The Myth of Achievement Tests : The GED and the Role of Character in American Life

James J Heckman

ISBN 10: 022632480X / ISBN 13: 9780226324807

Published by University Of Chicago Press Sep 2015, 2015

About this Item

Neuware - 'The GED and the Role of Character in American Life 'offers in-depth historical and analytical explorations of how the GED came to be used on such a grand scale and why our reliance on it is so pernicious. For example, the main organization that administers the test, the American Council on Education, has for decades prevented the US Census from distinguishing GEDs from high-school graduates, and thus prevented honest evaluations of the GED s effectiveness. Also, due to a reliance on achievement tests and programs like No Child Left Behind, schools were given an incentive to encourage low-performing students to drop out and take the GED to get them off the books without penalty. So the GED program creates problems by inducing students to drop out of school, and it conceals major social problems by passing off GEDs as high-school graduates. The essays in this book definitively establish that, as a group, GEDs are not the equivalents of high-school graduates. The book explains statistically how most GEDs perform at the level of high-school dropouts in the labor market, in marriage, in the military, and in society at large. '.

Seller Inventory # 9780226324807

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Myth of Achievement Tests : The GED and the Role of Character in American Life
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press Sep 2015
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022632480X
• ISBN 13: 9780226324807
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu

About this title

Synopsis

Achievement tests play an important role in modern societies. They are used to evaluate schools, to assign students to tracks within schools, and to identify weaknesses in student knowledge. The GED is an achievement test used to grant the status of high school graduate to anyone who passes it. GED recipients currently account for 12 percent of all high school credentials issued each year in the United States. But do achievement tests predict success in life?

The Myth of Achievement Tests shows that achievement tests like the GED fail to measure important life skills. James J. Heckman, John Eric Humphries, Tim Kautz, and a group of scholars offer an in-depth exploration of how the GED came to be used throughout the United States and why our reliance on it is dangerous. Drawing on decades of research, the authors show that, while GED recipients score as well on achievement tests as high school graduates who do not enroll in college, high school graduates vastly outperform GED recipients in terms of their earnings, employment opportunities, educational attainment, and health. The authors show that the differences in success between GED recipients and high school graduates are driven by character skills. Achievement tests like the GED do not adequately capture character skills like conscientiousness, perseverance, sociability, and curiosity. These skills are important in predicting a variety of life outcomes. They can be measured, and they can be taught.

Using the GED as a case study, the authors explore what achievement tests miss and show the dangers of an educational system based on them. They call for a return to an emphasis on character in our schools, our systems of accountability, and our national dialogue.

Contributors
Eric Grodsky, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Andrew Halpern-Manners, Indiana University Bloomington
Paul A. LaFontaine, Federal Communications Commission
Janice H. Laurence, Temple University
Lois M. Quinn, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Pedro L. Rodríguez, Institute of Advanced Studies in Administration
John Robert Warren, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

About the Author

James J. Heckman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is the director of the Economics Research Center at the University of Chicago and codirector of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group, an initiative of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the Becker-Friedman Institute. John Eric Humphries is a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. Tim Kautz is a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago and the recipient of a National Science Foundation fellowship.