GED Reading Comprehension Practice Questions, Set 5

Use this passage for questions 1 to 4

Passage 1 “Our district should move to a four-day school week next fall. Each school day would run about an hour longer, so students would lose little class time over the year. We would save on bus fuel, heating, and substitute teachers, money we could put toward raises. That matters: last year we posted eleven teaching jobs and filled only four. Nearby districts that switched report more applicants, and teachers tell us a three-day weekend is worth more to them than a small raise. Families would also gain a day for medical appointments, which in our county can mean a two-hour drive.” Passage 2 “A four-day week sounds efficient until you ask who watches the children on Fridays. In our county, most parents work five days, many of them at the plant or the hospital. A sixth grader cannot stay home alone all day, and paid child care is hard to find here. A study of districts in one Western state found that students on four-day schedules lost ground in math compared with similar students on five-day schedules, especially in later grades. The savings are also smaller than they sound. Buildings still need heat on Fridays if sports and clubs use them, and many districts that switched report saving only one or two percent of their budgets.”

Use this passage for questions 5 to 8

“Dolores had worked the grill at the Starlite Diner for so long that the regulars called the night shift “Dolores’s hours.” She did not talk while she cooked. She listened to the bacon. The new dishwasher, Kwame, talked enough for both of them. In his first hour he told her about his bus route, his little brother’s soccer team, and the community college class he was taking in accounting. Dolores answered with nods. Once she said, “Mm.” At two in the morning the rush came all at once, a dozen tickets from a bowling league. Plates came back faster than Kwame could wash them, and Dolores ran out of clean ones with four orders up. She turned to tell him to hurry and saw that he already was, sleeves soaked to the elbow, stacking the plates in the order she would need them: big ovals first, then the small rounds for toast. She had not told him that. No one had. When the league finally left, Dolores cracked two eggs on the grill, though no ticket asked for them. She slid the plate across the steel counter toward the sink. “Accounting,” she said. “You’ll be good at it.” Kwame grinned and ate standing up.”

Use this passage for questions 9 to 11

“Automatic Refills at Crestview Pharmacy Starting May 1, you can sign up to have eligible prescriptions refilled automatically. When a refill is due, we will prepare it and send you a text or phone call when it is ready for pickup. You will not need to call in or use the app. Not every medicine qualifies. Automatic refills are available only for prescriptions you take every day for an ongoing condition, such as blood pressure or cholesterol medicine. Controlled substances, including many pain and sleep medicines, cannot be refilled automatically under state law. If your prescription has no refills left, we will contact your doctor’s office to request a new one. This can take up to three business days, so please plan ahead. Prescriptions that are not picked up within ten days of the ready notice will be returned to stock, and your insurance will be credited. You will stay enrolled, and your next refill will be prepared on schedule. To sign up, ask any pharmacy team member or check the box on your next prescription form. You can cancel at any time.”

Use this passage for questions 12 to 15

“To the Editor: The city council will soon decide whether to spend $400,000 to restart the Summer Youth Jobs Program, which paid teenagers to work six weeks at parks, libraries, and nonprofits until it was cut in 2020. The council should restore it. A summer job teaches things a classroom cannot: showing up on time, taking direction, and handling a paycheck. I know because the program gave me my first job, painting picnic shelters at Lakeview Park when I was fifteen. My supervisor, a parks worker named Mr. Haynes, was the first adult outside my family to tell me I did good work. The benefits go beyond one person’s memories. When the program last ran, it placed 300 teenagers, and the parks department reported that its crews finished the summer maintenance list for the first time in years. Studies of similar programs in large cities have found that summer jobs can reduce violent-crime arrests among the teens who take part. Some council members say the city cannot afford it. But $400,000 is less than one half of one percent of this year’s budget. Surely we can find that much for the young people who will one day run this city. Terrell Wynn”

Use this passage for questions 16 to 18

“In 1944, with World War II still underway, Congress passed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, better known as the GI Bill. Lawmakers remembered what had happened after World War I, when many returning veterans struggled to find work, and they feared a wave of unemployment when millions of service members came home at once. The law offered several benefits. Veterans could receive unemployment pay for up to a year while they looked for work. They could get government-backed loans with low down payments to buy homes, farms, or businesses. Most famously, the law paid college or job-training tuition and gave veterans a monthly living allowance while they studied. Few officials expected many veterans to use the education benefit. Instead, it became one of the most popular parts of the law. By 1956, when the original program ended, millions of veterans had used it to attend college or train for a trade, and some campuses doubled in size. The benefits did not reach everyone equally. The law was carried out largely by state and local officials, and in many places Black veterans were steered away from loans or turned away by segregated colleges. Historians still debate how much the law narrowed gaps between groups and how much it widened them.”