Development of a Series of Liberal Arts Courses to Strengthen the College Performance of High School GED Graduates

Purpose

In 1988 Mary Baldwin College, in collaboration with the Virginia Department of Correctional Education, began to offer college courses leading to a B.A. at a women’s prison. Soon, however, high rates of early attrition became apparent, primarily among holders of the General Educational Development (GED) certificate. In the first four years of the B.A. program, 45 percent of the GED students withdrew during the first semester for reasons other than parole. After three semesters, only 38 percent of GED students persisted.

This was not unusual. Although research on GED tests shows that they function well as evidence of readiness for work, most students now take them for college admissions, and college attrition among GED holders ranges between 60 and 90 percent. The grade point average of GED students who persist to graduation, on the other hand, does not differ significantly from that of other students—probably because the massive early attrition weeds out all but the most able.

The high college attrition among GED students was attributed in the literature to the same low motivation which had caused these students to withdraw from high school. But the project director suspected that this was not the case for the Mary Baldwin students, because motivation is generally high among prison inmates.

It seemed plausible that the academic preparation of GED students was related to their lack of success in higher education. The passing standards for the GED, which vary from state to state, are often quite low. In Virginia, it is possible to pass the mathematics test while failing all algebra and geometry questions, and to receive no credit on the essay and still pass the writing test. Knowing this, some preparatory programs omit instruction in these topics altogether.

The project director felt that it was unreasonable to expect two or three months in even the best GED preparation program to replace two or three years of daily academic work. A look at the characteristics of students who persisted versus those who dropped out of the prison program showed that, indeed, the determining factor was dropping out of high school prior to entering the 12^th grade. Clearly it was academic rather than motivational factors that needed to be addressed to help GED students to succeed.

Innovative Features

The project—funded by FIPSE along with the American Bar Association, the Presbyterian Women’s Thank Offering, and the Titmus, Kates, and Beasley Foundations—consisted of three courses taken by GED students concurrently with initial college enrollment.

In creating the courses, project staff made a number of assumptions regarding the academic shortcomings of GED preparation. They expected students to have no experience in critical reading of and writing about book-length texts. They assumed little knowledge of world literature and history, algebra, geometry, and probability, little preparation for testing other than multiple choice, and no experience with classroom discussion or interdisciplinary thinking.

The three resulting courses concentrated on specific academic skills and content and demanded more reading and writing than many college courses. They were as follows:

1. The Ancient and Medieval Worlds. This course examined the roles of men and women at different historical times and in different cultures and different views of the "virtue" of patience. Students read The Odyssey, Ruth, Job, Plato’s dialogues about the death of Socrates, Murasaki Shikibu’s Diary, Kamo Chomei’s Hojoki, The Canterbury Tales, and a play by Shakespeare. Writing, which was taught by the traditional rhetorical approach, included eight short essays, several tests, and two oral reports.

2. Modern American Voices. This course focused on race and social class in American culture in the context of the relationship between the social sciences and the humanities. Students read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn against the background of the political rhetoric of Lincoln and Douglas. They read Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Lee Smith in the light of sociological theory on race, gender and family. They read the lyric poetry of Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot and Gwendolyn Brooks, and the speeches of the Civil Rights movement. They wrote essays on these texts and developed one into a research paper.

3. The Scientific Method. This course, which began with Descartes’s Discourse on Method, investigated the mathematical and philosophical underpinnings of the natural sciences. It examined basic algebraic functions and formulas as they relate to chemistry; the course also examined probability theory as it applies to genetics and intelligence and graphs and statistics. Students read The Double Helix and The Mismeasure of Man.

Students could begin the course sequence at any point. Because of high retention, there were soon more applicants than the courses could accommodate, so they were admitted on the basis of conduct, which allowed project staff to observe students with a wide range of preparation and GED test scores.

The course sequence was also offered, on a one-time non-credit basis, to GED students enrolled at three local community colleges.

Evaluation and Project Impact

The retention of 89 GED holders during the three years following the inauguration of the project course sequence at the prison was compared to that of GED students enrolling in the college program’s first four years. Prior to the project courses, first-semester GED students consistently withdrew at rates between 42 and 52 percent. During the project period, on the other hand, first-semester GED students withdrew at rates between zero and nine percent.

Eighty-five percent of GED enrollees in the project completed the fourth semester, compared to only 34 percent during the first four years of the collegiate program. In addition, the first-semester GPAs of project students were much higher than in previous years (2.34 versus 1.59). (The improved GPA was not solely dependent on the project course grade—when that grade was removed, the GPA still averaged 2.27.)

