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  3. "If we want to become a strong economy again, the best thing we can do is have an educated workforce. "Few would object to U. S.

"If we want to become a strong economy again, the best thing we can do is have an educated workforce. "Few would object to U. S.

admin2014-05-20  92
问题     "If we want to become a strong economy again, the best thing we can do is have an educated workforce. "Few would object to U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s explanation of why Washington is mobilizing $100 billion to schools and universities as part of February’s giant stimulus package. Indeed, other countries are following suit, with Britain, Germany, Canada, and others making new education funding part of their anti-crisis strategies.
    What’s far less clear is that this money is going where it’s most needed—or likely to have the greatest social and economic payoff. In Germany, the bulk of nearly ￡10 billion in new school spending is being used to renovate buildings, but unlikely to have much effect on the quality of German graduates. In the United States, schools were not using the stimulus money to boost student achievement, as promised by Duncan, but to fund their general budgets. And in still other countries, governments are using money to help build new world-class universities—projects that a World Bank study in July warned risk bleeding resources away from more desperately needed areas.
    The biggest error governments are making is to blindly push for more and better everything at all levels of education; more teachers, flashier facilities, more technology in the classroom, and more elite universities. All such efforts may seem sensible, but studies show that simply spending more on education doesn’t produce better results. Kids don’t necessarily learn more if they sit in smaller classrooms, in more modern and better-equipped schools, or even if their teachers are better-paid. According to Ludger Woessmann of the IFO Institute, merely raising per student spending has zero effect on achievement. The United States, France and Germany have increased spending significantly in past decades only to see performance stagnate, while countries like Sweden and Finland have boosted quality through structural reform.
    Studies suggest another important way education policy should be refocused. They find that the largest returns on investment come not from mobilizing more money toward top or even average performers, but toward those who have been left behind. Raising the achievement of the unskilled and excluded would lead not only to individual payoffs, such as higher incomes and more meaningful lives, but also would generate big benefits for economies, such as higher productivity and greater GDP. It would also result in broad social gains—less crime, less welfare spending, and a greater sense of cohesion. "Improving our education to get the economic growth more broadly shared is the one most important thing we can do," says Benjamin Friedman, a Harvard economist. He argues that changing education in this way would be one of the few ways governments could promote both justice and economic growth—not one at the expense of the other.
According to the passage, many countries should have spent new education funding in______.
选项 A、repairing school buildings
B、funding their daily expenses
C、building first-rate universities
D、improving student achievement
答案D
解析 细节题。根据题干提示定位至第二段。该段介绍了新增加的教育投入在各国的使用问题，例如：德国把这笔钱用于翻新校舍；美国把钱用于维持学校的日常开支；其他国家将教育基金用于建设世界一流大学，唯独没有哪个国家把教育基金用于提高学生的学习成绩上，而这才是增加教育投入的初衷，故正确答案为[D]。各国在不清楚教育基金如何获得最大回报的情况下，把本应该用于提高学生学习成绩的基金投入到了翻修校舍、维持日常开支、建设一流大学上，因此排除[A]、[B]、[C]。
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