四级单项选择阅读理解附讲解：2012年6月真题(1)Part II Reading Comprehension(Skimming andScanning)(15minutes)Directions:In this part,you will have 15 minutes togo over the passage quickly and answer thequestions on Answer sheet 1.For questions 1-7,choose thebestanswer from the four choices marked A),B),C)andD).For questions 8-10,complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.Small Schools RisingThis year's list of the top 100 high schools shows that today,those with fewerstudents areflourishing.Fifty years ago,they were the latest thing in educational reform:big,modern,suburban highschools with students counted in the thousands.As baby boomers(二战后婴儿潮时期出生的A)came of high-school age,big schools promised economic efficiency.Agreater choice of courses,and,of course,better football teams.Only yearslater did we understand the trade-offs this involved:the creation of excessivebureaucracies(宫僚机构)，the difficulty of forging personal connections between teachersand students.SAT scores began dropping in 1963;today,on average,30%of students do notcomplete high school in four years,a figure that rises to 50%in poor urbanneighborhoods.While the emphasis on teaching to higher,test-driven standards as set in NoChild Left Behind resulted in significantly better performance inelementary(and some middle)schools,high schools for a variety of reasonsseemed to havemade little progress.Size isn't everything,but it does matter,and the past decade has seen a noticeablecountertrend toward smaller schools.This has been due ,in part to the Billand Melinda Gates Foundation,which has invested $1.8 billion in American high schools,helpingto open about 1,000 small schools-most of them with about 400 kids eachwith an average enrollment of only 150 per grade,About 500 more are on thedrawing board.Districts all over the country are taking notice,along with mayors in citieslike New York,Chicago and San Diego.The movement includes independent public charterschools,such as No.1 BASIS in Tucson,with only 120 high-schoolers and 18graduates this year.It embraces district-sanctioned magnet schools,such as the Talented andGifted School,with 198 students,and the Science and EngineeringMagnet,with383,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 itincludes alternative schools with students selected by lottery(),such as H-B Woodlawn inArlington,Va.And most noticeable of all,there is the phenomenon oflarge 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 ofstudents all marching to the same band.Hillsdale High School in San Mateo,Calif,is one ofthose,ranking No.423-among the top 2%in the country-on Newsweek's annual ranking ofAmerica's top highschools.The success of small schools is apparent in the listings.Ten years ago,when the firstNewsweek list based on college-level test participation was published,only three of the top 100 schools had graduating Classes smaller than 100 students.This yearthere are 22.Nearly 250 schools on the full ,Newsweek list ofthe top 5%of schools nationally had fewer than 200 graduates in 2007.Although many of Hillsdale's students came from wealthy households,by the Iate 1990 averagetest scores were sliding and it had earned the unaffectionatenickname(绰号)"Hillsjail."Jeff Gilbert.A Hillsdale teacher who became principal last year,rememberssitting with other teachers watching students file out of agraduation ceremony and asking one another in astonishment,"How did that studentgraduate?"So in 2003 Hillsdale remade itself into three "houses,"romantically named Florence,Marrakechand Kyoto.Each of the 300 arriving ninth graders are randomly(随机assigned to one of the houses.Where they will keep the same four core subject teachersfor two years,before moving on to another for 11th and 12thgrades.Thecloseness this system cultivates is reinforced by the institution of "advisory"classes Teachersmeet with students in groups of 25,five mornings a week,for open-ended discussions of everything from homework problems to bad Saturday-night dates.Theadvisers also meet with students privately and stay in touch with parents,sothey are deeply invested in the students'success."We're constantly talking about oneanother's advisers,"says English teacher Chris Crockett."If you hear thatyours isn't doing well in math,or see them sitting outside the dean's office,it's like a personalfailure.Along with the new structure came a more demandingacademic program,the percentage of freshmen taking biology jumped from17 to 95."It wasrough for some.But by senior year,two-thirds have movedup to physics,says Gilbert "Our kids are coming to school in part because they know there are adults herewho know them and care for them."But not all schools show advances afterdownsizing,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 asingle metric,the proportion of students taking college-levelexams.Over the years this system has come in for its share of criticism for itssimplicity.Butthat is also its strength:it's easy for readers to understand,and todo 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)from five states wrote to ask that their schools be excluded fromthe calculation."It is impossible to know which high schools are 'the best'in the nation,"theirletter read.in part."Determining whether different schools do