TY  - JOUR
AU  - Heckman,James J.
AU  - LaFontaine,Paul A.
AU  - Rodriguez,Pedro L.
TI  - Taking the Easy Way Out: How the GED Testing Program Induces Students to Drop Out
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14044
PY  - 2008
Y2  - May 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14044
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14044.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James J. Heckman
Department of Economics
The University of Chicago
1126 E. 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/702-0634
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: jheckman@uchicago.edu

Paul A. LaFontaine
NORC
1155 E. 60th Street
Chicago  IL  60637
E-Mail: plafonta@gmail.com

Pedro L. Rodriguez
Center for Social Program Evaluation
1155 E. 60th Street
Chicago, IL  60637
E-Mail: pedrolrs@uchicago.edu
AB  - 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.
ER  -