Should the General Education Diploma (GED) be eliminated?

NYSAEA appears to be a private professional organization.


You are right, BOCES does seem to run alternative high schools in NYS on a county-wide basis in some areas of NYS. Those would be in addition to what the various school districts offer in terms of alternative high schools.

I'm finding all of this rather confusing.

At least there appear to be many options available in New York State to help students graduate--preferably with a regular diploma, but, failing that, with a GED.

It IS confusing!

It shouldn't be this hard to find out who is running our "public" schools. It's a big game of connect the dots.

I thought the theory of learning is that everyone can learn, if given enough time that the individual needs. So, the regular "track" in school is sort of a sort; those that handle a curriculum in an alloted time, and those that don't. So, to allow for those that may require more time to focus on one's study, the GED can get an individual beyond not achieving completion of high school in some alloted time.

Anyway, that is not my point. My point is that if one has a GED, and decides to pursue some additional level of education in a community college, for example, wouldn't that individual likely also have some remedial courses, since a GED does not equate to the "academic" college oriented diploma? So, when students pursue education beyond a GED, and take remedial courses in a community college, they are just finishing up their education at a pace that is comfortable. What should be wrong with that?

I think it all comes down to public education just being a "sort" of the fast and not so fast learners, in my opinion. In the military, in my experience,one is just "trained," the objective being to get a job done correctly, not focussing on sorting students into fast or not so fast learners, to see who gets promoted after the summer vacation, in my opinion.

My thinking runs along the same lines, Foofie.

The alternative school we're hoping to get Mo into isn't divided into classes based on age. There's a lower school and an upper school, kids work at their own pace, there isn't a push to get kids to graduate "on time". It makes so much sense to me.

I remember hearing the TED talk by Ken Robinson where he says something about the "factory model" of education where we pretend that the most important thing about kids is their age and I think that's when I started looking at options.

I read so much now about regular colleges offering so many remedial classes that I really wonder what value a diploma has. (After reading about credit recovery programs I wonder even more.) I think the value must lie in the student demonstrating that they can stick with the program and there is something to that -- an employer wants to know that his employee can meet a deadline. So much work is based on deadlines instead of thinking that it kind of makes sense that the diploma is the hallmark.

Reading through a lot of the information I've looked up about this I now have other questions that I'm sorting through. So much of it deals with lifetime earning for the student/drop out and how that effects the overall economic health of the country. Despite the pleas of "think of the children" I get the sense that we're really supposed to just think of the children as cogs.

But it is just a sense..... I haven't worked it all out yet....

Your concern for an education is already half the battle won, in my opinion.

You also can't ignore age, though. There are non-academic issues to be considered, because you don't necessarily want 12-year-olds spending all day with eight-year-olds. There's just a vast difference in emotional and physical maturity.

I agree and that is a hard thing to address. That's one of the reasons I kept bringing up my question of how long should we allow kids to stay in the public school system. Do we want 20 year olds in our high schools?

why not?

there were 20 year olds in grades 12 and 13 when I was in high school. it didn't seem to be a problem for anyone. It's actually the law in Ontario that people can attend regular high school til age 21 - and there is a push to increase that maximum leaving age (for youth in state care).

I see it much the same as the flipside - that is, allowing students to skip grades - I think that the social development which comes while attending school is at least as important as the academic work

Wouldn't a progressive/liberal often believe that the 8 year old would become more mature if associating with a 12-year old? That was the scatter site housing concept for welfare in NYC. The welfare recipients would benefit by living amongst middle class folks. In my own opinion, many people assimilate down. So, in reality, I would not feel good about 8 year olds associating with 12 year olds.

And, I think the age to remain in high school is increasing.

The solution might be home schooling?

I don't know if we do or don't, I was responding to DrewDad's comment.

Is it a good idea to mix 14 year olds and 20 year olds in the same classes?

That's very interesting about the law allowing people to stay in school until they are 21. What happens if they have still failed to graduate by that time? I'm going to see if I can find out about America's laws that address that....

I' be surprised to see a six-year age gap, but I know we're less likely to allow grade skipping than is done in the U.S.

The normal age for finishing high school here is between 17 and19, so 21 isn't much of a stretch.

I don't have a problem with 20 year olds getting an education; I don't think they should necessarily be on the same campus as 14 and 15 year olds, though.

High School in Texas is grades 9-12. I entered 9th grade at 13 and graduated at 18.

It's not too far fetched to expect it and doesn't need skipping to be achieved.

I entered High School at 13 (September birthday and it hadn't occurred yet that year). In math class there were several Seniors who needed the class to meet graduation requirements for a Regents Diploma (this was in New York). Some were already 19 and turned 20 soon after. Not all the 19 year olds had been held back in school. Some, similar to my nephew, had started school a year late for various reasons.

