More than one million adults took the General Educational Development test in 2001 to try to earn the equivalent of a high-school degree, far more than ever before. The GED examination, which is administered by the American Council on Education, provides a credential to adults who failed to finish high school but wish to attend college.
In a report scheduled to be released today, the council said that the number of adults who took at least one of the five parts of the GED exam in 2001 soared to 1,069,899, up from 860,684 in 2000. The increase was driven largely by the planned introduction of a new version of the GED exam in 2002, replacing one that had been in use since 1988. People who had passed only some of the five parts of the 1988 version of the GED had to pass the remaining parts by the end of 2001 or start over with the new version. That inspired many more people to rush to take the old exam last year, GED officials said.
Among other highlights of the GED report:
· The average age of the adults who took the GED exam in 2001 was 25.2 years, up from 24.7 in 2000.
· The number of exam takers who sought special testing accommodations because of disabilities rose by 95.5 percent, to 15,782 in 2001.
· The number of GED candidates taking the Spanish-language version of the test grew by 9.7 percent from 2000 to 2001. California saw a 56-percent increase in the number of adults who took the Spanish-language version.
Copies of the report are available from the Web sites of the American Council on Education and the GED Testing Service.
Lexington Herald-Leader
Patton agrees with educators funding is low
FRANKFORT - Gov. Paul Patton yesterday agreed for the first time with many educators and advocates that Kentucky's schools are underfunded.
"I believe we've achieved relative economic equity," Patton said in front of a large crowd at the Kentucky History Center. "We have not yet achieved adequacy."
It was the first time the governor had publicly sided with a group of superintendents who have been saying the same thing about adequacy since budget forecasts left the schools in a financial stranglehold earlier this year.
Many of the several hundred attendees of yesterday's "education summit" also said the state legislature would have to look at Kentucky's tax structure to raise more money.
"The revenue problem in Kentucky is the 800-pound gorilla here. Something has to be done and I think the governor and the legislature know that," said Wayne Young, director of the Kentucky Association of School Administrators.
About 142 superintendents have reconvened the Council on Better Education, the group that started the court case that ended in the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act.
They have requested a University of Virginia professor to do a study on adequacy. The Kentucky Department of Education is commissioning similar research.
Those two reports will be carefully studied by a working group of advocates and educators that Patton will appoint, probably next week, to study the issue.
"This is not the end of this effort," he said, "but just the beginning."
Patton convened yesterday's summit as a way to focus attention and re-energize the reform act.
The reminiscences started out fond and flowery, about a poor Appalachian state that created an educational revolution.
But educators, legislators and advocates kept coming back to another, less nostalgic, point: Does the state provide enough money to uphold the academic standards KERA created?
During one panel, budget director Jim Ramsey said that KERA had largely achieved its first goal of creating equity between rich and poor school districts.
A tax increase -- to the tune of $1.2 billion each biennium -- helped pay for that, as well as for big jumps in teacher pay.
"There were some of us then, as now, who felt like we needed some reform in our tax system," Ramsey said.
However, that effort was hurt by a round of tax cuts in 1995, which cut $300 million from state revenues.
That helped drag down statistics such as teacher pay. Currently the national average is $43,000, while Kentucky's is $36,000.
That's the same old story, said Gene Binion, superintendent of Elliot County, and one of the original plaintiffs in the KERA court case.
"I think eventually we're going to have to have a funding system and hold the course on it, or else we're going to be faced with the same problem," he said. "This has happened time and time again.
Several panels also looked at KERA's effects on curriculum and governance, and a system that requires that all schools reach a "proficient" academic level on Kentucky's statewide tests by 2014.
"The bottom line is that schools are reaching levels of achievement never seen before," said Stuart Silberman, superintendent of Daviess County schools. "Our schools have gone from hoping for the best to expecting the best."
Patton, who leaves office next year, said he and the legislature must ask themselves, "Do we have the courage and the wisdom to keep educational improvement on track? ... What is the most important, maintaining our offices or providing our children with a higher quality of life?"
State Sen. David Karem, who worked on the original legislation, said the legislature, at least, had to answer the charge.
"It's a matter of they have to," he said. "It would be such a tragedy for this state not to honor the commitment. It's a moral and ethical obligation."
Commonwealth News Journal, Somerset
Local education administrators are defending the salary of the head of the community and technical college system, Mike McCall.
Last week, it was reported that McCall, head of Kentucky Community and Technical College System, is one of the highest paid community college system heads in the Southeast, a fact that irks some of the system’s faculty and staff.
McCall receives a base salary of $225,000, plus $76,500 a year for a housing allowance, for a total of $301,500. The KCTCS Board of Regents also gave him a $20,000 bonus this year, making a total of $321,500. His fringe benefits, including health and retirement benefits, are worth an additional $59,031 a year.
Somerset Community College president Dr. Jo Marshall said McCall has tackled a unique position in the United States in pulling together the community college and technical college system.
“He has demonstrated his ability to pull this operation together to establish a system out of two areas that were not originally united and I feel like he’s working hard to achieve single or Southern Association of Colleges accreditation for all colleges and upgrading the level of instruction,” Marshall said. “I personally think he’s earned every penny of his salary.”
Marshall has a different perspective from others because she came from Alabama — a state where the two systems are not blended. Combining such systems has been difficult, Marshall said, but handled well by McCall.
“Through his leadership, he has demonstrated he truly is a visionary and someone who is able to articulate the vision and set in motion the steps to accomplish it,” she said.
The Associated Press story compared several salaries for heads of community college systems in the southeastern United States.