Report: Missouri Ready to Move on from the GED

/ The Old Crank

The Moberly Monitor-Index reports that Missouri is officially looking for an alternative to the GED to serve as the state’s high school equivalency exam.

As many people reading this blog already know, the GED Testing Service, a relatively new for-profit joint venture between the American Council on Education (ACE) and the education publisher Pearson, are in the process of dramatically revamping the GED. The new GED, set to replace the current assessment in January of 2014, will actually include two parts: an updated high school equivalency assessment aligned with the common core, and a second part that will measure college and career readiness. The new GED will also no longer be a pencil-and-paper exam, but a computer-based test.

These changes have been highly controversial. States (New York in particular) have complained about the increased cost of the exam. Most states are expecting the base cost of the exam to rise significantly, which will likely compel them to increase the fee charged to each individual taking the test (the cost to an individual varies depending on how much the state subsidizes the cost). In my experience talking with teachers about adult education policy, the new GED is far and away the most frequently expressed policy concern among adult educators.

A few months ago, a report claimed that as many as 25 states are looking into the possibility of dropping the GED. I don’t have the resources to monitor this closely state-by-state, so I don’t know how many have gone so far as to actually seek proposals from vendors for alternatives. Until I read the Moberly Monitor-Index story this morning, New York was only other state I knew of that had gone forward with such a request.

What’s really interesting about the Monitor-Index story is that the reporter is clearly under the impression that the GED’s days as a “national standard” for high-school equivalency are numbered:

The exact changes that will occur are still unclear, but what is known is that the national standard GED will no longer be in place.

States will soon be able to choose vendors to develop and regulate the tests, which could cause difficulties for adults and young people pursuing the GED option over a high school diploma.

“The challenge I see is that every state is going to choose their own vendor,” Maryville AEL Director Linda Stephens said. “That is different than it has ever been before. I can see problems developing with bordering states and people who relocate.”

Each states education department will be able to set its own standards. The question remains whether credits and scores earned in Missouri will be honored elsewhere.

Stephens has been reviewing information on GED Testing Services sent to her by the state. But there are many vendors out there ready to enter the high school equivalency business. (my emphasis)

From what little I do know, I think it’s premature to state with certainly that a free-for-all is imminent for high-school equivalency tests around the country. But the scenario the reporter lays out here is certainly not far-fetched. Having different exams in different states probably will create confusion. It could be particularly challenging for someone studying for an exam in one state who then unexpectedly finds themselves in a situation where they need to move to a different state—maybe due to a job change, for example. And, as noted above, it’s also not clear whether every state will recognize the validity of every other state’s exam.

For better or worse, the GED, while not by any means the only path towards high school equivalency for adults and out-of-school youth, is our de facto national test. It’s hard to imagine how states dropping it and replacing it with multiple alternative exams won’t create confusion for adult learners and present new challenges to the already under-funded field of adult education. It’s also unclear if there is some point at which enough states drop the test that Pearson is no longer to justify it as a viable for-profit venture. What happens then?

What Are the Key Federal Policy Issues for Nonprofits?

/ The Old Crank

Pablo Eisenberg, a senior fellow at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, wrote an opinion piece last week for The Chronicle of Philanthropy that was critical of the Independent Sector’s new report on nonprofit advocacy, Beyond the Cause, arguing that is was undermined by “a self-serving agenda and an implicit, if not intentional, suggestion that Independent Sector become the central hub of the [nonprofit] sector’s advocacy efforts.”

The Chronicle headline would lead you to believe that the article was primarily about Eisenberg’s discomfort with the notion of Independent Sector serving as the voice for all on nonprofits, but the meatier part of his critique actually concerned the specific policy issues that they reported as the most critical to the field. He doesn’t agree with their choices, and suggests five policy changes that he thinks would make more of a difference. Those changes are (in a nutshell):

  • Improving what he labels as a “dysfunctional” nonprofit regulatory system.
  • Mandating an increase to the share of assets foundations must distribute annually.
  • Encouraging greater socioeconomic diversity on nonprofit boards of both foundations and nonprofits.
  • Closing the growing gap between large and small nonprofits. He notes that small organizations are shrinking (or closing) while large nonprofit are thriving and that tis disproportionately hurts the poor and disadvantaged, who typically get services from smaller, community-based nonprofits.

You can read the entire article to read his arguments in depth.

It’s useful to think about the most pressing policy issues impacting nonprofits, even though I don’t think it’s easy to come up with a list that every nonprofit would agree on, considering the size and diversity of the sector—which includes organizations ranging from universities with multi-million endowments to small, all-volunteer organizations with tiny budgets. And sometimes we forget that the sector includes a wide variety of political points of view as well.