On the second or third day of that school term, I had a schedule change and was put in art class as a replacement for some other class. Again, there was a 6 year gap between some of us in age. That age gap is much more common than people realize.

That happened to me -- but I was on the older end of the scale.

I had taken all my schools upper level English classes during my junior year but still needed an English credit to graduate. There was only one class that fit my schedule -- a freshman level class. Luckily it was with a teacher that I'd had years before and she knew I could do the work. She allowed me to sit in class and read whatever I wanted. I was 17 and the rest of the class was 13.

Not quite a 6 year gap, but pretty close.

I don't think it's the age problem, but a concentration problem. It seems more mature people (correlation with age) tend to do better in school because they have a higher level of concentration.
Think about it. In my high school, as well as most high schools in America 5 or 6 segments of 50 minute periods is used to transfer unrelenting streams of information. That's where some kids struggle, if they don't go home and process this information into workable long term memory, thus the idea of homework is there.

I would say schools should also offer a program for students that struggle with this schedule. For example, divide lessons into 25 minute sections, and then repeated throughout the day. So say Subject-1 is taught for 25 minutes which is the first exposure, and ninety minute later, the 25 minute essence of Subject-1 is repeated, and then possibly a third time. Then all subjects are segmented and interleaved in such a fashion. And since such a repetitive schedule slows down the info. addressed per unit of time, the school year must be extended into summer.

Kids will hate it, but it is a method that will help struggling kids who are smart but have concentration problems.

That's interesting, aspvenom. I've not heard that broached before, at least re repetition/clarification on the same day.
I have a slight memory that in elementary school, teachers would repeat key concepts from the last class, at least sometimes.

I learn things better with repetition myself, and not necessarily lengthy repetition - just thinking about the idea a second and maybe third time. That happened in my schooling, especially at university, as I wrote sloppy notes as best I could - sometimes from non native english speakers, one swedish and one russian, so some of the notes were phonetic - but also from fast lecturers who were clear but speaking faster than I could process entirely or at least write sensibly. Then I would go to the library or at worst later that day, rewrite my notes so I had them in good form and was clear on the concepts.

I guess it depends on the person listening and the person teaching. Some teachers clearly followed some outline form, so, easy notes, and some seemed to ramble roads of thoughts - those were interesting too.

Do kids still take notes? Or at least doodle on paper?

I'm one of the people that didn't mind homework - for me it helped get the math lesson further in my brain. Of course I'm against stupid homework, but what is stupid probably varies in people's views.

Some people are just brilliant in some subjects. A lifetime friend skipped most of an advanced chem class (biochem, I think it was) over a semester, just went through the book, got a top grade among a large number of students in all the tests.

"I would say schools should also offer a program for students that struggle with this schedule. For example, divide lessons into 25 minute sections, and then repeated throughout the day. So say Subject-1 is taught for 25 minutes which is the first exposure, and ninety minute later, the 25 minute essence of Subject-1 is repeated, and then possibly a third time. Then all subjects are segmented and interleaved in such a fashion. And since such a repetitive schedule slows down the info. addressed per unit of time, the school year must be extended into summer."


At my school we test our students to see how advanced they are and depending on the level they are at we put them in classes that's going to help them with their learning style. For example, if a student is slow in learning we give the student the same class EVERY DAY for the same amount of time every day. There's other students that do have a learning disability, therefore those students are taken care of by ONE teacher everyday. That one teacher teaches those students all the different subjects every day, instead of those students having different teachers everyday and having for example Math class every other day like regular students do. There's different accommodations that schools offer to students that need help in different areas of learning. In my school we also offer summer school only to those students that failed three or more subjects in the regular school year.

That is interesting. I've read that revisiting a topic intermittently can help it sink in. But they're doing that at my son's school and it has everyone all confused!

For me the thing that would have really helped at school was if they had recognized that some people need to move to think.

I can't get comfortable in a chair if I have to have my feet on the floor. The only time I sit with both feet on the floor is if I'm driving or using the toilet. I much prefer to sit on the floor when forced to sit. When I do have to sit I like to sit "tailor fashion", with both feet crossed into my lap, or with the soles of my feet together. At minimum, I have to have one foot curled underneath me. Even then, I'd really rather stand. I concentrate much better when I'm standing.

School desks were torture for me. I had to be a contortionist to get comfortable.

I'll wager there are other kids who feel the same and if they aren't flexible enough to get comfortable then all they can think about is relieving the urge to move.

You know, while I had a nice desk when I was working, i jury rigged a stand up desk from two horizontal filing cabinets and a nice piece of plywood. I spent a lot of time standing up there for anything that didn't require computer, calculator, or phone.