Archive for February 2nd, 2009
GED: Influence My Thinking
February 2nd, 2009
We have GED in-house this year for Randolph students and I’m wrestling with the subject. I understand how valuable GED is for adults who, for whatever reason, didn’t make it to a diploma. I saw Kimberly Mansfield deliver a wonderful program as part of Gowanda’s Adult Education program. It was one night per week, free of cost to the students and the district, helping prepare for the GED those students who had dropped out and those adults in the community who wanted it. Makes perfect sense to me.
I can’t deny it’s a good thing that we have our students coming to RCS for their GED instruction and attending BOCES for a vocational certificate–it’s definitely better than dropping out, no argument there. I’m not sure why they don’t get the GED instruction at BOCES, while there for the vocational piece. Can we deliver the instruction in a better or more cost effective way than BOCES can for GED? I’m not sure about that. Could our RCS teachers offer something else to our students, like additional electives, if they were freed up from that GED assignment?
I wonder what’s best for our GED students. Most of all, I wonder if we tried every other option first and if they absolutely would have been drop-outs without this program in-house. What about alternative ed at BOCES? There’s a program that offers an alternative that results in a diploma.
Readers, if you have an opinion, please respond. Influence my thinking. GED students, help me to understand how GED at Randolph is better than GED at BOCES, or is it? GED Teachers, what do you think? Parents? In a cost/benefit analysis, wouldn’t the rest of our students benefit more from those teachers offering more electives? Would GED students get a better or equitable program at BOCES?
My biggest fear? That our in-house GED program will look like an appealing alternative to those students on the brink, that we’ll have more drop-outs to GED (yes, it still counts as an RCS drop-out in the eyes of the State Education Department) because it looks easier to our struggling students than hanging in there and getting a high school diploma.
