Why do students take the GED?

When I interviewed for my job at PSKS, one of the questions I had to answer was, "What does a GED mean to you?"

My answer was that while a GED was equivalent to a high school diploma for resume or college application purposes, to me it said more than that.  It said that the recipient chose an alternative path for their education than the conveyor belt that they started on.  When option one didn't work, they found a different way and earned it.  I tutored a high school graduate once who had special needs.  She told me that she felt pushed through classes because teachers didn't want to deal with her, and handed a diploma to get rid of her.  She felt jealous of GED students, because they had to work for their 450 passing grade.

I recently read an opinion piece by three guys from Department of Economics at the University of Chicago who very much disagree with me.

Their piece is about how the new GED is more difficult to better test the "scholastic ability" (Heckman, et al.) of students, but that both the old and new GED miss the picture by ignoring "a completely different set of skills that matter in high school and life."  As an educator who values authentic assessments, I actually agree with their main point, that the GED doesn't accurately measure a student's intelligence.  But as someone who is not in the field of Economics and actually works with GED students, I find their tactics for making their point heartless and short-sighted.

At one point they ask:

But why do GED recipients drop out of high school? The GED test — and achievement tests in general — miss skills like motivation, persistence, self-esteem, time management and self-control.

This is why they think GED students drop out?  Because they have low self-esteem?  Poor time management?  Because they are lazy?

Students who's families experience homelessness face many barriers when it comes to education.  The McKinney-Vento Act notes that homeless students are susceptible to enrollment delays (due to lack of records), likely to be segregated from non-homeless students, and struggle to find transportation to their "school of origin."  Therefore, homeless students often end up changing schools many times while their families move from shelter to shelter.  Each time a child changes schools, they fall behind as they struggle to adapt to new cultural norms combined with the stresses of living in poverty.

Other students drop out because they're running away from an abusive home life.  Some students come out to conservative parents, who then kick them out.  In these situations, the youth is usually not thinking about staying in high school at the moment, they are focused on survival.  I wouldn't say that they lack "motivation and persistence" though.

I've met a teenage mother who got kicked out when she had one credit left, the school didn't want to find a way to deal with her situation.  Another student got kicked out for the assumption that he was involved in gang activities.

And don't get me started on the amount of students I've met who dropped out because they were in Special Education classes, struggling more and more to confine themselves in a system that just doesn't fit with their learning style, until they finally get so frustrated (or break enough behavior contracts) that they leave.

Acknowledging the real reasons why students leave high school is imperative to creating a safe alternative for them.

My student Josh (student names are always changed for confidentiality purposes) has been a street youth for years.

Since the GED changed, I haven't gotten the new study guides and haven't been able to tell the students what the new test looks like, what passing grade you need, what materials you will need, etc.

Josh comes into my classroom last Friday, "Hey Teach," he says.  "I made a bet with someone that I could get my GED this week, so I've been taking the tests all week, and I should get my scores in the next 24 hours."

I didn't understand how he had even began to go about this.  The Testing Center closest to where Josh hangs out hasn't even started testing the new GED yet, so Josh had ridden the buses to three different community colleges in two opposite directions.  Once he signed up for the test online, he had to show up and take it or lose the money he had paid for that testing slot.

As a student under 19, Josh needs a form granting him permission to test from his home school district.  I start this with students the day I meet them, because it's a long, bureaucratic process.  Josh got the form filled out himself, but there was still trouble at the center with the administrators thinking it wasn't legitimate.  He asked to speak to a supervisor and advocated for himself to be able to test that day.

Then, Josh spent $120 and 7 hours labeling parts of an atom, writing an essay comparing historical articles, and doing algebra.  His scores came in that Friday, and he got his GED and passed two of his tests with honors.  Don't try to tell me this student dropped out because he lacked motivation, persistence, self-esteem, time management, or self-control.

I do still agree with the authors that students like Josh are missing out on some crucial parts of high school by getting a GED, but the experiences I value are different from the skills they advocate for.

When a student gets a GED, they might never have a chance to practice public speaking.  They might not get the holistic experience of trying out different electives: art, music, sports, and other clubs.  And they definitely miss out on the chance to maintain a few years in a more sheltered adolescence with a chance to just be a socializing teenager.

The opinion article started with:

In a 2011 study, the GED Testing Service found that within six years of earning a GED, about 40 percent of GED recipients enroll in college -- but most drop out within a year.  Only about 1 percent earns a bachelor's degree.

