Part 2. Education then and now.

A.Keywords

reading, math, science, academic progress.

Vocabulary

glean, decimal, fraction, stall, calculus.

A1. Here is a news report on how young students in the United States have been doing since 1969. Listen to the first part of the report, and complete the following research findings.

For nearly 30 years now, the US government has tested nine-, thirteen-, and seventeen-year-olds in reading, math and science.
The information that researchers gleaned for these tests is the closest thing this country has to a national report card on students' academic progress.
Today the Education Department released a lengthy study detailing how students have been doing since 1969. The government's test results are pretty mixed.
Today's nine-, thirteen-, and seventeen-year-olds can add, subtract, multiply and divide better than they could 30 years ago. As they get older, today's students are more skilled in basic geometry, use decimals, percentages and fractions.
In reading, scores improved during 1970s and 80s. Then they dropped and stayed flat for most of the 1990s. This means kids in all three age groups may have trouble locating and identifying facts from stories or summarizing and explaining what they read.
Nine-year-olds today, however, do have a slightly better grasp of science than they did in 1969 when the first science test was given nationwide. But again, science score for thirteen- and seventeen-year-olds have stalled.