Nearly two-thirds of US uncredentialed adults who passed the [general educational development] GED test in 2010 indicated further education as a reason for testing, and 55.6 per cent specified testing to enter a two-year or a four-year postsecondary institution (ACE, 2011). Do GED test credential recipients tend to follow through with their educational aspirations? Do the instructional methods, means, and strategies of the K-12 system and of adult education affect students' transition into and success in [postsecondary education] PSE differently? First-year data from an American Council on Edu
... Show more
Nearly two-thirds of US uncredentialed adults who passed the [general educational development] GED test in 2010 indicated further education as a reason for testing, and 55.6 per cent specified testing to enter a two-year or a four-year postsecondary institution (ACE, 2011). Do GED test credential recipients tend to follow through with their educational aspirations? Do the instructional methods, means, and strategies of the K-12 system and of adult education affect students' transition into and success in [postsecondary education] PSE differently? First-year data from an American Council on Education longitudinal study showed that nearly 43 per cent of the 2003 cohort of GED test passers enrolled in PSE by October 2009; however, only 12 per cent of them had graduated from their postsecondary program in the same timeframe (Patterson, Zhang, Song, and Guison-Dowdy, 2010).
The purpose of this paper is to expand on the insights, as offered in Zhang, Guison-Dowdy, Patterson, and Song (2011), into the postsecondary transitions and outcomes of GED test passers in contrast to those of traditional high school graduates. Analyses use the [Beginning Postsecondary Students] BPS:04/09 dataset, a large, longitudinal dataset representative of a US cohort of postsecondary freshmen. A second paper (Guison-Dowdy and Patterson, in press) further compares GED test credential recipients and traditional high school graduates side by side using BPS:04/09 data as well, examining more specifically the socio-academic experiences, the continued or altered trajectories, and the thoughts of students in their journeys through the postsecondary system, between the time they first enroll and until they exit.
Excerpts from publication.
Show less
