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  3. As 56 million children return to the nation’s 133, 000 elementary and secondary schools, the promise of "reform" is again in the

As 56 million children return to the nation’s 133, 000 elementary and secondary schools, the promise of "reform" is again in the

admin2013-07-02  53
问题     As 56 million children return to the nation’s 133, 000 elementary and secondary schools, the promise of "reform" is again in the air. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has announced $ 4 billion in Race to the Top grants to states whose proposals demonstrated, according to Duncan, "a bold commitment to education reform" and "creativity and innovation that is breathtaking". What they really show is that few subjects inspire more intellectual dishonesty and political puffery(极力吹捧)than "school reform".

    To be sure, some improvements have occurred in elementary schools. But what good are they if they’re erased by high school? There’s also been a modest narrowing in the high-school achievement gaps between whites and blacks, although the narrowing generally stopped in the late 1980s.(Average scores have remained stable because, although blacks’ scores have risen slightly, the size of these minority groups has also expanded. This means that their still-low scores exert a bigger drag on the average. The two effects offset each other.)
    Standard explanations of this meager progress fail. Too few teachers? Not really. From 1970 to 2008, the student population increased 8 percent while the number of teachers rose 61 percent. Are teachers ill paid? Perhaps, but that’s not obvious. In 2008 the average teacher earned $53, 230; two full-time teachers married to each other and making average pay would rank among the richest 20 percent of households. Maybe more preschools would help. Yet the share of 3- and 4-year-olds in preschool has rocketed from 11 percent in 1965 to 53 percent in 2008.
    "Reforms" have disappointed for two reasons. First, no one has yet discovered transformative changes in curriculum or pedagogy(教学法), especially for inner-city schools, that are(in business lingo)"scalable" — that is, easily transferable to other schools, where they would predictably produce achievement gains. Efforts in New York City and Washington, D. C., to raise educational standards involve contentious and precarious school-by-school campaigns to purge "ineffective" -teachers and principals.
    The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation. Students, after all, have to do the work. If the students aren’t motivated, even capable teachers may fail. Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a "good" college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school "reform" is that if students aren’t motivated, it’s mainly the fault of schools and teachers. The reality is that, as high schools have become more inclusive and adolescent culture has strength-ened, the authority of teachers and schools has eroded.
    Motivation has weakened because more students don’t like school, don’t work hard, and don’t do well. The conflict between expanding "access" and raising standards goes against standards.
    Against these realities, school-"reform" rhetoric is blissfully evasive. Duncan urges "a great teacher" in every classroom — akin to having every football team composed of Ail-Americans. With that sort of intellectual rigor, what school "reform" promises is more disillusion.
Which of the following is the best title of the passage?
选项 A、Why School ’Reform’ Fails?
B、How Should Schools Reform?
C、School ’Reform’ has failed
D、The Prospect of School ’ Reform’
答案A
解析 主旨大意题。第一段说明学校改革的诺言仍未兑现，引出主题。第二段介绍了美国中小学改革的现状。第三至第六段分析说明了学校改革失败的原因。第七段表达了作者对改革方式的不满。由此可知本文主要说明的就是学校改革失败的原因，故[A]项最为准确。原文没有讨论学校应该如何进行改革，故排除[B]项。第一段就指出了学校改革仍未有成果，其余部分主要介绍失败原因，[C]项片面，故排除。原文没有讨论改革的前景，排除[D]项。
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