I am truly saddened about what is going on in my school district, especially in the school where I am
currently working.
    Why are so many students not doing well? Why is there such a huge achievement gap between urban
and suburban students? Just this week, in my school the seventh grade team leader called a meeting to
discuss academic detention (放学后留校). The purpose of the detention is to allow students who are
doing poorly a second chance to redo the work. Now if a student did not understand an assignment I
have no trouble allowing that student to redo a test or give some extra credit work, but if a student did
poorly because he/she opted(选择) not to do the work out of sheer laziness, that student should not be
given a second chance.
    And parents should be held accountable for their children. That is another reason why there is such a
huge achievement gap. All children should be monitored at home in order to achieve great success in
school. Perhaps it might be a great idea for urban school districts to offer free classes to parents on how
to help their students at home. Of course this idea is far fetched, after all we do not want to offend the
parents. What we will do instead is to spend a fortune on teacher training because if the kids are not
doing well it must be the fault of the teacher. That kind of mindset, if allowed to continue will be a perfect
recipe for greater achievement gaps.
     I started working at my current school in August and I have been in the teaching field for 25 years.
What I believe is that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make that  horse drink. You can't
force kids to change bad habits over  night, nor can we afford to lower standards just so a kid can  pass
a class.

1. The seventh grade team leader in the author's school called    a meeting to ________.
A. analyse the reason for the huge achievement gap between students
B. find out who is to blame for the huge achievement gap between students
C. talk about giving students who are doing poorly a second  chance to redo the work
D. discuss how to narrow the huge achievement gap between students

2. The author believes that a student can be given a second chance ________.
A. if he did poorly the first time
B. for whatever reason he did poorly the first time
C. if he failed the first time in spite of his efforts
D. if he comes from a suburban area

3. In the last paragraph, the author intends to tell us that ________.
A. a student can make improvement only when he is willing to
B. teachers are to blame if his students are doing poorly
C. the school should force those students to work harder if   they're doing poorly
D. the school should treat different students with different standards