Writer Bruce Murphy did Chicago Tribune readers a great disservice and maligned millions of GED recipients with his misleading, inaccurate and deeply flawed Aug. 5 cover story, “Shortcut to Failure?” Since the article distorts so much of the current data involving the GED and ignores other significant research on its positive impact, one can only assume that it is a purposeful effort to smear this important program.
Let me be direct, the author completely misstates the central conclusions of the February 1998 report, “Educational and Labor Market Performance of GED Recipients,” conducted by the U.S. Department of Education. Murphy writes, “The study concluded that there was no boost in wages for high school dropouts who get a GED.” In fact, the report says just the opposite: “GEDs earned more than other dropouts but less than high school graduates. In the short term, GED recipients had no earnings advantage over dropouts, but their relative earnings grew over time.”
The findings of this Department of Education report are important, because, as Mr. Murphy states, the report was commissioned to address questions about the GED. The report goes on to say that GED recipients enroll in postsecondary education at higher rates than high school dropouts, and clearly states, “The GED process identifies and certifies high school dropouts whose ability to read, write, think, and do math is better than that of other dropouts and about equal to that of high school graduates, on average.” It also says, “GED certification provides reliable information about an individual’s basic cognitive skills to postsecondary institutions, employers, the military, the federal government, and others who might be asked to make a election decision about that person.”
Conveniently missing from Mr. Murphy’s article are any of the multiple studies on the GED program conducted by Harvard University professor Richard Murnane. His extensive research shows both short- and long-term earnings gains and increased participation in postsecondary education for GED recipients above that of high school dropouts.
It is laughable to suggest that there is an effort by the federal government to “mask” the national high school dropout rate by including GED holders in its statistics on high school completion-nothing could be further from the truth. With one click on his home computer, Mr. Murphy would have found the latest U.S. Census Bureau data on high school completion, compiled by the Department of Education for its annual Digest of Education Statistics. This comprehensive document clearly uses three separate categories for this information: “Dropout,” “Completed by GED” and “Completed by Diploma.”
Any writer or researcher who wants to do a thorough job can use this data and easily identify the percentage of people who fail to graduate from traditional U.S. high schools.
Is earning a GED the same as completing four years of high school? No. Would we ever recommend leaving high school early and taking the GED? Absolutely not. But the GED represents a second opportunity for millions of Americans-most of whom are well past the age of high school enrollment.
The real scandal is that 50 million Americans lack a high school education today. The GED is one modest but effective effort to address that problem. Your article grossly misrepresents this program and its impact.
— Stanley O. Ikenberry / President, American Council on Education
Bruce Murphy responds:
The Department of Education study does say earnings are higher for GED holders than other dropouts but notes that when you control for years of high school completed by each, any boost in earnings for male GED holders is eliminated. When you further control for cognitive abilities, the “sheepskin” effect of the GED for females becomes minimal as well.
Research by Richard Murnane was also missing from any of the publications that the American Council on Education provided me to prove the validity of the GED. Murnane has found a boost in wages for whites with GEDs but none for minorities, and has found that even GED holders who completed the 10th grade and had strong cognitive skills were three times more likely to drop out of college than students with a high school diploma.
You can certainly find some government publications that exclude GED holders when reporting the population of high school completers. But according to Tom Snyder, the director of annual reports for the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, “most reports on educational attainment include the GED in the figures for high school completion.”
If ACE truly believes it is important to distinguish between GED holders and high school completers, it might begin with its own Web site, which declares that “one out of every seven people who graduate each year earns that diploma by passing the GED Tests.”
Reading a description like that, you’d never suspect that the GED is a certificate that takes, on average, 30 hours of study to pass, compared with the thousands of hours a high school graduate completes. You’d never know that GED holders are 12 times more likely to fail at a four-year college and that they earn much lower wages, compared with high school graduates. These findings are important for all Americans to understand, and were not denied by ACE.
A second chance
The research about the GED that you present without question has been hotly debated and thoroughly contested in other studies. For example, research reported in the December 2000 volume of the Monthly Labor Review found that women who get GEDs have an earnings gain of 25 percent over female dropouts without GEDs, 10 years after leaving school.
Of course we need to encourage teenagers to stay in school. No matter how hard we try, however, some will drop out-not because the GED is available, but because they are facing life crises, or because the schools are not meeting their needs. This group will need a second chance later in life. Should we deny it to them?
Attainment of the GED, for all its flaws, opens the doors to job training and higher education.
— Jenny Wittner / Senior policy associate, Women Employed, Chicago
A grim future
Your article makes several good points, but doesn’t really address behavior-disordered high school students, other than to suggest that more alternative school programs are needed. The resources are not there for the mentally ill and overmedicated. Many of these students are highly intelligent and gifted. The process of medicating them properly can take many months, while they wither away in a traditional classroom. Alternative schools are often not appropriate, but these kids are labeled Behavior Disordered. In frustration, they drop out and get GEDs.
This allows them to qualify for low-paying jobs. They become adults and have to resort to Social Security and welfare in order to eke out a living and pay for medications. Add that to the fact that most high school curriculums are dumbed down, and the picture is even more grim. I would like to see an article focusing on the mentally ill and where they fit in with this process. Keep up the good work.
— Marjorie Noga / Chicago
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