UPDATE: GED No Better Than Dropping Out, Study Shows
The GED — or General Education Development diploma — to put its recipients on par with regular high school graduates, reports James Warren in a BusinessWeek article. The report is based on a study conducted by James Heckman, a Nobel prize-winning economist.
More than 737,000 people took the GED test in 2008, with around 470,000 passing.
The study shows that most who receive their GED’s fail to go on to college while the few who do often go only to two-year colleges and end up dropping out in the first semester. In the end, they earn comparable salaries to those of high school dropouts.
Heckman’s thesis is that we as a society should be investing more in early education — where it makes more of a difference and not waiting until it’s “too late” — i.e. after high school.
Although we tried to find data on how many have taken the , it looks like most of the GED data available are organized by age, race and income — not geography.
Several candidates for Hawaii’s elected offices are promoting the concept of early childhood education to prevent problems later on.
Talk about the GED, earlier education opportunities and other education issues in our ongoing conversation here.
