According to the Star Tribune, the Minnesota Legislature "that students no longer have to pass the 11th-grade math test." Many educators think the test is too difficult. See "Must-pass math test goes by the wayside", Star Tribune, 2009-05-30.
The Star Tribune also published four examples from the text. See "Could you pass the test?" I did the examples fairly quickly with what I consider ninth-grade math; I would have had all I needed to know for this test in Algebra I. I did get a bit stymied on how high the ball would go; I made an arithmetic error! The solution was only to plug in the time values of 1, 2, and 3 to find the value that gave one of the multiple-choice answers.
If 11th-grade students can't pass this test, either they slept through Algebra or never took it, a shame either way. And if so many can't do simple algebra, how are we going to find people to do the needed jobs from construction worker to engineers to scientists?
