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Pass score lowered for GED
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Five points doesn’t sound like a lot, but it made a big difference for Kailey Engle.
Engle, 17, took the GED test last December but failed.
“I was really upset,” she said. “I didn’t know if I would be able to pay to take the test again, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do yet.”
That changed late last month when the company that administers the test lowered from 150 to 145 the minimum score required to pass each part of the high-school equivalency exam.
Those five points made all the difference for Engle.
“They changed it, and I ended up passing all of them,” she said. “It was overnight, and now I’m a graduate.”
Engle dropped out of school at 15 when she got pregnant.
“I only work a minimum-wage job and I have a 2-year-old at home,” she said. “Now I’ll be able to go to school to do what I want and have money to take care of us.”
She hasn’t yet decided where she’ll go to school, but she wants to pursue a career in early-childhood development.
Engle isn’t alone.
“It’s only five points, but we know from giving the practice tests, it is significant,” said Mia Panno, Youngstown’s Adult Basic Literacy Education coordinator and General Educational Development chief examiner.
She said many students’ scores fall between 145 and 149 on their practice tests.
“It will really make a difference in math,” Panno said.
The score change “is driven by a detailed analysis of educational outcomes of GED program graduates compared with high-school graduates over the past 18 months,” according to the Ohio Department of Education website.
C.T. Turner, a spokesman for GED Testing Service in Washington, D.C., said the decision to change the score is data driven.
“We’ve been closely watching GED graduates and their performance for the last 18 months – almost two years – and we have a wealth of data that we hadn’t had before,” he said.
The data showed that fewer GED graduates required remediation in college than high-school graduates in Ohio, Turner said.
The change was implemented to put GED graduates “on the same curve as the typical high-school graduate in the state of Ohio.”
The GED test changed Jan. 1, 2014, becoming more difficult, and moved from pencil and paper to computer.
Based on past scores, about 1,350 Ohioans who previously have taken the test will pass under the new score.
Test-takers who earn a 165 are able to go directly into a college course without requiring remediation, Turner said. Those who earn a 175 can earn college credit under the changes.
Employees of businesses such as Walmart, KFC or Taco Bell who don’t have a high-school diploma could be eligible for a program that pays for everything a student needs to study for and pass the GED test, Turner said.
“It is a tremendous value to those adults – especially as a large number of employees in these companies lack a [high school] diploma,” he said.
GED Testing Service is contacting those affected who already took the test and believe they didn’t pass. Panno said that contact likely will be made via email, using whatever email address students used when registering for the exam.
The test includes four parts: math, reasoning through language arts, social studies and science. Test-takers must pass all four parts to secure a GED.
The increased difficulty resulted in fewer people passing under the old score.
“It’s achievable now,” Panno said. “If they come to us we can get them there.”
Though a test-taker must pass all four parts to earn a GED, he or she doesn’t have to pass them all at the same time.
Once an individual passes one portion of the test, that score stays forever.
“We encourage people to take them one subject at a time,” Panno said. “We tell them to take their favorite subject first. For a lot of people, it’s math that’s last.”
Beginning next month Choffin Career and Technical Center, where Youngstown ABLE is located, will become an official GED testing site.
Students will schedule their test date and time through their GED.com accounts.
Scheduled dates are the second Tuesday and second Thursday of each month, beginning March 8 and continuing through June 14.
First-time computer-based test-takers may request an $80 discount voucher before scheduling and paying for the test through a student’s GED.com account.