INTRO

The General Educational Development program (GED) leads to a secondary diploma equivalency. It is available to any student age 16 or older who is not enrolled in school. Students study for and then pass a series of five standardized tests. Study for these tests can be done independently or in the learning center in close cooperation with our teaching staff. There is a small charge for each test, but instruction is free.

THE 5 TESTS

Language Arts, Writing Part 1 covers sentence struture, organization, usage and mechanics. You are asked 50 multiple-choice questions and have 75 minutes to answer them.
Language Arts, Writing Part 2 is an essay of about 250 words on an assigned topic, and you have 45 minutes to write it.

Social Studies covers U.S. History, World History, Civics and Government, Economics and Geography. For these 50 multiple-choice questions, you have 70 minutes.

Science focuses on Life Science, Earth and Space Science and Physical Science. You have 80 minutes to answer these 50 questions.

Language Arts, Reading asks you to read several non-fiction and literary texts including poetry and drama. You have 65 minutes for 40 multiple-choice questions.

Mathematics includes question on numbers and operations, geometry, measurements and data analysis and algebra. You are allowed to use a calculator on the 25 multiple-choice questions of Part 1, the 25 questions of Part 2 have to be completed without calculator. The total math test takes 90 minutes.

Typically, only one test is taken during one exam date. It is important to remember that the Science and Social Studies exams do not test your prior knowledge in these fields. Instead, both tests provide you with information (in writing and in graphs) and then test your ability to understand this information and reason with it to develop new understandings.

STUDYING FOR THE EXAM

In order to prepare for these tests, you have a choice between a variety of study settings. You can choose to come into our centers on a regular basis and work closely with our community teachers. You may also decide to do some or even most of the skill development work independently either at home or in the center with our teachers standing by for help when needed. A baseline standardized assessment will be administered in order to establish your initial educational functioning level. Based on a diagnostic of that assessment and on the results of a learning styles inventory, you and your advisor will create an individual learning plan that ties instructions right into the your existing level of skills and knowledge.

When you feel confident that you are getting close to being prepared for the GED exam, typically a practice test is administered to ascertain how well you would do on the real exam. Together with your advisor, you will then decide whether more studying is advisable or whether you should sign up for the exam.

SIGNING UP AND PAYING FOR THE EXAM

Before your first GED exam, you have to fill out some paper work that asks mostly for demographic information. On your exam days, you need to bring a valid photo ID along so that we can verify your identity. If you are under 18 years of age, you also need written permission from your parents/guardians to take the exam. The $15 fee per test can be paid by check, money order, cash (exact change, please) or voucher from another service agency such as the Parent Child Center or Vocational Rehabilitation.

PASSING AN EXAM AND QUALIFYING FOR THE DIPLOMA EQUIVALENCY

A perfect score on an individual GED exam is 800, a passing score is 410. However, you must achieve an average score of 450 among the five exams for a total of 2250 in order to qualify for the diploma equivalency.

THE HISTORY OF THE GED

Created for military personnel without a high school diploma in 1942, the GED (then known as the General Equivalency Diploma) was made available to non-military population in 1947. Each year, about 800,000 people take the GED test and 70% of those earn their GED certificate.

STUDY RESOURCES

We highly recommend the “Complete GED Preparation” course published by the distributor of the official GED Practice Tests, Steck-Vaughn (ISBN 978-1-4190-5399-3). The book offers explanations, practice materials, assessments and simulated GED exams with diagnostics for each of the 5 test areas. It lends itself as a self-study guide and as a resource for work with a teacher in any setting (classroom, 1 on 1 or learning lab). Online study resources are available (e.g. gedforfree.com), but users may have to deal with unwanted advertisement.