Adult students without a high school credential are consistently denied access to programs offered by community colleges and four-year institutions. With a workforce that is in need of employees, employers have identified soft skills that are necessary for success in the workplace. Alabama offers a free program for students that includes these…

Community colleges face enrollment declines, student performance, and accountability metrics, the need to support nontraditional students' career paths, and constraints imposed by limited resources. Community college leadership would benefit from empirical data on students with nontraditional GED credentials and the effects of remedial education…

Competency-based testing and credentialing (CBTC) initiatives aim to address inequity in adult education by fundamentally changing how states use GED®, HiSET®, and TASC™ test scores to award and withhold high school equivalency credentials. However, CBTC is inconsistent with how developers intend states to use those scores. Accordingly, it falls…

Studies have found that educational credential attainment could reduce recidivism-- committing a criminal offense after being released from incarceration--by a significant amount (Davis et al., 2013; Lee College, 2019; Northwestern, 2020). Therefore, the philosophy department needed to create a program that would increase high-school-equivalency…

Results from two studies provided strong evidence for the validity of the HiSET® tests, thereby demonstrating that HiSET is a well-developed battery of tests with passing and college and career readiness (CCR) standards that, when met, provide a pathway to postsecondary education, better employment opportunities and wages, and a better quality of…

The overall design and framework of the GED Program is centered around providing measurements and tools documenting and promoting student achievement. More information about the test itself and the underlying documentation and validity framework may be found in the GED test Technical Manual on the GED Testing Service website. The philosophy…

Diploma and degree completion have become the fundamental standard for judging the performance of secondary and postsecondary educational institutions. Increasingly, leaders of education and workforce policy and programs assume that these measures of attainment effectively serve as indicators of adequate levels of essential literacy and numeracy…

The new Minnesota Standard Adult High School Diploma program has evolved into a viable secondary credential option within the Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC). This competency-based credential broadened the scope of instruction to include digital literacy and work readiness, providing hope and opportunity for individuals struggling to…

Among people who leave high school prior to completion, many return to schooling as adults. High school equivalency programs (such as a General Educational Development or Adult Basic Education program) gives them the opportunity to go back and complete high school requirements. Using data from the 2017 Aboriginal Peoples Survey--a national survey…

Until 2014, the General Educational Development (GED®) test dominated the high school equivalency (HSE) test market throughout the United States, to the point that educational experts acknowledged the acronym "GED" had become synonymous with "high school equivalency." However, changes to the test, the way it is administered,…

Many youth in America are not on track for labor market success. One factor that increases the risk of poor labor market outcomes among these youth is dropping out of school (Rumberger 2020). Youth who drop out of school are at greater risk for job instability and for lower longterm earnings (Hair et al. 2009). They are also more likely to…

This report presents findings from a feasibility evaluation of the Bridges to Pathways (Bridges) program. Bridges was a program for young men in Chicago between the ages of 17 and 21 years who were involved with the criminal or juvenile justice system and lacked a high school credential. The program offered intensive mentoring and case management,…

The report draws on a wide array of surveys and administrative datasets to present statistics on high school dropout and completion rates at the state and national levels. The report includes estimates of the percentage of students who drop out in a given 12-month period (event dropout rates), the percentage of young people in a specified age…

High School graduation rates are key indicators of accountability for high schools and school districts in Oregon. Beginning with the 2008-09 school year, the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) implemented the cohort method of calculating graduation rates. The cohort method identifies the year the student entered high school for the first time…

The guided pathways approach to community and technical college redesign has significant impacts for adult basic education (ABE). The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) and Ability to Benefit provide federal support that complements the work being done in Guided Pathways. Washington state's approach to implementing guided pathways…