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New Changes Coming to GED

Geannine Shuster works with a tutor at Seeds of Learning.
Geannine Shuster works with a tutor at Seeds of Learning.

Geannine Shuster is good at multiplication.

But fractions, she says, give her a little bit of trouble.

The 39-year-old is one of about 350 people every month who utilize the center's free G-E-D exam preparation classes.

She's planning on taking the test sometime next year, when a new, more challenging version will be introduced.

"I think about it and I get nervous and excited about it all at the same time," she said. "It's just a happy, confused, scared feeling all at once."

Nicole Chestang is vice president of the company that administers the test, G-E-D Testing Services.

The G-E-D was last changed in 2002, she says, so an update is overdue.

"The status quo was no longer good enough," Chestang explained. "We needed to step up our game and make sure that people who came through this program could demonstrate strong academic skills, including critical thinking and problem solving skills, so the test is changing to provide the opportunity for the test taker to really demonstrate a whole breadth of skills but across the same areas that we've traditionally tested."

Seeds of Literacy's Education Consultant Dan McLaughlin has completely revamped the study program to help students prepare better for the test's new challenges.

"The Common Core standards have a lot more to do with close reading, a lot more analytical writing," McLaughlin said. "So we tried to beef up our curriculum by having longer, information based reading added to the curriculum, and also have our students do a whole lot more writing than they had been doing."

McLaughlin's also using the program's new computer lab to teach people basic technology skills, like how to drag and drop and point and click.

That's necessary because the paper version of the test is being eliminated; now it'll only be offered on a computer at a testing center.

That could be a problem for many students, says Jo Steigerwald, Seeds of Learning's Development Officer.

She says the majority of their students don't have a computer at home.

"To write an essay by hand, if that's all you've been doing, is very different from composing an essay, on a keyboard, in a timed situation, during a really high stakes test," Steigerwald said. "It's just another additional skill that they need to learn."

They'll also have to find a way to pay more for the test.

The new version will cost $120 in Ohio. The paper version of the old test cost $40.

McLaughlin worries any one of these changes could discourage people from pursuing a GED.

"especially when they hear about the cost," he said. "A lot of our students feel like this is their shot to get back into the labor force and this is just a huge stop."

But Schuster says she's not deterred. The mother-of-three has big plans of passing the test and then enrolling in nursing classes at a local community college.

"I just wanna make something of my life," she said. "And getting my GED is the first start of it."