Why a privatized GED will fail students Coalition for Public Education/Coalición por la Educación Pública

Coalition for Public Education/Coalición por la Educación Pública:

Why a privatized GED will fail students
Monty Vyse reports on the fallout from the takeover
of GED testing by for-profit Pearson Education--and
what it will mean thousands trying to take the exam
each year.

December 11, 2012-- socialistworker.org

SINCE THE 1940s, adult learners who have left high school without a diploma have had the option of taking the General Educational Development (GED) test. Nearly 700,000 people took the GED test in 2011--about half are Black or Latino [1].

Test-takers come disproportionally from under-funded, urban school districts. In New York state, for example, 63 percent of GED test-takers last year were in New York City. The average age for test takers is 26, making the GED a vital resource for adult learners in the workforce.

In 2011, Pearson Education, the world's largest for-profit testing company, entered into a "partnership" with the non-profit American Council on Education, the parent organization that created GED Testing Service, which in