Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension(Skimming and Scanning)(15minutes)
Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer sheet 1. For questions 1-7,choo the best answer from the four choices marked A)， C)and D). For questions 8-10,complete the ntences with the information given in B)， the passage.
Small Schools Rising
This year's list of the top 100 high schools shows that today, tho with fewer students are flourishing.
英语字母手抄报
Fifty years ago, they were the latest thing in educational reform: big, modern, suburban high schools with students counted in the thousands. As baby boomers(二战后婴儿潮时期出生的人) came of high-school age, big schools promid economic efficiency. A greater choice of cours, and, of cour, better football teams. Only years later did we understand the trade-offs this involved: the creation of excessive bureaucracies(官僚机构)，the difficult
y of forging personal connections between teachers and students.SAT scores began dropping in 1963;today,on average,30% of students do not complete high school in four years, a figure that ris to 50% in poor urban neighborhoods. While the emphasis on teaching to higher, test-driven standards as t in No Child Left Behind resulted in significantly better performance in elementary(and some middle)schools, high schools for a variety of reasons emed to have made little progress.劳务分包
Size isn't everything, but it does matter, and the past decade has en a noticeable countertrend toward smaller schools. This has been due ,in part ,to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has invested $1.8 billion in American high schools, helping to open about 1,000 small schools-most of them with about 400 kids each with an average enrollment of only 150 per grade, About 500 more are on the drawing board. Districts all over the country are taking notice, along with mayors in cities like New York, Chicago and San Diego. The movement includes independent public charter schools, such as No.1 BASIS in Tucson, with only 120 high-schoolers and 18 graduates this year. It embraces district-sanctioned magnet schools, such as the Talented and Gifted School, with 198 stu
2022新年图片>彩旗飘飘
dents, and the Science and Engineering Magnet,with383,which share a building in Dallas, as well as the City Honors School in Buffalo, N.Y., which grew out of volunteer evening minars for students. And it includes alternative schools with students lected by lottery(抽签)， such as H-BWoodlawn in Arlington, Va. And most noticeable of all, there is the phenomenon of large urban and suburban high schools that have split up into smaller units of a few hundred, generally houd in the same grounds that once boasted thousands of students all marching to the same band.
鉴定师Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, Calif, is one of tho, ranking No.423—among the top 2% in the country—on Newsweek’s annual ranking of America’s top high schools. The success of small schools is apparent in the listings. Ten years ago, when the first Newsweek list bad on college-level test participation was published, only three of the top 100 schools had graduating Class smaller than 100 students. This year there are 22. Nearly 250 schools on the full ,Newsweek list of the top 5% of schools nationally had fewer than 200 graduates in 2007.
Although many of Hillsdale’s students came from wealthy houholds, by the late 1990 average test scores were sliding and it had earned the unaffectionate nickname (绰号) “Hillsjail. ” Jeff Gilbert. A Hillsdale teacher who became principal last year, remembers sitting with other teachers watching students file out of a graduation ceremony and asking one another in astonishment, “How did that student graduate?”
So in 2003 Hillsdale remade itlf into three “hous,” romantically named Florence, Marrakech and Kyoto. Each of the 300 arriving ninth graders are randomly(随机地) assigned to one of the hous. Where they will keep the same four core subject teachers for two years, before moving on to another for 11th and 12th grades. The cloness this system cultivates is reinforced by the institution of “advisory” class Teachers meet with students in groups of 25, five mornings a week, for open-ended discussions of everything from homework problems to bad Saturday-night dates. The advirs also meet with students privately and stay in touch with parents, so they are deeply invested in the students’ success.“We’re constantly talking about one another’s advirs,” says English teacher Chris Crockett. “If you hear that yours isn’t doing well in math, or e them sitting
outside the dean’s office, it’s like a personal failure.” Along with the new structure came a more demanding academic program, the percentage of freshmen taking biology jumped from 17 to 95.“It was rough for some. But by nior year, two-thirds have moved up to physics,” says Gilbert “Our kids are coming to school in part becau they know there are adults here who know them and care for them.”But not all schools show advances after downsizing, and it remains to be en whether smaller schools will be a cure-all solution.
The Newsweek list of top U.S. high schools was made this year, as in years past, according to a single metric, the proportion of students taking college-level exams. Over the years this system has come in for its share of criticism for its simplicity. But that is also its strength: it’s easy for readers to understand, and to do the arithmetic for their own schools if they’d like.责无旁贷的意思
马蹄莲种子Ranking schools is always controversial, and this year a group of 38 superintendents(地区教育主管)from five states wrote to ask that their schools be excluded from the calculation.“It is impossible to know which high schools are ‘the best’ in the nation, ”their l
etter read. in part. “Determining whether different schools do or don’t offer a high quality of education requires a look at man different measures, including students’ overall academic accomplishments and their subquent performance in college. And taking into consideration the unique needs of their communities.”上海春节
