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Some States Dropping GED Tests Due To Price Spikes
First time accepted submitter murkwood7 writes with news about states looking for an alternative to GED tests because of cost constraints. "Several dozen states are looking for an alternative to the GED high school equivalency test because of concerns that a new version coming out next year is more costly and will no longer be offered in a pencil and paper format.
The responsibility for issuing high school equivalency certificates or diplomas rests with states, and they've relied on the General Education Development exam since soon after the test was created to help returning World War II veterans.
But now 40 states and the District of Columbia are participating in a working group that's considering what's available besides the GED, and two test makers are hawking new exams."
...does this mean that I'll finally be able to take the damn thing online?! I've been meaning to take it for years (I was homeschooled) but I've never been able to find time around my job to go to the classes.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
In operation since shortly after WWII wrapped up, and now Pearson steps in and the price spikes... Allow me a moment to collect myself after such an earth-shattering surprise. Does anybody know what moment of insanity and/or oversight in foundational structure allowed Pearson to get in on the action in the first place?
State administrators must come up with an equivalent equivalency test.
Or it means that you couldn't keep going to school because you had to support your family or that your family had issues that you had to escape (see, crime, poverty). One of my very good friends dropped out of high school, got his GED, attended college, and graduated with degrees in both electrical engineering and computer engineering. He also maintained a 3.9 GPA (only one class ever gave him less than a 4.0). Now, he's a very smart guy, mind you, but it just goes to show that not everyone out there getting a GED is meth-snorting, glue-sniffing trash. Try having a little compassion.
The usual reason given for privatizing is the old canard "the private corporations can do this at a much lower cost".
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The real reason for privatizing is to help funnel public funds into the hands of the corporations run by the buddies of whomsoever happens to be in power at the moment, democrat or republican.
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The idea of saving money helps sell privatization, but it never takes into account: -- cost over-runs
-- no incentive to keep costs down
-- no incentive to make availability or usability easy
-- no incentive to use formats or techniques that would allow easy migration of data or processes onto other platforms in case this doesn't work out (i.e. companies have a perverse incentive to make themselves indispensable)
-- low-ball bids make you think the cost is going to be lower, but the political pal always makes sure that the corporation gets a cost plus profit contract, rather than a fixed cost contract. It's a scam, this push to privatize is not helping anything.
It's not common sense he needs. It's a big cluebat across the side of his head that he needs.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The only issue is if they give a test, and by passing hand you a degree, they call them diploma mills.
> "the private corporations can do this at a much lower cost".
> The idea of saving money helps sell privatization, but it never takes into account:
That this only works when there is competition.
Creating a private monopoly just grantees that rents will go to the private hands.
The usual reason given for privatizing is the old canard "the private corporations can do this at a much lower cost"
And it's nearly always true... when there is competition.
When there's no competition, when a single private corporation is set up as a government-mandated monopoly, the result is always going to be very bad. You can make it less bad by adding a government regulatory body to provide oversight, but the result will still be less efficient than if there were true competition.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Privatization
- Less bloat.
- Kickbacks to Congresscritters from companies.
Government-Provided
- More bloat.
- Kickbacks to Congresscritters from unions.
- More voters directly attached to tit of government.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Some dumb fucks of kids grow out of it, to become smart and productive adults. Others become Slashdot AC trolls.
I suggest you read Adam Smith's commentary on the value of publicly funded education in "The Wealth of Nations." After noting the higher "efficiencies" of privatizing education, Adam Smith still concludes that a more broadly educated public through public education (even at the expense of wasting a bit more money on less-motivated students) is ultimately for the public good. Of course, more modern free-marketeers who don't give a fuck about the public good (only maximizing profits) come to different conclusions.
Like CLEP?
And so what? Imagine that a person is a horrible, 2bit no-account lazy bum who dropped out of school because he wanted to smoke pot.
Well, people can change! Such a person shouldn't be held back because of what he did in high school. We all sucked in some ways in high school.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
After noting the higher "efficiencies" of privatizing education, Adam Smith still concludes that a more broadly educated public through public education (even at the expense of wasting a bit more money on less-motivated students) is ultimately for the public good.
The current school system in the US is a bloated government monopoly, indifferent to competing models of schooling. You pay for it through taxes whether you send your kids to public school, private school, or if you homeschool them (or even if you don't have kids at all). There are alternatives to public school in the US, but the government doesn't care. They get their money, even if you shell out for private school or quit your job to homeschool.
At the minimum, parents should receive vouchers equivalent in value to what the local public school system pays per pupil, vouchers that could be redeemed at private schools, or used for homeschooling expenses. This would put real pressure on crappy public schools to reform themselves or face starvation, unlike the misguided "No Child Left Behind Act".
The usual reason given for privatizing is the old canard "the private corporations can do this at a much lower cost".
That's one of the reasons. The other is that, since the government has extraordinary powers (the ability to arbitrarily take what it wants from its citizens, imprison them, execute them), any tasks that do not require those extraordinary powers should not be performed by the government, in order to reduce the ability to abuse those powers.
