Critics say these people are no smarter than other dropouts, the GED people claim passing the average passing score puts you in the top third of high school graduates.

%%Alternative

HIGH STAKES DIPLOMAS DRIVING MANY TO GED
z42\clip\2000\06\takeged.txt New standards might prompt more students
to seek GED http://www.uticaod.com/statenews/statenews.htm By MICHAEL
GORMLEY The Associated Press ALBANY — Educators from Washington,
D.C., to a small upstate school system worry that raising state
academic standards may drive more students to graduation equivalency
tests.  Other students, they fear, might drop out to take the GED
test because only dropouts may take it — unless they get the district
superintendent’s permission. If they fail, and about half do, it’s
unlikely they will return to school.

%%Harmful


GREENE SAYS GED IS STILL EQUIVALENT TO DROPOUT, NOT HS DIPLOMA
z63:\clip\2002\12\gedmyth.txt
http://www.educationreview.homestead.com/2002GreeneGEDMyth.html
The GED Myth By: Jay Greene
Jay Greene is Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Public
Policy Research and can be reached at
jgreene@manhattan-institute.org.  
the minimum passing score established by the GED Testing Service for
each subject test is the equivalent of performing better than only
14% of high school seniors who were administered the same test,
although they claim that passing the whole battery of tests requires
GED recipients to outperform 33% of high school seniors
Nobel prize-winning economist, James Heckman, and his University of
Chicago colleague, Stephen Cameron, find that "Exam-certified high
school equivalents are statistically indistinguishable from high
school dropouts There is no cheap substitute for schooling."
According to Cameron and Heckman's analysis of national data,
receiving a GED does not make someone significantly more likely to be
employed or have higher hourly wages than a dropout.  They find that
regular high school graduates are significantly more likely than GED
recipients or dropouts to be employed and have higher hourly wages.


NOBEL PRIZE WINNER KNOCKS GED AS "ABSOLUTELY HARMFUL"
z46\clip\2000\11\nobel.txt Conversations With Nobel Prize Winners Dan
Ackman, Forbes.com, 11.03.00, 12:01 AM ET
http://www.forbes.com/2000/11/03/1103nobel_3.html James Heckman On
Preschool, Testing And Choosing The Right Parents ..a test that's
absolutely harmful and that's the [general equivalency diploma] test.
..GEDs, when you control for their ability, earn no more and maybe
actually learn less than other high school dropouts.  At the same
time, it certifies that these people lack other skills that are very
important,

%%New

GED TO BE REVISED TO INCLUDE MORE ANALYSIS
http://www.freepress.com/news/education/ged6_20010706.htm Clock is
ticking on GED testing Students must pass by Dec. 31 or face tough,
revamped process July 6, 2001 BY LORI HIGGINS and ERIK LORDS Detroit
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS


%%Online

http://www.4tests.com/examdesc.asp?examid=38
GED Practice Test
Math sample is about grade 6

http://cite.telecampus.com/courses/gedprep1.htm
$25 online course
http://cite.telecampus.com/courses/ged1test.htm Practice test
(math is about grade 6)

http://www.businessbookmall.com/mathpp27.htm
Claims to be GED middle school math problems, look like 1st 
year algebra to me, above ged level.
4n + n = 21

%%Test

http://www.acenet.edu/calec/ged/home.html
Welcome to the Official Site of the
GED Testing Service!

The General Educational Development (GED) Testing Service develops
and distributes the GED Tests. 

More than 800,000 adults take the GED Tests each year. 

Those who obtain scores high enough to earn a GED diploma outperform
at least one-third of today’s high school seniors. 

GED graduates include: Bill Cosby, Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas,
Delaware’s Lieutenant Governor Ruth Ann Minner, and U.S. Senator Ben
Nighthorse Campbell. 

One out of every seven people who graduate each year earns that
diploma by passing the GED Tests. 

68 percent of GED test-takers plan to enter a college, university, or
trade, technical or business school during the next year 

The average age of people taking the GED Tests is 24.4. 

More than 95 percent of employers in the U.S. consider GED graduates
the same as traditional high school graduates in regard to hiring,
salary, and opportunity for advancement. 

http://www.acenet.edu/calec/ged/college-TT.html More than 60 percent
of GED test-takers say they intend to further their education beyond
the GED. Ninety percent of colleges and universities recognize the
GED. Passing the GED Tests puts you in the upper 25th percentile in
terms of class rank and lets colleges know that you have the skills
and knowledge equivalent to applicants from traditional high schools

http://www.acenet.edu/calec/ged/specs-A.html Test Specifications and
Construction Cognitive skills Questions on the GED Tests are
classified by cognitive level using an adaptation of Bloom’s Taxonomy
of Educational Objectives (Benjamin Bloom, ed., 1st ed., New York:
Longmans Green, 1956). Questions classified at the highest cognitive
levels (e.g., synthesis, evaluation) require the use of skills
described at the lower levels (e.g., knowledge and comprehension).

Sample Problems:
http://www.acenet.edu/calec/ged/sampleQ-TT.html
Moderately difficult: 1] If 10% of a town’s population of 10,000
people moved away, how many people remained in the town?
Easy: 2] The pie chart above shows how the tax dollar was spent in a
given year. According to the figure, what percent of the tax dollar
was left after direct payment to individuals and national defense
expenses?




http://www.acenet.edu/calec/pdfs/execsummary99.pdf Alignment of state
and national standards (GED) recommend that all high school students
should study probability and statistics, geometry and right triangle
trigonometry, multiple representations of functions, and the
fundamentals of algebra, as well as be able to compute, estimate and
use technology

Bellevue Community College
http://www.bcc.ctc.edu/bccweb/howtoenroll/ged.stm
Individuals eligible to take the GED test must fulfill the following criteria: 
Person must be at least 16 years of age 
Persons between 16-18 years of age must submit a release form from
their last high school or current school district