"Equivalency test revamped in effort to improve job skills" by Michael Alison Chandler | Washington Post, April 28, 2013
WASHINGTON — Hundreds of thousands of high school dropouts hoping to earn an equivalency diploma will have to pass a more challenging GED test that is being designed to improve the prospects of low-skilled workers in a high-tech economy.
Related: What the Immigration Bill i$ Really About
So what jobs are they going to leave you as the cheap foreign labor comes rolling in during the midst of an unemployment crisis in this country? Soldier or civilian service to the military-industrial complex?
The largest overhaul in the exam’s 70-year history follows growing criticism that it has fallen far short of its promise to offer a second chance for the 39 million adult Americans without a high school diploma. Very few of those who pass the GED test pursue higher education, and most struggle to earn a living wage.
Which has little to with a diploma and more to do with the elite grabbing all the wealth and actively working to ship jobs overseas, outsourcing -- and insourcing -- cheap labor, illegal or otherwise, to put American citizens out of work.
The new exam, scheduled to be introduced in January, will emphasize skills that are more relevant to today’s employers and colleges, including critical thinking and basic computer literacy as the test goes digital and the pencil-and-paper version is abandoned.
It's not education anymore; it's indoctrination and inculcation, in the guise of the greater good, of course.
It also will be aligned to national academic standards approved by 45 states and the District of Columbia, matching it more closely to the education students are now expected to receive in public schools.
CT Turner, a spokesman for the GED Testing Service, said the new test is motivated by the economic reality that a GED alone, like a high school diploma, will not help the approximately 800,000 people who take the test each year. The test has to become a ‘‘steppingstone’’ to college, he said.
Just wondering what and who the contract pays for developing the new test?
‘‘If we are not going to give them a chance to better their lives, we are giving them false hope,’’ he said. ‘‘We are assigning them to a dead-end job.’’
Well, we know about the jobs lie, but there is also the ball-and-chain that the banks love so much (and no chance to declare bankruptcy?).
The United States has slipped from first in the world to 16th in college attainment for young adults, a trend that President Obama has pledged to reverse.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Lip-Smacking Debt Collectors
Thanks for the help, Obama. I thought he was your friend, kids.
The battery of tests known as the GED, for General Educational Development, was first administered in the 1940s to give returning World War II veterans a way to return to school and take advantage of the GI Bill. It expanded as federal funding began flowing to adult education programs and GED programs were introduced in prisons.
The test has increased in rigor four times. Today’s challenge — to prepare high school dropouts for college — is steep, particularly given that many preparation programs squeeze four years of high school material into crash courses offered in church basements, said Terry Grobe, a program director for Boston-based Jobs for the Future.
More than 20 people crammed into a narrow classroom on an April morning at the Woodbridge Workforce Center for the first day of a 12-week GED preparation course.
Some students at the center in Woodbridge, Va. hope the GED will help them move into management at McDonald’s or the Calvin Klein store at the mall.
Most have more distant goals: to stop cleaning office buildings or working the split shift as a bus driver and to become an X-ray technician or a preschool teacher.
‘‘I am here today because I want to go to college,’’ said Judy James, 41, of Woodbridge, who left high school when she had her first child, who is now enrolled in college.
Was is it, an AA meeting?
The average GED test taker is 26 years old; nearly a quarter of all test takers are 16 to 18.
A 40-week program run by the nonprofit Living Classrooms in the District of Columbia serves 20 teenagers from the region who were released from juvenile detention.
Ah, another nonprofit makes an appearance in my new$paper.
The program offers test preparation along with training in woodworking and metal shop and basic life skills.
Toni Lemons, program director, said 40 weeks is sometimes not long enough. Many arrive with third- or fourth-grade-level skills, and some are not ready for the test by the end of the program.
Myles Powell, 18, was filling out an online application for a part-time job at Dunkin’ Donuts during a break one recent morning. After he passes the GED, he hopes to enroll in college and pursue a career.
Historically, most test takers’ aspirations have ended with the GED. A 2011 study by the GED Testing Service found that although about 60 percent of test takers said they planned to pursue postsecondary education, just 43 percent enrolled. Of those who went on, about a third dropped out after a single semester and only 12 percent graduated.
