首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Small Schools Rising This year’s list of the top 100 high schools shows that today, those with fewer students are flourishin
Small Schools Rising This year’s list of the top 100 high schools shows that today, those with fewer students are flourishin
admin
2013-06-03
38
问题
Small Schools Rising
This year’s list of the top 100 high schools shows that today, those with fewer students are flourishing.
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 (二战后婴儿潮出生的人) came of high-school age, big schools promised economic efficiency, a greater choice of courses, and, of course, better football teams. Only years later did we understand the trade-offs this involved: the creation of excessive bureaucracies (官僚机构), the difficulty 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 rises to 50% in poor urban neighborhoods. While the emphasis on teaching to higher, test-driven standards as set in No Child Left Behind resulted in significantly better performance in elementary (and some middle) schools, high schools for a variety of reasons seemed to have made little progress.
Size isn’t everything, but it does matter, and the past decade has seen a noticeable counter-trend toward smaller schools. This has been due, in part, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Founda-tion, 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 students, and the Science and Engineering Magnet, with 383, which share a building in Dallas, as well as the City Honors School in Buffalo, N.Y., which grew out of volunteer evening seminars for students. And it includes alternative schools with students selected by lottery (抽签), such as H-B Woodlawn 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 housed in the same grounds that once boasted thousands of students all marching to the same band.
Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, Calif, is one of those, 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 based on college-level test participation was published, only three of the top 100 schools had graduating classes 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 households, by the late 1990s 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 itself into three "houses," romantically named Florence, Mar-rakech and Kyoto. Each of the 300 arriving ninth graders are randomly (随机地) assigned to one of the houses, where they will keep the same four core subject teachers for two years, before moving on to another for 11th and 12th grades. The closeness this system cultivates is reinforced by the institution of "advisory" classes. 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 advisers 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 advisees," says English teacher Chris Crockett. "If you hear that yours isn’t doing well in math, or see 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 senior year, two-thirds have moved up to physics," says Gilbert. "Our kids are coming to school in part because 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 seen 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.
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 letter read, in part. "Determining whether different schools do or don’t offer a high quality of education requires a look at many different measures, including students’ overall academic accomplishments and their subsequent performance in college, and taking into consideration the unique needs of their communities."
In the end, the superintendents agreed to provide the data we sought, which is, after all, public information. There is, in our view, no real dispute here; we are all seeking the same thing, which is schools that better serve our children and our nation by encouraging students to tackle tough subjects under the guidance of gifted teachers. And if we keep working toward that goal, someday, perhaps, a list won’t be necessary.
Fifty years ago, big, modern, suburban high schools were established in the hope of______.
选项
A、ensuring no child is left behind
B、increasing economic efficiency
C、improving students’ performance on SAT
D、providing good education for baby boomers
答案
D
解析
第一句话指出,五十年前,大规模、现代化、郊区化的动辄几千人的高中是当时教育改革的一个新生事物。第二句话接着说,当婴儿潮时期出生的孩子到了上高中年龄时,这样的大规模的学校保证了经济上的有效性、更多的可选课程、更好的足球队。可以明显感觉出来,第二句话是在说第一句话中大规模高中学校涌现的背景、原因、目的:婴儿潮时期出生的孩子到了上高中年龄,学生一下多了,这样的大规模的学校可以适应这种学生潮。所以,建立大规模学校是希望为婴儿潮时期出生的孩子提供好的教育。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/0Og7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Nooneshouldbeforcedtowearauniformunderanycircumstances.Uniformsaredemandingtothehumanspiritandtotallyunnece
A、Thevisitingeconomisthasgivenseverallectures.B、Dr.Johnsonandtheguestspeakerdislikeeachother.C、Dr.Johnsoninvit
A、Mr.Johnisverykind.B、Themanshouldnot’worry.C、Sheworriesabouthim.D、ShelikestotalkwithMr.John.BM:Mr.Johnju
Scienceforself-reliancehas,inrecentyears,becomeamatterofgreatconcernforThirdWorldanddevelopingnations.Thesen
________________(只有与你平平安安呆在家时)thatyouwishyouwerehavinganadventure.
Bysaying"nodocumentissafeanymore",theauthorprobablymeans______.Theadvantageofusingbandingpatternstotracedo
A、HeisdefinitelylearningChinese.B、HeisdefinitelylearningEnglish.C、Heisprobablylearningaforeignlanguage.D、Heis
Thewordsofhisoldteacher______(在他的脑海中留下了长久的印象),andheisstillinfluencedbythemnow.
A、Hedoesn’tknowJack.B、HeforgetstoaskJack.C、Jackknowsalotaboutdigitalcamera.D、Jackprobablyknowsnothingaboutd
Iwasimpressedwith____________(完成工攻的效率)intheagency.
随机试题
Internet所采用的远程登录服务协议为()。
EDI软件的重要特征有
铅中毒所致精神障碍的治疗药物不包括
临床上用于解救吗啡类急性中毒引起的呼吸抑制的药物是( )。
环境容量是指对一定地区,根据其(),在特定的产业结构和污染源分布的条件下,为达到环境目标值,所允许的污染物最大排放量。
基本建立现代企业制度的特大型企业集团,投资建设《政府核准的投资项目目录》内的项目,可按项目单独申报核准,也可编制()。
以下哪个会议制定了抗日民族统一战线?()
WorldWarIIwasthewatershedeventforhighereducationinmodernWesternsocieties.【F1】Thosesocietiescameoutofthewarwi
对管理信息系统的结构描述一般可以从横向(基于职能)和纵向(基于管理层次)两个方面来描述。“人员结构安排”是哪个职能哪个管理层次的管理信息系统的任务?
Whenyouhavetomeetsomeonefromadifferentculture,beprepared.Ifyouunderstandculturaldifferences,you’llbeabetter【
最新回复
(
0
)