Can Anyone Recommend A Good Pre-Algebra/Algebra Book?

As my head begins to clear (thank you for the prayers) my wife and I have discussed me going back to school to learn a skill. I have always loved being in the medical field, as I was once an EMT, but because of a hand injury and lack of jobs in the county, I have let my EMT certification lapse. So, I have looked and what I want to pursue is a certification in the field of surgery technician. It allows me to work with patients again and I believe it will be more fulfilling for me instead of what I was going to do which was medical billing and coding.

The local career center has the program and a pell grant will pay for it completely, but there is one issue for me. I have to take a TABE advanced level (tests of adult basic education) and as it stands right now because of one section I would not be able to be accepted into the course. I have never had algebra. I was not taught it in high school as I was always in a special education class for math and when I got into tenth grade I went right into tech school for electronics where the teacher didn't teach us a thing, instead it was just a few hours of whatever we wanted to do.

So now I actually need to learn Algebra. I called the career center and they do not have a course for me to take and instead recommended this book: http://www.amazon.com/TABE-Test-Adult-Basic-Education/dp/0071405615. After perusing the book one thing stands out, it teaches based on thinking you have once learned algebra before and therefore know how to do the work. I do not know how to do algebra so I need something that starts from the beginning, preferably with pre-algebra so that I can learn fractions again as that is also an issue for me.

Can anyone here who may have experience in this area recommend a book or another solution?
 
Naomanos, also if you ever need any help just PM me or I can give you my email and I'll gladly help you!
 
Thank you everyone for you replies. I stayed using Khan. It seems simple enough, but I am just brushing up on arithmetic at the moment.

I did receive an email from Khan and it let me know that each mastery section can take five months to complete. That has d me a little worried as I need to have learned Algebra by summer.

p. s. Thank you Lanolin for your pm.
 
I'm so pleased that your wife is getting better. (y)
Unfortunately I don't know where to purchase such materials where you live aside from Amazon.
 
Go to a local bookstore (or try Amazon) and order Shaum's Outlines...and teach yourself...also see my Previous post...

For now, try and master the distributive property, the associative property, and what is called grouping like quantities (some call it "simplification"....combining all X's, all Y's (or a's b's etc)....follow PEMDAS (the order of operations) Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplications, Divisions, Additions, Subtractions....also master adding subtracting multiplying and dividing Positive and Negative numbers....

Those 6 items will get you very much through College mathI or Algebra I

http://www.mathsisfun.com/positive-negative-integers.html

https://www.mathsisfun.com/multiplying-negatives.html

http://www.mcwdn.org/Algebra/DivPosNeg.html

Have fun...
 
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