Higher Education Is Goal of GED Overhaul

Jose Franco, 25, top left, listens as Serge Shea instructs the GED Bridge to Health program at La Guardia Community College in New York. The program mixes GED curriculum with more rigorous college-level courses.

—Melanie Burford for Education Week

By Catherine Gewertz

The General Educational Development program, or GED, is undergoing the biggest revamping in its 69-year history, driven by mounting recognition that young adults’ future success depends on getting more than a high-school-level education.

Potent forces have converged to stoke the GED’s redesign. A labor market that increasingly seeks some postsecondary training, paired with dispiriting rates of college remediation and completion, has sounded alarm bells that young Americans are ill-equipped for prosperous futures.

In response, nearly every state has adopted common academic standards designed to elicit new kinds of skills from students. President Barack Obama has urged the nation to use such standards as a steppingstone to producing millions more people...