Judge Mathis grew up in the housing projects in Detroit. He was involved in gangs. He spent time in jail. How did he pull himself out? After learning that his mother had cancer, Mathis decided it was time to change the course of his life. He was offered probation, if he entered a GED program. He didn’t just stop at a GED, though. He went on to college and law school, and he became the youngest superior court judge ever to serve in Michigan. Did he stop there? No, he went on to have his own television court show.

With a GED, opportunities for job advancement or for new careers can open up. Many promising careers, like nursing, law enforcement, and hair stylish, require a high school degree or GED as a first step to career training. The armed forces also require a GED or high school diploma. High school graduates and GED earners make an average of $385,000 more in their lifetime than people without a GED or high school diploma, and going on to higher education or career training means even more earning potential. The GED is most lucrative when it’s a gateway to higher education at trade schools, community colleges, or universities. The average income for college graduates is $44,000, more than double the income of people who haven’t graduated high school, and 97% of colleges accept GED graduates.

Another highly respected GED graduate, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, was an active sponsor of scholarships for GED recipients. When speaking at a GED scholarship ceremony in 2003, he said: “You are now so much more prepared to go off in search of America. … You have indelibly today taken a huge and magnificent step forward.” Are you ready to take that step forward and find the land of opportunity?

Earning a GED is not difficult. Most people can prepare in a few short months with online GED study programs. The GED exams cover the bare essentials from high school, the things that are most valuable for success in today’s job market. You don’t need to memorize a lot of facts and dates. The GED focuses on critical thinking skills: analyzing, making inferences, and applying concepts to new situations. With a little practice, you can quickly improve these valuable skills and earn a GED.

Paul Salopek was born in Barstow, California in 1962. He dropped out of high school, and he took the GED to earn his high school equivalency. He didn’t stop there. While working as a fisherman and farm worker, Salopek earned a degree in environmental biology from UC Santa Barbara, graduating in 1984. When his motorcycle broke down in New Mexico a year later, he took a job at a local newspaper to earn money to repair his bike. It was the beginning of a career.

Salopek has worked for National Geographic and Texas’s El Paso Times. Currently he is a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, writing about Africa, Central Asia, and the Balkans. In 1998, he won a Pulitzer Prize for writing about the Human Genome Diversity Project, and in 2001, he won another for his writing about Africa, including the civil war in Congo. He has written about over 50 countries throughout the world. In 2006, Salopek was held in prison for five weeks in Darfur, one of the many conflict zones he’s travelled to as a writer.

Salopek is the recipient of the 2009 Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for courageous journalism. As part of the award, he received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

Paul Salopek took his GED and went to the ends of the earth with it. That’s what the GED is for. It opens doors for adults who need more opportunity, for better jobs, higher education, and personal fulfillment. Each GED earned represents the potential for achieving a dream.

Take a look at unemployment rates in 2008. No high school diploma? The unemployment rate was 9%. Among high school graduates, it was only 5.7%. That’s lower by more than a third. What if you earned a 2-year Associate degree at a community college? The unemployment rate was only 3.7% among people with Associate degrees. The more education you earned, the lower your chances of being unemployed. That means education equates to jobs.

But what kind of jobs? That’s where income comes in. Among people 25 and over who had full-time jobs, the median weekly income for people without a high school diploma was $426 in 2008. With a high school diploma, it jumped to $591 a week, an increase of nearly 40%. With that 2-year Associate degree, median income $736 a week. More education equates to better paying jobs.

Here is the complete data table from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:
2008 Unemployment rate    Education attained    2008 Median weekly earnings
2.0%                           Doctoral degree                       $1,555
1.7%                           Professional degree                $1,522
2.4%                          Master’s degree                       $1,228
2.8%                          Bachelor’s degree                    $978
3.7%                          Associate degree                      $736
5.1%                          Some college, no degree          $645
5.7%                          High-school graduate              $591
9.0%                          Less than a HS diploma           $426

The opportunities that education gives you are too good to pass up. If you don’t have your high school diploma, look into the GED. You can get more education, and more education means more opportunity.

Toyota rejected millions in subsidies from several American states to build a new plant in Ontario, Canada instead. The reason? Training American workers is more difficult and costly. What is the solution for America’s workforce?