Most of the problems you iterate only come about if you privatize a monopoly (indispensibility, keeping costs down, etc); monopolies are going to be problematic, regardless of whether they're private or public.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Smith was also dealing with a world in which there was mass illiteracy. Advocating the public provision of a sixth-grade education is very different from saying that we should push every single student, regardless of intellectual abilities and interests, to go to college.
Few people are too stupid to learn to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. Once you start hitting real science and math, typically in junior high/middle school, people start to fall by the wayside. At that point, we are engaged in the provision of free babysitting, not education, in an increasingly large portion of the population. This is counterproductive, because it simultaneously prevents students who don't want to be there from being able to go out and earn a living and subjects those who do want to be there to their antics.
Would I like to live in a well-educated society? Yes, of course I would. But my world - and the world of most Slashdotters - is not the world of most people. Most people aren't capable of getting a college degree from even the crappiest of schools, and the idiotic idea that every person should spend their first twenty-two years on earth in pursuit of a bachelor's degree is holding us back as a society. We spend far too much money on education, for far too little return. The fact that Adam Smith saw some low-hanging fruit to pick doesn't mean that the marginal dollar spent on education is always a net positive.
Smith's specific discussion in "Wealth of Nations" concerned university level education, not sixth grade, though the same general class of arguments apply at basically every level (the more educated the populace, to whatever level they are capable of rising to though perhaps not paying for on the private market, the better overall for society).
No, the point is not what you said. Contracts can be for a fixed amount ( fixed-price contract) where the company has to make a good faith bid on what it will cost them, and they include their profit in their bid cost. If they perform the job with a lower cost, they get higher profit. If the job ultimately costs more, they have to eat the extra cost and perform the contract at the specified cost. :>)
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A "cost plus profit contract bid" allows the company to say "I am guessing that the job will cost X and you will pay me X + I am including a profit of P% of X along with that cost, but if the job ends up costing X+Y dollars, then you shall pay me (X+Y) + P% of (X+Y) as this contract says you shall pay me "cost + profit".
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Fixed-cost puts more burden on the company to perform and do it efficiently and well. Cost-plus means that the company does not have as much incentive to keep the costs down as much as possible. (usually up to some fixed limit, according to wikipedia). Note, information is from wikipedia and San Diego Union Tribune articles. Please note IANACA / IAAHSK : I am not a contract attorney, i am a high-school kid.
There are many of us that have never used drugs that have taken the GED exam, myself included. During high school both my father, and my younger sister died. And my mother decided that I moving to follow my grandparents was a good idea, and my credits transferred for half what they were worth at the previous school. so as a junior I credit wise I looked like a freshman. (since half credits were rounded down) I had never used any drugs that were not prescribed to me or came over the counter. (and no I did not modify those) my GPA did suffer due to everything I was going through, but even then I was never a straight A student. So, I took the GED exam which at that time was weighted so that only 25% of high school graduates could pass it. I passed it on my first try
I was stuck in a dead end job for many years, but I'm finally back in school. Currently have completed an EE minor, am one class away from a math minor as well, and I am working on completing my senior year for a CS major..
Who are you to say what someone else needs? Especially, if you don't know their life. The details I placed in this post are just a fraction of the stories and difficulties I have faced. If you think you know him well enough to state "It's a big cluebat across the side of his head that he needs." then maybe he knows you well enough to state the same, or possibly worse.
Perhaps you should, oh, read something about School districts before going on your little rant? The simple fact is, by far, schools are run at the local level by voter appointed school boards who are in significant control over just how well your local school system functions, be it how much they tax, who they tax, and just how efficiently they use that money in educating students. If your local school system is a bloated mess, odds are good it's in large part your own fault.
Or, you know, parents could become more involved in *important* aspects of schooling? Instead of focusing on whether or not God is in the classroom, why not push for more of all religions being taught? If little Timmy comes home and gets an A, why not quiz Timmy and see if he really deserved it? And if he gets a C+, why not do the same? Or do you really thing the problem is that Timmy's teacher needs to fear for their job daily or cutting their salary would magically fix things? Would you fearing for your job daily or cutting your salary make you a better worker?
No, I'd say a large part of the problem is that (a) parents abstractly demand a lot of teachers but are generally unqualified to even know if the teachers are doing a good job or not, (b) this stems not from the fact that parents *can't* know these things but many simply refuse to put the effort into it because schooling is treated as a secondary or tertiary thing in their child's life--after all, if it takes so much effort to know those things, then obviously you aren't using them in your own daily life, so it can't be that important, so why relearn it temporarily for your kid's sake--, and (c) parents aren't politically involved enough in ways that matter. Sure, it's easy to get upset that your school is rated badly one year. It's much harder to commit to finding and voting for good people to sit on the school board--especially if that means parents are the ones. It's much harder to actually figure out what's important and what's not when it comes to learning.
