A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Educational and Labor Market Performance of GED Recipients - February 1998

Appendix A: The GED Norming: Evidence
From Wisconsin

After setting rigorous new standards for passing the GED test (40 and 50), the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction contracted with the GED Testing Service for a 1987 state norming of the test and collaborated in the process. According to Quinn (1997b), the Wisconsin case provides evidence of problems inherent in the GED norming process. While 77 percent of the schools asked to participate in the norming did so, only 38 percent of the seniors who started the five-test battery finished. The state Department of Public Instruction questioned the representativeness of the seniors in the study, particularly on the urban/rural dimension (Martin 1992). The GED Testing Service also said that the 1987 Wisconsin sample may have been biased (GED Testing Service 1993b).

Subsequently, a 1993 norming was conducted in Wisconsin to replicate the 1987 study with a more representative sample. According to Quinn, 46 percent of the schools contacted actually participated, and 81 percent of the students who started the test battery finished it. An analysis of the 1993 data showed that the participating schools were representative of the population of Wisconsin schools with regard to urbanicity, and the examinees were representative of Wisconsin seniors with regard to sex and race (GED Testing Service 1993b).

Student reluctance to take the test may have contributed to the participation problems. Quinn (1997b) provides anecdotal evidence of student unhappiness about taking the GED battery in the 1993 administration of the test, and ACE excluded from its calculations students who scored below the level expected by chance "to remove the deleterious effects resulting from students who may not have taken the examination seriously." [65]
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[Bibliography (part 2 of 2)] [Table of Contents] [Appendix B: Tables B-1, B-2, and B-3 ]