The weather in Texas may have cooled since the recent extreme heat, but the temperature will be high at the State Board of Educa

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问题     The weather in Texas may have cooled since the recent extreme heat, but the temperature will be high at the State Board of Education meeting in Austin this month as officials debate how climate change is taught in Texas schools.
    Pat Hardy, who sympathizes with views of the energy sector, is resisting the proposed changes to science standards for pre-teen pupils. These would emphasize the primacy of human activity in recent climate change and encourage discussion of mitigation measures.
    Most scientists and experts sharply dispute Hardy’s views. "They casually dismiss the career work of scholars and scientists as just another misguided opinion. " says Dan Quinn, senior communications strategist at the Texas Freedom Network, a non-profit group that monitors public education. " What millions of Texas kids learn in their public schools is determined too often by the political ideology of partisan board members, rather than facts and sound scholarship. "
    Such debates reflect fierce discussions across the US and around the world, as researchers, policymakers, teachers and students step up demands for a greater focus on teaching about the facts of climate change in schools.
    A study last year by the National Center for Science Education, a non-profit group of scientists and teachers, looking at how state public schools across the country address climate change in science classes, gave barely half of US states a grade B + or higher. Among the 10 worst performers were some of the most populous states, including Texas, which was given the lowest grade (F) and has a disproportionate influence because its textbooks are widely sold elsewhere.
    Glenn Branch, the centre’s deputy director, cautions that setting state-level science standards is only one limited benchmark in a country that decentralises decisions to local school boards. Even if a state is considered a high performer in its science standards, " that does not mean it will be taught" , he says.
    Another issue is that while climate change is well integrated into some subjects and at some ages—such as earth and space sciences in high schools—it is not as well represented in curricula for younger children and in subjects that are more widely taught, such as biology and chemistry.  It is also less prominent in many social studies courses.
    Branch points out that, even if a growing number of official guidelines and textbooks reflect scientific consensus on climate change, unofficial educational materials that convey more slanted perspectives are being distributed to teachers. They include materials sponsored by libertarian think-tanks and energy industry associations.
The study mentioned in Paragraph 5 shows that_________.

选项 A、climate education is insufficient at state public schools
B、policy makers have little drive for science education
C、Texas is reluctant to rewrite its science textbooks
D、environmental teaching in some states lacks supervision

答案A

解析 根据题干中的The study和Paragraph 5定位到第五段,其中提到研究的内容为“全美公立学校如何在科学课上处理气候变化”这一问题,而结果显示“美国各州中仅有一半的州获得了B+及以上的等级”,只有一半州的成绩还可以,因此可以推出公立学校关于气候变化的教育是欠缺的,故正确答案为A。文中关于policy makers的内容为“研究人员、政策制定者、教师和学生越来越多地要求学校更加重视气候变化的事实的教学”,与B选项中的science education毫无关系,故排除。文中关于Texas和its science textbooks的内容是“该州被评为最低等级(F),但影响巨大,因为得克萨斯州的教科书在其他地方售卖广泛”,并未提到它不愿重写科学教科书,故排除C选项。同样,文中并未提到“一些州的环境教学缺乏监督”,故排除D选项。
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