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The GED Testing Service requires test-takers be 16 years of age or older. However, most states require that a person be 18 years or older. This needs to change: Anyone age 16 or older should be permitted to take the GED. High achieving students deserve the ability to verify their proficiency in key subjects so they can get on with college. Going even further, states should deem that anyone who scores high enough shall have satisfied the state’s graduation requirements and can leave school.

As higher education undergoes dramatic changes thanks to the coronavirus, reformers should aim higher than expanding online education. Now is a propitious time to end the dominance of accreditation agencies in higher ed and create a GED-like equivalency exam for a college degree. Many students want a traditional college life: living on campus for four years, attending classes, and socializing. But for the majority of students, what matters most is learning and getting a credential for a good job or ready for graduate education. These students genuinely desire knowledge but don’t always need other aspects of the traditional college experience....

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — Five months after authorities cracked a decades-old cold case by nabbing the Golden State Killer, law enforcement officials announced Friday the capture of another notorious California predator, the NorCal rapist, who is accused of raping at least 10 women over 15 years. Officers arrested 58-year-old Roy Charles Waller Thursday morning as he arrived at work at the University of California Berkeley. Authorities found Waller by applying the same method used to catch the Golden State Killer – matching old crime scene DNA with data uploaded to the website of a Florida-based genealogy company called GED match....

Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing Human Brains from Medical Museum A 23-year-old Indiana man pleaded guilty on Wednesday to breaking into a medical museum and stealing preserved human brains and other tissue that he then sold online, authorities said. David Charles, of Indianapolis, pleaded guilty to six charges including receiving stolen property, and burglary in a Marion County court where Magistrate Amy Barbar sentenced him to one year of home detention and two years of probation, county prosecutor spokesman Anthony Deer said. Charles on multiple occasions broke into the Indiana Medical History Museum to steal jars of brains and other...

Hillary Clinton is heading to the Sunshine State this week to spend time with one of Florida’s most influential Democratic donors, trial lawyer John Morgan. Morgan is not just praising Clinton’s candidacy, but actively bashing her potential Republican rivals. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Morgan took shots at Wisconsin Governor and prospective 2016 candidate, Scott Walker: “Walker would be the first president with a GED.”The Democratic donor attempted to insult Walker for not obtaining a college degree, which he opted out of in order to get started with his career. Morgan continued, calling Walker cruel names in an...

There are plenty of things to criticize Scott Walker over. His lack of a college degree is not one of them. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has emerged as a modest front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination in the past couple of weeks. This may well be a temporary state of affairs. If the 2012 GOP primaries taught us anything about the presidential nominating process in the super PAC era, it’s that every candidate will be the front-runner for a few weeks. At some point this year, everyone from Huckles to Doctor-Citizen Ben Carson will serve a brief spell as the...

What a snob! On today's Morning Joe, Howard Dean, a product of fancy prep schools and Yale, suggested that Scott Walker was unfit to be president because his lack of a college degree rendered him "unknowledgeable." Dean's disdain for the un-diplomaed came during a discussion of Walker having declined, during his recent trip to the UK, to state whether he believes in evolution. Joe Scarborough was incredulous at Dean's diss, pointing out that people such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg never finished college. To which list could be added super-successful and knowledgeable people from Rush Limbaugh to Steve Jobs,...

It doesn’t sound like a “deal breaker”:...

Dropouts Seek a Boost From Equivalency Exams Numbers Seeking a Degree Swell -- But Gains May Be Limited A growing number of Americans are taking high school equivalency tests in their hunt for any leg up in a bleak labor market. Adult-education centers across the country report backlogs and waiting lists for prep courses cramming dozens of topics and years of lessons into weeks or months. But the potential for a better job and pay that drives many to seek a General Educational Development diploma comes with a caveat: The certificate generally is of limited value unless students use it...

