ALONG his block in Newark’s West Ward, where drugs are endemic and the young residents talk about shootings with alarming nonchalance, Najee Little is known as the smart kid. He got all A’s his sophomore year, breezing through math and awing his English teachers. His mother, a day care worker, and father, who does odd jobs to make ends meet, have high aspirations for him. They want him to earn a college degree.
在纽瓦克市西区的一片社区，毒品肆虐，年轻人漠然地聊着枪击事件，而纳吉·利特尔(Najee Little)却是公认的聪明孩子。在高中二年级的时候，他是一名全优生，数学考试手到擒来，英语水平让老师称赞不已。他母亲在日托所工作，父亲打着零工，只能勉强度日。全家人对他期望很高，希望他能拿到大学学历。

So last year, when Bard College opened an early college high school in Newark for disadvantaged students with dreams of a bachelor’s degree, he was sure he’d do well there. He wrote his first long paper on Plato’s “Republic,” expecting a top grade. He got a D minus. “Honestly,” he recalled, “I was kind of discouraged.”
所以，当巴德学院(Bard College)去年为梦想拿到学士学位的家庭条件不佳的学生在纽瓦克开设大学先修高中时，他确信自己能在那里表现出色。他写了生平第一篇长论文，讨论柏拉图的《理想国》(Republic)，期望能拿到高分。可是，他却只得到了D-。“老实说，”他回忆道，“我有点灰心。”
That paper marked the beginning of a trying academic path that would both excite and disillusion him. The past two years have been peppered with some promising grades — an A in environmental science — and some doozies. He failed “Africa in World History” and squeaked by in calculus. Mostly, he came to realize that getting into college and staying there would be a herculean task. There was tricky grammar, hard math and tons of homework. There was the neighborhood cacophony to tune out and the call of his Xbox. And there was the fact that no one in his house could help him.
那篇论文标志着他从此踏上了时而激动时而幻灭的艰难学术之路。过去两年的学习里，点缀着一些不错的成绩——环境科学得了A——还有一些非凡的经历。但他的非洲史不及格，微积分也只是勉强通过。最主要的是，他渐渐意识到，上大学并坚持到毕业将是一项极为艰巨的任务：语法复杂、数学艰深、作业无数；要忽略邻居制造的刺耳噪音，还要抵挡游戏机的诱惑；家人却帮不上任何忙。
“My work is more advanced than anyone at home has experienced,” he said. And that, it turns out, is why the school had accepted him.
“我的学业比家里所有人经历过的都复杂，”他说。而这一点，正是学校接收他的原因。
Across the country in communities like Newark, the early college high school model is being lauded as a way to provide low-income students with a road map to and through college. According to the most recent figures from the National Center for Education Statistics, 68 percent of all high school graduates make it to a two- or four-year institution, but only 52 percent of low-income students do the same. Of poor students in four-year institutions, only 47 percent graduate within six years, compared with 58 percent of the general population.
在全美像纽瓦克这样的社区里，大学先修高中的模式广受赞誉，因为它向低收入家庭的学生提供了一条进入并读完大学的途径。根据国家教育统计中心(National Center for Education Statistics)的最新数据，在美国所有的高中毕业生中，能升学到两年或四年制院校的比例为68%，但在低收入家庭的学生中，这一比例仅有52%。就读四年制高校的贫困生里，只有47%能在六年内毕业，与之相比，全体学生中的比例为58%。
Not surprisingly, the challenges are greatest for students whose parents did not attend any college: their graduation rate hovers around 40 percent. Early college high schools seek to rectify that, by merging high school and some college. Students can earn both a high school diploma and an associate degree, and some are set on the path to a four-year degree.
不出意料，对那些父母没有上过大学的学生而言，挑战是最大的：他们的毕业率在40%上下徘徊。为了改善这一点，大学先修高中将一些大学课程和高中课程归并。学生既可以取得高中文凭，也将同时获得副学士学位，其中一些学生还可以踏上四年制学位之路。
Educators and big-ticket donors have praised the schools for saving students money and time — most schools compress the academic experience into four years. Since 2002, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has provided more than $40 million toward initiatives. The Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York have also chipped in. President Obama is a proponent, giving a shout-out in his State of the Union address to P-Tech, a public-private partnership that pairs the New York City public school system and the City University of New York with I.B.M., which promises graduates a shot at a well-paying job.
