8th Grade Reading Quiz
8 questions · no time limit
0:00
READING INFORMATIONAL TEXT
Question 1 of 8
No time limit
Current
Answered
Flagged
Not seen
PASSAGE
When the mathematician Katherine Johnson began working at the group that later became NASA, she entered a place built on both calculation and separation. The workrooms were full of the scratch of pencils and the hum of machines. The hallways, however, carried rules that were not written in any equation. As a Black woman in the 1950s, Johnson was expected to be precise but not prominent.
Colleagues described her as quietly confident. She asked questions that made meetings run longer, which was not always welcome. Yet those questions mattered. In aerospace work, a small wrong assumption can become a large disaster. So Johnson treated assumptions like loose bolts: fine until they fail.
During early space missions, she checked flight paths and verified numbers that other people had produced. Later accounts often highlight a dramatic moment when an astronaut asked that "the girl" check the calculations. The phrase is uncomfortable, and historians debate the exact wording, but the point holds. Trust in her accuracy crossed boundaries that social customs tried to enforce.
Johnson did not describe her career as a constant battle, nor did she pretend the barriers were imaginary. Her legacy sits in that tension. Excellence did not erase inequality, but it did expose how unreasonable that inequality was.
What is the central idea of this passage about Katherine Johnson?
YOUR PROGRESS
8
QUESTIONS
Ready when you are
Answer in any order. Your progress shows here as you go.
QUESTIONS
KEYBOARD
Pick an answer ABCD
Next question ↵→
Previous ←
Flag for review F
Answers save as you go · flagged questions come back at the end