In 2008, Toyota will open a new plant in Woodstock, Ontario, Canada. American states vied for the jobs the new Toyota plant could provide, but Toyota rejected offers of millions of dollars in aid. “The training program you need for people [in Ontario], even for people who have not worked in a Toyota plant before, is minimal compared to what you have to go through in the southeastern United States,” said Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association. See the article here.

Over 30 million Americans don’t have a high school diploma, and today’s workplace demands crucial literacy and thinking skills. Toyota’s decision highlights the problems American companies and workers both face. Without basic learning skills, how can American workers acquire necessary job skills?

“Business owners, stockholders, workers, and governments are all affected by an undereducated work force,” says Michael Ormsby, president of The GED Academy, GED preparation specialists. “People want a solution that’s doable… that can be implemented without excessive costs. One that works.”

The GED Academy purports that they have that solution: innovative educational software to help adults pass the GED. “The goal of our program is exactly what today’s workforce needs,” says Ormsby, “basic, fundamental skills.” The GED Academy terms it “essential education,” covering reading, writing, math, and critical thinking skills for adults who never learned how to learn.

“Our approach is to combine entertainment with learning,” says Ormsby, “using storytelling to engage people who lack study skills and who function poorly in a classroom. We use a simple, cross-platform technology developed for the web. All it requires is a computer, and students who go through this course become learners–workers who respond to training.”

The software is simple, flexible, and easy to use. The courses follow a virtual classroom, peopled with adult GED students, including Becca, a former truck driver who needs to find a new career because of back problems. “We wanted to give adult learners people they could relate to, and relate their learning to their real life. How is this going to help me with my job…or with finding a new job? How is this going to make my life better? Those are the questions students ask.”

Software-based educational programs have many benefits. Students can learn independently and receive immediate feedback through electronic quizzes. The costs are minimal, and since passGED provides teacher support both online and on the phone, no teacher is necessary. The main criticism of independent learning software is that learners need to remain motivated to use the software. To counter this criticism, passGED relies heavily on humor and character interactions in the virtual classroom, as well as providing Internet-based forums for group discussion, writing critiques, and support.

“For businesses and communities, this is an amazing investment,” says Ormsby. “It’s an investment in a viable workforce.”

For more information about the GED test, GED test preparation, or The GED Academy prep program, visit The GED Academy at: http://www.passged.com

The GED Academy unveils an innovative, online GED practice test to reach the millions of American adults without a high school diploma…over 30 million. The GED Academy strives to utilize technology to help undereducated adults who need to learn how to learn.

The GED Academy has unveiled an innovative version of the GED practice test. “The problem is,” says Michael Ormsby, president of The GED Academy, specialists in GED preparation, “that many potential GED candidates never learned how to learn. They struggle with traditional classroom environments and test-taking materials.” GED practice tests are an example. Traditional pen-and-paper tests require hand-scoring, and GED candidates often aren’t skilled enough to evaluate their own performance. “It requires a lot of support,” says Ormsby, “and community programs aren’t well funded.”

Throughout the country, individuals, communities, and businesses are recognizing the need for GED programs to develop undereducated adults into a viable workforce. “GED graduates are a vital component of a globally competitive workforce that strengthens existing business and supports economic growth and development in Virginia,” says the Virginia Department of Education. Virginia has created a goal of 20,000 new GED graduates per year, recognizing the problems raised by a staggering 30 million American adults without a high school diploma.

The level of support for adult education varies widely, from the high level of commitment found in Virginia to areas where community groups are struggling to find funding sources. “Educational programs need to take advantage of technology,” Ormsby insists, “to compensate for the funding gap.”

The new practice test, The GED Academy states, is a perfect example of how technology can help underfunded programs. The test is Flash-based and built for the web, so it can run on nearly any computer that can browse the Internet. Built according to the guidelines of the American Council on Education, the two complete half-length practice tests in reading, writing, math, science, and social studies have the same content as traditional pen-and-paper practice tests.

The difference is the need for support to take the test, score it, and understand the test results. The online test gives immediate feedback and computerized scoring, translating the number of right and wrong answers into information that the student can use. “The goal is to give students a tool to target their studying toward areas they need to improve,” says Ormsby.

The test even includes the essay portion of the GED test, and essays are scored by GED Academy instructors. “It’s something individual students can’t do for themselves,” Ormsby points out, “and it’s very time consuming for community program instructors [to grade essays.]”

The easy-to-use technology is typical of The GED Academy’s passGED program, which includes a complete Flash-based study program, with a guarantee that learners will pass the GED.

