GED proves it's not equivalent to high school degree

1
GED proves it's not equivalent to high school
degree

• By Jay P. Greene
• Detroit News, April 7, 2002
• Source

2
What is the GED

• Many people think that the "E" in GED stands for
  "equivalent," believing the alternative
  credential is supposed to be like a high school
  diploma. They are wrong on two counts -- the GED
  stands for General Education Development
  certification, and there is nothing about this
  certification that is equivalent to a high school
  diploma.
• We know that the GED is not equivalent to a
  regular high school diploma because GED
  recipients tend to fare later in life much more
  like high school dropouts than like graduates. A
  study by Nobel Prize-winning economist James
  Heckman and colleague Stephen Cameron found GED
  holders to be "statistically indistinguishable"
  from high school dropouts They're not
  significantly more likely to land a job or to
  have higher hourly wages.

3
How is it tested?

• We get data.
• Outcome
• b1 Years of Educ.
• b2 gender (0, 1)
• b3 HS Dip (0, 1)
• b4 GED (0, 1)

Score
W/ HS Dip
If HS Diploma helps, curve shifts upward.
If GED doesnt help, curve doesnt shift
Years
4
Results

• The 60 percent of GED recipients who attempt
  higher education also do not make out very well.
  Almost three-quarters of GED holders who enroll
  in community colleges fail to finish their
  degrees, compared with 44 percent of high school
  graduates. In four-year college, the prospects
  are even grimmer An astonishing 95 percent of
  GED holders don't finish, compared with 25
  percent of high school graduates.
• GED recipients tend not to do much better than
  high school dropouts primarily because it doesn't
  take very much to obtain a GED. To get the
  certification, one has to pass tests in five
  subjects. Despite a recent revision of the tests,
  passage is not very difficult.

5
Consequences to the belief in GED Equivalency

• There are real consequences to the false belief
  in GED equivalency. First, the easy availability
  of an "equivalent" degree may entice students to
  dropout of high school. States that made it
  easier for students to take the GED, by having
  lower minimum age requirements and shorter
  waiting periods between leaving high school and
  taking the GED tests, experienced higher dropout
  rates than states that made access to the GED
  more difficult.
• Second, counting GEDs as if they were like
  regular high school graduates has distorted
  public understanding of graduation rates in this
  country. When the U.S. Department of Education
  announced last year that 87 percent of students
  complete high school, they lumped together GED
  recipients with regular high school graduates.
  And when it claimed that the high school
  completion rate has been steadily increasing, the
  department failed to note that if the growing
  number of GED recipients were excluded, the real
  high school graduation rate has actually been
  declining since the 1960s.