The siren's song of the GED

Fifteen teams of school officials in Wellston, Mo., spent the weekend canvasing the homes of former students who have dropped out of school, KSDK News reports.  

At one home, Superintendent Stanton Lawrence had a conversation with the mother of one of his district's dropouts.

"Well, actually, he's decided to go through a GED program," she told him. 

Ah, the siren's song of the GED. One National Center for Education Statistics survey, found that 40 percent of dropouts said they left school in part because “it would be easier to get the GED.” 

The KSDK report doesn't say how this encountered ended, but we know that it can be tough to convince a student who wants to take the easy road that there's benefit in returning to high school.

Problem is, for many, a GED is not an easy road. For one thing, many students who say they're going to leave school to take the test never actually get around to taking the test, because for some the cost of the test — not to mention preparation courses — are prohibitively expensive. 

And those who do take the GED don't always pass. About one in three fails the exam.

Even those who pass don't always find that the GED opens the doors they expected. 

For one thing, the military won’t accept most GED holders into its ranks. 

It's not alone, Mary Reimer of the National Dropout Prevention Center told Time Magazine that "most employers would tell you that... they would pass up a GED holder for a high school graduate any day."

A recent study — by the recipient of a Nobel Prize in Economics, no less — backs that assertion. In his research, James J. Heckman has found that the GED doesn’t provide any additional value in the labor market. In fact, Heckman found, male GED holders might actually make less than dropouts and female GED holders likely make just over 1 percent more money than dropouts do. 

One possible reason: About a quarter of all prison inmates are now leaving the clink with a GED. Heckman and his co-authors at the University of Chicago suggested that might weaken the value of a GED, “by its association with criminality.”

We've said it before and we'll say it again: Dropout recovery is tough work. Coming armed with the right information and right message to give to students is an important first step.