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  3. Teachers are heroes, not villains, and it’s time to stop demonizing them. It has become fashionable to blame all of society’

Teachers are heroes, not villains, and it’s time to stop demonizing them. It has become fashionable to blame all of society’

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问题     Teachers are heroes, not villains, and it’s time to stop demonizing them.
    It has become fashionable to blame all of society’s manifold sins and wickedness on "teachers unions," as if it were possible to separate these supposedly evil organizations from the dedicated public servants who belong to them. Collective bargaining is not the problem, and taking that right away from teachers will not fix the schools.
    The fact is that teachers are being saddled with absurdly high expectations. Some studies have shown a correlation between student performance and teacher "effectiveness," depending how this elusive quality is measured, but there is a whole body of academic literature proving the stronger correlation between student performance and a much more important variable: family income. Yes, I’m talking about poverty. Sorry to be so gauche, but when teachers point out the relationship between income and achievement, they’re not shirking responsibility. They’re just stating an inconvenient truth.
    According to figures compiled by the College Board, students from families making more than $200,000 score more than 300 points higher on the SAT, on average, than students from families making less than $20,000 a year. There is, in fact, a clear relationship all the way along the scale; Each increment in higher family income translates into points on the test. Sean Rcardon of Stanford University’s Center for Education Policy Analysis concluded in a recent study that the achievement gap between high-income and low-income students is actually widening. It is unclear why this might be happening; maybe it is due to increased income inequality, maybe the relationship between income and achievement has somehow become stronger, maybe there is some other reason.
    Whatever the cause, our society’s answer seems to be: Beat up the teachers. We tend to believe that most of the teachers in low-income, low-performing schools are incompetent—and, by extension, that most of the teachers in upper-crust schools, where students perform well, are paragons of pedagogical virtue. But some of the most dedicated and talented teachers I’ve ever met were working in "failing" inner-city schools. And yes, in award-winning schools where "all the children are above average", I’ve met some unimaginative hacks who should never be allowed near a classroom.
    It is reasonable to hold teachers accountable for their performance, but it is not reasonable—or, in the end, productive’ to hold them accountable for factors that lie far beyond their control. It is fair to insist that teachers approach their jobs with the assumption that every single child, rich or poor, can succeed. It is not fair to expect teachers to correct all the imbalances and remedy all the pathologies that result from growing inequality in our society. Portraying teachers as villains doesn’t help a single child. Ignoring the reasons for the education gap in this country is no way to close it. And there’s a better way to learn about the crisis than going to the movies. Visit a school instead.
According to the text, which one of the following is strongly related with student performance?
选项 A、Teacher effectiveness.
B、Parental involvement.
C、School ranking.
D、Family income.
答案D
解析 本题考查考生对文章主要论据的理解。这篇文章为教师辩护的一个主要论据就是造成学生学术表现差距的原因在于家庭收入，理解了这一点，就不难选出D是正确答案。ABC均是很具有迷惑性的选项，因为这三个都是通常意义上人们理解的对学生成绩会有重要影响的因素，并且A和C在文中都有提到。A出现在第三段第三行，“effectiveness”是“有效性”的意思，指的是教师教育的成效，即教师是否“给力”。B文中并无提及。C项是对第五段所述内容的一个引申，第五段指出了好学校和差学校在师资力量以及学生表现上的差距，可引申为学校排名对学生表现的影响。文章在第五段指出学校有差异，但是学校里老师的好坏却未必跟学校好坏有关，并且学校或者老师的好坏都不是学生成绩差距的主要原因。因此C也错误。
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