Ques: I'm taking a test and have to guess the right answer to the question after the article. Article: In her new book, "The Smartest Kids in the World," Amanda Ripley, an investigative journalist, tells the story of Tom, a high-school student from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, who decides to spend his senior year in Warsaw, Poland. Poland is a surprising educational success story: in the past decade, the country raised students' test scores from significantly below average to well above it. Polish kids have now outscored(......) American kids in math and science, even though Poland spends, on average, less than half as much per student as the United States does. One of the most striking differences between the high school Tom attended in Gettysburg and the one he ends up at in Warsaw is that the latter has no football team, or, for that matter, teams of any kind. That American high schools lavish more time and money on sports than on math is an old complaint. This is not a matter of how any given student who plays sports does in school, but of the culture and its priorities. This December, when the latest Program for International Student Assessment(PISA) results are announced, it's safe to predict that American high-school students will once again display their limited skills in math and reading, outscored not just by students in Poland but also by students in places like South Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Singapore, and Japan. Meanwhile, they will have played some very exciting football games, which will have been breathlessly written up in their hometown papers. Why does this situation continue? Well, for one thing, kids like it. And for another, according to Ripley, parents seem to like the arrangement, too. She describes a tour she took of a school in Washington D.C., which costs thirty thousand dollars a year. The tour leader--a mother with three children in the school--was asked about the school's flaws . When she said that the math program was weak, none of the parents taking the tour reacted. When she said that the football program was weak, the parents suddenly became concerned. "Really?"... Question: The purpose of this article is to _ . Options: A: draw public attention to a weakness in American school tradition B: call on American schools to learn from the Polish model C: compare Polish schools with those in America D: explain what is wrong with American schools and provide solutions
Ans: A

Ques: I'm taking a test and have to guess the right answer to the question after the article. Article: CHICAGO ---Call it a reward, or just "bribery ". Whichever it is, many parents today readily admit to buying off their children, who getgoodies for anything from behaving in a restaurant to sleeping all night in their own beds. That's what worries parenting experts. "I think that reward systems have a time and a place and work really well in certain situations," says Marcy Safyer, director of the Adelphi University Institute for Parenting. "But what often gets lost for people is being able to figure out how to communicate to their kids that doing the thing is rewarding enough," Safyer says. Parents and experts alike agree that thedynamic is partly a reflection of the world we live in. It's unrealistic to think a parent wouldn't reward their children with material things sometimes, says Robin Lanzi, a clinical psychologist and mother of four who's the research director at the Center on Health and Education at Georgetown University. "But you want to make sure that they match the behavior, so it's not something huge for something small," Lanzi says. She recalls hearing about a father who offered his child a Nintendo Wii game system for scoring a couple goals in a soccer game. Elizabeth Powell, a mother of two young daughters in Austin, Texas, knows what she means. "You want to raise them in a way that they're respectful and appreciate things," Powell says of her children. "But sometimes, you wonder now if kids appreciate even a new pair of shoes. " Question: Parenting experts are worried that _ . Options: A: today's children are fed up with material things B: parents are rewarding their kids improperly C: today's children are more and more demanding D: there is lack of communication between parents and children
Ans: B

Ques: I'm taking a test and have to guess the right answer to the question after the article. Article: Google is preparing for changes in its privacy policy beginning March 1st. The company says it plans to replace more than 60 separate policies for different products with one main policy. Privacy activists criticized last month's announcement. They are concerned that the new policy will make it easier to track the activities of users across Google's many products -- from Gmail to YouTube. Marc Rotenberg heads the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. He says Google's aim is to create a single unified profile of its users. "We believe that not only is that a threat to privacy, we actually believe it is illegal, because last year Google entered into an agreement with the US Federal Trade Commission in which they said they would not engage in that kind of data sharing without the permission of their users." Google says its new policy will make it simpler for users to share information across services like Google Search, Gmail and Google Calendar. And it says the new policy will help personalize each user's experience. Over time, it says, users can expect to see better search results, fewer unwanted advertisements and more content targeted to their interests. But Marc Rotenberg says in return, people who choose to use Google will lose control over the information they share. "The type of information you might provide for an e-mail service, for example, such as your address book, which contains private information, is different from the type of information that you might provide for a social network service where people purposely make information publicly available to their friends." Mr. Rotenberg says these two kinds of services should be kept separate. "By trying to combine these two services, in our view, Google is actually undermining a very well established expectation of privacy, especially for popular Internet services like electronic mail." Critics also see a bigger problem with Google's new policy. The plan would not give users a choice to drop out of the data sharing. "In our view, if... Question: What's Google's purpose to change its privacy policy according to Marc Rotenberg? Options: A: To serve its users better. B: To make it easier for their work C: To personalize each user's experience D: To build up a unified profile of its users
Ans:
D