Education Week - January 27, 2016 - 9

Passing Score Lowered on Latest Revision of GED Exam
25,000 test-takers
could get credential
By Catherine Gewertz
The GED Testing Service has decided to lower the passing score for
its high-school-equivalency exam, a
move brought on by data showing
that students who passed the latest, tougher version of the test were
doing better in college than high
school graduates.
The move will allow states to
lower the passing score on each section of the GED exam from 150 to
145 out of 200. The GED Testing
Service projects that if all states
choose to use the new lower passing
score, 100,000 more people could
pass one or more subjects of the test,
and 25,000 of them could be eligible
for a GED credential by passing all
four sections.
The company recommended that
states grant retroactive passage
to test-takers who failed with the
previous score of 150, but each
state can decide for itself. States
are expected to release details Jan.
26 about how they'll handle the
change.
GED pass rates dropped significantly after Pearson and the American Council on Education, which
make the test, released a more
difficult version in January 2014
to reflect the Common Core State
Standards. Fewer people are tak-

BLOGS

ing the GED test, too, and more are
taking new, competing high-schoolequivalency tests: the HiSET, by the
Educational Testing Service, and
the TASC, by McGraw-Hill Education CTB.
Robert Schaeffer, the public
education director for the National Center for Fair and Open
Testing, said the GED is an important pathway to opportunity
for young adults, and the new
version made accessing those opportunities harder. Lowering the
passing score "is a move in the
right direction," he said.
States are taking different approaches to the new score. GED
Testing Service spokesman CT
Turner said some will start using
it right away, others won't use
the new score until March, and
some might not use it at all. Some
will use the lower cutoff retroactively, granting passage to those
who fell short of the previous passing score.

Midcourse Adjustments
Not all states confer diplomas
for GED passage, but those that do
could decide to award them retroactively. Georgia is one such state: It
will grant diplomas to students who
failed the GED with a cut score of
150, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which first disclosed news last week of the GED's
passing-score revision.
The decision to lower the passing

score came from analyzing longitudinal data, Turner said. Tracking
student performance into college,
the company noticed that in several
states, fewer students who passed
the GED needed remedial coursework than did those who earned
high school diplomas.

We wanted to make
sure that the cut score
is on par with the
average graduating
high school senior."
CT TURNER
GED Testing Service

In Oregon's community colleges,
for example, 15 percent of GEDpassers needed remediation in reading or writing in 2014-15, compared
with 47.5 percent of those who
earned high school diplomas. Thirtynine percent of GED-passers needed
remedial work in math, compared
with 62 percent of recent high school
graduates. The GED Testing Service
noted a similar pattern in Rhode Island and in North Dakota.
The GED Testing Service aims
to set its passing score to reflect

the achievement of the typical
high school graduate, and the data
showed that a revision was needed,
Turner said.
"We wanted to make sure that the
cut score is on par with the average graduating high school senior,"
Turner said. "That's what policymakers and the public expect from
the GED: that it reflects-but isn't
ahead of-the curve for high school
performance."
He rejected, though, the idea that
the company erred when it set the
original cutoff score at 150.
"We did it based on sound research.
We had a technical-advisory group.
We did a norming study.
"The only difference here is that in
the past, we wouldn't have had this
information for years," he said, "and
wouldn't have been able to make an
adjustment so quickly. Now we have
the data to take into account, very
quickly, the actual performance of
adult learners, what they're doing
once they pass, and how they're performing."
Said FairTest's Schaeffer: "If that's
not admitting they set the bar too
high, then I don't know what is."
The GED exam itself is unchanged.
Along with the lower passing score,
the GED Testing Service is introducing another change. Instead of just
one cutoff point-passing or not passing-it now has three.
A score of 145 will connote highschool-level skills. A score of 165
will signify college readiness, and

