Программа дисциплины «Основы философии»

The Push for National Standards: What Parents Need to Know 
Maybe you've run into this problem. Your child is near the top of his 3rd 
grade class and excited about going to school every day. But after a move to another 
state, your son enters a new 3rd grade class and finds that his old school was far behind 
where his new classmates are in math. He struggles to adjust to a new neighborhood and 
a new school. And on top of that, he struggles to try to catch up with his new 
classmates. 
That's an issue that a group of educators from across the country, led by the 
National Governor's Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, hopes 
will be addressed with the introduction of a new set of academic standards for the core 
subjects of math and English. 
The standards were introduced earlier this month and 48 of 50 states have 
committed to helping with the effort and working to adopt the standards when they are 
finalized after a period of public comment and review. One state, Kentucky, has already 
approved the standards. 
The whole idea of common academic standards is one that education officials have 
argued about for years. Dane Linn, director of education for the National Governor's 

---

29 
Association, said the group looked to countries like Finland, the Netherlands and New 
Zealand, whose students regularly outperform not just Americans, but just about all 
other kids in the world. They also focused on the examples of top performing states in 
America, such as Indiana, with its High Tech School project; California with its Green 
Schools and some of the most successful magnet schools through the country. 
17. Прочитайте и переведите текст.
Is America Failing Math? 
Much attention has been paid lately to the “Achievement Gap” between our 
nation’s highest and lowest
-performing students. It's become the focal point for reform 
programs like the No Child Left Behind Act and the Race to the Top Program. These 
programs assume that our top students are setting a high bar, and that their schools are 
places to emulate. But are they? A team of researchers from Stanford and Munich 
decided to compare America’s highest
-achieving students with those from other 
countries. After studying scores from the international PISA math exam, they came to a 
disturbing conclusion: “the percentage of American students in the U.S. class of 2009 
who are highly accomplished is well below that of most countries with which the US 
compares itself.” In other words, only 6% of American students scored at the highest 
level, compared to countries like Taiwan at 28%, South Korea at 23%, and Finland at 
20%. In fact, the list of thirty countries that outscored us “…includes virtually all
of the 
advanced industrialized nations of the world.”
The researchers wondered whether the scores were skewed because our public 
schools take all comers. But when they compared subsets like white students, or 
students from college-educated parents, they found that these groups also lagged behind 
most of the other countries: “this is not a story of immigrant or disadvantaged or 
minority students hiding the strong performance of better-
prepared students.”
18. 
Прочитайте
и
переведите
текст
.