The Scholarship Jacket quiz

Question 1. Which literary genres best describe “The Scholarship Jacket”?

Mystery & Detective Fiction
Science Fiction & Speculative Fiction
Correct answer: Coming-of-Age & Realistic Fiction
Fantasy & Fairy Tale
Adventure & Survival Story

Coming-of-Age & Realistic Fiction is exactly right. An ordinary school honor collides with money and influence, and a fourteen-year-old comes out the other side knowing something about the world she did not know at the start.

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Question 2. What is the scholarship jacket, and who is it given to?

Correct answer: A gold and green jacket with a big gold S, given to the eighth grade valedictorian
A gold and green jacket with a big gold S, given to the best athlete in the school
A green and white jacket with a big gold S, given to the president of the eighth grade
A gold and green jacket with a big gold S, given to the top student in every grade

It is a tradition carried out every year during the eighth grade graduation. The jacket is gold and green, the school colors, and it “was awarded to the class valedictorian, the student who had maintained the highest grades for eight years.” It has “a big gold S on the left front side and your name written in gold letters on the pocket,” which is the point of it: the jacket exists to be seen.

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Question 3. Who in Martha’s family had already won the scholarship jacket?

Her grandmother, back when the school first started the tradition
Correct answer: Her oldest sister Rosie, who had won it a few years earlier
Her older brother, who graduated from the same school before her
Nobody — Martha would have been the first one in her family

“My oldest sister Rosie had won the jacket a few years back and I fully expected to also.” Martha is one of eight children: “My father was a farm laborer who couldn’t earn enough money to feed eight children, so when I was six I was given to my grandparents to raise.”

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Question 4. Why is the scholarship jacket the only jacket Martha’s family can hope for?

The school had stopped giving out sports jackets several years before she started
Sports jackets at her school went only to students in the ninth grade and above
Her grandfather needed her in the bean field on the afternoons the teams practiced
Correct answer: Sports cost registration fees, uniforms, and trips out of town her family cannot pay

“We couldn’t participate in sports at school because there were registration fees, uniform costs, and trips out of town; so, even though our family was quite agile and athletic there would never be a school sports jacket for us. This one, the scholarship jacket, was our only chance.” Coach Thompson had even tried to talk Grandma into letting Martha join the basketball team — Grandma said no — but it is money, not talent, that closes off every other jacket.

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Question 5. What does "Valedictorian" mean in this story?

The teacher chosen by the graduating class to hand out the diplomas
The student elected by classmates to represent them at graduation
Correct answer: The graduating student with the highest grades, who speaks at graduation
The student who has not missed a single day of school in eight years

The jacket “was awarded to the class valedictorian, the student who had maintained the highest grades for eight years.” Martha also names the other half of the honor when she explains why the jacket matters so much: it meant “more than just being a valedictorian and giving a little thank you speech for the jacket on graduation night.”

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Question 6. What are Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Boone arguing about when Martha overhears them?

Whether Martha should be allowed to give the thank you speech on graduation night
Whether the Board is allowed to charge the students fifteen dollars for the jacket
Correct answer: Whether to alter the records so the jacket goes to Joann instead of to Martha
Whether Martha should be moved out of history and into a harder math class

Mr. Schmidt, her history teacher, is furious: “I refuse to do it! I don’t care who her father is, her grades don’t even begin to compare to Martha’s. I won’t lie or falsify records. Martha has a straight A-plus average and you know it.” Mr. Boone, her math teacher, answers calmly and quietly. Martha had come back only for her gym shorts: “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, I just hesitated, not knowing what to do.”

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Question 7. Why was Martha walking back to her classroom in the first place?

She had left her history homework in her desk and needed it for the next class
Coach Thompson had sent her back to fetch a ball for the afternoon practice
Correct answer: She had forgotten her P.E. shorts in a bag under her desk and had to get them
The principal had sent word asking her to come to his office before gym class

She was already on her way to the gym when she remembered the bag under her desk, and “Coach Thompson was a real bear if someone wasn’t dressed for P.E.” So she had to walk all the way back — which is the accident that puts her outside the door. Martha calls it “a cruel coincidence that I had overheard that conversation.”

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Question 8. What reason does Mr. Boone give for wanting Joann to have the jacket?

