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  3. Parents can easily come down with an acute case of schizophrenia from reading the contradictory reports about the state of the p

Parents can easily come down with an acute case of schizophrenia from reading the contradictory reports about the state of the p

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问题     Parents can easily come down with an acute case of schizophrenia from reading the contradictory reports about the state of the public schools. One set of experts asserts that the schools are better than they have been for years. Others say that the schools are in terrible shape and are responsible for every national problem from urban poverty to the trade deficit.
    One group of experts look primarily at such indicators as test scores, and they cheer that they see all the indicators "reading scores, minimum competency test results, the Scholastic Aptitude Test scores" are up, some by substantial margins. Students are required to take more academic courses, more mathematics and science, along with greater stress on basic skills, including knowledge of computers. More than 40 state legislatures have mandated such changes.
    But in the eyes of another set of school reformers such changes are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive. These experts say that merely toughening requirements, without either improving the quality of instruction or, even more important, changing the way schools are organised and children are taught makes the schools worse rather than better. They challenge the nature of the tests, mostly multiple choice or true or false, by which children’s progress is measured: they charge that raising the test scores by drilling pupils to come up with the right answers does not improve knowledge, understanding and the capacity to think logically and independently. In addition, these critics fear that the get-tough approach to school reform will cause more of the youngsters at the bottom to give up and drop out. This, they say, may improve national scores but drain even further the nation’s pool of educated people.
    The way to cut through the confusion is to understand the different yardsticks used by different observers.
    Compared with what schools used to be like "in the good old days", with lots of drill and uniform requirements, and the expectation that many youngsters who could not make it would drop out and find their way into unskilled jobs — by those yardsticks the schools have measurably improved in recent years.
    But by the yardsticks of those experts who believe that the old schools were deficient in teaching the skills needed in the modern world, today’s schools have not become better. These educators believe that rigid new mandates may actually have made the schools worse.
The author suggests that the parents should______in order to make themselves clearly understand the present quality of the public schools.
选项 A、realise that the standard used by experts to decide the quality of schools is different
B、realise that the real condition of the quality of schools is not like what the experts say
C、have their own judgement on the quality of schools without being puzzled by the experts
D、make a comparison among different schools to find which experts are right
答案A
解析 根据第1段介绍的背景知识，不难理解第4段中的confusion指的是父母对究竟学校质量是提高了还是降低了的疑惑。由该段可知，要想解除疑惑，就要understand thedifferent yardsticks used by different observers(明白不同的观察者所采用的不同的标准)，再结合最后两段可知，第4段想要表达的意思就是不同的观察者采用不同的标准，那么他们最后所作出的结论就是不一样的，这就要求父母们能够充分地了解观察者作结论时所采用的标准，这样才有助于他们真正地了解公共中小学学
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