教育界人士和大额捐赠者对此类学校称赞有加，称它们为学生节省了费用和时间——大多数先修学校将学业压缩到四年完成。自2002年以来，比尔和梅琳达·盖茨基金会(Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)已经向此类计划提供了逾4000万美元（约合2.5亿元人民币）的资助，福特基金会(Ford Foundation)和纽约卡耐基基金会(Carnegie Corporation of New York)亦出资捐助。奥巴马总统也是支持者，曾在国情咨文演说中为P-Tech叫好。P-tech是一个公立和私营机构合作的项目，为纽约公立学校系统、纽约城市大学(City University of New York)与I.B.M.牵线搭桥，从而让毕业生有望取得高薪的就业机会。
There are now more than 400 early college high schools across the country — North Carolina has 76 of them — educating an estimated 100,000 students.
目前，全美的大学先修高中超过400所，惠及约10万名学生，其中，北卡罗来纳州有76所。
Bard, a liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., is at the vanguard of the movement, with a president, Leon Botstein, who has long chastised the American high school system for its inefficiencies. More than 30 years ago, Bard took over Simon’s Rock, a private college for 11th graders and up in Great Barrington, Mass. In 2001, it opened an early college high school in Lower Manhattan, enormously popular with hyper-motivated New Yorkers, and in 2008 it started one in Queens that has become a magnet for the high-achieving offspring of Chinese, Polish and Bengali immigrants. Until now, Bard’s model has largely focused on elite students.
地处纽约州哈德逊河畔安嫩代尔的文理学院巴德正是该运动的先锋，其校长利昂·波特斯坦(Leon Botstein)对美国高中体系的效率低下责备已久。30多年前，巴德接管了设在马萨诸塞州大巴灵顿的西蒙洛克学院(Simon’s Rock)。后者是所私立学院，接收11年级及以上的学生。2001年，巴德在曼哈顿下城开设了一所大学先修高中，在有着强烈积极性的纽约人中极受欢迎。到2008年时，它在皇后区又开设了一所这样的学校，像磁铁一样吸引着成绩优秀的中国、波兰和孟加拉移民后代。到目前为止，巴德模型主要针对精英学生。
In Newark, Bard moved into a school building across from a tire shop and a bail bond business. Hanging outside is a cheerful red banner with the Bard name etched in white, as if to signal that new life is being breathed into the neighborhood.
在纽瓦克，巴德进驻的那栋教学楼位于一家轮胎店和一个保释中介公司对面。欢乐的红色横幅挂在楼外，刻着白色的巴德名号，就像在说，学校向街坊里吹进了新的生机。
Administrators admitted 87 eighth graders as freshmen in fall 2011, and 36 sophomores as juniors who could expect to start college-level work immediately. This year, there are students in all four grades.
该校录取了87名8年级学生作为2011年秋季的新生，另招了36名高二学生进入这里的三年级，可以立即开始大学水平的学业。今年，四个年级都有学生就读。
Najee seemed like a perfect fit. He had been pulling in top marks as a high school sophomore, but was bored by a math class that rarely progressed past the basics and never required homework. Essays for other classes were usually half a page long. Only once did a teacher assign a full-length book to read — “Fahrenheit 451.” And that was over the summer. Najee was also eager to create some distance between himself and his rough-and-tumble neighborhood, where a good friend had been stabbed to death “over an incident with a girl.”
这对纳吉来说就像量身定做一样。高中二年级的时候，他总是得最高分，但数学课很无聊，内容基本不会超越基础知识，还从不要求家庭作业。其它课程的论文通常只要求写半页的内容。仅有一次，有位老师布置了一项要求读完一整本书的作业——《华氏451度》(Fahrenheit 451)——但给了他们整个暑假来完成。纳吉也急切想在自己和混乱的社区间划清界限。他的一位好朋友“因为一个女孩”在那里被人捅死。
His new classmates at Bard were similarly seeking to cocoon themselves somewhere safe and supportive. Miles Scott lives with his grandmother after his mother and father died within two years of each other. Billy Caraballo has been in and out of half a dozen schools. He calls Bard “a second chance.” Marvin Pinkrah transferred from a low-performing high school but had strong early preparation in Ghana. Friends call him “the human dictionary” and turn to him for help.
