US Hispanic Marketing

3. New York City GED students are forced to pass a practice test with a much higher score than the real test, contributing to fewer diplomas in the hands of city residents and more students dropping out of what is already considered a school program for dropouts. The students feel that their rights are being violated and that is true and the rights of parents are being violated because they have no say in the arbitrary and capricious practice test score.
4. GED students in NYC are not allowed to take home books and are encouraged this way to buy books, which is a violation of Chancellor’s regulations. The GED book only costs about $12, which is almost nothing for a major classroom book these days.

On a national level, these are major problems.

1. New Jersey is the only state today that has higher passing scores than all the other states and territories. The minimum is 410 all over the USA but NJ requires 420 in Writing and 450 in Math.
2. Illinois requires people to take and pass a test on the constitution of that state before a GED will be granted to a person who passes the GED. The governor’s office was informed and I know of nothing that has been done.
3. Puerto Rico requires its residents to pass the English Language exam before it will give a diploma to someone who passes the Spanish GED.
4. Many states do not give the French GED at all. Two states with large Haitian populations do not give the test in French and they are Massachusetts and Florida.
5. Colorado decided to do something that is very helpful to bilingual students who often drop out of school and to adult ESL students. Hispanics can take the GED in both Spanish and English at the same time. In the other states and Puerto Rico, people who start the GED in English must finish in that language, and of course if they start in Spanish or French they must finish the test in the language that they started with. The decision of Colorado was a great move to permit people who are bilingual to show they can demonstrate their knowledge best in whichever language they are stronger in on each of the 5 individual GED subjects.
6. In 2002 when the new GED test came out, there was a drop of about 45% in the numbers of people who took and passed the GED. We should keep in mind that there was a large rise in 2001 due to people rushing to finish a test that everyone knew was easier than the one that would replace it, but still there was about a 25% drop in diplomas.
7. The same drop will occur on the Spanish and French tests this year, since they will be new tests.
8. Governor Schwarzenegger, to my knowledge, has not done anything with the same Governor’s Initiative that I sent to Pataki.

I encouraged President Bush to become the spokesperson years ago by writing to Laura Bush and Mrs. Cheney and Ann Wagner of the Republican National Committee, but there was no follow up by the White House. I told Adam Chavarria, who is now the head of the President’s Special Commission for the Educational Excellence of the Hispanic Community, that the report left out the role that the GED plays in putting Hispanics on the Road to the GED. I asked him before he became the director to include a report on the GED, but I have seen no such report.

In the last few months, I have been in touch with three Hispanics in the Kerry campaign and asked them to help make the GED an issue in the campaign. They have told me that they have passed the information on to people higher up and they agree with my point of view. Nothing else has happened since I started doing this after the Democratic Convention.

A reporter who attends the debates must bring the GED into the Presidential Debates for the first time. He can use this information and ask the candidates what they would do to help at least ten million of the people mentioned below to get a GED and help improve the communities where they live. I call my plan “No Person Left Behind.”

Estimates are that between 30-45 million people in the United States have no high school diploma or GED.

The GED now accounts for 1 of 6 diplomas in the United States.

More than forty percent of adult Hispanics have no diploma at all.

You can see that a large percentage of prison inmates finally earn their GED in jail (see Governor’s Initiative).

YOU CAN NOW SEE HOW PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES ARE BEING LEFT BEHIND BY ADMINISTRATORS, ELECTED OFFICIALS, AND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES.

I HAVE MADE HISTORY IN FLORIDA AND NEW YORK BY MY RECOMMENDATION THAT WAS ACCEPTED BY GOVERNOR BUSH AND BY THE LIBRARY PROJECT IN CENTRAL ISLIP, NEW YOK. EVERY COMMUNITY NEEDS THIS PROJECT.

MARTIN N DANENBERG
7 BLAZER DRIVE
ISLANDIA, NY 11749
GEDHOTLINE@AOL.COM
631-348-1341
WWW.GEOCITIES.COM/GEDHOTLINE
WWW.AHORRE.COM/NOTICIAS