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The sudden surge in teenagers seeking alternative diplomas is a predictable result of Florida's tough new high school exit exam, but education officials seem all too eager to deny the obvious.
Asked to explain why 21,000 teenagers took the GED test last year, an increase of 78 percent in one year, Department of Education spokesman MacKay Jimeson pointed to state requirements for credit hours and grade point averages. But those standards haven't increased in almost a decade. So, Jimeson added: "Unfortunately, we still have kids in the system who have been affected, negatively, by the old system, which did not have high standards and accountability."
Unfortunately, shopworn political rhetoric doesn't get the job done either.
The fact that more students took the General Education Development test last year has little to do with "the old system" and everything to do with the new one. Last year was the first time the state denied diplomas to high school seniors who failed the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, and roughly 13,000 seniors failed. It is hardly coincidence, then, that students sought alternatives. DOE's own informational materials for seniors who have failed the FCAT expressly encourage them to take the GED.
Gov. Jeb Bush has previously defended such consequences as the tradeoff for higher graduation standards, and his point is fair enough. But the new GED statistics raise questions about the dimensions of that tradeoff. To what extent is the FCAT pushing students not only into alternative education tracks but out of high school altogether?
Last year, for example, nearly 1,000 of the students taking the GED were 16 years old. Given that the high school exit FCAT is first given in 10th grade, is it possible that early failure on the test is leading students to drop out of school? Debby VanderWoude, administrator of Dixie Hollins Adult Education Center, says she may be seeing such a trend in Pinellas. "I'm not surprised," she told a reporter. "We've been seeing a whole lot more of the younger ones."
These are serious educational concerns. Though the GED route is not necessarily a bad alternative for some students, the rapid upturn may portend a more troubling trend. The same DOE that pushed for the high-stakes graduation exam should be similarly intent on analyzing the effects. Unfortunately, DOE's response so far is little more than a bureaucratic shrug of the shoulder.