For more information about The GED Academy, visit: http://www.essentialed.org

The number of adult Americans who never finished high school is staggering: about 39 million Americans, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. In today’s marketplace, what is the outlook for these Americans?

Income for adults without high school diplomas has dropped up to $8,000 over the past 20 years, while salaries for the college educated continue to rise. It’s no surprise. Education has become essential in today’s competitive, information-based job market. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 80% of the fastest-growing jobs in the United States require some sort of education or training after high school. People without high school educations earn the least income and have the highest unemployment in the country—over 6%. The outlook doesn’t seem promising for the millions of adult Americans without high school diplomas. What are the options?

The good news is that adults without high school diplomas can earn more money if they develop the critical skills taught in high school and get a credential that shows it. A GED graduate earns on average $350,000 more in their lifetime. That breaks down to about $9,000 more income per year. The GED is the nationally accepted equivalent of a high school diploma, qualifying recipients for many jobs and for 95% of colleges. If a GED graduate pursues higher education at one of those career or technical colleges, community colleges, or universities, his or her earnings potential can go up even more. College graduates earn $26,000 more per year than people without high school degrees. That can mean upwards of a million extra dollars over the course of a full career.

How can a working adult with responsibilities earn a GED or beyond? Many adults have jobs, spouses, and children. Michael Ormsby, president of The GED Academy, relates: “As much as GED candidates want to better their situations, they need to pay rent and care for their families. Luckily, preparing for the GED is not as hard as they may think.” Adult education is available throughout the U.S., through community colleges, adult education centers, workplace programs, and traditional test-preparation booklets. For adult learners, the Internet also provides new options for training and education. Many online study programs are designed to meet the specific needs of adults with full-time jobs and families. Learners can prepare for the GED at home or anywhere they have access to a computer, at their own pace. Technologically-driven GED preparation programs can provide innovative, entertaining, multimedia programs that cater to students who did not learn well in a traditional school environment.

Unfortunately, the Internet also provides a vehicle for scam artists selling fake degrees. Promises of quick-and-easy online degrees are typically fraudulent. These fake schools are known as “diploma mills,” and in addition to losing their money, adults who mistakenly buy fake diplomas could lose their jobs. If a website offers a high school diploma based on an online test and life experience for a few hundred dollars, that diploma is likely to be worthless. Learn more about fake diplomas here.

What is the solution for adults struggling to get ahead without a high school diploma? Ormbsy says, “No matter where you left off your education or how high your goals are, the GED is the way to get there.”

For more information about GED online study programs, visit The GED Academy at http://www.passged.com.

By Leonard Williams

What good is the GED? How will it help me?

As a GED instructor, those are the questions I hear most often about the General Education Development credential, the adult learner’s alternative to a high school diploma. Those are my favorite questions to answer.

Here are some facts to consider about earning your GED:

1. A GED will help you get a job, and even keep it. Employers would rather hire someone who has the basic skills to pass the GED test than someone who doesn’t. Completing the GED means that the graduate has the fortitude to successfully finish a difficult exam. The GED is not a small thing!

2. You can expect to earn more money in your lifetime with a GED. Research shows that people with a GED make an average of $385,000 more in their lifetime than people who do not have a GED or high school diploma.

3. Passing the GED test will make you more valuable to your employer because you’ll have gained basic writing and math skills … demonstrated critical thinking and knowledge application. You’ll probably find it’s easier to get a work promotion or advance through workplace job-training programs once you have your GED.

4. Having the GED opens doors for advanced training. Most specialized training programs require either a high school diploma or a GED. And with a GED, you can look at higher educational opportunities.

5. You’ll feel better about yourself with a GED because you’ve accomplished something that only 60% of high school graduates can do.

6. Consider the impact of your educational achievement on your family. That alone goes a long way; it’s priceless.

More Resources
For additional GED study tips, test information and free resources on the GED test, including financial aid and student support, visit passGED.com. The website also provides links to federal agencies and nonprofits that serve GED students, instructors and workforce development programs. For a list of official GED testing sites and administrative contacts, visit Test Sites.

About the Author:
Leonard Williams, an e-learning instructor with passged.com, is also a curriculum specialist who focuses on research and development, implementation and assessment of best-practice learning solutions for adult learners and people with educational challenges. Leonard’s email is LeonardWilliams@passGED.com. He invites feedback and questions from GED students and instructors.

©2006 Essential Education Corporation. / www.passGED.com
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