好英语网中学竞争激烈纽约小学生争进培训班
As their parents sat anxiously in a waiting room, five children were sharpening their test-taking skills in a tutoring center in TriBeCa, underlining words that might hold clues to the answers and crossing off the illogical multiple-choice options intended to trip them up. For homework, there were more practice problems.
在纽约翠贝卡(TriBeCa)的一个辅导中心里，五个孩子正在磨砺他们的应考技巧，而他们的家长在等候室里焦虑地坐着。学生们在有可能为答案提供线索的词句下面划线，划去那些不合逻辑、目的就是难倒他们的选项，下课后他们还要做大量习题。
The tutoring business has come a long way from Stanley Kaplan’s basement in Brooklyn, and test-preparation courses for college or private school admission are practically a rite of American education. But in New York City, where even seats in public schools can be the rewards of a Darwinian contest, the industry has found a whole new lode to mine.
自从斯坦利·卡普兰(Stanley Kaplan)在布鲁克林一间地下室开设考前培训班以来，备考辅导业务走过了一段很长的路，大学或私人学校的录取考试补习班实际上已经成为了美国教育界的一种惯例。但是在纽约市，一个入读公立学校也会经过达尔文式适者生存竞争的地方，辅导行业找到了一座可供开采的全新矿脉。
从左至右，克洛伊·陆、尼古拉斯·吕、辅导老师葆拉·希格拉和哈利·斯万逊在“Bright Kids NYC”举办的辅导班上。
The students in the Manhattan center, all high achievers in their elementary schools, were practicing for the state standardized tests that begin this week, exams that for years had typically been overlooked, if not ignored, by the parents of top performers.
曼哈顿那家辅导中心的小学优等生甚至要为全州标准化考试做准备。多年来，好学生的家长通常都会忽视，甚至可能无视这项考试。
But competition for top middle schools has intensified as more families choose to remain in the city and others find themselves unable to afford private schools, and performance on fourth- and fifth-grade standardized tests is crucial to getting into one of those schools. So many parents — some wealthy, some not — are now shelling out hundreds and even thousands of dollars for tutors and for courses like the eight-week Saturday morning boot camp in TriBeCa. And that is on top of test preparation that almost all elementary schools now provide in class.
但是随着越来越多的家庭选择留在这座城市，以及一些家庭无法负担私人学校的费用，进入优秀中学的竞争已经加剧了，而四、五年级的标准化考试分数对于进入好学校来说非常关键。所以很多家长——有些比较富裕，有些并不富裕——会支付数百甚至数千美元为孩子聘请辅导老师，或者让孩子参加培训班，比如每周六上午在纽约翠贝卡区开课的八周制培训班。这种付费辅导是课外的，现在几乎所有小学原本都会在课堂上提供考前培训。
“This is just us wanting to kind of ease the pressure of the test,” said the father of a third grader enrolled in the TriBeCa program, run by Bright Kids NYC. The program costs about $550 for eight one-hour tutoring sessions. He asked to remain anonymous because he feared his decision to pay for tutoring would reflect poorly on his daughter’s school, the Lower Lab School on the Upper East Side, which like most schools makes its own efforts to prepare students for tests. “I think a lot of families are tutoring in some way,” he said. “Everybody we know does something.”
“我们只是希望缓解这项考试的压力，”一位父亲说，他读三年级的女儿参加了在翠贝卡举办的培训班。这个培训由Bright Kids NYC开办，费用约为550美元，每次一小时，一共八次。这位父亲不愿意透露名字，因为他担心让女儿参加付费辅导显得瞧不起女儿所在的洛尔实验学校(Lower Lab School)。这所学校位于纽约上东区，像大多数学校一样，它也在为学生做考前培训。“我觉得很多家庭都参加了某种形式的辅导，”他说：“我们认识的每个人都是这么做的。”
The Education Department has not tried to discourage private tutoring, nor would officials say whether they are concerned about the possibility that it could give wealthier students an unfair advantage in middle school admissions. But the department has already seen an unusual rise in high scores on its tests for gifted programs, administered to 4- and 5-year-olds, with figures released on Friday showing 2,656 students qualifying for roughly 400 seats in the most selective schools this fall.