Joann has waited eight years for the jacket and her grades are nearly identical
Correct answer: Joann’s father sits on the Board and owns the only store there is in the town
Joann has already paid the fifteen dollars the Board has decided to charge
Joann’s family has offered to pay the rest of the cost of the jacket for the school

“Look, Joann’s father is not only on the Board, he owns the only store in town; we could say it was a close tie and—” Mr. Boone never claims Joann earned it. He points at her father’s power, and then offers a form of words — a close tie — that would let the school hand the jacket over without appearing to break its own rule.

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Question 9. What does "Falsify" mean in this story?

Correct answer: To change a record on purpose so that it says something untrue
To lose a record by accident and then have to write it out again
To keep a record hidden from the people who have a right to see it
To copy a record out by hand so a second office can keep one too

Mr. Schmidt draws his line there: “I won’t lie or falsify records.” To falsify is to alter something deliberately so that it tells a lie — grades, in this case. Notice that he treats lying and falsifying as one act, while Mr. Boone’s suggestion of a close tie is an attempt to do the same thing without ever using either word.

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Question 10. Martha hears the rest of the argument only in fragments. What does the story do with them?

Mr. Schmidt repeats the words to Martha in the hallway after he leaves the room
Correct answer: Only a word here and there gets through, and the story never says who said them
Mr. Boone reports the words to the principal, who apologizes to Martha for them
Martha writes the words down that night and shows them to her grandmother later

The pounding in her ears drowns out the rest of the words, and only a word here and there filters through: “Martha is Mexican,” then “resign,” then “won’t do it.” Salinas never attaches those words to a speaker. The prejudice is not a speech by a villain; it is audible for a moment through a door and then folded back into the polite language of close ties and fees — which is how a fourteen-year-old would actually receive it. Mr. Schmidt comes rushing out and, luckily for Martha, goes the opposite way toward the auditorium.

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Question 11. What does the principal tell Martha when he calls her into his office?

That the Board has voted to give the jacket to Joann because of a close tie
That she must give a thank you speech at graduation to receive the jacket
That her grades will be checked once more before the valedictorian is named
Correct answer: That the Board will now charge fifteen dollars, or it goes to the next in line

He looks uncomfortable and unhappy, fidgets with the papers on his desk, and will not meet her eyes: “This year the Board has decided to charge fifteen dollars, which still won’t cover the complete cost of the jacket.” Then: “So if you are unable to pay the fifteen dollars for the jacket it will be given to the next one in line.” Martha does not need to ask who that is. Standing “with all the dignity I could muster,” she says she will speak to her grandfather and let him know tomorrow.

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Question 12. What does the principal say Martha’s grandfather owns?

A small bean farm at the far end of the quarter-mile dirt road
The only store in town apart from the one that Joann’s father owns
A quilt shop that Martha’s grandmother runs out of the front room
Correct answer: A two-hundred acre ranch, which means he certainly has the money

When Martha reports the refusal, the principal walks to the window and finally asks why: “Your grandfather has the money. He owns a two-hundred acre ranch.” The detail matters because it takes poverty out of the argument altogether — the refusal is not about what the family can afford. (If your copy of the story says a small bean farm instead, you have the earlier 1984 text; most textbooks print the later version.)

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Question 13. What does Grandpa do when Martha asks him for the fifteen dollars?

Correct answer: He leans his chin on the hoe handle and asks what a scholarship jacket means
He tells her to ask her grandmother, who keeps the money for the household
He counts out the fifteen dollars and tells her to take it in the next morning
He walks back to the house with her to write a letter to the principal

She finds him hoeing between the rows of little bean plants and asks him “in Spanish, the only language he knew.” He straightens up tiredly, leans his chin on the hoe handle, looks out over the field, and then asks quietly, “What does a scholarship jacket mean?” Martha answers eagerly, because maybe there is a chance: “It means you’ve earned it by having the highest grades for eight years and that’s why they’re giving it to you.” Too late she realizes what her own answer has just done.

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Question 14. Why does Grandpa refuse to pay the fifteen dollars?

