Breaking the TI Calculator

Texas Instruments is replacing thousands of school calculators in Virginia after an observant sixth-grader discovered a function that would have given students an unfair advantage on standardized tests.
The state Department of Education specifically asked Dallas-based Texas Instruments two years ago to disable the function on its calculators that converted decimals to fractions if it wanted to sell them to Virginia schools.
The new TI-30 Xa SE VA calculator passed muster with state and local school officials, and many school divisions ordered thousands of them, said Lois A. Williams, the state Department of Education's middle-school math specialist.
But in January, Dakota Brown, a 12-year-old student at Carver Middle School in Chesterfield County, figured out that by pressing two other keys on his TI-30 Xa SE, he could change decimals into fractions. After math instructors informed the state, the Department of Education notified Virginia's 132 school divisions about the calculator recall. "His fellow students were so proud of him and congratulatory," Michael F. Bolling, instructional specialist for math in Chesterfield said. "They thought it was really, really cool. They didn't call him a nerd or anything."
Williams said the state doesn't have the total number of calculators recalled because it was up to each school division whether to purchase the TI-30, one of four models approved for use on the Standards of Learning math exams.
Texas Instruments voluntarily recalled the calculators and is replacing them with models whose fraction keys are truly disabled. The company will donate many of the calculators to Third World countries, Bolling said.
Despite becoming a hero of sorts to local math enthusiasts, Dakota isn't saying much about it. Chesterfield school officials held a low-key ceremony, for which Texas Instruments sent him a graphing calculator, "which he loved," Williams said.
Excerpts taken from Houston Chronicle