Friday, May 19, 2000
GED test overhauled, will be tougher
Ohio students urged to finish before 2002
The Associated Press
The high school equivalency test will get tougher in 2002, and Ohio officials are encouraging people to finish taking the exam before the rules change.
People who haven't passed all five parts of the GED test by the end of 2001 will have to start over, an Ohio Department of Education official said Thursday.
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GETTING TOUGH
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A revised version of the GED test to be used starting in 2002 is still under development. But it is expected to include these changes:
• Test takers will be permitted to use a calculator on portions of the math test, but they will be expected to come up with their own answers rather than choosing among answers now provided in multiple-choice questions.
• They will also have to plot points on a graph.
• Nonfiction readings on the test will include documents that would be used in business. Fiction excerpts still will include poetry, literature and drama.
• Test takers also will be required to organize written passages, deciding how many paragraphs would be needed to explain a subject and where sentences should be inserted.
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The new national General Educational Development test is still being developed through field tests on high school seniors. But it is expected to have more maps and graphs and fewer multiple-choice questions, said Joan Myers, administrator of Ohio's GED office.
“People will have to have some problem-solving skills that they didn't have to have before,” Ms. Myers said.
More than 22,000 Ohioans took the GED test last year, with three-quarters of them passing it. High school dropouts, ranging from teens to adults, take the test in hopes of going on to technical school or college and getting better jobs.
The American Council on Education in Washington, D.C., owns the test. It distributes it to the 50 states, which administer and score it.
The test has been updated only two times since it was created after World War II to help soldiers complete their high school education. The most recent revision was in 1988, with the addition of an essay.
The new changes reflect the impact of welfare-to-work legislation. They are designed to better prepare test-takers for the workplace by measuring more of what today's high school seniors are expected to know.
Rebecca Hayes, 21, finally completed the exam last year after dropping out of Taft High School in Cincinnati. Ms. Hayes passed the pretest and said the multiple-choice part of the GED exam was easy.
The five parts are science, social studies, mathematics, writing, and literature and the arts.
To encourage people to take the test before 2002, Ohio officials are looking for ways to pay for more exams. The state now pays the test's $42 cost for a person who has passed the pretest. But the person must pay for repeat tries to pass the test.
“It's going to be a more difficult test,” said Ed Whitfield, Ohio's assistant director of student assessment and curriculum. “We really want to get people in and taking the test.”
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