Students who sign up to take the GED will find a new test come Jan. 1. It will be a more difficult path toward the high school equivalency diploma, and some parts of it will be offered only online. But the test isn’t ready, and teachers have not received test preparation booklets, leading them to worry about whether they will get materials in time to help their students prepare.

The changes were set in motion in 2011, when the American Council on Education, the longtime administrator of the General Education Development test, or GED as it is better known, teamed up with Pearson PLC, the educational publishing giant, to create a more rigorous exam aligned with the Common Core Learning Standards. They also took the test from a nonprofit endeavor to a for-profit one; GED is now a registered trademark of Pearson and will cost $120 per student.

New York opted for the new graduate-equivalency exam created by publisher McGraw-Hill called the Test Assessing Secondary Completion, or TASC. It will cost $52 per student and includes two free test retakes.

In an effort to learn what is coming, some New York City teachers are turning to sample questions that McGraw-Hill has posted online.

“In the writing section, there are a lot of ‘how do you feel?’-type questions,” said Michael Friedman, the chapter leader of the GED Plus program for students ages 17-21. “It’s testing their ability to write five coherent paragraphs.”

Marcia Williams, who teaches at the GED Plus program in Corona, Queens, said students “are going to have to read more nonfiction, watch CNN and PBS, to get facts when arguing their point.”

To help students prepare, she is extending the time of her current class, which normally runs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

But many of her students work after school. Others face different challenges. The majority of Williams’ students are immigrants, many of whom had little schooling in their home countries.

“They come in with reading scores from 5th- to 8th-grade level, although a few are above that,” she said. “Math levels are 4th- and 3rd-grade levels. It will take more time now for them to pass the test — not two months, but a year.”

While the Pearson test will be entirely online, the McGraw-Hill version will initially have some questions in print and others accessible only online.

Friedman is concerned that students who know the content may not be computer literate or may lack the typing skills to complete the exam efficiently.

Antonio Spinelli, who teaches GED Plus in Staten Island, said teachers just want to know what’s coming.

Students can take the old GED before Jan. 1, but if they fail, they’ll have to take the new TASC. In the past, students who failed one section of the GED, whether English or math, had to retake only that part. Teachers wonder if the same will hold true with the TASC.

“They’re still working on the test,” Spinelli said. “Will there be more changes? It’s an unsure feeling about what they’re going to do.”