These numbers are interesting to me, compared to the fact that over 90% of the hundreds of College Success students with SEA (many who are GED recipients) are enrolled in higher education in good academic standing.  To me these numbers say that the GED test, like any test, can only measure a snapshot of a student.  There needs to be as much support for GED students as there are for middle class high school seniors pursuing higher education to expect both groups to be able to reach the same results.

Eventually the authors of the article finally conclude with the point that the GED needs to be supplemented.

Many GED recipients come from disadvantaged backgrounds and receive less support at early ages, but various interventions could help compensate for early disadvantage and improve life outcomes. Many have high rates of return and work primarily by building skills not captured by tests. Dropouts deserve a real second chance, something not assured by passing the GED test or any achievement test.

With this I agree, but they miss the part where this is happening.  This is exactly what my work with PSKS and SEA is about.  Which makes me sad to think that unless these Economic academics didn't do their homework, there might not be supportive programs for GED students in other cities.  That is a real problem that I'm glad the authors are aware of.  I just hope as they continue their work, they take the time to actually get to know some GED students.

Department of Education.  "McKinney-Vento Education for Homeless Children and Youths Program."  Federal Register.  Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, 8 March 2002.  Web notice.  3 Feb 2014.

Heckman, James J., John Eric Humpries, and Tim Kautz.  "New GED test fails to measure skills that matter most."  Seattle Times: Education Lab Blog.  Caitlin Moran, 23 Jan 2014.  Web.  2 Feb 2014.

A Companis Journey - Connections

My Companis journey began as a series of connections.  It started with Donna Beth Blythe, of all places.  The Sunday I became a member of Seattle First Baptist Church (which houses Companis), I read a piece I wrote about my grandmother from the pulpit.  Craig Darling, the Pastor for Call and Vocation and Executive Director of Companis, approached me after the service, and I learned that he had known my grandmother.  That spurred our conversation about Companis, and me becoming a Companis worker.

When I met with Craig and Gary, we talked about my goals as an educator.  How I had learned I needed to be somewhere where I would build long-term relationships with students, the environmental piece could be put on hold for now.  I wanted to work with older students, not elementary aged anymore.  I wanted to get back to the demographics of Fraser kids, at risk youth who need the extra level of support and guidance, because for many reasons related to systematic oppression, that support is lacking elsewhere in their lives.  I mentioned Seattle Education Access (SEA), because I had learned about it from Charlie (my friend from IW), but we weren't sure if it was the right fit yet.

When we looked into it and realized it was actually the perfect fit, Craig and Gary had me come in to SEA with them for a meeting with Anthon and Sarah.  Everyone was looking at my resume when Sarah's eye caught the educational experience section, and I learned that she was also an Earlham English major.

Family, IslandWood, Earlham; I felt there were pieces of my life nudging me along this path I was leaning into curiously.  I started to sink into that feeling of being exactly where I was supposed to be.

That was the beginning of my journey, noticing and receiving the connections.  Now I'm three months in my year of service with SEA.  In my opinion, SEA is a gracious space, a term we've been talking about from Bill Graves book, Sharing the Rock.

SEA logo www.seattleeducationaccess.org

To me, SEA is a gracious place, because it is a place where we practice saying yes.  At SEA, students hear, "Yes, you can go to school.  Here's how..."  SEA is a gracious space, because it is a place of genuine checks-in and debriefs.  I hear the honest truth about others' lives, and share how I am really feeling, through the positive, and the hardships.  SEA is a place where the powers that be spend more time figuring out how to support the people under them, than how to milk them for capital value.

SEA is a place where people see the value in things that can't be measured.  I've had conversations with my bosses and co-workers about how part of our job is to show up and be present.  This means sitting at a drop-in site for weeks before the students feel used to you and ask for help with homework, this means sitting patiently through the silence with students as they work through decisions.  These moments of building something is important work.

My time at SEA is going to be split 50/50 between admin work and tutoring.  The tutoring has been a scary and exciting experience. I've spent the last two years focusing on large group management.  The curriculum I've worked with has either been for 5th grade and younger, or has been after school workshops.  Sitting down with adult students to show them how to do algebra, geometry, calculus, or write a paper was a terrifying feeling at first.

Although I don't remember calculus yet, I really love tutoring at the middle, high school, and even college levels!  So far, my tutoring experience at SEA is helping me realize I do want to be a teacher someday, and I have what it takes to teach math, science, English, maybe even history at the adolescent age level.