Helping teachers to lift student achievement more effectively has become a major theme in US education. Most efforts that are now in their early stages or being planned focus either on building the skills of teachers already in the classroom or on retaining the best and dismissing the least effective performers. The question of who should actually teach and how the nation' s schools might attract more young people from the top tier of college graduates, as part of a systematic effort to improve teaching in the United States, has received comparatively little attention. McKinsey's experience with school systems in more than 50 countries suggests that this is an important gap in the US debate. In a new report, Closing the Talent Gap : Attracting and Retaining Top-Third Graduates to Careers in Teaching , we review the experiences of the world's top-performing systems, in Finland, Singapore, and South Korea. These countries recruit 100 percent of their teacher corps from the top third of the academic cohort. Along with strong training and good working conditions, this extraordinary selectivity is part of an integrated system that promotes the prestige of teaching—and has achieved extraordinary results. In the United States, by contrast, only 23 percent of new teachers come from the top third, and just 14 percent of new teachers who come from the top third work in high-poverty schools, where attracting and retaining talented people is particularly difficult. The report asks what it would take to emulate nations that systematically recruit top students to teaching if the United States decided that it was worthwhile to do so. McKinsey's survey of nearly 1,500 top-third US college students and current teachers, highlighted in the report, shows that a major effort would be needed to attract and retain the best students to teaching. The stakes are high: recent McKinsey research found that a persistent achievement gap between US students and those in top-performing nations imposes the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession. Research on whether the academic background of teachers is a useful predictor of classroom effectiveness has had mixed results, and no single reforjn can be depicted as a silver bullet. But the success of the best-performing national systems suggests that an effort to attract the country's top students to teaching deserves serious examination as part of a comprehensive human-capital strategy for the US education system.
单选题
Among efforts to improve teaching in the United States, the following has received much attention EXCEPT______.
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】解析：此题为细节分析题。根据题干信息定位答案至第一段。作者欲抑先扬，在文章开始介绍了美国教育界为提高其教育质量而做的各种努力，如：注重培养现任老师的能力，注重留住最佳人才，并且淘汰绩效最差者；但随后笔锋一转，指出“什么人应该从事教育工作，美国的学校应该如何吸引更多的高校优秀毕业生”这一本应作为“系统性努力的一部分”却没有得到足够的关注(has received comparatively little attention)。因此，D选项为正确答案。
单选题
Which of the following statements is not true according to the second paragraph?
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】解析：此题为细节推断题。根据题干信息the second paragraph定位在第二段。该段第二句提到，“……我们研究了芬兰、新加坡和韩国等世界上表现优异的教学系统经验”，可知，排除B项；该段第四句提到，“除了……条件外，这种特异的用人选择性也是提高教学声望的整合系统努力的一部分……”，因此，排除C项；该段倒数第二句，“……，只有14％来自排名前三分之一高校的新老师在极度贫困的学校就职，像这样的学校，吸引并留住有才能的人是非常困难的”，可排除D项。在第二段中有提到，“这些国家(芬兰、新加坡和韩国)的教师100％出自在学业方面排名前三分之一的毕业生”，在倒数第二句又指出“在美国只有23％的新教师出自排名前三分之一的高校毕业生”。但这并不能说明，美国教师就一定比芬兰、新加坡或韩国的教师差。因此，此题A选项为正确答案。
单选题
We can see from the third paragraph that______.
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】解析：此题为细节分析题。根据题干信息the third paragraph定位在第三段。该段第一句提到，“1500名学生(来自排名前三分之一的美国高校学生及目前正在从事教师工作的人)”是麦卡锡进行研究的调查对象，因此，排除D项；接着第一句后半句指出，“……需要付出巨大的努力来吸引和留住优等生教学”，说明他们还没有足够成功地完成该项工作，排除A项；该段第二句：“美国学生与那些在教育方面表现最为出色的国家的学生之间的学业差距，对国家在经济方面的持久衰退产生了同等的影响。”由此可排除C项，选出B项。
单选题
We can draw a conclusion from the last paragraph that______.
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】解析：此题为细节推断题。根据题干信息the last paragraph定位在第四段。第一句意思是：“关于是否老师的学术背景可以当做课堂效益的有用指标的研究结果是混杂的，任何单独的改革都不能被描述成解决问题的杀手锏。”这句话表明，教师的大学教育背景并不一定就能预测教师的课堂效果，所以把提高教育质量的赌注压在教师的大学教育背景上是行不通的。换句话说，也就是A项的内容“单靠吸引并留住优秀毕业生从事教育工作并非一定能提升学生的成绩”，由此判断，A选项为正确答案。
单选题
What is the author's attitude towards American education system?