SALIBURY — Wor-Wic Community College is in the process of launching and expanding several Adult Education programs aimed at giving individuals who did not graduate from high school a second shot at a diploma.
The college is an official Pearson GED Testing Center and supports a large network of Adult Ed courses across the lower Eastern Shore.
“Adult Education is a program that has both federal and state funds allocated to it. And it really serves students with two goals,” Ruth Baker, Dean of Continuing Education and Workforce Development, told the Wicomico County Council Tuesday.
Wor-Wic’s administration visited the council to give an extended briefing on how Adult Ed programs are changing in the area. Baker explained that the two common goals for participants in the programs are: earning a high school diploma as an adult or taking English as a Second Language (ESL) courses for non-native speakers.
The college looks to accommodate everyone interested in continuing their education later in life. While Wor-Wic has done GED programs in the past, where they are today is a huge leap forward from where they were only a few years ago, according to the school.
“It’s a very different program that we have now. There are really three big things that have changed,” Baker told the council.
Those three changes have to do with availability, size and how the actual GED test is taken. There are many different tracks to earning a GED. There are the traditional classes and test but there are also new alternative programs like Family Literacy and portfolio building. With the latter, Baker explained that a GED can be earned through a collective portfolio presentation.
“It’s a good opportunity maybe for folks who are older, have a little more life experience or maybe just aren’t very good at taking tests. It’s another way to get that diploma,” she said.
Baker added that it really is a diploma being earned. In Maryland, there’s no practical difference between a standard high school diploma and what is earned through GED programs.
It’s not called a GED, it’s called a high school diploma for anyone who goes through the program successfully,” said Baker.
Along with all of the new routes to earning a diploma, Baker noted that availability of programs and courses has spread out across the area so that Adult Education should be easy for anyone in Worcester or Wicomico to access.
People seem to be noticing since the number of Adult Ed students has spiked from about 400 a few years ago to roughly 750.
The final change, along with availability and popularity, is the GED test. For those who wish to take the exam it is now entirely online. Cutting out the old school pen and paper has caused Wor-Wic some “growing pains,” Baker admitted, but the college is fast to adapt and use technology for education. The administration is even looking at using satellite testing options for the Wicomico Detention Center to better give inmates that second shot at a diploma.
One of the most important aspects with Adult Education is that it’s a beginning, not an end. Dr. Ray Hoy, president of Wor-Wic, told the council that once students have earned their diploma the school does its best to help them continue their education.
“These people have made a commitment to bettering their lives by earning their high school diploma through the GED or external diploma program or any of those mechanisms. And what we want to make sure is that they don’t just stop with that,” said Hoy.