The General Educational Development (GED) credential is issued on the basis of an eight hour subject-based test. The test claims to establish equivalence between dropouts and traditional high school graduates, opening the door to college and positions in the labor market. In 2008 alone, almost 500,000 dropouts passed the test, amounting to 12% of…

We exploit an exogenous increase in General Educational Development (GED) testing requirements to determine whether raising the difficulty of the test causes students to finish high school rather than drop out and GED certify. We find that a six point decrease in GED pass rates induces a 1.3 point decline in overall dropout rates. The effect size…

GED (General Educational Development) testing candidates have many options available to them to prepare for the GED Test, including adult education (AE) classes, practice tests, and self-study. This study focused on candidates who voluntarily took the GED Test and could choose freely among preparation activities. We examined GED Test preparation…

The economic and employment outlook for individuals without a high school diploma is bleak. For many of these individuals, passing the General Educational Development (GED) Test is the first step in competing in the increasingly demanding job market. GED test-taking policies vary across test centers and jurisdictions, and have the potential to…

This report describes the structure, format, and processes of Iowa's General Educational Development (GED) test center structure and presents the results, conclusions, and recommendations from an evaluation of that structure. The major purposes of the evaluation were to assess the effectiveness of Iowa's new statewide GED structure, determine…

In 1989, 682,728 people (7% less than in 1988) took the Tests of General Educational Development (GED Tests). Approximately 68% earned scores sufficient to qualify for the GED diploma awarded by their jurisdictions. Departments and ministries of education in the United States and Canada awarded 376,879 credentials (down 13% from 1988) based on GED…

The methods used by the General Educational Development Testing Service (GEDTS) to establish and maintain score stability and reading reliability on its direct assessment of writing are described. Using the 1988 site certification and monitoring results of several scoring sites, the focus is on describing how the score scale was established and…

The Iowa Norming Study determined how well graduating high school seniors (N=722) performed on the revised 1988 Tests of General Educational Development (GED), providing the data to describe and evaluate the score requirements for GED Test candidates in terms of the percentage of Iowa high school graduates a GED Test candidate must exceed to…