SInce Pearson bought control of the GED test, there has been a staggering collapse in the number of students who passed it and won a high school diploma. Pearson raised the cost of taking it and made it harder by aligning it with the Common Core.
Before Pearson took over, about half a million students took the GED, and most passed. After Pearson took control, passing rates dropped by a stunning 90%.
These days, employers often require a high school diploma even for menial jobs. No diploma, a life of limited opportunity.
New York City once had a superb adult education program, one of the best in the nation. But that program is now producing few graduates.
“The city Department of Education touts its $47 million-a-year adult-education program as the biggest in the state and second-biggest nationwide, but last school year it awarded just 299 high-school equivalency diplomas, The Post has learned.
“About 27,000 people over age 21 were enrolled in classes offered by the DOE’s Office of Adult and Continuing Education, including 15,700 learning English as a second language and nearly 11,000 in basic education classes that can lead to a diploma.”
The New York Post blames the program’s leadership, but in light of the national data, the test itself might be flawed. Still, $47 million to produce 299 graduates. Wow.
Mercedes Schneider recently reported that the GED was dropping its cut score, though not by a lot. This was a recognition that the failure rate was too high. But will this solve the problem?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Pearson = Watch out!
About 100,000 per kid is too high, but then we spend about 30,000 per year on inmate of prison–so maybe it’s not sub a bad deal.
I read about and taught about serfdom. Now I guess we’ll be living it.
NYS uses TASC, not GED. Different tests.
I’m a 1960’s honor roll graduate of an excellent northern New Jersey school system, & several years later earned my Bachelor’s, magna cum laude, from Syracuse University; I could not qualify for a GED in NYC today. I have a friend with a PhD who feels she couldn’t either. Our lives & careers since then demonstrate the value of the learning behind our degrees, so it follows that the current standards are way out of line with reality.
You have to love how it’s just all an abstract experiment. Boost the cut score! Now drop the cut score! It’s tens of thousands of people who either do or don’t get the credential they need to get even a bad job. Collateral damage, I guess.
Among the many things that rephorm is trying to pull over on us is the idea that high school graduation = college ready. Be prepared for only about 30% of students to be able to graduate high school in any form, whether traditional or GED.
It makes no sense to make a GED an elitist pursuit. The GED is a ticket to access to all types of job training, job entrance and community college. America should be about second chances. Some students get off to a rough start, but have potential to follow their dreams, and the GED should not stand in their way. With a GED more students will move forward, be better citizens and contribute more to the economy. Raising an artificial bar higher makes no sense for anybody except Pearson who can suck more money out of students, many of whom are already poor.
So New york had better design their own version of the GED, with a new name,and sell it to the employers (in a metaphorical sense of course!).
New York has not used the GED since Jan 1, 2014
We’ve been giving civil service tests for decades – why did we NEED a new GED?
Pearson is very reminiscent of the British East India Company — only in this case, it is our own state governments who have given them the green light to rip off the American public, whom they treat as their colonies.
You all due realize Pearson got a new company logo.
http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo_and_identity_for_pearson_by_together_design.php#.VrQYYeaH6rs
I have a thing for graphic design so I followed the link. The new logo is made up of the letter “P” and an interrobang. That’s the punctuation mark that combines an exclamation point and a question mark.
I suppose they meant that to express “questions asked in excited manner,” but to me it the other meaning of the interrobang makes more sense and fits better, as in “What the F?!” Because disbelief, horror and disgust are the only responses I can think of when I think of Pearson.
Are we surprised their visual literacy is so lacking that they made such a poor choice of logo? Further proof of the importance of learning to read images, a skill taught by visual art educators!
It’s called: Let’s test ‘em, flunk ‘em, tell them their stupid.
Has anyone told them that these adults have no clue about what is covered in CC?
Just an FYI. New York has not used the GED since Jan 1, 2014 Because of the Pearson issues. NYSED was a leader in moving away from the GED and now 20+ states have followed.
Different test. Same argument. The mismanagement is tolerated by the chancellor. A curriculum will certainly help but that is not important to supt rose marie mills. She just wants meaningless numbers to keep the state happy.
The superintendent seems to quite proud of her accomplishments – completely missing the point and the needs of the students. If you only get about 300 something odd students ready for the exam, of course your pass rate will be high. In her own words:
“This year marks my third as superintendent of the Office of Adult and Continuing Education (OACE), and I am extremely proud of our accomplishments. Thanks to improvements in the delivery of instruction, data practices, and collaboration, the 2014-15 fiscal year was the most successful in the history of our office. We provided
services to over 27,000 adult learners, 299 students earned their high school diploma (with a 94 percent passrate), more than 3,000 participated in training classes, 1,085 entered postsecondary education or training, and 15,707 participated in English as a Second Language classes.”
Thanks pearson ged. You not only made the math test so hard I could not pass it. And you took hundreds of dollors from me I did not have. After three tries i still have not achieved my GED and I still can’t get a job to even feed myself or my family. What’s sad is I want to work and can’t because of a ged. So I thank you pearson for helping me and my family to a storage building and food banks!!! Thank You from me and all the I don’t won’t to even think about how many others out there you have ruined with your ged!!!! We all thank you pearson we hope you have a good meal and sleep well tonight.
I feel so bad for you, Teresa, and for the millions of other kids that this company has harmed. Warm regards, and best to you going forward.
This was a way forward for lots and lots of poor kids whose schools hadn’t served them well because they weren’t suited to kids who weren’t academically inclined.
And then Pear$on got ahold of it.
Pear$on is evil.
Pure freaking evil.
Pear$on Cored the test so that more kids would fail and have to pay them to take the test again and again and again, at enormous personal cost in addition to the financial cost (borne, mind you, by the poorest of the poor).
Pear$on is freaking evil. Curses upon people who use their tests, who enable this obscene behavior.
They became a road block, keeping these kids from moving forward with their lives, from getting into that trade program and learning to repair cars or cut hair or do welding and so become productive members of society. They DESTROYED LIVES.
What Pear$on did with this test hurt, egregiously, the most vulnerable young people in the country. This company is evil incarnate. If they thought they could turn an extra buck this quarter by [fill in Bosch-level horror], they would do it.