美国教育部没有阻止私人开设辅导业务，官员也不会谈及他们是否担心在中学录取工作中，这种情形可能会给富裕家庭的学生带来不公平的优势。但教育部已经发现，在招收四到五岁孩子的“资优班”考试中，获得高分的人数出现了不同寻常的增长。四月份公布的数字显示，今年秋天有2656名学生获得资格申请最好的重点学校的400个入学名额。
The department is switching to a new type of gifted test next year, partly in response to concerns that tutoring and test preparation are influencing the results.
从明年起，教育部将改用一种新类型的“资优考试”，部分原因就是担心学生参加的辅导和考前准备会影响考试结果。
“Students at schools with strong teaching and a rich curriculum should be well prepared for the annual exams,” said Shael Polakow-Suransky, the department’s chief academic officer. “At the same time, we do encourage families to reinforce what students learn in the classroom with activities like reading, writing and solving complex problems.”
“在教学能力强、课程安排丰富的学校中，学生应该已经为迎接这项年度考试做好了准备，”教育部首席学术官谢尔·普拉科-舒兰斯基(Shael Polakow-Suransky)说：“与此同时，我们也鼓励家长通过阅读、写作和解决综合问题等活动来巩固学生在教室里学到的东西。”
Bige Doruk, the founder of Bright Kids NYC, said she began offering the math and language arts boot camp in response to parental demand and had opened more classes in the last month, as the tests drew near. Most of the students in these classes do not need remediation, she said, but their parents want assurance that when the exams begin on Tuesday, their children will be comfortable and not lose their cool.
Bright Kids NYC的创始人比奇·多鲁克(Bige Doruk)说，她开设数学和英文培训班是响应家长的需求，随着考试日期的临近，她在三月份开设了更多的培训班。多鲁克说这些培训班里的大部分学生不需要补习，但是家长们希望开考的时候，孩子们可以泰然自若地应考，不会表现得慌张失措。
Some hire tutors when their children are in third grade, a full year before they will take the fourth-grade tests that many selective middle schools use for admissions.
一些家长在孩子读三年级时就开始聘请辅导老师了，这离四年级考试还有整整一年时间。很多重点中学都是根据四年级考试的成绩来录取学生的。
“Parents are feeling the pressure more,” said Robin Aronow, a private and public school admissions consultant. “I know parents who have resisted tutoring because they thought it was crazy, but just the fact that I’ve had parents resist it means there’s a lot of it going on.”
“家长们感到了更多的压力。”私立和公立学校的招生顾问罗宾·阿罗诺(Robin Aronow)说：“我知道有些家长在抵制补习，因为他们觉得这种做法很疯狂，但‘有人抵制’本身就说明这种现象很普遍了。”
Tutoring companies have popped up across the city, and a quick Internet search turns up dozens of one-on-one or group programs set up for the state’s math and reading exams.
纽约各处冒出了很多辅导公司，在互联网上快速搜索一下，你就可以看到几十种针对全州数学和阅读统考的“一对一”辅导或补习班。
Sylvan Learning advertises test prep for “any state test” on its Web site; Manhattan Edge Education offers individual tutoring for the state exams at rates of $80 to $150 an hour, its Web site says; Park Slope Tutorial Services, which charges $75 an hour, reminds parents just how tough it is to get into a good middle school. Although Kumon does not brand itself as tutoring for a particular exam, parents do use the company for the state tests, and 642 third and fourth graders are currently enrolled in the 12 Manhattan locations.
