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February 22, 2010

NEW YORK TIMES THE WMD FOR THE GED IN NEW YORK

The New York Times, in its GED Editorial of February 21, 2010, missed its mark almost as badly as President George W. Bush did when he did not find the WMDs or Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Times keeps mentioning the "great" GED state of Iowa, a state where 2,000 out of 6,000 people do not finish the GED to be calculated into the statistics used by the American Council on Education. Any GED math student must learn that we use proportion to figure things out. There are 2000 out of 6000 for Iowa and 24,000 out of 57,000 who do not finish the GED test to be counted in statistics that show the total picture, not some glorious percent like 99 percent for Iowa. When you find the percent of dropouts for both states, you see 33 percent for Iowa and 42 percent for New York. Almost everyone in New York State completes the testing, because we encourage people to complete the testing (whether they are in GED preparation programs or not). The unusually high dropout rate from testing impacts on everyone except for the best qualified candidates (which the GED class may have little or no effect on). The attempt to correct the 9 percent difference is really based on the fact that New York State pays the money for the testing. If the people paid for the testing, there would be no real problem (especially since the DOE really does not know how to improve instruction that much). The New York Times must correct its mistake the way that President Bush did and so must any other person who claims to know GED. In looking over the states that do well that have very little GED attrition from the start of testing to the completion, Tennessee has 77.6 percent passing rate (which is noteworthy), but in assessing its progress, keep in mind that everyone has to take a lot of GED preparation and not only the GED practice test (which the Times keeps reporting on because it has been misled by people in the state).

Alaska is much more interesting, even though its number have fallen from record breaking numbers. Alaska mobilizes 5.1 percent of its population toward the GED and Iowa mobilizes only 2.1 percent. The completion rate for each 3.6 percent and 1.4 percent. Iowa is mediocre compared to Alaska and at 32 percent its incompletion is comparable to Iowa's incompletion. All the news that's fit to print? Huh? I think not.

Profesor Martin Danenberg February 22, 2010 12:10 PM