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  3. Calculus does not have to be made easy—it is easy already. That banner used to grace the Los Angeles classroom of someone once c

Calculus does not have to be made easy—it is easy already. That banner used to grace the Los Angeles classroom of someone once c

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问题     Calculus does not have to be made easy—it is easy already. That banner used to grace the Los Angeles classroom of someone once called the best teacher in America. Jaime Escalante, the unconventional calculus teacher who was depicted by Edward James Olmos in the 1988 film Stand and Deliver, died last year of cancer at the age of 79.
    Half a year after his death the Obama administration weighed in on the state of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education in this country. The report, " Prepare and Inspire," reviewed the sobering statistics about what our K-12 schools undergo by comparison to their counterparts in other developed nations. It called for recruiting and training 100,000 STEM teachers.
    But achieving these goals is not going to be easy. The report noted that 25,000 STEM teachers leave the workforce every year, mostly because of disgruntlement with their jobs and lack of professional support. To attract and retain enough science and math teachers will require an elevation in their status and a thorough revamping of attitudes toward the entire profession.
    The onus to improve schools should be on federal, state and local educational strategists. The first step should be to tap the strengths of the existing teaching pool. We must identify today’s Escalantes—the top 5 percent of the nation’s STEM teachers—and, as recommended in the administration report, induct them into a STEM master teachers corps that would receive salary supplements and federal funding to support their activities. Second, we need to give all teachers the tools they need. We should form the equivalent of an Advanced Research Projects Agency to help develop educational technologies, including "deeply digital" instructional materials that encourage active participation. Finally, we should shift our emphasis from standards to implementation. Developing new standards does have a role, but it is the difficulty of putting them into practice, given the day-to-day pressures that teachers are under.
    To meet all the goals set by the White House report would require an extra $1 billion each year. Against the nearly $600 billion spent annually for public education, it is not a huge sum. Still, with local districts faced with declining tax revenues and unfunded mandates, some of the money will have to come from the federal government.
    That goes against the grain during a time when teachers’ salaries and benefits are being cut. Yet the costs of doing nothing are a matter of simple calculus. If we do not improve STEM education, the U. S. will continue a decades-long slide from the middle of the pack in student achievement toward the very bottom.
The author holds that STEM education in America is currently in a______situation.
选项 A、chaotic
B、difficult
C、perilous
D、hopeful
答案B
解析 推断题。对于美国理学教育的评估，主要集中在第二段和第三段。其中作者提到了学生与其他发达国家相比所遭受的境遇，以及对教师们的需求，而另一方面教师又对自己工作处境不满，因此B是对当前教育状况的合理概括。
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