Florida is changing its policy on youths who opt for a GED to finish high school in less than four years. Until now, those looking for a shortcut could earn the same diploma as others. But Education Commissioner Eric Smith says that's not fair... So Smith has notified school districts that all who take the General Educational Development test must now receive a high school equivalency diploma, just like dropouts who later go through the GED process.

The soaring costs of a college degree are prompting colleges to consider a three-year degree program. Britain has long granted a degree for three years of college. I would like to suggest a one-year degree program. And I don’t mean an associate’s degree. Here are some hard facts most colleges will never tell you and most parents could not tolerate hearing. The general requirements of the first two years at most colleges are what high school should have been. That is what junior should have learned had he not been busy getting high, getting drunk, and being socially promoted. Better...

Brian Gegner was sentenced to 180 days behind bars because his daughter was unable to complete her G-E-D.

Is the GED test the same in every state or is it different? My son took it yesterday and said it was a piece of cake and said people you would not think would be able to pass it did. Then I had educators from out of state saying that it was a very hard test and one where a lot of studying would be required. My son took it because the public school would not accept credit for his first two years of high school at a non accredited private school. Long story but he dropped out of public...

1) Mandate high school graduation or equivalency as compulsory for everyone below the age of 21. Just as we established compulsory attendance to the age of 16 or 17 in the beginning of the 20th century, it is appropriate and critical to eradicate the idea of "dropping out" before achieving a diploma. To compete in the 21st century, all of our citizens, at minimum, need a high school education. 2) Establish high school graduation centers for students 19-21 years old to provide specialized instruction and counseling to all students in this older age group who would be more effectively addressed...

What follows is the lede from a Baltimore Sun article today (Sunday) about Army recruitment as reprinted in The Day in New London, Connecticut. It demonstrates, again, the truth of Mark Twain’s dictum, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” "Washington — The Army met its recruiting goal for November by again accepting a high percentage of recruits who scored in the lowest category on the military's aptitude tests, Pentagon officials said Thursday, raising renewed concerns that the quality of the all-volunteer force will suffer. "The Army exceeded its 5,600 recruit goal by 256 for November, while the Army Reserve...

It has recently been brought to my attention that there are MANY homeschooled kids that are having problems getting into the military. Aparently local recruiters are not being very helpful. If anyone out there has some experience in this area please let me know. This problem seems to be much bigger than just here in Tallahassee. The recruiters are saying that the "SCHOOL" must issue some document before the ASVAB can be administered, and the schools have no idea what they are talking about. As a U.S. Army Drill Sergeant I should know the solution to this problem, but since...

WASHINGTON - Army Secretary Noel Harvey and vice chief of staff Gen. Richard Cody said Monday that the Army was using looser Defense Department rules that permitted it to sign up more high school dropouts and people who score lower on mental-qualification tests, but they denied that this meant it was lowering standards. Until Army recruiters began having trouble signing up enough recruits earlier this year, the Army had set minimum standards that were higher than those of the Defense Department. The Army has a recruiting shortfall of 6,000 to 8,000 soldiers over the past 12 months. Harvey and Cody...

We have been discussing inexpensive ways to fast track kids through high school to avoid the liberal agenda: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1315730/posts?page=84#84 The thread title was not well thought out, because some parents might instinctively skip over it due to attached stigma, whether real or imagined.

I've been getting asked more and more about my position that high school is a waste of time and my recommendation for parents to give their children a choice to skip high school. This is in response to the liberal agendas now prevalent in high schools as well as the simple fact that such a strategy would give kids a 4 year head start on their peers. Below are some useful links for investigating this option. I will repost my own experience under that. http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/school/equivexam.html UCB Parents Advice about School Taking the High School Equivalency Exam Advice and recommendations from...

BURBANK, Calif. -- A 20-year-old California man who dropped out of high school to care for his ailing father has earned the first perfect GED score the state has seen in the past decade. State officials say Zachary Olkewicz earned the only perfect score among the 569,000 people who took the GED in California in that period. He is one of only six people nationwide last year to answer every question on the testcorrectly. Olkewicz is now attending college and hopes to someday open a computer software design business.