In an earlier report and Gadfly editorial-available at http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=75#1062-the Manhattan Institute's Jay Greene explained that official high school graduation rates published by the federal government understate the problem of dropouts because they treat the General Education Development (GED) credential as the equivalent of a standard high school diploma. But is the GED a good substitute for the real thing? In an article in City Journal, Greene notes that earning a GED brings few of the benefits of earning a high school diploma-economists have found the life outcomes of GED-holders to be no better than those of high school dropouts-and proceeds to explore why that might be. One reason is that passing the GED requires very little academic knowledge; the average GED recipient passes the test after just 30 hours of class time and study. Preparing for the GED also requires none of the social discipline that sticking it out in high school demands. Greene argues that treating the GED as the equivalent of a high school diploma not only distorts our dropout statistics, it may even contribute to the problem; the existence of an easier route to a credential may actually encourage students to drop out. Greene cites a study by the Urban Institute's Duncan Chaplin that found that the easier a state makes it to get a GED, the higher the dropout rate. To eliminate this problem, Greene suggests that we make the GED harder and raise the minimum age for taking the test. "GEDs Aren't Worth the Paper They're Printed On," by Jay P. Greene, City Journal, Winter 2002.