他在巴德的新同学也同样希望找到安全且能受到支持的地方待着。迈尔斯·斯科特(Miles Scott)的父母在两年内相继去世，他现在和祖母住在一起。比利·卡拉巴罗(Billy Caraballo)换了6所学校。他称巴德是“第二次机会”。马文·平卡罗(Marvin Pinkrah) 是从较差的高中转校过来的，但他在加纳的早期基础很扎实。朋友们称他为“活字典”，经常找他帮忙。
Bard’s goals are unapologetically ambitious, mimicking those at its other schools. Most teachers have doctorates, and some of its curriculum is borrowed from the college itself. Freshmen and sophomores cram yearlong high school math, social studies and science classes into one-semester chunks. Juniors and seniors — they’re called first years and second years — take 60 credits’ worth of college-level courses, on Caribbean literature, multimedia studies and Shakespeare. A series of classes known in Bard parlance as “seminar,” a replica of the series taught on the college campus, explores ancient philosophers and great American and European thinkers.
巴德并不避讳其雄心勃勃的目标，效仿在它旗下的其它学校。大多数教师有博士学位，其中一些课程就是从大学里借用的。一、二年级学生要在一个学期内学完一整年的高中数学、社会学和科学课程。更高的两个年级的学生被称为大一和大二生，要修完60个学分的大学等级课程：加勒比文学、多媒体研究和莎士比亚等。巴德提供一系列的“研讨课”，复制了大学校园里所教的同类课程，探索研究古哲学家和美欧的伟大思想家。
The ethos of early college high schools: catch students up, not by relegating them to the kind of remedial classes required at community colleges but by bombarding them with challenging work. At the Bard school, that means works by Dante, Locke and W.E.B. Du Bois that have populated and enriched the lives of their more affluent peers.
大学先修高中的精神是：不让学生掉队，不是把标准降低到社区大学里要求的那类补习课程，而是用充满挑战的功课激发他们的潜力。在巴德，这意味着学生们将去研读但丁(Dante)、洛克(Locke)和W·E·B·杜波依斯(W.E.B. Du Bois)的著作，而这些书通常是他们追求丰富人生的富裕同龄人才会研读的。
Students say the transition has been tough. Al-Nisa Amin, now a sophomore, remembers slumping over a math problem that first year, crying out of sheer frustration. But she has stuck it out, partly because she is scared of being sent back to her old high school.
学生们说，过渡阶段非常艰难。目前读二年级的妮萨·阿敏(Al-Nisa Amin)记得在第一年的时候，做一道数学题做到崩溃，沮丧地哭嚎。但她坚持了下去，一部分原因是担心被送回原来的中学。
For those who parachuted into college-level classes, the climb has been steep, and often eye-opening.
对于那些猛然面对大学程度的课程的学生，学业的山峰陡峭而壮丽。
On a recent afternoon, Najee and his classmates, some in the optional uniform of khaki pants and rust-colored sweatshirts, settled into steel-framed desk chairs for a Shakespeare class.
在最近的一天下午，纳吉和他的同学坐在钢架桌椅上听莎士比亚文学课，其中一些学生身穿自愿穿着的卡其色裤子和赭色运动衫校服。
Flipping through their Signet Classic paperbacks and scribbling notes, they reviewed the first act of “Twelfth Night,” intuitively understanding that Orsino, Duke of Illyria, had become obsessed with Olivia. When their professor, David Cutts, asked what was going on in Orsino’s heart, several called out matter-of-factly: “Love.” The class then discussed the vagaries of love at first sight, and voted on whether they believed in it. Most didn’t.
他们翻阅着Signet Classic出版社的平装版《第十二夜》(Twelfth Night)紧张地记着笔记。复习第一幕时，他们自然而然地明白了，伊利里亚公爵奥西诺(Orsino)着迷于奥丽维娅(Olivia)。当教授戴维·卡茨(David Cutts)问他们奥西诺的内心活动时，几名学生斩钉截铁地喊道：“爱情”。接着全班讨论起了奇妙的一见钟情，并就是否相信一见钟情进行了投票。大多数学生并不相信。
Some were confused by the shipwrecked noblewoman Viola and her motives in disguising herself as a servant. “He’s rich, so why is she trying to hide?” one student asked, befuddled. Another hypothesized: “I think she’s interested in him.”
