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DISAPPEARING DROPOUTS
Why
are teenagers filling "adult education" centers?
Each year,
hundreds of thousands of Americans enroll in "adult education"
classes to earn their GED, the high school equivalency diploma. The
GED was created after World War II to help returning veterans continue
their education and, since then, students in the program have traditionally
been adults in their 20’s and 30’s.
Today, there’s a new trend: GED classes are increasingly filled
with teenagers. In some states, more than half the students taking
the GED test are teens. That's the case in Florida, where we went
to explore this trend.
To produce this report, we spent months collecting and analyzing state
data and talked with dozens of GED students and teachers. In the end,
our investigation uncovered troubling facts that call into question
not only the growing number of referrals to the GED, but also much
of the “progress” high schools claim to have made under
No Child Left Behind.
produced by John
D. Tulenko
The "Story
Behind the Story" of Disappearing Dropouts |
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VIEWER
COMMENTS |
"It
was a good and important report. What's so amazing is that
even with all the thousands of students sloughed off into
GED programs, Florida's official graduation rate is still
absolutely awful. Things really should be so bad there --
suspension and grade retention rates are both high too. I
think the problems must go very deep." - Anne Wheelock
Click
here to leave your comments. |
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Original
Airdate: November 30, 2004 |
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