请阅读Passage 1, 完成第小题。 Passage 1 In recent years,however, society has come to understand the limitations of schools that merelysort and rank students. We have discovered that students in the bottomone-third to one-half of the rank order-plus all who drop out before beingranked-fail to develop the foundational reading, writing, and mathematicalproficiencies needed to survive in, let alone contribute to, an increasinglytechnically complex and ethnically diverse culture. So today, in asking schoolsto leave no child behind, society is asking that educators raise up the bottomof the rank-.order distribution to a specified level of competence. We callthose expectations our?? "academicachievement standards". Every state has them, and, as a matter of publicpolicy, schools are to be held accountable for making sure that all studentsmeet them.?To be clear, themission of sorting has not been eliminated from the schooling process. For theforeseeable future, students will still be ranked at the end of high school.However, society now dictates that such a celebration of differences m amountlearned must start at a certain minimum level of achievement for all.??The implications of this change in missionfor the role of assessment are profound. Assessment and grading proceduresdesigned to permit only a few students to succeed (those at the top of therank-order distribution) must now be revised to permit the possibility that allstudents could succeed at some appropriate level. Furthermore, procedures thatpermitted?? (perhaps even encouraged)some students to give up in hopelessness and to stop trying must now be replacedby others that promote hope and continuous effort. In short, the entireemotional environment surrounding the prospect of being evaluated must change,especially for perennial low achievers.??The students' missionis no longer merely to beat other students in the achievement race. At leastpart of their goal must be to become competent. Teachers must believe that allstudents can achieve a certain level of academic success, must bring all oftheir students to believe this of themselves, must?accommodate?the factthat students learn at different rates by making use of differentiatedinstruction, and must guide all students toward the attainment of standards.??The driving dynamicforce for students cannot merely be competition for an artificial scarcity ofsuccess. Because all students can and must succeed in meeting standards,cooperation and collaboration must come into play. The driving forces must beconfidence, optimism, and persistence-for all, not just for some. All studentsmust come to believe that they can succeed at learning if they try. They musthave continuous access to evidence of what they believe to be credible academicsuccess, however small. This new understanding has spawned increased interestin formative assessment in recent years.What do the "academic achievement standards" in Paragraph 1 refer to?
A.The driving dynamic forces for all students who need to survive in society.B.Confidence, optimism, and persistence that students need in order to succeed.C.Differentiated levels of competence specified for students with different abilities.D.The missions of students who want to beat others in their achievement race in school.