Ged

Close friends of Mike Tyson say the former heavyweight champion is skeptical about his chances of winning a new trial and now spends his prison time reading and studying in hopes that an education will win him early release. Even if Judge Patricia Gifford, of Marion County (Ind.) Superior Court, sides with the defense during his June hearing and a new trial is ordered, Tyson, convincted of rape, will be just 11 months short of his May 1995 release from the Indiana Youth Center.

Rocking back in a miniature orange chair in the children's section of the Ardmore Library, 19-year-old Rachelle Kaplan flipped back her long brown hair and gave a toothy smile as she talked about her plans to attend Temple University and get a degree in abnormal psychology. It was only about two years ago, when she was in 11th grade, that Kaplan, a Bala Cynwyd resident, dropped out of Lower Merion High School. She has been working odd jobs at stores like Wawa and taking off with her boyfriend to follow the Grateful Dead cross-country.

Carmen Feliciano is a busy mother of four young boys, including an 8-year- old with cerebral palsy. Not the kind of person you'd expect to have time to attend a graduation ceremony for someone other than a relative. But that's what Feliciano plans to do tonight, the third time in as many years she will have watched graduates of the Women's Program at Lutheran Settlement House don cap and gown to receive their GEDs - graduate equivalency diplomas. Feliciano, 27, of Olney, goes for inspiration.

In the school of hard knocks, Rhonda C. Cherry, former drug addict, prison inmate and defendant in a murder case, holds a Ph.D. with honors. Yesterday, along with 48 other inmates, Cherry was awarded a more marketable degree, her high school general equivalency diploma (GED) in a ceremony at the freshly painted gym on the grounds of the House of Correction. In the overcrowded prison system, beset by a brutal cycle of assaults and confrontations, lockdowns and criticism, the education program is a tender green shoot of success.

It was a commencement with very little pomp and practically no circumstance. But no group of graduates ever looked happier. They were there to receive their GEDs (general equivalency diplomas), these six adults, all blind or otherwise physically handicapped, who had made it against considerable odds. And handing out those diplomas, signifying that the recipients had met academic requirements equivalent to a high school education, was their teacher, a diminutive dynamo of a woman who is blind herself.

On May 23, a goal that Victor V?zquez set 25 years ago will finally come to fruition. That's the date of the convocation marking Temple University's 115th commencement, at which V?zquez will be awarded a doctorate in history. V?zquez is an adjunct faculty member at Temple and an assistant to Richard M. Englert, the vice president for administration. That fact might surprise those who knew him back in 1970, when he dropped out of his South Bronx high school and joined the Air Force, where he got his GED. A Vietnam-era veteran, V?zquez is disabled and was forced to leave the service in 1972 after losing a leg to a football injury suffered as a member of his Air Force base's team.

Just one year short of receiving her high school diploma, Nicole Branconi, 17, of Swarthmore, dropped out. A good student, Branconi said her education had fallen apart when her parents divorced and she was forced to transfer to another high school in her junior year. She hated the new school so much, she said, that she decided to leave and finish her secondary education by earning a General Equivalency Diploma. "I would have graduated in June. I thought about going back - my mom wanted me to - but I couldn't stand that school," Branconi said.

Belinda Smith got it. Donna Johnson just got it, too. Sharon H. can't stand waiting for the letter anymore to see if she did. Robin Ming got it when she turned 34 - inspiring her daughter. And Colleen Malloy knows she still has a lot of work to do before she even gets close to getting it. Somehow the cluster of letters that few can define just doesn't do "it" justice. The letters are GED. The General Education Development test was originally designed to help returning GIs after World War II, as colleges and employers sought to gauge the knowledge of men who left high school to go into military service.

Darling "Dee" Gregory has seen hell, and it wasn't for her. These days, she's seeing possibility and hope. Gregory, 37, who is a paraplegic, received her high school equivalency diploma yesterday as part of a unique class at the Free Library designed specifically for the physically disabled. The ceremony, held at the Central Library on Logan Square, featured New Jersey Gov. James Florio, who also has a general equivalency diploma (GED). Gregory was one of 24 students, many in their 30s and 40s, who no longer deferred their dreams, despite the regular life pressures of family and the extraordinary pressures of physical and learning disabilities, such as blindness, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and dyslexia.

At 15, Leah Taylor figured she knew it all. So she quit school. Her mother said she would be sorry. Taylor disagreed. "I was a naive teen," said Taylor, now 35. "I thought that sleeping in in the morning and having a boyfriend was the main thing to do. So I hung out a lot and got a waitressing job on the midnight shift. " After a string of odd jobs, she had a daughter at age 20, a son when she was 26 and was living on public assistance in the Chester projects where she had grown up. Katrina Robinson dropped out of Germantown High School after the 10th grade.

