GED

Assistant Principal at New Haven Adult and Continuing Education Center: “People who have no money will never be able to actually take the GED”

/ The Old Crank

In case you missed it, NPR aired a story last week about the concerns over the high cost of the 2014 GED this morning. The report was filed from an affiliate in Connecticut, and featured interviews with students/staff at the New Haven Adult and Continuing Education Center.

That particular program was a good choice: Toni Walker, the Assistant Principal, is also a Connecticut state representative. Walker’s comments on the potential increase in cost gets to the heart of the issue:

“It [the cost] is going to be prohibitive … People come here with pennies and nickels, bringing us change to pay for their GED,” Walker says. “So it’s going to be a class issue. People who have no money will never be able to actually take the GED.”

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?

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.

Why Hasn’t Prison Education Led to Better Employment Outcomes in D.C.?

/ The Old Crank

(Updated Below)

According to the Council for Court Excellence (CCE), an estimated 60,000 people in the District of Columbia have criminal records (this is roughly one in every ten persons), and about 8,000 of them return to the city each year after serving their sentences. Unfortunately, half of these individuals will end up back behind bars within three years of getting out.

Reducing recidivism improves public safety and strengthens communities, and is therefore a worthy policy goal. And the research tells us that one of the best ways to accomplish this is to provide inmates with access to education and training while they are in prison.

But it appears that education and training for incarcerated D.C. residents isn’t going to be enough unless we significantly reduce barriers to employment once people are out of prison.

Las year, CCE released a report on the employment challenges facing previously incarcerated D.C. residents after they are released. The report was based on the results of a survey of 550  formerly incarcerated individuals. Among the key findings: there was little or no difference in employment rates for those who earned a GED or job certificate before or after prison and those who did not:

The unemployment rate among survey respondents was about the same after incarceration as it had been prior to incarceration, even among those who used their time in prison productively to increase their skills. Over 30% indicated that they received a GED or higher in prison and 35% indicated receiving a job training certificate of some kind. CCE’s sample showed little or no difference in the unemployment rate for those who had earned a GED or job certificate in or after prison compared with those who had not. (my emphasis)

This finding is at odds with the findings of another recent recidivism study from another jurisdiction, conducted by Jake Cronin, a policy analyst with the Institute of Public Policy in the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri.

Cronin studied Missouri Department of Corrections data and found that inmates who earned their GED in Missouri prisons were significantly more likely to find a job after release from prison than those who did not.

But Cronin also noted that recidivism rates went down most dramatically for those inmates had earned a GED and acquired a full-time job after release.

“Employment proves to be the strongest predictor of not returning to prison that we found,” Cronin said. “Those who have a full-time job are much less likely to return to prison than similar inmates who are unemployed. Recidivism rates were nearly cut in half for former inmates with a full-time job compared to similar inmates who are unemployed.”

It makes sense to me that education plus sustained employment has the most lasting impact on reducing recidivism. But in Missouri, at least, attaining an educational credential appears to increase the likelihood of employment, whereas in Washington it may have no effect at all. So the question is whether there are other significant barriers to employment for formerly incarcerated individuals here in the District—other than education—that may not be as prominent in Missouri. And if there are, what do we do about them?

I’ll concede that the biggest barrier to employment for many people these days is the lack of jobs to begin with. I’ll also concede that part of the problem may be that the jobs that do become available in the District may, on average, require more specialized training or post-secondary education than the jobs that are available in Missouri. (I don’t know that for certain, but it seems reasonable.) Nonetheless, there are also policies that can be put in place to make it easier for those returning from prison to find a job, and to encourage employers to hire them.

For their part, the Council for Court Excellence (CCE) believes that barriers to employment unrelated to education do exist, and in their report, they made several recommendations to address them, including, among other things, liability protection for employers and a “certificate of good standing” indicating that an individual has completed his or her sentence and is in good standing with conditions of release.

These two recommendations are the centerpiece of recent bill, the D.C. Re-entry Facilitation Amendment Act, introduced by D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson on July 10th.

UPDATE 9/27/12: My original headline (Why Hasn’t Prison Education Reduced D.C. Recidivism Rates?) was all wrong—I was making a point about employment outcomes, not recidivism rates—and was updated accordingly.