My GED Hotline GED Practice Test

Will someone ask the Deputy Mayor why about 80 percent of high school and GED graduates at the City University of New York are taking remedial courses now, today, after years of mayoral control of the schools? Nobody "ensured" those youth. There is a lot of rhetoric coming from people who do not know GED and it will be highly doubtful if the money can achieve what they are saying unless they limit access to the GED to a chosen few. What percentage of those youth earned their high school diplomas among the youth taking remediation? With all the talk from Chancellor Klein over the years about providing a world class education or the same education that students in the best schools get, I think that some of the students who graduated benefitted but most did not. Thank Chancellor Klein!

Just as I was about the publish this article, city officials revealed that since 2002 the percentage has been reduced by 7.5 percent and the current figure is 74.4 percent taking remediation. This certainly is not a world class education and the education attainment of those who are in the best school. I would also urge an investigation of those remediation programs so the public will know exactly what is going on. Investigate! Report! Make improvements!

“We need to do a better job preparing our students so they can have a shot at a successful future,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “The current General Educational Development curriculum does not teach them the skills needed in today’s workforce. By working closely with all of our partners to raise the bar and open more doors for our students, we will restore the promise this certificate once held for students who are unable to receive a high school diploma.”

Only seven percent of the millions who need a GED are in GED classes according to one of the major GED reports. There are opportunities for a small number of people. The doors have never been wide open nor can we say when that will happen as we recover from the worst economy that we have known since the Great Depression. Maybe we could use the $3 million to restore the patriotism for the GED that once existed.

By the way, Iowa in 2002 when the new GED came out tested 4,897candidates of whom 2,586 passed (its 92.5 percent passing rate was based on its low completion rate of 2,795) and the passing rate overall was 52 percent. New York in 2002 tested 48,095 of whom 25,084 passed (its percentage was 53.7 based on its high completion rate of 46,724) and the passing rate was exactly 52 like Iowa. I am sure my friends on the City Council of New York and the New York State Assembly will find this information interesting. Iowa has become the model to follow among the New York Times and others who really do not understand the statistics well. Since Hispanics fail in greater numbers, it must be evident that if Iowa had tested 3,939 candidates as New York did (Iowa tested 77), its passing rate would have been lower. New York tested 828 in French and Iowa tested only 1 candidate. I cannot comment on this, but the American Council on Education can provide more data

A year and a half ago on the John Gambling show, my attempt to speak to Mayor Bloomberg about the GED was rejected by Gambling Show staff that had me wait on the line ( the rejection was the show's last minute decision). There must be something wrong with the City University and it may be out of touch with the skills needed by New York City High School graduates because the vast majority of students are taking remediation. Who told the mayor to say the things he said here? Freddie Ferrer, Democratic candidate for mayor in 2005, was talking about improving the skills of the workforce and what has happened in the last five years. Nothing or hardly anything? There is no need to use talk like "we will restore the promise of this certificate." I think most of the GED world would be offended by this. As a man who has spent the last 25 years of my life in GED and the last ten years helping the governments of Florida and New York and people around the United States and the world, I do not know what the man is talking about. Almost everyone who earns a GED must complete the course and that is really the problem and the same will hold true for those who take the test in 2014 when it will have been "restored" by Mayor Bloomberg. Raising the bar does not open doors. It leads to more dropouts and more GED dropouts, as it did in 2002 and for years afterwards. All of these conditions and more are what are keeping millions of people among the forty million from obtaining the GED, holding back America. There is a pipeline to prison related to not helping the youth fast enough and the violence and crime we have seen over the last forty years could have been greatly reduced by doubling and tripling the GED diplomas in the communities with the greatest need. We want to turn youth away from drugs and crime and into GED and higher education. The Department of Education has not really achieved anything close to this.

Next is information that I just found on the internet about Bill Gates. No changes have been made to the text.

Bill Gates; was a young computer genius with an unreal understanding of technology, expecially computers. When he was 17yrs.old he was arrested for Grand Theft Auto, he plead guilty to a single charge of Attempted Joy Riding.

At the age of 18yrs. old Bill Gates took his G.E.D. passed the first time and Scored the highest that had been ever seen on the G.E.D. test.

At 19yrs. old he entered Harvard on a full scholarship (again only having a G.E.D.), earning a place on the Deans List w/ Perfect Attendance and a 4.0 (G.P.A.), thus the following semester dropping out at Mid-Term, as he started his first job working with computers doing security patches for IBM. 3yrs. later he left IBM to pick up a job w/ Dell and Apple, doing security patches and networking...

