阅读理解 Last year the nation's best-known business consulting firm ran an international survey to try to determine why certain countries—like Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore and South Korea—seem to have the best schools. The answer came back, somewhat unsurprisingly, that these countries have the best teachers; educators who are respected, rewarded, and held accountable for their performance in the classroom.
This may seem obvious, but you would never have guessed watching the Democratic debate in Las Vegas the week before Thanksgiving. All the candidates give lip service to the importance of education to the nation's future. And it goes without saying that accountability is the key to performance in any job. Yet when John Roberts of CNN asked the candidates if school boards should be able to reward teachers or fire them based on performance, all the Democrats headed for the hills, hemming and hawing and obfuscating their answers.
What's going on here? In short, the power of the teachers' unions. The National Education Association is a big hitter in the Democratic Party. The NEA is all about job security, so you won't find Democrats leading crusades to weed out bad teachers. The Republicans don't do much better. They say they are reluctant to meddle in local school governance and instead push for vouchers so kids can go to private or parochial schools.
In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg hired Joel Klein, a former Justice Department antitrust chief in the Clinton administration, to run the city's chaotic schools. Klein managed to get a third of the school principals to sign an agreement that would allow them to be terminated for cause. And he got the teachers' union to agree to give up this absurd privilege: in New York, for many years, teachers with seniority could show up at any school they wanted and teach there, shoving aside teachers with less seniority. Klein won the right to stop low-performing senior teachers from exercising this droit du seigneur. Some of them just went home rather than teaching wherever they wanted to—and were still paid in full. That doesn't sound like an enormous step toward teacher accountability, but it was a struggle for New York to extract even these comparatively modest concessions from the teachers' union, and it shows how far there is to go. Teacher accountability is at the heart of true education reform. If only the presidential candidates would even dare to discuss the problem.
单选题 6.According to the survey,the common feature of the best schools is that they have_________.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】细节题。首段首句提到了一项全球调查的目的是找出加拿大、芬兰、日本、新加坡以及韩国等国家拥有最好学校的原因。调查结果显示：这些国家之所以有一流的学校，是因为他们有一流的教师。所以[B]“一流的师资”正确。
单选题 7.According to the text,what is the essential quality for teachers?
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】推断题。第二段第三句提到民主党候选人认为责任心是做好任何工作的关键。本文最后一段倒数第二句也提到教师的责任心才是教育改革的真正核心。[A]“能力”、[B]“诚信”、[C]“守时”固然是教师应具备的素质，但不符合本处语境，故排除。因此[D]“责任心”为答案。
单选题 8.It can be inferred from Paragraph 2 and Paragraph 3 that_________.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】推断题。第二段结尾提到是否能根据教师的表现决定奖惩时，候选人都支支吾吾，故可推断[A]“全国教育协会不是根据责任心大小来评价教师”为答案。第三段提到全国教育协会在民主党内的地位举足轻重，因为它的职能是保证职业安全。所以民主党内从来没有人搞改革运动，淘汰不合格教师。故排除[C]“民主党有权奖惩不合格教师”；共和党也表示不便干涉当地学校的管理，故排除[D]“共和党可以干预当地学校管理”；本段最后一句介绍了共和党人可以申请把孩子转到私立或教会学校读书，但并未说明[B]“许多孩子宁愿选择去私立学校读书”，故排除[B]。
单选题 9.In the text,the word"droit du seigneur"(Line 6, Para. 4) most probably means_______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】语义题。第四段首句提到纽约市学校管理混乱。乔尔.可莱上任后采取了一系列整顿措施，其中包括让教师协会同意放弃一个荒谬的特权：资历深的教师能到他们想去的任何学校任教的特权。同时，乔尔.可莱也有权阻止那些资历深却不称职的教师享受特权。因此droit du seigneur的意思是“任意择校任教的权利”，故[D]为答案。
单选题 10.We can conclude from Paragraph 4 that the candidates_______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】推断题。最后一段主要介绍了乔尔.可莱敢于挑战教师协会的权威，突出教师责任心在教学中的重要性，在教学改革方面迈出了关键的一步。但是，那些总统候选人却为了自保，在媒体面前不敢公然与教师协会唱反调。所以作者在本文最后一句才用了虚拟的手段表示出了自己的无奈。故可推断出总统候选人“坚信明哲保身”，故[D]为答案。