Sylvan Learning在其网站上宣传针对“各州统考”的补习班；Manhattan Edge Education的网站上说可以为全州统考提供个别辅导，价格为每小时80至 150美元；Park Slope Tutorial Services的收费是每小时75美元，它还提醒家长说，小孩要进入一个好中学非常困难。虽然Kumon没有宣传针对特定考试的补习，家长们确实在购买该公司的全州统考辅导服务，目前有642名三年级和四年级学生在Kumon位于曼哈顿各处的12个教学点参加补习。
This elbows-out and wallets-open competition for top middle schools is most apparent in Manhattan, where a boom in development has carried in a flood of elementary- and middle-school-age children. Since 2002, four new schools serving the middle grades have opened in District 2, which runs from the Upper East Side to Lower Manhattan, and others have expanded, according to the city. But that has not cooled the contest over selective middle schools like the Salk School of Science, which received 777 applications for 146 seats last year.
进入重点中学的竞争十分激烈，成本高昂，这种情况在曼哈顿最为明显，该区域的繁荣发展导致了大量小学和初中适龄儿童涌入。城市记录显示，自2002年以来，从曼哈顿上东区到曼哈顿下城的2区已经新开了四所中学，其他学校也在扩大规模，但好中学的入学竞争并没有因此降温，比如索尔克科学学校(Salk School of Science)去年就收到了777份申请，但入学名额只有146个。
To have a shot at schools like these, fifth graders need to have scored at least a Level 3 — out of 4 — on both the reading and math exams in fourth grade. But at some of the most-sought-after schools, a Level 3, which means that the student met the state’s standards, is insufficient.
要入读这种学校，五年级学生的四年级阅读和数学考试成绩至少要达到3级——最高为 4级，3级表示学生达到了该州的标准，但在一些最抢手的学校，3级成绩是不够的。
To apply to Delta, a gifted program at Middle School 54 on the Upper West Side, the children needed to reach Level 4 on both exams, or a combined scale score of 1,385 out of 1,575, according to the school’s Web site. At Anderson, one of the city’s most selective middle schools, they needed a 725 on the English test and a 731 on the math test. That means they could get no more than four wrong answers on the English test and five on the math test, making every missed question a costly one.
“三角洲”(Delta)是上西区54中学开设的一个资优班，学校在网站上表示，要申请这个班，学生需要在两项考试中都达到4级，或者在总分为1575的综合量表分中获得1385分以上。安德森(Anderson)是最有名的优秀中学之一，它的英语考试分数线是725，数学分数线是731。也就是说，学生在英语测试中答错的题不能超过四个，数学考试中不能超过五个，每错一题的代价都很高昂。
And those scores do not guarantee admission; they simply qualify the student to take another test, given by the school itself.
就算达到这样的成绩也不能担保会被学校录取；它仅仅表示该生有资格参加学校自己组织的另一个测试。
Students who want to take the Hunter College High School test for seventh-grade admission must score high on the fifth-grade standardized tests.
希望参加亨特学院高中(Hunter College High School) 七年级入学考试的学生，必须在五年级的标准化考试中获得高分。
At one highly regarded school, East Side Middle School on the Upper East Side, each applicant is graded on a 30-point scale. Seven of those points are assigned based on students’ reading and math exam scores — 3.5 points for a score of 4, 2.5 for a score of 3 — and the rest are based on an interview, a writing sample, a math quiz and the elementary school report card.
上东区的东区中学(East Side Middle School) 是一所非常有名的学校，它按30分的总分给每个申请者打分。其中7分是根据申请者的阅读和数学考试成绩——需要分别在满分4分的测试中取得3.5分，在3分的测试中取得2.5分——其他分数的依据是面试、一篇作文、一个数学测验以及小学成绩单。
The school received about five applications this year for every open seat — and those were only the applicants who ranked the school as their first choice. The principal, David Getz, said he had heard people talking about children being tutored for the fourth-grade exams, but had not noticed whether his incoming sixth graders had been prepped.
今年，这所学校的每个名额都有五个人在竞争——这还只计入了把这所学校列为第一志愿的学生——该校校长大卫·盖茨(David Getz)说，他曾听人谈到过四年级的备考辅导，但没有注意到即将进入该校的六年级学生是否参加过这种辅导。
“I would hope parents were doing that because their kids were struggling over all, as opposed to just doing well on that specific test,” Mr. Getz said.
盖茨先生说：“我希望家长们这样做是因为孩子的整体学习很吃力，而不是特意为了考试做准备。”