The Wasatch County School District’s adult education program provides a pathway for people over 18 to earn the equivalent of a high school diploma by passing the General Educational Development (GED) tests.
Amanda Edwards is an administrator for Wasatch Alternative High School. She says teachers in the program are trained to meet students where they are, regardless of their educational background.
“We have some students who come in ready to pass any of the assessments right away, and we have other students who come in and have gaps, say, in math,” she said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Dec. 26. “And then the classroom instruction looks like our teachers filling the gaps that they have.”
That includes students in the county jail who want to pursue their GED. Classes in jail are taught weekly by Kathy Carr, who’s also a leader at the Wasatch Community Foundation.
“She’s absolutely amazing,” Edwards said. “We’re just lucky enough here to have a great relationship with our jail, to be able to then celebrate graduations.”
Many people are in jail for relatively short periods of time. For sentences longer than a year, they’re sent to the state prison. But some individuals spend a long time in jail waiting for a case to work its way through court. The Wasatch County Sheriff's Office also has an agreement to house some state prisoners in exchange for funding.
For people incarcerated over longer periods, Wasatch Alternative High School principal Tod Johnson said education can be a lifeline.
“There are inmates that are there for years, and it gives them hope and something to work on,” he said. “In fact, we just celebrated a graduation.”
Johnson said the student’s mother was able to attend the graduation and celebrate with her daughter.
“This recent graduate, she said, ‘This is something that has been a goal of mine for a long time,’” he said. “Especially as her mother was there to celebrate that with her, that was fun to see.”
Edwards said that even for students serving shorter jail terms, attending classes is time well spent.
“What we really hope to do is just spark that learning again and get students believing in themselves,” she said. “That’s what education is all about, right?”
She said many former students from the jail program go on to share success stories with the district.
Once students have their GEDs, they can often access higher-paying jobs or enroll in postsecondary classes. Edwards said many Alternative High School alumni pursue programs through Mountainland Technical College.
Nationally, education can make a key difference for people in jails and prisons. A 2016 report from the RAND Corporation, a policy research organization, found that people who participate in any kind of education while incarcerated are up to 43% less likely to reoffend. They’re also more likely to find jobs once released.