一些人对遭遇海难的贵妇薇奥拉(Viola)，以及她为什么把自己伪装成仆人而感到困惑。“他很有钱，那她还有什么好隐瞒的？”一名学生不解地问。另一名学生则猜测：“我觉得她对他有好感。”
When Dr. Cutts reviewed a plot point toward the end, one girl scolded him: “spoiler alert.”
当卡茨教授点出结尾时的一段情节时，一名女生责备说：“不要剧透。”
Less lighthearted was seminar, which on this day involved mulling over a densely written essay by the Marxist political theorist Fredric Jameson on the meaning of self in a postmodern world. Reading aloud a 2006 article in The Economist titled “Post-Modernism Is the New Black,” one student stumbled over “facade,” “anachronistic” and “grandeur” — words that would seem fair game for late high school.
研讨课则没那么多欢乐，这一天要研读马克思主义政治理论家詹明信(Fredric Jameson)撰写的一篇信息量极大的论文，主题是自我在这个后现代世界里的意义。在朗读2006年《经济学人》(The Economist)上题为《后现代主义成为新时尚》(Post-Modernism Is the New Black)的文章时，一名学生被“立面”(facade)、“时代错误的”(anachronistic)，以及“壮丽”(grandeur)这样的词难住了——它们本该属于高中高年级的理解范围。
Another student wanted to know: “What’s a phenomenon?” One inquired about the meaning of “sinister.”
另一个学生问：“什么是‘现象’(phenomenon)？”另一个则想知道“险恶的”(sinister)的含义。
The article cited Auschwitz as an example of how the Enlightenment had “given birth” to totalitarianism. Not one of the 10 students knew what Auschwitz was. Debate ensued over whether it was a city in Switzerland, Russia or Poland. Their professor finally interjected: “It’s usually used as the big example of the Holocaust.”
文章将奥斯维辛(Auschwitz)作为例子，描述启蒙运动(Enlightenment)是怎样孕育出极权主义的。10个学生中没有一个人知道奥斯维辛是什么。接着他们开始辩论它是不是瑞士、俄罗斯或波兰的一座城市。教授终于插嘴解释：“人们常常把它当作犹太人大屠杀的一个主要例子。”
In similar classes in Bard’s New York schools, students’ vocabulary, communication skills and historical knowledge appear noticeably more advanced. During a recent discussion in the Manhattan school on punishments doled out in the ninth and tenth pouches of Dante’s Inferno, one student said she thought the physical torture was “consistent with the logic of the story.”
巴德学院在纽约开办的学校里类似的课堂上，学生们的词汇量、沟通能力和历史知识明显更为好。曼哈顿学校最近关于但丁的《地狱》(Inferno)一书中，第9和第10囊里做出的惩罚进行了一场讨论。讨论过程中，一名学生说她认为身体折磨是“与故事逻辑相符合的”。
“Their souls do inhabit a form,” she mused. “They do have an underworld body. He even describes the shape of their tear glands.”
“他们的灵魂的确栖息于一种形式，”她思忖道。“他们的确有一副地狱之身。但丁甚至描述了他们泪腺的形状。”
Another student disagreed, pointing to the way the sinners who had split with the Catholic Church were being split open with swords. “I think this is really about metaphorical pain,” she said confidently. “It’s not literal.”
另一名同学不同意这个说法，指出与天主教会切断关系的罪人，后来身体被剑劈断了。“我觉得这里讲的是隐喻性的痛苦，”她自信地说。“并不能从字面上理解。”
The disparity raises an uncomfortable question. Can students who are so behind be brought up to college level in a few efficient years, even with good teachers and good intentions?
学生水平的差距，又引出了一个令人不安的问题：即使有出色的老师、良好的意图，如此落后的学生是否能够通过几年的高效学习，就提升到大学水平？
Meandering through the bustling hallways of the Newark school one day this winter, waving at students as they passed, Lori Ween, dean of studies and faculty in English, was hopeful but frank: “We tell our students whatever happened before this, this is where you are now.” Still, she acknowledges, it has turned out to be harder than many of the students expected. This is in part because Newark’s most promising high school students flee for better districts, although officials say that as Bard’s reputation grows, they expect more will stay.
