首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Why We Need Good Teachers [A]The relative decline of American education at the elementary- and high-school levels has long been
Why We Need Good Teachers [A]The relative decline of American education at the elementary- and high-school levels has long been
admin
2014-05-30
37
问题
Why We Need Good Teachers
[A]The relative decline of American education at the elementary- and high-school levels has long been a national embarrassment as well as a threat to the nation’s future. Once upon a time, American students tested better than any other students in the world. Now, ranked against European schoolchildren, America does about as well as Lithuania, behind at least 10 other nations. Within the United States, the achievement gap between white students and poor and minority students stubbornly persists—and as the population of disadvantaged students grows, overall scores continue to fall.
[B]For much of this time—roughly the last half century—professional educators believed that if they could Only find the right teaching method, all would be well. They tried New Math, open classrooms, Whole Language—but nothing seemed to achieve significant or lasting improvements.
[C]Yet in recent years researchers have discovered something that may seem obvious, but for many reasons was overlooked or denied. What really makes a difference, what matters more than the class size or the textbook, the teaching method or the technology, or even the curriculum, is the quality of the teacher. Much of the ability to teach is innate(天生的)—an ability to inspire young minds as well as control unruly classrooms that some people instinctively possess. Teaching can be taught, to some degree, but not the way many graduate schools of education do it, with a lot of boring or marginally relevant theorizing and teaching method. In any case the research shows that within about five years, you can generally tell who is a good teacher and who is not.
[D]It is also true and unfortunate that often the weakest teachers are degraded to teaching the neediest students, poor minority kids in inner-city schools. For these children, teachers can be make or break. "The research shows that kids who have two, three, four strong teachers in a row will eventually excel, no matter what their background, while kids who have even two weak teachers in a row will never recover," says Kati Haycock of the Education Trust and coauthor of the 2006 study "Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students Are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality."
[E]Nothing, then, is more important than hiring good teachers and firing bad ones. But here is the rub. Although many teachers are caring and selfless, teaching in public schools has not always attracted the best and the brightest. There once was a time when teaching was one of the few jobs not denied to women and minorities. But with social progress, many talented women and minorities chose other and more highly compensated fields. One recent review of the evidence by McKinsey & Co., the management consulting firm, showed that most schoolteachers are recruited from the bottom third of college-bound high-school students.
[F]At the same time, the teachers’ unions have become more and more powerful. In most states, after two or three years, teachers are given lifetime tenure(长期聘用). It is almost impossible to fire them. In New York City in 2008, three out of 30,000 tenured teachers were dismissed for cause. The statistics are just as eye-popping in other cities. The percentage of teachers dismissed for poor performance in Chicago between 2005 and 2008 was 0.1 percent. In Akron, Ohio, zero percent. In Toledo, 0.01 percent. In Denver, zero percent. In no other socially significant profession are the workers so insulated from responsibility. The responsibility does not just fall on the unions. Many principals don’t even try to weed out the poor performers. Year after year, about 99 percent of all teachers in the United States are rated "satisfactory" by their school systems; firing a teacher invites a costly court battle with the local union.
[G]Over time, inner-city schools, in particular, surrendered to a defeatist mindset. The problem is not the teachers, went the thinking—it’s the parents(or absence of parents); it’s society with all its distractions and pathologies(病态); it’s the kids themselves. Not much can be done, really, except to keep the assembly line moving through "social promotion," regardless of academic performance, and hope the students graduate. Or so went the conventional wisdom in school superintendents’ offices from Newark to L.A. By 1992, "there was such a dramatic achievement gap in the United States, far larger than in other countries, between socioeconomic classes and races," says Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality. "It was a scandal of monumental proportions, that there were two distinct school systems in the U.S., one for the middle class and one for the poor."
[H]In the past two decades, some schools have sprung up that defy and refute what former president George W. Bush memorably called "the soft bigotry(偏执成见)of low expectations." Generally operating outside of school bureaucracies as charter schools, programs like KIPP(Knowledge Is Power Program)have produced inner-city schools with high graduation rates(85 percent). KIPP schools don’t cherry-pick—they take anyone who will sign a contract to play by the rules, which require some parental involvement. And they are not one-shot wonders. There are now 82 KIPP schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia, and, routinely, they far outperform the local public schools. KIPP schools are mercifully free of red tape and bureaucratic rules. KIPP schools require longer school days and a longer school year, but their greatest advantage is better teaching.
[I]It takes a certain kind of teacher to succeed at a KIPP school or at other successful charter programs, like YES Prep. KIPP teachers carry cell phones so students can call them at any time. The dedication required makes for high burnout rates. It may be that teaching in an inner-city school is a little like going into the Special Forces in the military, a calling for only the chosen few.