A year later quiting. After meeting a black gentleman (whom didn't really see all the real possibilities of the Windows and Microsoft benefits and business opportunities, Bill Gates seen even more). that gave Bill Gates the idea for Microsoft Suites and Windows OS. Bill Gates gave the black gentleman a few hundred thousand dollars and 2 years later opened Microsoft Foundation.

This information was supposed to be at the beginning of this article. Okay the article has become a work in progress.
Wisconsin uses some stimulus money for GED testing.
Wisconsin receives $1,000 from Wal-Mart for GED test scholarships for GED test takers.
New York City receives $3 million for new GED pilot project.
These important things were announced by the GED Testing Service.
Arne Duncan feels that Cathie Black can do a good job and that Chancellor Klein has done a fine job.

ALL I CAN SEE GOING ON REALLY IS THE GED IS GOING TO BE MADE SLIGHTLY HARDER, BUT IT WILL STILL BE RELATIVELY EASY TO PASS AND THIS LAST PART IS THE MESSAGE TO EMPHASIZE. IN 2002 THE SAME THING WAS DONE, BUT WE DO NOT WANT TO GO THERE BECAUSE OF THE NEGATIVE IMPACT THAT IT HAD ON OUR NATION. THE GED IS HARDER TO PASS AND WILL BE HARDER TO PASS THAN THE PROMOTIONAL EXAMS GIVEN TO NYC STUDENTS, TESTING THAT WAS THROWN OUT BY NY STATE COMMISSIONER DAVID STEINER. THIS HAPPENED UNDER THE WATCH OF KLEIN-BLOOMBERG.

New York State statistics for 2008-2009. See it here -7.2 in test takers, -5.9 percent in passers in 2009 and -0.1 difference in completions. Thousands of diplomas were lost again in New York State and we are way behind figures from a decade ago. The more people talk, the worse things get. Washington, D.C., Indiana, and Tennessee did worse. Rhode Island and West Virginia showed gains.

So the DOE is back to square one. Was the testimony given at City Hall a big lie in November of 2007 when Cami Anderson told all of us who attended the GED Testimony at City Hall that the DOE had in place ways of improving the delivery of instruction or better methods for teachers (I expected much greater numbers from the DOE because of its claim that instruction was improved)? Was I wrong for feeling that way? Given the same number of students each year and a higher passing rate for the same numbers, one would surely expect many more diplomas. After various GED reforms it seems the DOE wants to reform again using the new test as an excuse. Cami Anderson was moving in the wrong direction then and nothing has changed since. Just as she was giving testimony years ago, thousands more people took and passed the GED outside the DOE's (See Jacqueline Cook's GED Report because this was one of the most important details in her report because communities were positively mobilizing without the help of the DOE) GED programs and the DOE could only show an increase of about two hundred. Is that what reform is about? Three million dollars could mobilize 42,857 people to take the test. If there were more GED diplomas in 1999, why were so many restructurings needed by the DOE? Is the answer to improve instruction and reduce the number of diplomas?

Money for GED testing is badly needed. That is what we needed then and that is what we need now. Lots of people who did well on the GED have lost their jobs in this economy. See my comments back in November of 2007. I eliminated some material from the article I wrote, but the entire text is available still on the internet. I was looking for great gains in diplomas and not higher percentages of people passing. The city is worse off than it was in 2007, both economically and educationally. The CSS report documents Black and Hispanic unemployment. Long before this report was written, I knew that our nation has a great problem which I can define for you quickly and efficiently. People do not connect well enough with opportunities and community organizations do not connect well with each other and the elected officials are a great part of the problem. Cami Anderson's comment about "showing dogged determination when you get an obstacle in the way" are not reassuring words for a scientific approach to help people get jobs through a pilot program that will cost $3 million.

