Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Heckman, James J
• LaFontaine, Paul A
• Rodriguez, Pedro L

Titel

Taking the Easy Way Out: How the GED Testing Program Induces Students to Drop Out. NBER Working Paper No. 14044

Ist Teil von

• National Bureau of Economic Research, 2008

Ort / Verlag

National Bureau of Economic Research

Erscheinungsjahr

2008

Quelle

ERIC

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• We exploit an exogenous increase in General Educational Development (GED) testing requirements to determine whether raising the difficulty of the test causes students to finish high school rather than drop out and GED certify. We find that a six point decrease in GED pass rates induces a 1.3 point decline in overall dropout rates. The effect size is also much larger for older students and minorities. Finally, a natural experiment based on the late introduction of the GED in California reveals, that adopting the program increased the dropout rate by 3 points more relative to other states during the mid-1970s.