He is saving every dollar the bean crop earns for the rest of the family
He does not believe the principal will hand the jacket over even if he pays
Correct answer: A jacket you pay for is not a scholarship jacket, whatever the Board calls it
He wants Martha to earn the fifteen dollars herself working in the bean field

He goes back to hoeing while she works it out for herself, and then says it plainly: “Then if you pay for it, Marta, it’s not a scholarship jacket, is it? Tell your principal I will not pay the fifteen dollars.” He never lectures her — her own definition does the whole job. Notice too that he calls her Marta, the Spanish form of her name and the author’s own, while everyone at school calls her Martha. Martha locks herself in the bathroom for a long time, “angry with Grandfather even though I knew he was right.”

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Question 15. What does "First-person point of view" mean in this story?

A narrator outside the story who can enter the mind of every character in it
A narrator who addresses the reader directly as you all the way through
A narrator who tells the story in the present tense as the events happen
Correct answer: A narrator inside the story, telling it as I and knowing only what she saw

Martha tells her own story, looking back years later: she says she did not know about adrenalin in those days, and “To this day I don’t remember if I got in trouble in P.E. for being late.” Because we are locked inside a fourteen-year-old’s vantage point, we learn only what she can see, hear, or work out from a doorway — which is why we never find out what the principal told the Board, whether Mr. Schmidt really threatened to resign, or who spoke the words about Martha being Mexican. Those gaps are not carelessness; they are the technique, and they are why the story turns up in so many lessons on point of view and inference.

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Question 16. What finally changes the principal’s mind?

Mr. Schmidt threatens to resign in front of the Board unless Martha gets it
Martha’s grandmother comes to the school and offers to pay part of the fee
Coach Thompson tells him Martha has been the best student in the school
Correct answer: Martha repeats her grandfather’s reasoning and lets slip that Joann can have it

She reports the refusal — “I know, sir, but he said if I had to pay for it, then it wouldn’t be a scholarship jacket” — and then, standing up to leave, she says, “I guess you’ll just have to give it to Joann.” She had not meant to say it; it just slipped out. That sentence tells him she knows exactly what the fee was for, and the scheme cannot survive being named out loud by the child it was aimed at. He sighs, goes back to his big desk, watches her, biting his lip, and tells her he will make an exception and inform the Board. Martha runs out so she can cry in the hall where there is no one to see her.

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Question 17. What does Grandpa always carry in his back pocket?

Correct answer: A crumpled red handkerchief for wiping the sweat off his forehead
A folded seed packet he checks against the rows of green bean plants
A short length of twine for tying up plants that have grown too tall
A pocket watch that tells him when to go in to the house for supper

At the very end, once Martha has told him her news: “He pulled out the crumpled red handkerchief that he always carried in his back pocket and wiped the sweat off his forehead.” It is a small, ordinary gesture, and Salinas puts it exactly where a lesser writer would have put a speech.

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Question 18. What does Martha do before she tells Grandpa the good news?

She runs to the house and tells her grandmother the whole story first
Correct answer: She crouches down in his row and pulls weeds beside him without a word
She waits at the supper table until he has come in from the field
She writes the news out in Spanish and leaves it on the kitchen table

She runs straight to the field: “I joined him in the row where he was working and without saying anything I crouched down and started pulling up the weeds with my hands.” Only once she has a little pile of weeds between the rows does she stand up and face him. He says nothing, gives her a pat on the shoulder and a smile, and sends her in to see whether her grandmother needs help with supper. “He didn’t fool me,” Martha says — and then she “skipped and ran back to the house whistling some silly tune.”

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Question 19. What does the jacket itself stand for in the story?

A family heirloom handed down from one graduating sister to the next
The friendship between Martha and the teacher who defended her grades
Correct answer: Public proof of merit that was earned, which money cannot honestly buy
The wealth of the Board members who decide which student may wear it

Gold and green, a big gold S, her name in gold letters on the pocket: the jacket exists to be seen, and what it announces in public is eight years of the highest grades. For Martha’s family it is also the only prize they can compete for, since every other jacket costs money — “This one, the scholarship jacket, was our only chance.” A fifteen-dollar fee would quietly convert a certificate of achievement into a purchase, and Grandpa’s refusal defends the meaning rather than the object. The bean field is the story’s quieter symbol: patient, unglamorous work, one weed at a time, which is what eight years of A’s actually were.

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Question 20. Which statement best expresses the central theme of “The Scholarship Jacket”?