For his part, Eisenberg thinks it’s impossible for nonprofits to share a broad consensus about which issues are most important, and that “the best that nonprofits can accomplish is to strengthen their individual advocacy and lobbying activities and join with other organizations in coalitions that fight for specific policy changes.”

But is it really impossible to come up with a short list of changes that a broad consensus of organizations could agree are important? And while I agree that working via coalitions is an effective strategy, the reality is that the best coalitions often are led by a trusted leader that pulls everyone together and keeps things organized. While I don’t think a single entity could speak for everyone on every issue facing nonprofits, a lead organization that was able to bring the sector together on a handful of the most critical issues, if it resisted the temptation to dominate the advocacy space on its own, could be very effective. The more groups there are advocating here in Washington on behalf of this sector, the more likely we are to drown each other out.

For the record, here are the issues that Independent Sector picked as most important:

  • Protecting against proposals that could limit the organizations eligible for charity status.
  • Protecting against proposals to limit or remove charitable tax deductions for donors.
  • Clarifying advocacy and lobbying rules for charities and private foundations.
  • Guarding against any proposed revisions to Internal Revenue Service disclosure forms that could hamper nonprofit operations.
  • Reducing/eliminating overly burdensome paperwork and red tape involving government contracts with nonprofits.
  • Providing more government-financed research on the nonprofit sector.

Redesign of Los Angeles’ OneSource Centers Will Focus on Helping Out-of-School Youth Get Their High School Diploma or GED

/ The Old Crank

(updated below)

Here’s an example of Workforce Innovation Fund dollars being used on a major education project for out-of-school youth: Los Angeles new Youth Source Centers, a redesign of a program that used to be focused on helping in-school youth look for jobs, but will now be focused on helping out-of-school youth 16-21 to get their high school diploma or pass the General Educational Development (GED) test. The new centers are funded in part by a $12 million grant from the Department of Labor’s Workforce Innovation Fund.

(via Intersections South LA)

UPDATE 10/27/12: An article posted to the National League of Cities blog, CitiesSpeak.org, puts this initiative in context, noting that it is one of several “dropout reengagement initiatives” now operating in cities such as Davenport, Iowa, and Boston, Massachusetts. The author advises municipal leaders to keep an eye on these efforts, as “[m]oving dropouts back into school holds great promise for achieving credentials at the high school level and beyond.” There is a reference to cross-collaboration as a common element of these initiatives; I wonder to what extent—if any—existing adult education systems (which, in many areas, have traditionally provided the bulk of educational services to out-of-school youth) are employed in these efforts.

Early Reports Suggest DACA Increasing Demand for Adult Education

/ The Old Crank

Back in I August I wrote an article suggesting that the new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative might increase demand for GED classes—and for adult education classes in general.

According to Miranda Leitsinger of NBC News, it has. Although it’s not clear yet what the impact of DACA has been on the demand for adult education in general, she reports that interest in the GED test is on the rise, at least in some states.

Some GED state testing centers are seeing a spike in requests to take the test or a course, as well as an uptick in calls with questions about the exam since the government began accepting applications for the deferred action program on Aug. 15, according to an informal survey of state GED test program administrators conducted by the GED Testing Service, the official creator of the exam.

In Iowa, centers have experienced a 20 percent rise in English as a Second Language attendance for GED prep, while Massachusetts has seen a 25 percent to 50 percent surge in registration for the test through Spanish. In North Carolina, there has been a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in testing requests, including to take it in Spanish, prompting adminstrators to order more such tests for next year.

I suspect that the main reason an increase in demand is only being reported from some states is due to a lack of data. The GED test program administrator survey cited here, for example, is characterized as “informal,” and it could be that many states did not respond or have not collected data on this yet.

Leitsinger also suggests that DACA is increasing immigration advocates’ awareness of the lack of adult education services available:

I think it’s fair to say that the immigrant rights movement is discovering the education reform movement … and that they’re really coming to understand, first of all, how hard it is to get a GED and secondly, how limited the capacity of adult education programs is,” said Margie McHugh, co-director of the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy. “Certainly this 350,000 or so young people are the most immediate concern and the most vulnerable for not making it through the process, and that’s very much related to both the difficulty of pursuing a GED or completing a GED … and also the lack of availability of programs.”

What’s critical about all this is that it means that the relief provided by DACA is going to be much more accessible to those with the means to pay for GED classes. I’d be interested to know the extent to which the administration took into account the availability of free/low-cost adult education services when they formulated this policy, and whether they were concerned that the lack of such services might seem unfair to those with limited means. Secondly, now that there is evidence that the potential DACA applicants are frustrated by the lack of affordable services, whether this presents an opportunity for immigration rights advocates and adult education rights advocates, working together, to ramp up our advocacy on the need for adult education services.