School Push Out and the General Educational Development Test

• In Event: The GED and Literacy Programs as Counterspaces to Schooling? Operationalizing What We Know

Abstract

Objectives
Using empirical data, this presentation describes how accountability policies, punctuated by pressures excited by No Child Left Behind, produce the conditions in which schools tacitly and explicitly encourage under-performing students to drop out under the auspices of the GED. It will provide a critical analysis of neoliberal logic and trace the logic through test based accountability, state mandated exit exams, and the conditions that produce school pushout. The presentation will detail youth perspectives on the lived value of the GED. The presentation argues that pushed-out youth pursue the GED as acts of repatriating their learning, and in doing so, repatriate the value of the GED.

Perspectives or theoretical framework
This presentation has a theoretical and ethical foundation in critical theory, participatory methodology, and indigenous theory. Building upon the tradition of political economy, this presentation maps connections between the use of the GED by urban schools and youth, and neoliberal education accountability policies. In addition, indigenous theories of erasure, colonization, resistance, renewal, and change are featured in this presentation. At the outset, this may seem to be an unusual approach, but I contend that indigenous theories of settler colonialism and contestations of that structure are especially relevant to the theorizing of urban space and urban schooling.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
The study to be presented was conducted as participatory action research, conducted over a span of 18 months in New York City, with seven youth co-researchers, aged 17-19, several of whom had been pushed-out, and ultimately earned a GED. Together, we talked with hundreds of in-school and out-of-school youth across the city, in interviews, focus groups, and surveys.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
Empirical data reported in this presentation are from our one-hour semi-structured individual interviews (n=35) and focus groups (nine focus groups, n=95) with youth GED earners and seekers, and our survey (n=476) of New York City youth attending public schools.

Results
The findings to be presented are as follows: Federal policies like No Child Left Behind, state policies such as exit exams and the phase out of the local diploma, and city policies that prevent multiple routes to graduation directly contribute to school push out; youth value the GED in ways formerly unobserved by analyses that focus on higher-education-use and use for employment; an additional, pivotal value of the GED is in its role as substitute for adequate educational options; as other public institutions become more vulnerable to privatization, schools also become more vulnerable, potentially closing urban youths’ last access to the public sphere.


Scientific or scholarly significance
This presentation is unique because it takes the innovative approach of examining an often overlooked feature of American schooling—the GED—to expose taken-for-granted policies and practices that result in school pushout. It employs the GED as a lens through which the audience can see the pitfalls of neoliberal school reform, the costs of accountability policies, and punished satisfaction of earning a consolation prize diploma, from the perspectives of young people made unwelcome by their schools.

Author

• Eve Tuck, SUNY - College at New Paltz