今年冬天的一天，漫步在纽瓦克校园人来人往的走廊里，教务主任兼英语教学主任洛里·维恩(Lori Ween)向经过的学生们招手，她满怀希望但也很坦白：“我们告诉学生们，无论在这之前发生过什么，这里都是你们现在的学校。”但她承认，实际情况比许多学生想象的要困难得多。部分原因在于，纽瓦克最有潜力的高中生转学去了更好的学区，不过官员表示，随着巴德的声誉不断增长，他们预计会有更多人留下来。
So far, the school has lost 7 of the 36 students who entered in 2011 as first-year college students and 20 of the 87 who entered as high school freshmen.
到目前为止，在2011年进入该校就读大学一年级的36名学生中，已经流失了七名；而87名作为高中新生入学的学生，则流失了20名。
Najee has repeated one class. Both Miles and Billy have repeated several. More than half the class had to repeat one of the required seminars in a monthlong intensive at the end of the last school year. A “free” period that had always been used as a study period at the other Bard high schools needed to be renamed “enrichment period” to signal it was intended for work.
纳吉已经重修了一门课。迈尔斯和比利都重修了几门课。超过一半的学生必须要在学年结束时的一个月高强度地重修所要求的研讨班。在其它巴德高中一直被用作学习期的“自由”阶段，在这里需要更名为“扩充期”，表示这一阶段是用来完成课业的。
Dr. Ween says students come to school with problems that can easily derail them. One sophomore, after a few days off, announced that her father had been murdered, shot seven times. Another complained that she had been in a hospital room all weekend. When Dr. Ween asked if she was sick, she responded, “No, my boyfriend was shot.” Another is his younger brother’s primary caretaker, making him dinner and getting him ready for school.
维恩博士说，来这里上学的学生有着各种会让他们分心的问题。一名二年级学生请了几天假后，回来说她父亲被谋杀了，身中七枪。另一位抱怨她整个周末都在医院病房，当维恩博士问她是不是生病时，她回答说，“不是，我男朋友被枪击了。”另一位则担当着弟弟的主要监护人，给他做晚饭，安顿他上学。
“When you hear these stories, it’s really easy to say, ‘Take a break,’ ” Dr. Ween said. But she resists. Her students, she said, need to be supported, but not let off the hook from schoolwork.
“当听到这些故事时，很容易会有一种让他们休息一下的想法，”维恩博士说。但她坚持不这么做。她说，她的学生需要支持，但不能不完成课业。
Taken as a group, early college high schools place a premium on teaching rudimentary study skills — how to take notes, how to interact with professors, where the best spot is to sit in a classroom. But the greatest emphasis is on thinking. Students are encouraged to see themselves as participants in an academic world, and as interested in gaining knowledge as in getting good grades. Dr. Ween calls it “joining the debate.”
整体来说，大学先修高中非常重视传授基本的学习技能：怎样记笔记，怎样和教授互动，教室里最佳的座位在哪里。然而最强调的是思考。学校鼓励学生们将自己看成是学术界的参与者，不仅要取得好的成绩，更要有求知欲。维恩博士称之为“参与讨论”。
The students at Duplin Early College High School in eastern North Carolina take an applied math class in which they learn about velocity and graphing by building roller coasters out of wire, piping and masking tape. Then they are asked to defend the project. At the Dayton Early College Academy in Ohio, students learn about constitutional law in mock trials. And at Bard, in an environmental science class, students read articles about the effect biofuel is having on corn prices and debate the merits of renewable energy.
在北卡罗来纳州东部的杜普林大学先修高中(Duplin Early College High School)，学生们上了一门应用数学课程，通过用电线、管道和遮蔽胶带做一个过山车，研习速率和绘图。然后，他们被要求就这个项目作答辩。在俄亥俄州代顿早期大学学院(Dayton Early College Academy)，学生们在模拟审判中学习宪法。在巴德的一堂环境科学课上，学生们阅读有关生物燃料如何影响玉米价格的文章，就可再生能源的优点展开辩论。
“You cannot pull off an early college high school successfully without fundamentally changing pedagogy,” said Joel Vargas, vice president of Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit organization based in Boston that develops early college high schools. He calls it the opposite of “chalk and talk.”
“如果不从根本上改变教学法，大学先修高中不可能成功，”未来工作(Jobs for the Future)副总裁乔尔·瓦格斯(Joel Vargas)说。未来工作是总部设在波士顿的一家非盈利性组织地处，旨在发展大学先修高中。他称大学先修高中为填鸭式教学法的对立面。
The model reverses ideas about how to best serve students whose parents haven’t gone to college. Gone is knee-jerk vocational tracking. Gone is the thinking that students must master all the basics before taking on more challenging work.
