English Language Arts: Making Connections (TEKS.ELA.9-12.5.E) Practice Test

At the edge of the Edwards Plateau, a debate team meets in a cafeteria that smells like oranges and bleach. Their topic is groundwater: who owns what cannot be seen. The ranchers call it a savings account; the city calls it infrastructure; the oil rep calls it a partner. Outside, a wind farm trades shadows with mesquite, and a dry creek still wears the memory of fish along its limestone. One student's abuela waits in a colonia where the tap sometimes coughs air. Another student's father has notes about rule of capture, with arrows to court cases and margins full of fence-line jokes. During cross-examination, someone asks whether a right becomes wrong when drought makes neighbors strangers. The judge, a biology teacher, pushes his glasses up and says, define sustainable. No one mentions the pecan grove cut down last spring; everyone glances at the trophy case reflecting their faces into one wide, wavering team. The bell rings, and the custodian stacks chairs, humming. On the bus ride home, the debaters count stock tanks like stars and practice saying commons without sounding naïve. At night, the aquifer keeps flowing, or resting, depending on who is telling the story. Beneath their feet.

In a high school newsroom, the editor-in-chief receives anonymous screenshots alleging that a beloved coach falsified attendance forms to keep athletes eligible. The source insists on secrecy; the adviser insists on verification. The team's afterschool practice thumps through the wall like a metronome for urgency. The editor thinks of the first time the coach drove the late bus so no one would walk home in the rain, and of a civics unit on accountability that treated institutions as if they were maps, not people. She opens a stylebook and sees rules about commas, nothing about mercy. Her staff argues about harm: how to measure it, who to count. Someone says truth is disinfectant; someone else says disinfectant stings healthy skin. They cross out adjectives, gather records, and draft questions that neither accuse nor excuse. When the coach arrives to comment, he brings oranges and a folded letter. He says the system is cruel; he says he made it a little less cruel. The editor hears the practice stop. Outside, a janitor rattles a cart. The newsroom clock ticks with unearned confidence. The editor prints two versions of the headline and realizes both will be wrong in different ways. For someone.