UnNews:Scores missing after US tornado
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| Scores missing after US tornado | 
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27 May 2011
JOPLIN, Missouri -- The US state of Missouri has released a list of more than 230 students whose school test scores have gone missing since a devastating tornado struck the city of Joplin on Sunday.
But the list is shrinking as people’s report cards are located, and officials hope others have simply failed to contact relatives – especially poor students who flunked.
On Thursday, the Associated Press found Sally Adams’s scores. Neighbors rescued her and her report card after Sunday's tornado, but she had lost her mobile phone and was unable to contact her family, who lived next door. In a world of texting and on-line chats she was not about to walk next door and inform them.
Another series of tornadoes struck Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas on Tuesday and Wednesday, causing at least 16 students there to also lose their scores.
Search teams in Joplin, Missouri, home to 49,000 people, have scoured the wreckage for lost test scores. But by Thursday morning, authorities began weighing when to begin using bulldozers and other heavy machinery to clear debris - a step that would indicate no more report cards were expected to be found.
Joplin Fire Chief Mitch Randie was quoted by the Associated Press as saying: "We've had stories from other disasters of people’s score sheets being found two or three weeks later, and we are hopeful we'll have a story like that to tell."
Those leading the search effort say it is impossible to know how many people are truly missing their report cards, since many with low grades, or who failed to pass, left the area and have not been in contact with relatives.
Sources[edit]
- Staff "Scores missing after US tornado". BBC, May 27, 2011