Full Description
Constituting one in twelve of adult Americans, GED certificate holders comprise a major pool of underdeveloped human capital in our society. They are a resource that will be sorely needed as "boomers" reach retirement and the traditional pipeline of 17 - 23 year olds falls short of filling our growing workforce needs. Although these nontraditional students can potentially meet our future workforce demands, and although half of them enter post-secondary education, half of those who do so drop out of college for lack of basic support systems - often at the very same institutions that provided programs of retention while they were earning their GED and completing basic Adult Education classes. Yet national data collected by the National Center for Educational Statistics reveals that GED certificate holders who persist to their second year of community college studies accumulate grade point averages equal to high school graduates, refuting widely held beliefs that GED earners are not capable of rigorous academic work. This is the first book to remedy the dearth of data on this forgotten population, to present original research on these students, describing their characteristics and motivations, and to provide proven models for identifying, retaining and graduating this under-counted and underestimated cohort. It addresses the issue of the pipeline from GED centers to postsecondary education, and includes first-person narratives that offer vivid insights into GED earners' resilience and needs. As this book reveals, more than 40 percent of community colleges responding to a 2010 ACT survey have no one responsible for coordinating retention efforts; and more than half have no goals for first-year student retention; and estimates that community colleges are cumulatively foregoing over $1.5 billion in revenues as the result of failing to retain their GED populations.This book is a comprehensive resource for college administrators, and for educational policy makers and researchers, offering both broad policy recommendations and tested ideas and models that can be implemented at the state and institutional level.
Contents
EDITOR'S NOTE ON THE FOREWORD FOREWORD Story Musgrave PREFACE Angela Long INTRODUCTION Angela Long PART ONE. THE VOICE OF THE RESEARCHER 1. IDLE ASSETS An Examination of America's Underdeveloped Capital Christopher M. Mullin 2. AMERICA'S UNTAPPED RESOURCE Taking a Closer Look at GED Student Populations Margaret Becker Patterson 3. FROM GED® TO POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION The Role of Institutions Wei Song PART TWO. THE VOICE OF THE STATEWIDE LEADER AND ADMINISTRATOR 4. REDEFINING COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENT SUCCESS Helton "Hep" M. Aldridge 5. STATE OF EDUCATIONAL TRENDS The Developmental Education Dilemma Mark A. Heinrich 6. LESSONS ON LEADERSHIP K-12 Dropout Prevention Models in Promoting Postsecondary Education Success Steve Dobo 7. DELVING INTO THE TRENCHES A Practitioner's Perspective Pamela Blumenthal 8. INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE AT THE COLLEGE LEVEL Santa Fe Scholars Program as a Model for the Future Jackson Sasser PART THREE. THE VOICE OF THE STUDENT. PROMOTING RETENTION FROM A STUDENT LEADERSHIP PERSPECTIVE 9. FROM GED® TO MASTER'S DEGREE Leah Rapoza 10. THE POWER OF STUDENT LEADERSHIP IN TRANSFORMING LIVES Frederick Parks Jr. 11. REFLECTIONS OF A PEER MENTOR LEADER Catlin Cade PART FOUR. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 12. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Angela Long APPENDIX ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS INDEX
