According to the The Dallas Morning News, requiring a passing score on the TAKS test is cheating a lot of students out of a diploma. This is just so, like, unfair! Take Ebonee Manning for example, they say.
Ebonee has taken the TAKS test more than six times, and she has yet to get a passing score on the math portion of the test. Ebonee says she didn't have to work too hard in high school. She saved herself plenty of time for "cruising and clubs with her home girls." She started failing algebra in 9th grade, but she didn't worry about it. She just made it up in summer school where the classes were much easier to pass.
Just before she failed the test again in March 2009, she got a letter from her boyfriend who was in prison on a drug conviction. He had "a hunch" that she was pregnant. She took a pregnancy test and, gee whillikers, she was! That March test was the last chance she had before her class graduated. "I been to school all these years, and this is what I get? Going back every summer to take a test?" (It seems Ebonee has a bit of a problem in the birds and bees and grammar departments as well as the math department).
Anyway, Ebonee says, she doesn't understand why it's so important for her to know algebra. "I'm not going to use it ever again. I know I'm not." Of course you are, Ebonee. For instance, if the government pays you $250 a month for each baby you have, how many babies do you have to have to get $1000 a month? I'll just bet you can figure that out, and that, my dear, is algebra!
"Seeking the right formula." The Dallas Morning News; July 26, 2010; p. 1A.
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