(1). 1:Growing up in Morris Heights, a poor neighbourhood in the Bronx where violence was omnipresent, Joel Cabrera thought his future would be either “death or jail, because that’s what the outcomes are here”. 2:Middle school was like “a juvenile- detention facility”. 3:High school did not interest him enough to finish. 4:Had he stopped there, he would have faced a life on the edge of penury. 5:Among high-school dropouts nationwide, average earnings are only $600 a week. 6:To avoid that, Mr Cabrera enrolled in courses offered at his local community college. 7:There he came across a scheme called ASAP (“Accelerated Study in Associate Programmes”) that sought to push pupils like him—city residents without family wealth or familiarity with universities— to complete two-year degrees.
(2). 1:ASAP is designed to address a simply stated problem. 2:Many low-income minority students enroll in college. But few finish. 3:Only 34% of black men finish their bachelor’s degree within six years, compared with the average rate of 60%. 4:Those individual decisions to drop out collectively amount to society-wide stratification. 5:The racial gaps in earning college degrees have hardly budged since 1995. 6:Simple as the problem may be to describe, the approach taken by ASAP is complicated. 7:Rather than target one thing that derails students, the programme tries to tackle many at once. 8:Pupils are given financial help, including money for textbooks and free MetroCards to get around the city. 9:They must meet academic and career advisers several times a month. 10:They are tracked by a data operation that detects pupils in precarious positions before they quit. 11:This worked for Mr Cabrera, who continued to a bachelor’s degree, a few internships and a series of good jobs after that.