Thousands lining up to take GED now

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- Damittra Eveans was trembling as she walked into the Sangamon County Regional Office of Education -- accompanied by two friends and her mother for moral support -- to hear if she passed the GED test.

"I jumped up and down and started screaming, 'I finally did it!'" Eveans said, smiling broadly. "Everyone was clapping for me."

Eveans, 28, was a hotel housekeeper who knew she needed a better job to care for her children. She followed the GED she got last month with a certified nurse's assistant program and will soon take state competency exams in that field.

But Eveans also wanted to get the test behind her before a new, more difficult test debuts Jan. 1.

And so do many other Illinoisans. Educators across the state are scrambling to answer phones, handle applications and find testing space for thousands of people wanting to take the General Educational Development test before the end of the year.

Officials are particularly concerned about people who have passed tests in some of the five subject areas but want to retake others. They must do that before the deadline or they'll have to start over. Partial scores can't be carried over.

"We're real flexible. We only need 10 people to take a test. And we'll schedule individuals," said Marty Barrett, regional school superintendent for Champaign and Ford counties.

"If we have enough people to test on Dec. 31, we will," he said.

In Chicago, officials added a temporary testing site to the 15 already there and set up three dates in November and December for as many as 200 people.

"We've been advertising this for two years and if people wait until the last minute, what they're realizing is, the last minute is here," said Brenda Carmody, GED administrator for the Illinois State Board of Education.

The number of Cook County residents taking the test last month was 80 percent higher -- 1,463 -- than the 814 who took it in August 2000, said Scott Collins, who runs the GED office there.

More graphs

Begun in 1942 to help veterans who left school to go to war, the GED has been revamped to better test how students apply knowledge.

For example, students will have to decipher significantly more graphs. Much more communicating today is done graphically instead of by long passages of text, said Joan Auchter, executive director of the national GED Testing Service.

If you can't read and interpret, Auchter said, "you're not going to be able to function in today's society. There's just too much information out there; you've got to process it."

The new test likely will cost more. It costs $25 for Illinoisans, but Auchter said her agency's cost increased from $8 per test to $12. Carmody said the state board is considering a "nominal" increase.

In Springfield, the test has been given twice a month, instead of once, since June. The number of students has grown by almost half, Sangamon County Regional School Superintendent Helen Tolan said.