But money, oh yea, it's easy enough to (a) demand money and buy into the top rated schools--damn the obvious point that top rated schools are, optimistically, top rated because the students want to succeed (a fact quite missing from little Timmy or you)--or (b) to pay off your own home schooling--which at least will get you involved in schooling but then you're doing even more work than just being well civic minded while still probably providing a disservice to your children when you're not quite enough of an expert in many areas to do a good job of covering plenty of subjects (although presuming you put in the effort, your child will likely eventually learn to be motivated enough and learn on their own which sort of solves that issue).
Of course point (b) sort of hints at another important point. Teach your kids to be motivated to learn, period. That, really, solves most of your problems. You might still want to complain about how much of a "waste" your local school system is, money wise, but then pretending that schools facing starvation will magically solve the pressing issue of parent apathy is just outright delusional and speaks more of a general greed on your part.
Or, maybe it's the "principal" of the thing? Yea, that's the ticket...
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Congratulations on having been an exceptionally bright and ambitious kid. However, your advice is approximately as useful to the 99.9% of humanity who don't share your particular combination of brilliance, cojones, and luck as saying "high school isn't needed; just win the lottery instead."
But how do you have competition when you need a standard test? Either the companies have to agree to a flat specification for said test, in which case you need a regulatory body anyway, or they're selling the same product, in which case they can't improve their products. Making it government-run looks like the right thing to do in this case, even though it has its own inefficiencies, because there just can't be a functional market.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
we need to have more trades / apprenticeship and stop pushing college for all / tech the test.
Not all people can learn in a college setting and we should not dumb down to college to have them pass we should push the people who do better in more on hands trade / tech school / apprenticeship setting.
The test is computerized, but it is still proctored. You need to schedule the exam in a testing center, and show up at the appointment time with a valid ID.
If GED test can be taken online, I bet you there will be attempts in test taker impersonation.
New Economic Perspectives
I would chalk it up to educational methodology and the one-size-fits-all pedagogy that we seem to practice when it comes to education. People have unique skills, and people learn differently.
There are some things that come easily to me, without expending any significant effort (math, language, music) but there are things that I have to struggle with (e.g. visual arts).
Those things I am good at, I learn pretty much on my own. Take math, for instance. I can very easily pick up even sophisticated topics (e.g. topological manifolds) by picking up a book and immersing myself for a few weekends. Ditto for music -- I can usually translate my musical knowledge to any musical instrument once I've established the scale and technique. I may not be very good at it (not without practice, anyway), but I will make music.
But those things that aren't my strong suit? I need a lot of practice and the freedom (not to mention time) to make the connections on my own.
Foreign languages is another one of those -- I grew up in a tri-lingual household, and I can usually pick up languages pretty easily. But I find it easier to pick it up by immersion than by reading a book or going through a course. Letting me spend two weeks immersed in a language will be significantly more productive than subjecting me to a traditional class on languages for two months.
So, in my opinion, most people perform poorly because the educational system is designed for scale and issuing rubber-stamps -- not real education. If our goal is to genuinely educate the masses, we would have an educational system that's catered to people's strengths and learning capabilities.
So.. like a lot of IT certs.
No one is a "dumb fuck" merely because they drop out of school. Public schools in the US are, I believe, absolutely abysmal. It is possible to drop out and self-educate or be home schooled, and frankly, I think either of those things are better choices for individuals who even slightly care about their education.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
School acts as general socialization
Locking a kid up in a building with poor education standards with others their own age (some of whom are bullies) isn't a very good way to have someone socialize, in my opinion. That said, there are many options available to kids who are homeschooling if they want to socialize with other people.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Let's set aside the fact that your response of "you don't need education because you're too stupid" is a complete non sequitur to the above argument about "you don't need education because you're already too damn smart," and focus on your point.
Some day, I'd like to live in a democracy, which means that *everyone* has the job of citizenship. That means every burger flipper should absolutely know way more about history, art, literature, mathematics, science, music, agriculture, and philosophy than they need to be a good wage slave who says "yes mastuh, would you like fries with that?". So long as burger flippers are necessary, I'd like to progress towards a world where they're *treated* as necessary (and are empowered by education to claim that victory). You remind me of the people who insisted that teaching slaves to read should be illegal, because it would be nothing but trouble. I want a world with more of that kind of trouble.
But though the common people cannot, in any civilised society, be so well instructed as people of some rank and fortune, the most essential parts of education, however, to read, write, and account, can be acquired at so early a period of life that the greater part even of those who are to be bred to the lowest occupations have time to acquire them before they can be employed in those occupations. For a very small expense the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.
Does that sound like a university education to you? Or just an elementary one? BTW, he advocates that university professors be paid directly by their students.
Of course, more modern free-marketeers who don't give a fuck about the public good (only maximizing profits) come to different conclusions.
Actually, modern "free-marketeers" believe that there should be both public and private schools and that they should compete with each other to deliver the best education at the least cost. There are various and sundry issues with this model, but I'd appreciate a link to any economist, respected or otherwise, who argues that the public education system should be completely abolished.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock