Iowans who’ve taken the G-E-D have a better “pass” rate than in any other state. Almost 85-hundred Iowa adults took the “general educational development” test, the so-called G-E-D, last year. Ninety-five percent of those students passed, the highest rate of any state. The national average was 70 percent. According to statistics from the U-S Census Bureau, workers who have a high school diploma or the G-E-D equivalent earn about seven thousand dollars more a year than those who flunked out or quit high school. Fifty-six percent of the Iowans who passed the G-E-D test last year were men; 44 percent were women. Nearly a quarter were minorities.