Without further schooling, the GED offers little economic payoff. Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman found in the early 1990s that America’s high school equivalency certificate was not equivalent in the labor market. Those who passed the GED earned far less than high school graduates and worked fewer hours.
On average, GED recipients fared about the same as dropouts who never took the test, further research showed. One subgroup, the lowest-skilled test takers eventually got bigger paychecks, but not enough to lift them out of poverty.
I think higher force$ are con$piring against you kids.
Heckman and other economists have concluded that the GED test is limited in its ability to predict success because it measures only cognitive ability. But Turner said that by setting a higher bar, more people will be prepared to enter college without getting stuck in remedial courses, a common reason students drop out.
Otherwise known as pulling up the ladder.
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Military recruiter is just down the mall, I mean, hall.
Related:
Job market improves for recent college graduates
If you look hard enough?
Confidence, connections led to job for Babson senior
See: Healey Hurting Babson
Connections helped that kid, but I'm hurting blogging about the Globe.
Searching for job leads, and adding up debt
Speaking of debt:
"Several students said they would have to see what their job prospects are after graduation before they could imagine donating to UMass. Prominent on campus last week was an exhibit called the “debt fence,” where students posted testimonials about how much they owe: $30,000, $92,000, even $120,000."
Don't worry, kids; UMass is out begging for you.
"UMass Amherst aiming to raise $300 million" by Marcella Bombardieri | Globe Staff, April 28, 2013
AMHERST — The University of Massachusetts Amherst plans to launch a new capital campaign Sunday to raise $300 million, a bid to make up for dwindling state funding and build the kind of alumni loyalty that some state flagships have enjoyed for generations.
I thought we were a-roarin' in recovery?
For the new chancellor, Kumble Subbaswamy, the symbol of UMass Amherst’s undertaking is the picturesque Old Chapel at the center of campus: its doors have been locked for 17 years, cobwebs gathering and ceiling tiles crumbling inside.
Subbaswamy, who arrived last summer after his predecessor, Robert Holub, was eased out by trustees, recalled his “disgust” at the condition of the once-proud Romanesque Revival chapel built from local granite and sandstone in 1885.
See: If You Can't Go to the UMass Health Clinic
I guess you better just pray instead.
“It speaks to the benign neglect or ambivalence that the state has had towards this campus,” he said. “For that very reason to me it now can become symbolic of the . . . growing importance and growing pride of the institution.”
Subbaswamy was inaugurated as chancellor Saturday in the culmination of a week of celebrations of UMass’s 150th anniversary. In an interview Thursday, he spoke enthusiastically about the university’s recent improvements, despite being treated just hours earlier for a dislocated shoulder from a fall down the stairs at home.
Related(?): Passing Over This Post
The great karma gods at work again?
“We’ve been in all sorts of shadows of private institutions, hidden in the valley of Western Massachusetts, [yet] we’ve emerged as this major university,” said Subbaswamy, a physicist who most recently was provost of the University of Kentucky. “It’s time now to spread the word and put a little swagger into the campus.”
If he's a physicist he knows the official explanations for 9/11 are false.
UMass’s fund-raising lags way behind the state’s private universities as well as many public universities in other states with stronger alumni traditions. Penn State, for example, is in the middle of a $2 billion capital campaign....
See: Penn State Sex Abuse Scandal Inspired Phone Call
Despite the drop in state support and a high turnover of campus leaders, UMass Amherst officials believe they have a lot of good news that will help them woo support from thousands of alumni who have never donated before.
UMass Amherst has become notably more selective in the last few years, with SAT scores of freshmen rising and the percentage of applicants accepted dropping....
Even the public school of last refuge is now becoming elite?
A building and renovation boom, including an honors college and life science building opening this year, has turned the campus into a maze of construction sites, punctuated last week by springtime bursts of pink and yellow from flowering trees and daffodils....
Oh, spring is finally here (nothing in my Globe on the floods today)?
More controversially, UMass Amherst is spending millions of dollars to upgrade its football program and join a more elite subdivision, but the team attracted deeply disappointing crowds to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough this year....
Related:
In move up, UMass football sees empty seats, high costs
UMass football move loaded with financial risks
Also see: UMass tops list of state’s high earners
The football coach made how much? But they have no money, huh?