Correct answer: An honor has to be earned, and a thing you buy is no longer an honor
Adults will always find a way to cheat children out of what they earn
Money is the only thing that decides who gets ahead in a small town
Family loyalty matters more than any prize a school can hand a student

Grandpa asks one question — “What does a scholarship jacket mean?” — and Martha’s own answer convicts the Board’s fee. Around that core the story sets merit against influence: a Board member’s daughter, a math teacher willing to call an A-plus average a close tie, and, for one unattributed moment through a door, plain prejudice. The bleaker options do not survive the story. Adults do not all cheat her: Mr. Schmidt refuses, and the principal in the end relents. Money does not win: it loses, to a definition. And the adult narrator frames the whole episode in a single line — “Those were the days of belief and innocence” — so Martha wins the jacket and loses the belief that grades were ever the only thing being counted.

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Question 21. Which of these events actually happened in the story?

Martha’s oldest sister Rosie had already won the scholarship jacket a few years back.

Happened

Rosie won it, which is why Martha “fully expected to also.” It is one more reason the jacket is a family matter and not only a school prize.
Mr. Schmidt, the history teacher, refuses to lie or falsify the school’s records.

Happened

“I won’t lie or falsify records. Martha has a straight A-plus average and you know it.” He is the angry voice Martha hears through the door.
Mr. Boone points out that Joann’s father is on the Board and owns the only store in town.

Happened

That is his whole argument, delivered calmly and quietly, along with the suggestion that they could call the result a close tie.
Martha walks into the room and confronts the two teachers about what they are saying.

Didn't happen

She does the opposite. Shaking, she waits a few minutes, then goes in, grabs her bag and flees the room. Mr. Boone looks up when she comes in but says nothing.
The Board decides to charge twenty-five dollars for the scholarship jacket.

Didn't happen

Fifteen dollars — a sum the principal admits “still won’t cover the complete cost of the jacket.”
Grandpa tells Martha that he simply cannot afford the fifteen dollars.

Didn't happen

He never says anything of the kind, and the principal later insists he has the money. His refusal is about what the word scholarship means, not about what is in his pocket.
Martha is angry with her grandfather even though she knows that he is right.

Happened

She locks herself in the bathroom for a long time, “angry with Grandfather even though I knew he was right,” and angry with the Board, whoever they were.
Coach Thompson had once tried to talk Grandma into letting Martha join the team.

Happened

She had said Martha was a good forward and tried to get permission for her to play basketball. Of course Grandma said no.
Martha blurts out her good news the moment she reaches her grandfather in the field.

Didn't happen

She joins his row and pulls weeds beside him in silence first. Only after she has a little pile of weeds does she stand up and tell him, and he does not ask what happened while they work.
Mr. Schmidt winks at Martha and says he hears she is getting the jacket this year.

Happened

“His face looked as happy and innocent as a baby’s, but I knew better.” Without answering she gives him a quick hug and runs for the bus.

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Questions and answers

Question 1. Which literary genres best describe “The Scholarship Jacket”?

Question 2. What is the scholarship jacket, and who is it given to?

Question 3. Who in Martha’s family had already won the scholarship jacket?

Question 4. Why is the scholarship jacket the only jacket Martha’s family can hope for?

Question 5. What does "Valedictorian" mean in this story?

Question 6. What are Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Boone arguing about when Martha overhears them?

Question 7. Why was Martha walking back to her classroom in the first place?

Question 8. What reason does Mr. Boone give for wanting Joann to have the jacket?

Question 9. What does "Falsify" mean in this story?

Question 10. Martha hears the rest of the argument only in fragments. What does the story do with them?

Question 11. What does the principal tell Martha when he calls her into his office?

Question 12. What does the principal say Martha’s grandfather owns?

Question 13. What does Grandpa do when Martha asks him for the fifteen dollars?

Question 14. Why does Grandpa refuse to pay the fifteen dollars?

Question 15. What does "First-person point of view" mean in this story?

Question 16. What finally changes the principal’s mind?

Question 17. What does Grandpa always carry in his back pocket?

Question 18. What does Martha do before she tells Grandpa the good news?

Question 19. What does the jacket itself stand for in the story?

Question 20. Which statement best expresses the central theme of “The Scholarship Jacket”?

Question 21. Which of these events actually happened in the story?