Colleagues,
I would like to call your attention to some new data about the high school equivalency (HSE) exams and to thank our colleague JoAnn Weinberger for calling my attention to this column from the Hechinger Report newsletter, GED and other high school equivalency degrees drop by more than 40% nationwide since 2012, . https://hechingerreport.org/ged-and-other-high-school-equivalency-degrees-drop-by-more-than-40-nationwide-since-2012/
Here are some highlights from the short article:
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"Decline linked to 2014 change in exam and adult ed budget cuts, researcher says"
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"Little is known about what has happened to adult learners seeking high school degrees since the old GED exam disappeared because annual data is no longer published as it used to be every year. But thanks to a data collection effort by an expert in adult education at a nonprofit research organization in New York, Center for an Urban Future, we now have evidence of a sharp decline in new high school equivalency degrees in almost every state between 2012 and 2016."
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Specifically, the annual number of test takers who completed one of the three exams has fallen more than 45 percent from more than 570,000 in 2012 to roughly 310,000 in 2016. The number passing the exam and earning a diploma has decreased more than 40 percent from almost 400,000 in 2012 to just over 225,000 in 2016.
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“Every state has fewer people obtaining high school equivalencies. We need to have alternative routes for people who don’t graduate from high school. Communities and states that have large populations of people who lack a high school credential are places that will have heavy users of public services, whether welfare or Medicaid.” (from Tom Hilliard, a senior fellow at the Center for an Urban Future)
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A map is offered, with a number of red states where the number of people obtaining an HSE dropped by more than 50% between 2012 and 2016. You can go to the map from the article and click on your state to see what the drop there has been.
What do you think?
What should be done about this? Should more states offer alternative competency-based credentials like the National External Diploma Program? Should states create their own equivalency exams? Should HSE test-makers, as some have recently done, lower the cut scores for some of their tests, for example the math or writing test? If we had 2017 data would we see a different picture? Has this disparity in opportunity been recently narrowed, or not? Perhaps you do not see this as a problem, that this is an inevitable consequence of raising the testing bar so more people with an HSE cannot only enter post-secondary education but now, with a higher level of knowledge skills, can succeed. If so, does this mean that we need to increase intensity of instruction at pre-HSE or even more basic levels? If so, how can programs do this without significantly increased funding? What's your perspective on this news?
David J. Rosen, Moderator
LINCS CoP Integrating Technology group