General Educational Development - Passing The GED Testing Battery

Passing The GED Testing Battery

Possible scores on an individual test within the GED battery, like those on an individual section of the SAT, range from a minimum of 200 to a maximum of 800. A score of 800 on an individual test puts the student in the top 1% of graduating high school seniors. ACE issues recommendations for what constitutes a minimum passing score for any given sub-test (currently 410) and for the test as a whole (currently 2250, i.e. an average of 450 per test across all five sub-tests). Although most GED-issuing jurisdictions (for the most part, Boards of Education of U.S. states) adopt these minimum standards as their own, a jurisdiction may establish higher standards for issuance of the certificate if it chooses. Many jurisdictions award honors-level equivalency diplomas to students meeting certain criteria higher than those for a standard diploma in a given jurisdiction. Some districts hold graduation ceremonies for GED Tests passers and/or award scholarships to the highest scorers.

Colleges that admit based upon high school grades may require a minimum score on the GED for admittance based upon the GED. For example, Arizona State University requires an average sub-test score of 500 in addition to the certificate.

If a student passes one or more but not all five tests within the battery, he or she needs only retake the test(s) s/he did not pass. Most places limit the number of times students may take each individual test within a year. A student may encounter a waiting period before being allowed to retake a failed test. Tests must be completed by the expiration date, which is generally every 2 years on the last day of the year.

The GED credential itself is issued by the state, province, or territory in which the test taker lives.

Many government institutions and universities regard the GED as the same as a high school diploma with respect to program eligibility and as a prerequisite for admissions. The United States military, however, has explicitly higher requirements in admissions for GEDs to compensate for their lack of a traditional high school diploma. Likewise, economic research finds that the GED certification itself (i.e. without further postsecondary education or training) does not create the same labor market opportunities available to traditional high school graduates.

Some believe the test is easier than it should be, and some employers look down on it as a form of degree lower than a high-school diploma. Others believe the GED is harder than it should be; according to GED Testing Service statistics from the 2003 GED Statistical Report, the number of candidates who tested, completed, and passed the tests declined in 2002 and 2003. This decline is attributed to the new tests being more difficult.

The most common criticism is of the test battery's mainly multiple-choice format. Others argue that the reading-comprehension test is too simple, and that there are too many basic operations on the mathematics portion and not enough advanced algebra and geometry questions.

In response to this criticism, the test was revised in 2002 to make it more difficult to pass. One of the most important revisions made it more difficult to guess correct answers from the choices provided. This greater degree of difficulty is achieved by requiring students to show the process for finding the correct answer to a question, rather than simply providing a correct result. For example, a typical mathematics question will not ask what the second leg of a right-angled triangle is when the lengths of the first leg and the hypotenuse are given. Instead, It will ask for the formula that should be used to find the correct answer. This requires the student to use algebra and geometry to explain their answer.

A number of the questions also contain such options as "Not enough information given", "None of the above", and "No correction is necessary" as possible answers. These are found mostly in the "Mathematics" and "Language Arts: Writing: Part I" tests.

The test is administered to a representative sample of graduating high-school seniors each year, about 30% of whom fail the test. That only 70% of these students pass the test may show that it is harder than commonly believed.

While people who have earned GEDs tend to earn more than dropouts and less than high school graduates, economist James Heckman has found that this is primarily due to preexisting differences in the characteristics and backgrounds of GED graduates. When controlling for other influences, he finds no evidence that, for the average taker, the GED as a credential improves an individual's economic opportunities above those for other dropouts. However, on-going academic research shows that the minority of takers with high levels of both academic ability and characteristics of persistence and motivation potentially benefit greatly from obtaining a GED.