GED and other high school equivalency degrees drop by more than 40% nationwide since 2012

“High school graduation rates have soared in recent years, hitting a new record of 84 percent for 2015-16 in the most recent federal government count, but there are still millions of Americans who didn’t get a diploma in high school. Their best shot at earning one is passing a high-school equivalency exam, what was known as the GED before 2014 but has now splintered into three exam options: the new GED, the TASC and the HiSET. Little is known about what has happened to adult learners seeking high school degrees since the old GED exam disappeared because annual data is no longer published as it used to be every year. But thanks to a data collection effort by an expert in adult education at a nonprofit research organization in New York, Center for an Urban Future, we now have evidence of a sharp decline in new high school equivalency degrees in almost every state between 2012 and 2016.”