come with a recommendation that
scorers at that level skip remedial
work or placement tests, and enroll
in credit-bearing classes. A score
of 175 will connote not just college
readiness, but college-level skill,
and will come with a recommendation that students receive credit for
coursework in the subjects in which
they received those scores.
Since the GED covers math,
language arts, science, and social
studies, scores of 175 in each subject could suggest that students
automatically earn three credits
in math, three in science, three in
social studies, and one in language
arts, Turner said. It isn't yet known
whether colleges will opt to grant
credit for such GED scores.
Ten percent of the 400,000 people
who have taken the GED since January 2014 have scored 175 or higher
in one or more subjects, Turner said.
Jeff Carter, the executive director of the National Council of State
Directors of Adult Education, said
that reactions to the GED's move to
lower the passing score will reflect a
tension in his field.
"None of us wants to present unnecessary new barriers to adult
students," he said. "But at the same
time, we all think there needs to
be high standards. Having healthy
debate about that is something we
need to continually do."
Visit the HIGH SCHOOL & BEYOND blog, which
tracks news and trends on this issue.
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Districts Aren't Keeping Track
Of the Textbooks Schools Use
| CURRICULUM MATTERS | If you want to find out what
math textbooks a district is using, just ask the central
office, right? According to University of Southern California
researcher Morgan Polikoff, it's not quite that easy.
Polikoff is in the throes of an ambitious study on
textbook adoption, in which he and a group of students
are looking at which textbooks are being used in the five
most-populated states-California, Florida, Illinois, New
York, and Texas.
"Knowledge of what is going on inside schools strikes
me as the most basic function of the district office," he
wrote in a recent blog post. "And yet I would estimate
around 10 percent of the districts that have responded
to my FOIA [i.e., Freedom of Information Act] requests
have said they have no documents listing the textbooks
in use, and probably another 30-50 percent clearly have
to invent such a document to satisfy my request."
As Polikoff explained in an interview, California collects
textbook information from districts, but it's in PDFs, so
there's no standard reporting language. Deciphering that
has been one part of his research project. For the other
four states, he's sent three rounds of FOIAs to individual
districts, and so far, about three-quarters have responded.
In his blog post, Polikoff quoted a letter from the Chicago
district. Pulling a list of math and science textbooks by
grade, it said, would be "unduly burdensome in nature
and would require extensive resources to both search for
information, which would most likely require a manual
school-by-school search, and analysis to determine the other
data points you are seeking." Chicago denied his request.
The New York City district has sent six letters asking for
one-month extensions, Polikoff said. He expects to be denied
there eventually as well.
"This is totally anecdotal, but districts that don't
know or don't give me information tend to be at two

extremes-either huge districts or unbelievably small
districts with, like, two schools," he explained. That said,
many large districts in Florida, including Miami and
Hillsborough County, have sent him textbook lists.
Polikoff has also studied textbooks' claims of alignment
to the Common Core State Standards, which he says are
generally a sham.
-LIANA HEITIN

States Again Focus on Early
Education, But Will Action Follow?
| EARLY YEARS | From the president's State of the Union
Address to a board of commissioners meeting in Grand
Rapids, Mich., early education is once again on the lips of
legislators and policymakers in 2016.
Last year, there was far more talk about expanding earlychildhood education than action toward it. The talk has
started again.
President Barack Obama has made a habit, since 2013,
of making preschool a part of the education policy section
of the annual State of the Union Address. His final such
address was no exception, though early childhood was more
of a passing mention than a focal point.
But Obama isn't the only politician with preschool on
his mind. In the first few weeks of the new year, talk is
coming fast and furious, from both sides of the political
aisle.
Iowa House Minority Leader, Mark Smith, a Democrat,
pledged to work harder to expand early education there.
New Mexico lawmaker Rep. Javier Martinez, also a
Democrat, came out with a strongly worded opinion piece in
the Albuquerque Journal in rebuttal to an earlier editorial
there positing that proponents of using land-grant funds
to expand early-childhood education in the state were
unprepared to actually launch an expansion.
In California, the new speaker of the state Assembly,
Anthony Rendon, reiterated his commitment to earlychildhood education.

Meanwhile, Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, a Republican,
made early reading a key part of his State of the State
address. Nebraska state Sen. Heath Mello, a Democrat,
introduced a bill that would use a series of state tax credits
to expand early education. And an advocacy group in Kent
County, Mich., is set to renew its request to the board of
commissioners for a new property tax to fund expanded
early education.
Some states, like New Mexico, have had ongoing debates
that show little sign of reaching resolution any time
soon. Others, like California, have had strong legislative
movements toward change vetoed by strong governors. And
there are other variations: Montana's governor has pushed
for expansion, while the state legislature has taken no
action on the matter.
Whatever the circumstances, the pace of public preschools
and other early-education services has been incredibly slow.
We'll see if 2016 is any different.
-LILLIAN MONGEAU

Indiana Unseats Minnesota
In Charter-Law Rankings
| CHARTERS & CHOICE | Indiana has for the first time come
out on top of the National Alliance for Public Charter
Schools' annual ranking of state laws.
Indiana climbed five places to unseat Minnesota, which
has held the No. 1 spot almost every year since 2010, when
the alliance first started issuing the report. Minnesota was
the first state in the country to pass a charter law.
Ohio also climbed several spots, to 23rd place, after
lawmakers there overhauled the state's charter law this
fall.
Of the states that have charter school laws, Maryland
remains at the bottom of the ranking at 43rd.
The national alliance ranks states based on a variety
of metrics, including whether charter schools are held
accountable for their performance, have equitable access to
facilities, or have caps on their growth.
-ARIANNA PROTHERO

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Education Week - January 27, 2016

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