November 15, 2007
GED TESTIMONY AT CITY HALL NEW YORK
I listened to Superintendent Cami Anderson’s lengthy testimony about the programs of District 79. My conclusion is that the restructuring will help some students and the administration, but it will hurt the City of New York. I gave my reasons to the City Council in testimony.
Here is what is wrong with the restructuring. We must double and triple the number of GED’s in the worst neighborhoods. New York State leads the nation in the desertion of African Americans from school and it is about 15th from the bottom in GED. This is not a pretty picture for African Americans and Hispanics. The new plan of the DOE may bring a ten percent improvement, if it does improve things, and a hundred percent improvement is, obviously, ten times that figure. We can do it!
The DOE must tell us that students will no longer be required to pass the Official Practice Test (which turns many of them off, forcing them to leave class-the DOE is not really as student friendly as they say) in class with a score that is too high and does not make sense (Robert Jackson told me this last year). That score, I have been informed, is now 2,450. The passing score is only 2,250. What they have done is like raising the rim on the basketball court to eleven feet instead of ten feet and waiting to see who dunks. Very few would be able to dunk and very few go to take the GED. This is one of the great scandals of education in New York City. Students who want to study to get into certain colleges with scores of 2,500 or 3,500 (Queens College) should be encouraged to meet those goals, but most students need that GED for jobs. Latino apprentices for skilled jobs often do not get the job because the GED is required and this hurts Latinos. In addition that are not enough Latinos in Civil Service in New York State and this is one of the contributing factors.
The DOE must assure us that all students are given a Complete GED book to study from at home. Home study is critical to many students, especially when the attendance is from forty to sixty percent. The DOE should give the City Council a report on what the instructional improvements were and I will be happy to evaluate it.
The TABE test has been used for decades to hold students back in GED. The rights of students and parents have been violated. Seventeen and eighteen year olds who have been out of regular school for a year really do not have to go to GED class like others their age (state law). A separate alternative program is needed for them, students who are nineteen to twenty one (also state law permits them to take the GED without going to class and all other adults too), and all adults. MIAMI-DADE has a one week program that includes the taking of the Official Practice Test (which I have been urging for 7 years). This program can be taken in place of regular GED class. So students need this important option. A sixteen year old can take the GED the day after dropping out of school in Florida. One of my students in the Consulate of El Salvador was in class for only four hours and I sent him to get his GED and he passed. This can be done for thousands of people in New York City each year that do not belong in class. The students mentioned here should not give up their rights to the DOE.
The infrastructure for GED is not strong and I suggested opening up GED Testing in the Public Libraries of New York City. All New Yorkers outside of the class can take the Official Practice Test in the library one day, pass it, and get their date to take the real GED a week later in the library near their home or job. The days of waiting six months to take the test will be over and New York City will be able to compete with the rest of the state where the GED numbers are much better. Dr. Pat Mooney, the Administrator of GED in New York State actually told me I would cry if I saw the numbers for the city.
I also had the chance to explain the option that Tom Suozzi wrote in his run for Governor of New York. We could hire college students at $25 an hour to teach GED my way across New York State. I am sure that I could compete with the DOE and BOCES and save the taxpayer tens of millions of dollars, but we would have to increase that state funding to $8-10 million so people could take the test for free all over the state. The savings to the taxpayer in New York could be in the billions in social service costs since the estimate nationally is about $46 billion and New York State probably could absorb about ten percent based on GED figures.
MY FRIENDS ON THE CITY COUNCIL CAN HELP THE CITY MORE EFFECTIVELY THAN THE DOE. I SUGGEST WE HAVE A GED ROUNDTABLE FOR THE CITY COUNCIL AS SOON AS POSSIBLE SO THAT I CAN FINALLY ANSWER THE QUESTIONS YOU HAVE AND SHOW YOU HOW TO ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS.
Maria del Carmen Arroyo told about her passion for GED (she earned a GED). Her comments about the stipend program she was in are not true for all GED programs with stipends, but we do know that incarcerated youth and adults do much better on the GED because they do not have the freedom to stay away from class in a free society. I would suggest that we mobilize communities with a GED poster campaign and other methods first. This will be cost effective.
The Community Service Society gave testimony about using stipends to bring students into GED. The GED administrator of Puerto Rico recently signed up 250 students by going to a mall for a week. I do not encourage stipends for recruitment when it can be done without it. I can show the city other ways to achieve this through the schools. Puerto Rico is following up on getting Felix “Tito” Trinidad for a poster campaign that I gave them called “LUCHE POR SU TITULO” or “FIGHT FOR YOUR TITLE.”

I cannot say that Geoffrey Canada would not have made a good chancellor, but there was a parent who needed the GED and I wish Canada would have been more aggressive and getting the young man in the book help. You can also see the progress made from January to April of 2007 in the book "Whatever It Takes" to see the practice test results. One thing to keep in mind is that the students may not have been as bad as they tested. They may have known more than the results showed on the practice tests. Jumping from Canada to Cathie Black tells me that Mayor Bloomberg was inconsistent in his approach to replacing Chancellor Klein or am I wrong because both are connected with "big business" and not connected with other interest groups, such as organized labor. Geoffrey Canada did not run a big corporation and Cathie Black did.

