Assessment in Adult Basic Education: A Comparison of the Apl and Ged Tests

The purpose of this study was to determine how the approach to assessing outcomes in ABE exemplified by the Adult Performance Level (APL) Survey compares with the most widely used approach exemplified by the General Educational Development (GED) test. The APL Survey was administered to 269 adults at the time they were taking the new forms of the GED test. It was found that there is a high positive relationship between total scores on the APL Survey and the GED test (r = .81, p < .00001). Factor analyses of scores on the two tests suggest that one mental trait, reading ability, significantly affects performance on both tests. It was concluded that these results from the factor analyses account for the high positive relationship between scores on the APL and GED tests.