The physical improvements have eased the long-standing sense of UMass as bleak landscape of stained concrete. But they come at an enormous price: $1 billion invested in facilities between 2004 and 2012, with another $1.1 billion planned for the next five years, according to officials.
The state funded only $105 million of the capital spending over the last eight years, so the campus has borrowed heavily. Next year’s debt service will be $73 million, a huge burden for a school with an endowment of only $259 million.
Wow. The thing is IN HOCK to the BANKS!
Yup, DEBT SERVICE always COMES FIRST, kids. That's your lesson of the day.
Also see: Harvard Cutting Health Benefits
They are sitting on how much of an endowment?
Priorities for the capital campaign, which has already raised $183 million during its quiet phase, are research and technology, merit and need-based scholarships, buildings and infrastructure, and improving the faculty.
The school is already committed to rebuilding the faculty ranks back up from about 1,020 professors currently to the previous high of about 1,200, Subbaswamy said. The campaign is soliciting donations to add 27 new endowed professorships, doubling the number of elite, high-paying posts designed to help UMass defend itself when other schools try to poach rising stars.
Subbaswamy expects the chapel project to cost $15 million to $20 million, compared to the $55 million capital campaign goal for student support or the $97 million goal for research.
While other priorities may seem more pressing, Subbaswamy says delaying renovations will only make them more expensive....
Then how about not doing it at all? The chapel has been shut for 17 years; no one is mi$$ing it.
Several students said they would have to see what their job prospects are after graduation before they could imagine donating to UMass. Prominent on campus last week was an exhibit called the “debt fence,” where students posted testimonials about how much they owe: $30,000, $92,000, even $120,000....
Oh, yeah, that. Corporate paper really cares about your concerns.
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How you doing in school, kids?
"Citations drop for child work violations in Mass.; State enforcement praised, questioned" by Jenn Abelson and Gail Waterhouse | Globe Staff and Globe correspondent, April 29, 2013
Sixteen-year-olds on the job for more than nine hours straight, and sometimes over 48 hours in a week. Minors operating forklifts and motor vehicles or handling alcoholic beverages. Teenagers working late without adult supervision.
Those are some of the charges that have resulted in the state’s levying child-labor law fines against more than 100 companies, including national chains such as Dunkin’ Donuts and Subway.
In all, employers have racked up 3,550 violations and about $314,000 in civil fines since 2007, when the state began issuing citations. Child-labor laws in Massachusetts were tightened then following on-the-job deaths of several teenagers, including a 16-year-old who was killed after losing control of a golf cart at a Salem country club.
But enforcement citations appear to have dropped off dramatically in recent years, according to a Globe analysis....
The attorney general’s office has not conducted a statewide sweep of shopping centers since 2008....
Brad Puffer, a spokesman for Attorney General Martha Coakley, said robust enforcement and heightened public awareness have resulted in better compliance with child labor regulations. Puffer also noted the decline in violations could be partly attributed to a lower number of teenagers in the workforce because jobs are scarce in that age bracket.
“The economy has forced adults to take jobs historically held by teens,” he said. “That could change as the economy recovers and we will continue to ensure that all minors are treated fairly in the workplace.”
Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, said progress has been made in educating employers and teenagers about their rights and responsibilities.
MassCOSH, a workplace safety nonprofit, spearheaded reform of child labor laws....
There is another one, so you know who$e behind it.
Goldstein-Gelb said she is concerned about the large drop in the number of infractions and the lack of spot checks. Shortly after the labor laws were strengthened, sweeps at malls during the summer and holiday seasons, when many teens work, turned up numerous violations....
They included dozens for minors working without permits at the teen clothing retailer Hollister....
“There is a lot more that needs to be done. We are still seeing hospitalizations of youths on the job,” Goldstein-Gelb said. “There are still vulnerable minors who are afraid to speak up about working conditions.”
The attorney general’s office hit businesses with some hefty penalties during the first few years of tougher regulations. Boston Sports Club took the top spot, with $40,000 in fines for about 345 violations in 2007 and 2008....
In 2007, New England Sportservice, which runs concession stands at Comcast Center in Mansfield, received a $12,200 penalty for 121 violations, including 16- and 17-year-olds working more than nine hours a day and after 10 p.m.