Almost 43,000 New Yorkers could take the GED test and we would probably have over 17,000 more diplomas in the city with that money (and many more people ready for the workforce and college). The money given by Wal-Mart would test 10 people in Wisconsin. New York City needs GED test taking money and not new programs. It does not need a Bloomberg-Bill Gates concept that is expensive, especially at this time in our economy. This high level workforce and college preparedness which I believe has been in effect in some GED programs in New York City must now tell us the cost per diploma. You now know that based on New York City's own statistics that there is probability that over 17,000 can earn a diploma when $3 million is spent. Let us compare the data for the current GED program so we can see the probability of how many diplomas can be attained with the new program. I would suggest that Dennis White, the CEO of Metlife sit down with Mayor and they agree to put that money into GED testing in English, Spanish, and French. If this money could be spread out over two years, the GED programs on the city could double the number the number of test takers and passers, using two-thirds each year for test taking and one-third each year for this workforce-college preparedness program. This is the way to help New York City now during the recession. It is also a great way to help New York City for all time since we have to greatly reduce the educational gap and help the 1.6 million New Yorkers who do not have a GED. By the way, among the 1.6 million, there are enough people to fulfill the quotas needed by the GED effort that has been untaken. Seek and you shall find (and save your money)!

Now my readers know that when Fernando Ferrer was talking about improving the skills of the workforce and he did not mention the GED, I wrote about it. When Bill Thompson did not have a GED plan, I wrote about it. I appreciate the efforts of Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg in bringing money to the GED campaign, but they are going to waste a lot of it and not achieve the goals that New York City needs. I was a guest speaker for LCLAA many years ago in San Juan, Puerto Rico and one of the goals was to help more Latinos get into the trade unions through the GED. Things were not done right then and maybe Latinos lost opportunities to get good paying skilled jobs. I met former Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin there and he agreed to help in the GED campaign, but he quickly ended up in jail. As you can see, I had a plan to help the workforce of New York City back then and the plan that I see in place has to be modified immediately.

The Bill Gates Foundation is affecting too many leaders because of its prestige and his personal relationship with them. I would love to see a long term commitment from the Bill Gates Foundation to fund GED testing. I was giving information to the Robin Hood Foundation as early as 2003 (maybe 2002). No organization is getting it right and there have been complaints made to me about the benchmarks required by the Robin Hood Foundation, benchmarks that I do not agree with.

Arne Duncan probably should find stimulus money to help New York City now. If Wisconsin could use money, New York should get a lot of it. Here is more information below. Another important item is to ask the Secretary of Education to determine how many of the schools in New York City are Title 1 compliant. There were 47 schools selected to be closed and now the state has added 21 new schools to the fail list as of today. More than half of them are in the Bronx and the Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. wants the children in his communities to be protected. It is really important for all people in power to demand that a published list be created of all the schools that are not in compliance and that compliance should be properly documented because all kinds of illegal things are going on around the city. Mr. Secretary cannot continue to walk around citing yesterday's news and the truth is that the test scores were thrown out because the tests were too easy and I have been informed that the tests were so easy that it was easy to determine that the tests were never valid. Validity is a key ingredient for all testing and the public must be informed so it can draw the right conclusion.

Beth Fertig writes" Cami Anderson, who runs the city's District 79 program for alternative schools, says it the current GED doesn't do a good job of preparing adults for work or for college, and that the new curriculum will focus more on building math, reading and other skills, "such as, being able to conduct an interview effectively, write a resume, show dogged determination when you get an obstacle in your way."
The pilot program was created after the Community Service Society released a report in 2009 finding New York State's GED pass rate is 48th in the nation. Only 60 percent of participants passed the test in 2007, with New York City having a pass rate of 47.5 percent. Only 7 percent of the GED-eligible population ends up in preparation programs each year and just half that figure take the test. The Communitiy Service Society also found that in the current recession, those with less than a high school education lost jobs at nearly twice the rate of high school graduates and more than 10 times the rate of college graduates. More than one million city adults don't have a high school diploma or its equivalent.

MARQUETTE -- Help is coming to people in Marquette and Alger Counties who want to get their GED.
The Alger-Marquette Community Action Board has received $17,500 in stimulus money. Part of that money will be used to pay for the cost of the five tests it takes to get your GED. That can be as much as $250 for the five tests.
The hope is this will help the unemployed who need the equivalent of a high school diploma to get another job in this tough economy.

Through the pilot, administrators will develop and assess curricula designed to help accelerate students’ competence in literacy and numeracy, train GED instructors on the new test and curricula, construct implementation guidelines for states and districts to ensure they are prepared to help students meet more rigorous standards, and test items for the new GED and interim assessments aligned to the new GED test. The planning phase of the pilot will run from January 2011 to July 2011, curriculum and assessment tools will be developed during school year 2011 and 2012, alongside implementation pilots and teacher training. Outcomes of the pilot will be evaluated and finalized in 2014.

MARTIN N. DANENBERG
7 BLAZER DRIVE
ISLANDIA, NEW YORK 11749
631-348-1341
martin@mygedhotline.com
New:
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