对于父母没有上过大学的学生，怎样向他们提供最好的服务？这种模式带来了截然不同的观点。不假思索的职教分班不再适宜，认为学生必须掌握所有基础后才能研习更具艰深课程的观点也不再适用。
“Traditionally, what has happened is that kids who come in below standards are put in a remedial track and they do addition and subtraction over and over again,” said Cecilia Cunningham, executive director of the Middle College National Consortium, a network of more than 30 early college high schools. “They’re bored out of their minds and the message is: ‘You really can’t do this.’ ”
“传统的做法是，把不达标的学生集中到补习班，让他们一遍又一遍地做着加减法，”有着超过30所大学先修高中成员的全美大学先修高中联盟(Middle College National Consortium)执行主任塞西莉亚·坎宁安(Cecilia Cunningham)说。“他们觉得非常烦，向自己传达了这样一个信息：‘你真的做不来。’”
Studies show that high school students who take classes in which they get both college and high school credit — often referred to as dual-credit courses — fare better academically.
研究表明，上能够同时拿到高中和大学学分课程（通常称为双学分课程）的高中生，在学业上的表现要好得多。
According to Jobs for the Future, which is behind 246 early college high schools, 76 percent of its 2011-12 graduates have enrolled in college. A study last year of more than 30,000 Texas high school graduates found that those who took college-level classes in high school were more likely to have finished college after six years. Studies showing such attainment, however, aren’t able to determine if it is the type of students drawn to college-level coursework that makes the difference. And no long-term studies have been conducted about early college high school students and college graduation.
根据未来工作组织对246所大学先修高中的统计，76%的2011-2012学年毕业生考上了大学。去年，一项对3万多名德克萨斯高中毕业生的研究发现，在高中学过大学水平课程的学生，更有希望在六年后从大学毕业。但是，这些研究不足以确定该差异是不是由于参加大学水平课程的学生的类型所造成的。并且，还没有人针对大学先修高中学生和大学毕业率进行过长期研究。
This concerns Sandra Stotsky, a professor emerita in the University of Arkansas’s Department of Education Reform, who notes that there is not any substantial evidence that the model being tried out in Newark will help at-risk students get through four years of college. Dr. Stotsky finds the idea that students should have to go to college to get a good high school education counterintuitive, and has called on educators to refocus their efforts on making high school coursework more challenging.
这让阿肯色大学教育改革部(University of Arkansas’s Department of Education Reform)荣休教授桑德拉·司托茨基(Sandra Stotsky)很担心，她注意到，没有任何实质性证据能表明，在纽瓦克尝试的这一教学模式，能够帮助处在危险中的学生完成四年大学的学习。司托茨基博士觉得，学生必须到大学里去得到好的高中教育，这样的观念违反直觉，并且她呼吁教育家将功夫重新放在提高高中功课的挑战性上面。
Critics also worry about rushing students through the material and pushing them prematurely onto college campuses, thus dumbing down classes for the other students. Many colleges have resisted the pressure to promote 18-year-olds to sophomore or junior status. In 2009, New York University stopped accepting dual-enrollment credits, saying it was impossible to determine the rigor of the classes.
批评者也担心向学生们填塞内容，把他们过早地推进大学校园，会使其他学生的课程难度相形见绌。 许多大学在抵抗让18岁的学生跳级到大学二年级或三年级的压力。从2009年起，纽约大学(New York University)不再接收双学分学生，称其无法确定课程的难度。
Bard officials say public colleges are generally more open to accepting credit earned in high school. They estimate that more than half of last year’s 143 Manhattan graduates were able to transfer two years of credit.
巴德行政管理人员说，公立大学一般对接受高中获得的学分持更为开放的态度。他们估测，去年曼哈顿的143位毕业生中，超过半数的人能够转到两年的学分。
Ray Peterson, who has helped start all three of Bard’s public high schools, says that given the Newark students’ struggles, he is pleased with where they are: of the remaining 29 second-year students, 21 have been accepted to a four-year college. It’s promising news, but no guarantee of a bachelor’s degree. While some of the colleges have impressive graduation rates, many do not.