[J]Yet those few are multiplying. About 20 years ago, a Princeton senior named Wendy Kopp wrote her senior thesis proposing an organization to draw graduates from elite schools into teaching poor kids. Her idea was to hire them for just a couple of years, and then let them move on to Wall Street or wherever. Today, Teach for America(TFA)sends about 4,100 graduates, many from Ivy League colleges, into inner-city schools every year. Some(about 8 percent)can’t cope with it, but most(about 61 percent)stay in teaching after their demanding two-year tours. Two thirds of TFA’s 17,000 graduates are still involved in education and have become the core of a reform movement that is having real impact. The founders of KIPP, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, are TFA products. So is the most aggressive reformer in education today, Michelle Rhee, the education chancellor of the District of Columbia, who is trying to loosen the hold of the teachers’ union on a school system that for years had the highest costs and worst results in the nation.
[K]It is difficult to remove the educational establishment. In New Orleans, a hurricane was required: since Katrina, New Orleans has made more educational progress than any other city, largely because the public-school system was wiped out. Using nonunion charter schools, New Orleans has been able to measure teacher performance in ways that the teachers’ unions have long and bitterly resisted. Under a new Louisiana law, New Orleans can track which schools produce the best teachers, forcing long-needed changes in school curricula.
Unfortunately, the neediest students often receive the poorest teaching.
选项
答案
D
解析
根据Unfortunately和the neediest students定位到D段。原文说,很不幸。最差的老师通常会被降级去教贫穷的少数族裔学生。本题句子与原文意思一致。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/Yr17777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
Wehaveacrisisonourhands.Youmeanglobalwarming?Theworldeconomy?No,thedeclineofreading.Peoplearejustnotdoing
OneofthoserarelocalcreationsofAmerica,cowboypoetryhasalongandvividhistory,drivenbyitscolorfulpractitionersa
Americanculturehasbeenenrichedbythevaluesandbeliefsystemsofvirtuallyeverypartoftheworld.Theonevaluethat
InAmericanhighschoolstoday,it’stakenasagiventhatextracurricular(课外的)activitiesbringstudentsofdifferentracestoge
A、Attendingtheparty.B、Visitingsomefriends.C、Studyingforanexam.D、Writingaletterofapology.C对话中男士提到Shehasabigexa
A、Acompanywithdangerousworkingconditionsislikelytobepunished.B、Therearealtogetherthreedepartmentswhichprotectc
A、Theyusuallysay"Idon’tknow"inordertosavetime.B、Theymaygiveatouristawronganswersoastobepolite.C、Theycon
A、Spain.B、France.C、America.D、Germany.C短文提到的TheUnitedStatesalsohasmoreofitspeopleatwork表明,在西方发达国家,美国人比欧洲人工作的时间长,故答案
AfterSusanJoycewaslaidofffromDigitalEquipmentCorp.,shewashorrifiedtohearoftwosuicidesinherlayoffgroup.Such
Assecretaryofeducation.ArneDuncanisoverallyresponsibleforgradesK(kindergarten)through12.Someofthe$4billio
随机试题
有关讲授法的描述,错误的是【】
甲、乙、丙共谋要“狠狠教训一下”他们共同的仇人丁。到丁家后,甲在门外望风,乙、丙进屋打丁。但当时只有丁的好友田某在家,乙、丙误把体貌特征和丁极为相似的田某当作是丁进行殴打,遭到田某强烈抵抗和辱骂,二人分别举起板凳和花瓶向田某头部猛击,将其当场打死。关于本案
人民法院解决案件实体问题所使用的法律文书主要是(),它是刑事诉讼中最重要的法律文书。
懂行的专家和专业人员属于谈判队伍的()
下列哪一项不是咯血的病因
在肩关节前脱位的病人中,下列哪项可以作为确诊依据
司法公正体现在司法活动各个方面和对司法人员的要求上。下列哪一做法体现的不是司法公正的内涵?(2014年卷一第45题)
下列计量器具中属于A类计量器具的是()。
2015年国务院政府工作报告提出:“取消绝大部分药品政府定价。”由此可见,未来药品价格将通过市场决定,这表明:①市场需求决定价格②市场是决定价格的主体③价格由市场决定,国家不能干预④价格由价值决定,受供求关系影响
在克鲁斯的百般______下,大导演弗朗西斯.福特.科波拉终于同意在这部新作中给他安排一个小角色,原来巨星也曾有过死缠烂打______的时光。填人横线部分最恰当的一项是()。
最新回复
(
0
)