Post WW IIThe Servicemen's Readjustment Act, nicknamed the "GI Bill of Rights" by an American Legion ex-newspaperman, was unanimously passed by Congress in summer of 1944. In all, over two million veterans attended college under the World War II GI Bill at a cost to the federal government of 5.5 billion dollars.
Link to History of the G.I. Bill: http://www.gibill.va.gov/benefits/history_timeline/index.html A study comparing 1,500 veterans and 1,500 non-veterans at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1946 attributed veterans' better performance to their maturity and stronger motivation. Researchers at the University of Minnesota compared the pre-war and postwar scholastic records of several hundred students whose college careers were interrupted by World War II and found that they earned significantly higher grade point averages in the post-war period. A subsequent four-year study comparing the performance of veterans with GED certificates and veteran high school graduates enrolled at Indiana from 1946 through 1950 found that GED-certified veterans earned poorer grades and had higher attrition rates. The study recommended raising the total GED test score required for college admission from 175 to 262 or better and limiting GED testing to persons over age twenty. "Notwithstanding the many questions which may properly be raised with respect to the GED tests, it seems to me clear that we shall not again return to a system which requires actual attendance in class as an indispensable element in receiving academic credit." (Zook) |
ACE President George F. Zook In 1947 the American Council on Education made a major marketing advance by securing the support of the New York Education Department to issue GED credentials to high school dropouts who had not served in the military. New York was the last state in the union to issue GED credentials for veterans and the first to credential nonveterans. By mid-1947 eight states and the District of Columbia were using the GED to grant high school equivalency certificates to nonveterans. Within a year, twenty-two states were using the GED to credential civilians. The eruption of the Korean Conflict in 1950 brought several states back into the GED veteran testing program that had dropped out during the postwar period. California, Kansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Washington State all began allowing the new Korean War veterans to earn GED certificates, although as of 1954 none of these states were granting GED credentials to non-military civilians. In 1959 the American Council on Education was able to report that the number of civilians taking the GED tests had surpassed the number of veterans tested. In 1963 to emphasize the civilian nature of the program, the American Council on Education changed the name of its Veterans Testing Service to the General Educational Development (GED) Testing Service. During the 1960s with the baby boomers approaching adulthood and new federal support for GED instruction, the number of people taking the GED test increased nearly five-fold, from 61,093 in 1960 to 293,451 in 1969 and the number of GED testing sites increased from 658 to 1,566. The federal government began funding GED test instruction in the 1960s as part of the War on Poverty. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 provided federal funds for basic education for adults who had not completed eighth grade. The 1970 Adult Education Act reauthorization expanded the program to include secondary education, although its priority remained on persons with lower grade skills. In 1978 the House of Representatives' Committee on Education and Labor estimated that over 900,000 adults had achieved a high school equivalency credential under the Adult Education Act. In 1988 the GED test battery included an essay test as part of the writing sub-test. While continuing to maintain that the multiple choice writing skills subtest provided an adequate indirect measure of writing, the American Council on Education was receiving pressure to include an actual writing requirement. |