参与了巴德所有三所公立高中的创办的雷·彼得森(Ray Peterson)说，鉴于纽瓦克学生所处的困境，对目前所取得的成绩，他感到很欣慰。在现有的29名二年级学生中，有21位已经被四年制大学接收。这个消息展现了美好前景，但并不是拿到学士学位的保证。虽然一些大学的毕业率非常高，但还有许多大学不乐观。
Najee has been accepted to Bloomfield College and Felician College, both in New Jersey, and is awaiting word about scholarship money. His parents cannot afford to assist him financially, so he hopes to gain junior status. Marvin has been accepted by St. John’s University in Queens and, with a partial scholarship, D’Youville College in Buffalo.
纳吉已经被布卢姆菲尔德学院(Bloomfield College)和佛里森学院(Felician College)录取，这两所学校都在新泽西州，目前他正在等待关于奖学金的消息。他父母在经济上负担不起，所以他希望能获得读大三的资格。马文已经被皇后区的圣约翰大学(St. John’s University)和布法罗的德尤维尔大学(D’Youville College) （提供部分奖学金）录取。
The school’s star pupil, Katrina Anderson, who attended a well-regarded charter school before Bard, has been accepted on a four-year scholarship to Oberlin. But Billy has failed most of his college-level classes and is working toward a high school diploma.
在进入巴德之前曾在一所备受重视的特许学校就读的明星学生卡特里娜·安德森(Katrina Anderson)被奥伯林(Oberlin)录取，并获得了四年的奖学金。但比利的大多数大学水平课程都没有通过，他正在为高中文凭努力。
“My prediction after the first year was that a lot more kids would drop out and go somewhere where they had less stress,” Dr. Peterson said. “But most came back. They really appreciated the faculty holding onto its standards.”
“第一年后，我的预测是许多孩子将退出，转到压力更小的学校，”彼得森博士说。“但很多人回来了。他们非常感激教师们能够坚持其标准。”
Leon Botstein says there has to be room for fits and starts. He is planning to take the model to Baltimore and Cleveland, two cities with ailing public schools, and to Harlem.
利昂·波特斯坦说，必须有让学生有忽断忽续的余地。他计划把这一模式推广到巴尔的摩和克利夫兰这两所公立学校境况不佳的城市，以及非裔美国人聚居的哈莱姆。
“With idealism comes tolerance for failure,” said Dr. Botstein, chatting from behind his desk at his office at Bard’s campus upstate. “We need to think about these efforts the way we think about hospitals. Mortality rates can be zero if you don’t take any patients who are really sick.”
“要理想主义，就要有对失败的宽容，”波特斯坦博士坐在州北的巴德校园办公室桌子前说。“我们应该像看待医院一样看待这些努力。如果你不接收任何重病患者，死亡率可以是零。”
For Najee, failure would come at a disheartening price. The people he knows without a college degree have low-paying jobs or no jobs, or deal drugs.
对纳吉而言，失败的代价太令人痛心。他认识的那些没有大学学位的人们，有的拿着很低的薪水，有的没有工作，还有的成了毒贩。
So, when he is feeling overwhelmed or simply in need of a pep talk, he sometimes calls on Dr. Ween. One afternoon, they sat together in her office discussing strategies. Najee had a paper due and calculus to study for. Dr. Ween told him to plan out what he was going to do step by step. “Find a place where you are capable of doing work,” she said. “If it’s the library go to the library. If it’s my office, come here.”
因此，当觉得不堪重负或需要有人打气时，他偶尔会打电话给维恩博士。一天下午，他们在她的办公室里坐下来，讨论策略。纳吉有一篇到期未交的论文，还要学微积分。维恩博士让他一步一步计划将要做的事。“找一个你能够写作业的地方，”她说。“如果是图书馆，就去图书馆。如果是我的办公室，就过来。”
And so he saddled up in a chair in the library recently. For an essay on postmodernism and music, he browsed the review of a book by a University of Louisiana jazz professor and an excerpt from a book by two music professors at Stony Brook University.
因此，最近他坐到了图书馆的椅子上。为了写一篇关于后现代主义和音乐的论文，他浏览了路易斯安那大学(University of Louisiana)一位爵士乐教授的一本书的书评，以及由石溪大学(Stony Brook University)两名音乐教授所著书籍的摘录。
“I realize that a lot of people really want me to succeed,” he said. Even the neighborhood drug dealers. “That,” he added, “is my motivation.”
“我意识到许多人真心希望我能成功，”他说，甚至包括周围的毒贩。“那就是我的动力，”他说。