NLA Discussion: GED 2000

[pfboardman@msn.com]

FRANK FULLER SAYS:

As regards the GED 2000 ...

>Is there anyone else who feels that there should be a place in the
>testing inventory for an adult examination that simply demonstrates that
>the completers know what (other) high school graduates know?

>Adult life skills are paramount to our clientele and important to our
>professional practice. Nevertheless, I'm not at all sure that we should
>try to attenuate the exam that measures and certifies adolescent
>skills in terms that allow our adult clients to put an end to that
>"secondary education" stage of their lives, both in their own eyes and in
>the eyes of others.

>We've made efforts in the past to certify life skills -- the APL in the
>'70's comes immediately to mind. Perhaps there should be some plenary
>test of life skills available today. But it seems to me that the GED is
>doing something else, and we should not advocate for its abandoning that
>role without very careful consideration.

>Frank Fuller                          Adult & Continuing Education
>http://www.nsula.edu/~fullerf                 College of Education
>318/357-5862                         Northwestern State University
>fullerf at alpha.nsula.edu                      Natchitoches LA 71497


PETE BOARDMAN SAYS:

>Interesting point, Frank.  I would like to see more comments from you.

>Educators seem to miss the idea that people can learn from experiences
>outside of the classroom.  Indeed, the GED has its significant role to
>play.
>But of course, adults with lots of life experiences may have successfully
>bypassed its purview.  An examination that elicits the learning an adult
>has, apart from the classroom and the GED process, seems apropos.


FRANK SAYS:

>Pete,  I think you've hit on a fascinating point --  or perhaps just
>approached what seems to me to hold some fascination. What kind of
>process would occur that would give [whom?  -- us adult ed. people?  -- a
>representative group of clients?  -- a bunch of employers?] us a
>collection of competence areas that we could test in multiple choice? I
>am honestly more confident of coming up with a measure of a finite and
>exhaustively-studied body of information like high-school fundamentals
>than of a measure of life experience.

>In some ways, just the identification of the stake-holders in this
>project would be worth thinking about. Could anyone who holds a high
>school credential qualify to have input on the life skills that
>non-credentialled people have acquired for success? Could anyone who has
>not met some measure of success have such input?  It gets amorphous, and
>of course becomes, thereby, a lot of fun to think about.


PETE SAYS:

Frank,

     I appreciate your credentials: Adult Continuing Education, College of
Education, Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, LA.   I am a
teacher aide at a BOCES campus in upstate NY.

     Let me try to give a little shape to this question of "life skills".
Basically you have it right.  Not being the "stake-holders" puts us
(interested others) in the position of having to find out what it is that
the "stake-holders" who have 'it' (LIFE SKILLS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THEIR
SUCCESSES IN LIFE REGARDLESS OF THE 'FAILURES' OF HIGH SCHOOL OR GED.),
have.  We could then reformulate what they have into a series of questions
that would help (us/them) determine whether other stake-holders "have it."
We could also offer to share the skills of stake-holders who have it with
those who don't.  All in all, we would by-pass high school education and
GED.  Then the "stake-holders" could really "put an end to that 'secondary
education' stage of their lives."  And so could the rest of us (educators,
etc.).

    So, yes.  We need to get the information in order to develop the
examination and also to make it available for dissemination to those who
need it.  Go for it, Frank.  You can do it.

Pete Boardman
pfboardman at msn.com