At the community colleges, a comparison group of 48 GED holders volunteered to make their enrollment data available. Eighty-five percent of the 39 project students completed the first semester, compared to only 50 percent of the control group. By the end of the third semester, 74 percent of the project students were still enrolled, versus 42 percent of the control group. Although the effects of the project courses were less remarkable with the community college population, they nevertheless conferred a retention advantage of approximately 35 percent on their students compared to the controls.

Among the prison population, by the third semester there were few differences in achievement and retention between project students and their predecessors, bearing out the research that shows that GED students who persist do relatively well in later semesters. However, a comparison of the total number of women enrolled in college—including both those who were still in and those who had left prison—showed that 90 percent of the women in the project courses were continuing in higher education three semesters after initial enrollment, compared to only 38 percent of those who had not participated in the project.

The project course helped significantly with mathematical and writing skills as well. Students took the quantitative section of the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) at the beginning and at the end of the Scientific Method course. Their scores increased from a mean of 331—well below the level required for college courses—to 457 (the median, 450, is the minimum required by Mary Baldwin for admission to college algebra).

A random sample of student essays from the project courses was rated by a group of experienced English teachers on a scale of zero to ten, on criteria ranging from syntax to spelling and content. First semester students scored an average of 3.4; second semester students, 5.9; and third semester students, 7.7.

Participation in the program also correlated with lower recidivism. In Virginia, 49 percent of released women prisoners return to prison within two years (for those without a high school diploma, the rate is 60 percent). Twenty-nine percent of women who enrolled in a project course but dropped out before completing the first semester were reincarcerated, while under 11 percent of those who completed one or more semesters returned to prison within two years.

Although during their first semester students received as many disciplinary sanctions as they had during the previous three months, in later semesters their misconduct levels decreased by more than half. This came as a surprise to prison staff, who had expressed concern that college students would become disciplinary problems.

Persistence in the project courses seemed to decrease the dropout rate of the women’s children as well. The children of GED-holding incarcerated mothers dropped out of school at a rate of over 32 percent, and the children of mothers who did not complete their first semester in the project dropped out at a rate of 35 percent, but the children of those who completed at least one semester in the project left school at a rate of only 14 percent.

Lessons Learned

Research shows that many GED students are quick to become discouraged and abandon their studies for good. A successful first semester, on the other hand, often leads to continued enrollment, and the project’s retention figures reflect this.

The higher retention among the imprisoned students may be due in part to less reliance on adjunct faculty and to the use of conduct as an admissions criterion. Most significantly, however, in prison there were few competing demands and few alternatives, whereas in the community colleges the hurry-up-and-get-through-it mentality that often prevails among adult students caused many to choose less demanding classes.

Student evaluations of the Ancient and Medieval Worlds and Modern American Voices courses were highly positive, although less so for the sections on T.S. Eliot and political rhetoric. The Scientific Method course had to be substantially revised to provide more non-mathematical context and thus motivate students to learn the mathematical content. In retrospect it appears as though, given the quantitative deficits of these students, the sequence should contain two mathematics courses.

Students showed a startling lack of preparation in algebra—not one of those in the first offering of the Scientific Method Course could solve either x+2=4 or 2a=4 in a pretest. They experienced high math anxiety and thought that mathematics was something done for its own sake, with few applications to the real world.

The magnitude of the academic deficits of GED students was such that at first it prevented them from putting their life experience to use in the classroom. They were incapable of participating in class discussion. They failed to relate opinion to fact and took disagreements personally, often storming out of class in anger. Reading primary texts and writing about them proved overwhelming and so did examinations—students could not answer identification questions with complete sentences or organize responses to essay questions into paragraphs or even sentences. They could not relate texts read in class to outside sources or ideas, and when they eventually began to do this, the papers became, for a time, chaotic.

Higher education seems all too willing to respond to the demands of adults who want college credentials quickly and with as little effort as possible. Students with academic ability and considerable life experience may succeed in such programs, but clearly few GED students can. They require a slower track with, at first, lowered expectations to ensure success.

Project Continuation

The college’s B.A. program at the prison and the community college program have been canceled due to lack of funds. The three project courses, however, continue to be offered at the prison under a contract with the Virginia Department of Correctional Education. Supplemented with workshops on college admissions, financial aid, and college-related skills, the courses are available to women who will be released within a year. Evaluation is continuing.

Dissemination and Recognition

The program has been the subject of a number of presentations in the United States and Canada.

Available Information

Additional information may be obtained from:

Ashton D. Trice
Department of Psychology
MSC 7401
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
Telephone: 540-568-8189

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