Fines can add up quickly for employers with large staffs or those whose records were examined over several years. But individual citations — even for some potentially dangerous violations — are not that costly. For example, the national restaurant chain Texas Roadhouse with a $250 penalty for permitting a teenager to handle alcoholic beverages.
Related: Globe Shovels Some Texas Bullshit
Maybe he was drunk.
Civil penalties allow up to $250 for the first violation, as much as $500 for the second, and a maximum of $2,500 for the third and each subsequent offense.
Many of the business officials interviewed by the Globe said they were unaware of the state’s child labor laws....
Not an excuse.
Franchisees for national brands such as Dunkin’ Donuts, Subway, and Domino’s appeared to have particular trouble following the law....
Puffer, of Coakley’s office, said the agency plans to hire additional inspectors for the fair labor division later this year.
Then why did you cut them, and where is the money going to come from?
They will be responsible for investigating a wide range of issues, including wage and hour and child labor infractions. Meantime, he said, the state recently reached settlements with some businesses, including a $158,000 deal last fall with national restaurant chain Ruby Tuesday to resolve claims of child labor violations.
Because bu$ine$$ never really commits crimes in AmeriKa.
Many cases start with tips and complaints. While teen employment rates have slumped in recent years, some minors, particularly immigrants, do not want to speak out about violations for fear of risking their jobs, said Laurence Louie, youth coordinator for the Chinese Progressive Association in Boston’s Chinatown. Huh.
And here I was told you Amerikan kids were just lazy.
“Many immigrant youth rely on work for survival. A lot are working at places like restaurants where they work long hours and are sometimes underpaid,” Louie said. “But they just accept these conditions to some extent.”
Whereas American kids do not rely on work for survival, and do not accept some things.
Recruiting office just down the mall.
Jariel Soto, a 17-year-old Boston resident who works with MassCOSH to help educate young people about job safety and health, said many teens won’t complain because they need the money and know they are easily replaced.
I believe the term was "disposable" in one of the articles. Sort of like being a soldier.
“They feel as if they don’t do [the work], someone else will. They see so many teens looking for a job,” Soto said.
Yeah, but don't believe your lying eyes. Believe Boston Globe bulls*** instead.
Workplace safety advocates say it’s important — especially when people are competing for a limited number of jobs — that officials make random visits to ensure employers follow the law. There are still hundreds of teens treated at Massachusetts hospitals each year for work-related injuries — 324 such minors visited emergency rooms in 2010, the latest figures available from the state.
Moreover, advocates say, the state should routinely check in with employers who have already been fined. The lack of follow-up could help explain why only 20 of the 3,550 violations are listed as second offenses.
Puffer doesn’t view it that way....
Goldstein-Gelb, of MassCOSH, said she understands the agency’s budget constraints but without follow-up it’s hard to know whether fines are deterring companies from reoffending.
“If an employer has violated once,” Goldstein-Gelb said, “there is a chance they’ll do it again.”
Thank God there are Jews looking out for the welfare of all, huh?
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On to college, kids!
"Traditional ways upended in college of competence; At-home students focus on demonstrable skills" by Marcella Bombardieri | Globe Staff, April 29, 2013
As a former foster child with no family to help pay for college, 21-year-old Ashley Collins works three jobs while trying to stay in school.
Didn't Bush the Second say something about that being uniquely AmeriKan?
This year, she switched colleges, and now does her schoolwork at home, in her pajamas when she feels like it.
But this is not one of those trendy online classes everyone is talking about. It’s more radical: a real, accredited degree program with no classes at all, not even online. No teachers, just academic coaches. And a price tag of $2,500 a year.
The new program, called College for America and created by Southern New Hampshire University, demolishes one of the most fundamental building blocks of college: course credit. Instead of requiring a graduate to complete a set number of courses, it asks students to master — at any pace — 120 “competencies.” These are concrete skills such as “can distinguish fact from opinion” or “can convey information by creating charts and graphs.”
Related:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
I passed with flying colors!
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Shoehorning traditional classes into her work schedule, it “might have taken me 10 years” to graduate, said Collins, who lives in Concord, N.H. And with a full-time job — caring for developmentally disabled adults — that pays just $9.91 an hour, “I don’t really have the income to do it.”