On Saturday mornings for the last few months, Wharton professor Keith Weigelt has taught West Philadelphia residents - they call him Mr. Keith - about money, earning, saving, investing. For many students, this was the first time they learned about mutual funds. "White households have 20 times the amount of median wealth as black households," says Weigelt, 61. "We're trying to reduce the wealth gap by teaching financial literacy. I had this woman in tears telling me that, for the first time, she feels she can get out of poverty.

IF YOU'VE been thinking about getting your GED and you're not too good with computers, then get a move on. Effective January 2014, the high-school equivalency test will be more rigorous and entirely computerized, requiring a level of digital fluency that education advocates here say could hinder many test-takers. The GED was last revised in 2002, but for its next incarnation the test will be overhauled by a magnitude never before seen in its 70-year existence. Last year, the American Council on Education, which manages the test nationwide, partnered with a computer-based testing company to develop an assessment that they believe will better prepare students for modern workplace demands.

PENNSYLVANIA'S Adult and Family Literacy program proves its value every day, transforming the work lives of our citizens who have not succeeded in the education system or who have emigrated from another country. It is not just an education program; it is also an economic-development program for the state. Soon the Legislature will determine how much to fund it. Here's an example about a man named Mike, whose story demonstrates the critical need to continue the funding of Adult and Family Literacy: Like a lot of Pennsylvanians, Mike had a life that wasn't easy for him educationally.

Reading lays the foundation for everything we do, and I mean everything. The reality is that without being able to read or comprehend, the quality of life folds like a deck of first-grade vocabulary cards. I'm not just saying this because I read and write for a living. (Shout-out to my pragmatic mother who instilled a love of books in me by designating the library as our second home - a free and easy form of entertainment.) Seriously, though, can you imagine being unable to fill out a job application because you can't understand it?

It was the question Toshea Greene had been dreading, but one she knew eventually had to come. Sitting in her supervisor's office after almost a year on the job, a decision she made 27 years ago had returned to dismantle everything. Greene, 42, a divorced mother of two, left school after ninth grade. During a routine audit last year of personnel files at the Center City nonprofit where she did community outreach, her secret was discovered. It would cost her the job, which required a high-school diploma.

Conviction opens with the eerie shot of a weather-beaten shack on a bleak, wintry patch of land in rural Massachusetts. The camera pokes inside: There is blood and debris everywhere. Something bad has happened here. And something bad happens to Kenny Waters (Sam Rockwell), the small-town mug who gets arrested, tried, and sent to jail for life, charged with murdering the house's occupant. It is 1983, the circumstantial evidence is damning, there is incriminating testimony from witnesses, and Kenny's been skirmishing with the law since he was a little kid. Since he and his sister, Betty Anne, were little kids.

Major League Baseball is en route to having a kid wonder in the nation's capital. You might have heard the news. At the moment, he's just 17 years of age. He's known for smacking 500-foot home runs. As a catcher, he can throw runners out from his knees. On the mound, his fastball has been clocked at 96 m.p.h. And in a perfect world, devoid of the self-righteous and sanctimonious, that is all any of us would ever know about Bryce Harper. Except that's not all we know about MLB's top overall pick in the draft earlier this week, is it?

EVER SINCE Tattle saw Jerry pass out on his first day on the "Biggest Loser" campus, we wondered when reality TV was going to go too far - when some "Loser" was going to keel over for good, a "Survivor" would eat a fatal berry or a "Wipeout" stunt gone awry would leave a contestant paralyzed. So far, it's only broken ribs on "Dancing with the Stars" and broken hearts on "The Bachelor. " But . . . police in Colorado Springs say a driver being tailed by bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman during filming for his reality TV show was involved Tuesday in a rollover crash.

Dorothy Ward, 81, of Phoenixville, a retired special-education teacher and hospital chaplain, died Dec. 11 of complications from Guillain?Barr? syndrome, a muscular disease, at Manor Care in King of Prussia. For 10 years, until retiring in 1999, Mrs. Ward was certified staff chaplain at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, assigned to the trauma division. One or two days a week she flew aboard PennStar helicopters, which transport critical-care patients and provide on-the-scene services at accident sites.

Jumar Smith's past predicted an uncertain future. He had a string of convictions when he was caught with a firearm. Under a tough federal gun law, he ended up with 57 months in prison. But after Smith was released, he was invited into a novel program that seeks to help ex-offenders reenter society. And Smith credits it with helping to steer his journey from ex-con to entrepreneur. "It helps to keep me focused," said Smith, 33, who currently works for his cousin's cleaning service but is planning his own janitorial company and has been thinking about a demolition business and eventually branching into real estate.