Rickey: misgivings about math

All through middle school, Rickey Combs' grades earned him a place on the honor roll. He's already won a $4,000 college scholarship through a program called Gear Up. His mother also mentions his Seymour Kaplan Humanitarian Award and pulls out another plaque that honors him for "exceptional scholarship and leadership."

She doesn't ask Rickey whether he's done his homework — she says she always knows he has.

Rickey wouldn't be worried about the WASL if it weren't for math. This semester, it's his last class of the day, and the only course he dreads.

Rickey lives with his mother and three sisters under 10. He sings in Sealth High's audition-only Honor Choir, and plays power forward on the junior varsity basketball team. He loves writing and his world history class. He enjoys doing class projects that go above and beyond the requirements. But math ...

That's the subject on the WASL that students fail in the greatest numbers and, in seventh grade, Rickey was one of them.

He used to be good at math — even took an honors class for awhile in middle school. But since eighth grade, he has found it difficult.

His mother, a nurse, points out that the WASL may put pressure on students, but it also ensures they "have the education they need when they're adults."

Rickey, 15, agrees with that — to a point. But he wonders: How can he be a good student with all As and Bs except in math, and yet not get a diploma?

"I've been pulling my hair out about the WASL since last year," he says.

The math problems on the WASL, he says, aren't as straightforward as most of what he had in elementary and middle school. "If you're going to give us the WASL, give us a curriculum that's like the WASL," he says.

Sometimes, he admits, he's tempted to give up in math. Even when he thinks he knows what to do, he often gets home and — long after anyone is around to help — can't figure out how to do the homework.

When his school offered a class designed to help students pass the math WASL, he signed up, and it's helping. He's learning to sort the relevant information from the irrelevant in story problems. But even when he gets an answer right as he works with one of the teachers, he finishes with a big sigh.

"Man, I need to start looking at problems more closely and read between the lines," he says later. "I'm very gullible when it comes to math problems."

Rickey says he might want to be a singer, or perhaps a chef like his uncle. Or a psychologist. His friends, he says, often come to him for advice.

"I seem to be good at solving people's problems."

But math problems — those don't come as easily.

"You can't get rid of math," he says. "I know I have to take it. But there's this thing in my head: How am I going to learn this in time?"