College for America may sound, at first blush, suspiciously like a degree mill. But some leading thinkers in education believe so-called competency-based education, offered by only a few schools around the country, is actually a breakthrough. Proponents say it presents an affordable way for blue-collar adults to learn what they need for their careers, and then demonstrate what they know to job recruiters far more concretely than a transcript would.
I thought is about ejoucashun?
Earlier this month, the federal Department of Education approved College for America for federal financial aid funding, the first time the government has signed off on a degree that completely ignores the amount of time graduates spend in school.
So which well-connected intere$t$ and their lobbyists won that?
“The federal government is saying, maybe we should be paying for learning rather than time,” said Amy Laitinen, deputy director for higher education at the New America Foundation, a prominent think tank. “I don’t want to be too hyperbolic about it, but it really could signal a new era in higher education.”
Research in recent years has raised serious questions about how much students are learning in conventional degree programs, even as their tuition bills become ever more prohibitive.
So now your diploma is worthle$$?
A federal study in 2006 found that only a third of college graduates could do basic tasks like comparing the cost of food per ounce. Yet nearly half of undergraduate grades are A’s, as Laitinen noted in a report she published last year arguing that course credit is not a meaningful measure of academic progress.
Good Lord, it's as I observed years ago. AmeriKa's kids have been dumb-downed by prescription pharmaceuticals, mind-manipulating media, and curricular inculcation.
One other school, Western Governors University, created in 1997 by 19 governors of Western states, has gained wide attention for its competency-based online bachelor’s degree. The school’s 2012 seniors did better on a national exam than their counterparts at 78 percent of schools that participated.
College for America students include groundskeepers at a New Hampshire retirement community, call center and gas station employees, and factory workers at a ConAgra plant in Ohio that makes frozen pizzas and Slim Jims.
Students pay the same flat rate, $1,250 every six months, until they finish the program.
By assessing students on exactly what they can do, the school not only makes sure they know what they should, but also gives potential employers proof of their qualifications, according to Southern New Hampshire’s president, Paul LeBlanc. A prospective boss can examine a graduate’s actual work online: videos that show her presentation skills, writing samples, or spreadsheets she put together.
It's about THEM, not you, kids! I know that flies in the face of everything you have been taught since birth, but....
“I’ll contrast that all day long with the transcript that employers usually see,” LeBlanc said. “When you get a transcript and you see that somebody got a B in college math, all you really know is that they did better than somebody who got a B-. The transcript is kind of a black box.”
Anybody ever find those at the WTC and other sites?
Southern New Hampshire, a private nonprofit school that has gained a reputation for innovation in the last few years, spent about $3 million, including $1 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to develop an online curriculum that allows students to study, practice, and then submit assignments. Rather than creating its own study materials, College for America gathered what it calls the best available around the Web, including textbooks, video lectures, and educational websites.
Coaches monitor the students’ schedules and offer encouragement or troubleshooting. Students can find others who are working on the same subject and ask for help.
Isn't that cheating?
When students submit assignments, graders respond within 48 hours, often giving feedback and asking the student to try again.
Many of the assignments are practical. One presents students with hypothetical proposals for a vending machine contract for the employee lounge and ask him to write a memo evaluating the vendors. Then, a grader determines whether the students’ work demonstrates they have mastered five competencies, including writing a business memo, using logic, and making calculations in a spreadsheet....
Clearly, a few things can be lost when the campus is virtual.
Like face-to-face contact an interaction with people?
Collins was one of a group of students who enrolled through the nonprofit where she works. Because she sped through the assignments so quickly, none of her coworkers were ready to work with her on required group projects. She joined another group through the College for America website, but her interactions have been so limited that she has no idea even where her teammates live.
She does, however, get personal pep talks from her coach. When her seasonal job at a seafood restaurant started, she got discouraged about making time for her schoolwork. He reassured her that she was on track.
Collins did well in high school but lost direction after she decided not to pursue culinary school and got burnt out as a nursing assistant. She is still not sure what she wants to do with her life, but intends to go on to get a bachelor’s degree.
Collins lived in foster care from the age of 11. Now, she appears to be just weeks away from becoming the first in her family to earn a college degree....
Nice story, huh?
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