Should I Get a GED or Finish High School? A Teacher’s Guide for Parents and Teens
Last Tuesday, I had 16-year-old Mia and her mom in my classroom after school, the fluorescent lights already dimmed for the night, a half-empty mug of lukewarm tea leaving a ring on the stack of late essays on my desk. Mia’s hoodie was pulled up, she kept twisting the frayed drawstring, and finally blurted it out: “I don’t know if I should do GED or just stick this out for a diploma.”
Mia’s missed 18 days this semester. Most are mornings she couldn’t get out of the car in the parking lot because her anxiety spiked, before she even got to first period. She works 20 hours a week opening shifts at the downtown coffee shop to help cover car insurance and her little brother’s soccer fees, so she’s usually up by 5 a.m. and in bed by 10, which leaves barely any time for homework. She failed Algebra 1 twice now, and she’s three credits behind where she should be to graduate on time. Her mom came in ready to argue that quitting high school for a GED would ruin her future, that “no employer or college will ever take it.”
I’ve had this conversation enough times to know there’s no quick answer, so I pulled out a blank sheet of notebook paper and wrote down three questions I always walk through with families. I’ve found this takes most of the guilt and yelling out of the decision, instead of just defaulting to what society says is “right.”
First, I wrote: How many credits are you actually missing? I always tell parents to call the guidance counselor and get an exact number, not rely on vague report card comments that say “behind.” If a kid is 1-3 credits behind, most districts have free evening or weekend credit recovery that lets you make up one credit every six weeks. You can still graduate a semester or a year late and walk away with a traditional diploma, no GED needed. If you’re 4 or more credits behind, and dealing with a schedule or health issue that doesn’t fit regular school, that’s when it’s worth weighing GED seriously. For Mia, we checked her transcript that afternoon: she was 4.5 credits behind, so that already narrowed the options.
Second: What do you want to do in the next two years? That’s where most of the common myths about GEDs fall apart. I hear all the time that colleges won’t accept GEDs, but 98% of four-year colleges and every community college accept GEDs the same as a traditional diploma. Most trade apprenticeships accept them too. The only consistent exceptions I’ve seen are the military (most branches require a traditional diploma) and some entry-level public safety jobs, like police or corrections, that list a traditional diploma as a hard requirement. If your kid wants to join the Army right after graduation, that answers the question right there. If they want to do dental assisting, go to community college for nursing, or get an apprenticeship in construction, GED works just fine. For Mia, she’s wanted to be a certified nursing assistant since she started helping her grandma with physical therapy two years ago, and the local community college’s CNA program accepts GEDs. That checked out.
Third: What does the daily workload look like for each option? GED prep is usually self-paced, through local community education or low-cost online programs, and most people finish in 3 to 6 months, putting in 2 to 4 hours a week. That’s manageable for a kid working full time or dealing with mental health stuff that makes 8 hours in a school building every day impossible. Finishing a diploma with 5 missing credits, on the other hand, usually takes 12 to 18 months of 5 or more hours a week, between classes and homework. That’s a big time commitment, and it’s okay if that’s not possible right now. Mia did the math: if she stuck it out, she wouldn’t graduate for two more years. With GED, she could start her CNA program next fall.
After I wrote all that down, Mia and her mom sat there for 10 minutes talking quietly. Mom admitted she didn’t realize how bad the morning panic attacks got, or how many early shifts Mia picked up to help with bills. Mia said she was tired of feeling like a failure every day she showed up late to class and couldn’t catch up. They left to think it over, and a month later they emailed to say they’d signed Mia up for the GED prep classes through our district’s community ed.
A year before Mia, I had a student named Lila who also thought she wanted a GED. She was 17, behind on credits, hated the constant social drama at school. She tried three months of self-paced GED prep, but said she couldn’t make herself sit down and study alone after a full day of work. She switched back to part-time high school, graduated 15 months late, and that was the right call for her. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer here.
Last week Mia texted me a screenshot of her passing score for the reasoning through language arts test, three exclamation points at the end. She’s on track to finish the full GED by December. That’s good enough for her right now. I still get this question at least once a month from scared kids and worried parents. Most come in thinking GED is a failure, the easy way out. But it’s not a failure to pick the option that fits your life right now. A diploma that takes you two extra years to get when you’re burnt out isn’t better than a GED that lets you move on to the job or program you want six months from now. No one can say what’ll happen five years from now, anyway – that’s true for any graduate, diploma or GED.
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