GED recipients look almost identical to high school drop outs. He shows me life graph, after life graph that tell the same story. “This dash black line here shows this person got his GED at age 25,” he says on a graph showing income, “And you can see there is no dramatic jump.” It’s a little overwhelming to see hundreds of lives, graphed in such specific detail. The information is graphed along a timeline of their life from age 16 to 40. “It’s a little bit complicated,” says Kautz as her scrolls to one graph, “The first one shows their annual earnings, then if they are currently employed, married, divorced, have children of various ages, if they are in jail.” Sitting in his office building at the University of Chicago, Tim Kautz shows me these incredibly detailed graphs of people’s lives. They are currently working on a book called, “The GED and the Role of Character in American Life.” At this critical juncture, researchers and educators are looking back and asking how well the GED works and if the changes will improve it.Īmong the researchers most involved in GED research is James Heckman, a Nobel Prize winning economist, and his assistant Tim Kautz. GED testing service is creating a new version set to be released in 2014. Twelve-percent of high school credentials in 2008 were GED’s. People call GED the biggest high school in the country. “I have to work to get a career and get my life together, but everything is going sideways,” said Gonzalez. Right now, his days mostly consist of putting in applications and then waiting for calls that never come. But in the nearly twenty-five years since getting his GED, Gonzalez hasn’t been able to go college or get a stable job. It seemed like a humble, attainable goal, but still one that would at least help him to support his mother. “I thought it would open doors,” says Gonzalez. Teachers and job counselors told him that the GED would set him on the path for a good career.

But as time passed, it got harder and harder to make a living wage without a diploma. Growing up his family was poor, so he left high school and got a job to help make ends meet. On a drizzly morning, Jorge Gonzalez is standing in line outside a Public Aid office in Chicago.

Colleges with ged programs in chicago