Our current education system is unlikely to accomplish this dramatic rethinking. Imagine, for a moment, that American cars had been free in recent decades, while Toyotas and Hondas sold at full price. We'd probably be driving Falcons and Corvairs today. Free public education suffers from a lack of competition in just this way. So while industries from aerospace to drugs have transformed themselves in order to compete, public schooling has stagnated.
School choice could spark the kind of reformation this industry needs by motivating administrators to hire the best and adopt new strategies to keep top teachers in the classroom. The lesson that good teachers matter should be taught, not as a theory, but as a practice.
6. The beginning sentence "Good teachers matter." can mainly be explained as which of the following?
(A) Good teachers help students establish confidence.
(B) Good teachers determine the personality of students.
(C) Good teachers promote student achievement.
(D) Good teachers treat students as their own children.
7. According to the author, seniority pay favors ________.
(A) good teachers' with master's degrees
(B) young and effective teachers
(C) experienced and effective teachers
(D) mediocre teachers of average quality
8. The expression "separate the wheat from the chaff in the teaching profession" is closest in meaning to ________.
(A) distinguish better teachers from less capable ones
(B) differentiate young teachers from old ones
(C) tell the essential qualities of good teaching
(D) reevaluate the role of senior teachers
9. When the author uses the automobile industry as an example, she argues that ________.
(A) Japan's auto industry is exceeding America's auto industry
(B) the public schooling has stagnated because of competition
(C) the current American education system is better than the Japanese one
(D) competition must be introduced into the public education system
10. Which of the following CANNOT be concluded from the passage?
(A) Most average teachers want to leave school because of high pressure.
(B) Excellent teachers often leave schools for better jobs.
(C) The average quality of the teachers in America is declining.
(D) Teachers' quality is closely related to a number of factors.
Questions 11-15
The British author Salman Rushdie is selling his personal archive to a wealthy American university. The archive, which includes personal diaries written during the decade that he spent living in hiding from Islamic extremists, is being bought by the Emory University in Atlanta for an undisclosed sum. The move has sparked concern that Britain's literary heritage is being lost to foreign buyers. The archive also includes two unpublished novels.
Rushdie, 59, said last week that his priority had been to "find a good home" for his papers, but admitted that money had also been a factor. "I don't see why I should give them away," he said. "It seemed to me quite reasonable that one should be paid." The sum involved is likely to match or exceed similar deals. In 2003 Emory bought the archive of Ted Hughes, the late poet laureate, for a reported $600,000. Julian Barnes, the author of Flaubert's Parrot, is said to have sold his papers to the University of Texas at Austin for $200,000.
