Students drop out of high school without graduating for many reasons, but often learn later in life that their lack of a high school diploma is a serious barrier to personal and career success.
That’s when the GED. or “general education development” test comes in.
For Waynesville, GED programs are coordinated by adult education teacher Adele Nickels, who said a recent move toward internet-based education may open up opportunities for students who can’t attend traditional adult classes.
“There is so much talk about distance learning and online learning across the nation and our program that what we have in Missouri might well be the program that a lot of schools will follow.,” Nickels told Waynesville R-VI School Board members at their August meeting. “I predict that in the future online distance learning will come at all levels and this program, I think, is so well designed that it might be a model for the future.”
Joe Petrich, Waynesville’s assistant superintendent for human resources, agreed.
“Our adult education literacy program operates primarily through state grant money; it reaches out to adults in this community as well as some adjoining communities with various educational opportunities for adults,” Petrich said. “One of our most successful outreaches recently has been an online GED program.”
Nickels said Missouri’s first online GED program was created in 2000 by the North Kansas City school district. A second program began in the St. Louis suburb of Rockwood a year later; Waynesville’s program dates back to 2003. In Missouri, 28 schools now participate using funding from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education given to local districts, she said.
Waynesville’s online GED program isn’t restricted to Waynesville residents but serves the entire region, Nickels said.
“I take care of Pulaski County people but also around the Lebanon area, we also service them,” Nickels said.
People choose an online GED for many reasons, Nickels said, and one of them is the long distance in some Missouri communities to reach a traditional books-and-classroom GED program.
“They often have transportation issues, scheduling, babysitting, they live too far out, especially with gas prices now, to get to a site that’s close, (or) they have a different learning style,” Nickels said. “We have several with health issues; they’re immobile and they cannot leave their homes.”
In some cases, students are primarily attending an on-site GED program but supplement those classes with online education.
The classes are free to Missouri residents. However, getting an online GED is difficult, Nickels said, and it’s not for everybody.
Many people who didn’t finish high school continue have some of the same issues as adults that led to them failing to graduate from high school. While traditional classroom GED teachers can monitor students and provide mentoring and personal support to teach them study skills, that’s much harder with an online program.
“You have to be self-motivated, you have to have some computer experiences, you shouldn’t be a procrastinator, you need to learn well on your own, manage your time effectively and not be afraid to ask for help,” Nickels said.
Those interested in becoming online GED students first contact the state through the program’s website at www.gedonlineclass.com. State officials then contact Nickels to alert her to potential students in her area, Nickels contacts the students, and the students take a timed test at a central location to verify that they’re ready for the GED class.
Students must then re-test in person every 90 days, Nickels said, and that’s become a problem area for the program.
“It’s hard for them because there are certain reasons they are an online learner, and to get them to back is sometimes difficult, but we are getting stricter about it,” Nickels said. “If they don’t go back to the site program and re-test, we archive them. We don’t kick them out of the program, but we put them so they can’t access our program until they go back and do what we ask them to do.”
While Nickels said she’s glad to help students get a GED, she’s not happy to see anyone drop out of high school.
“We don’t want anybody to quit high school because getting your GED is not a cakewalk, it’s very difficult,” Nickels said. “You have to be really determined, you have to be dedicated and have to be a hard-working person to want to achieve this and accomplish this goal.”
Generally, hard-working and determined students don’t drop out of high school in the first place, and that means many of Nickels students are older adults who have learned from earlier mistakes in life.
Students range from those for whom English is their second language to students who are capable of doing algebra and writing at the paragraph or essay level. Online education, just as with the in-person GED programs, is tailored to the student’s academic level.
“We can service a lot of people at many different levels,” Nickels said. “We do expect them to write essays, even if they are online, because that is part of the GED test.”
Some students sign up for online classes who never would have taken an in-person class, she said.
“I just want you to know what a great program this is, really, and I really believe this will be the future of education,” Nickels said.
Responding to questions from board member Mike Keeling, Nickels said enrollment has sometime been up to 115 and is currently at 65 students.
That number is about right, Nickels said.
“When it gets past that number, it is difficult for me to have this and have my day job as well,” Nickels said.
About 40 of students who begin the program finish it, Nickels said.
“That’s more than I would have expected, and I’m glad to hear that,” Keeling said.