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

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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 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, blacks, and Hispanics, although the narrowing generally stopped in the late 1980s.(Average scores have remained stable because, although blacks’ and Hispanics’ 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.)

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答案 随着5600万儿童重返全国的13万3千所中小学,“改革”的承诺再次引发人们的关注。美国教育部长阿内?邓肯公布了总金额达40亿美元的“力争上游(Race to the Top)”计划奖金,以鼓励那些在申请方案中展示出,用邓肯的话说,“勇敢地致力于教育改革”并“拥有令人振奋的创造力和创新力”的各州。然而,实际上它们表明的是,比起“学校改革”而言,更少的项目将引发更多的学术腐败和政治吹嘘。 当然,小学现在已有了一些进步。但是,如果取得的进步将被高中抹杀,那么它的意义又何在呢?白人、黑人和西班牙裔学生在高中学业上的差距正缓慢缩小,尽管这种趋势在80年代末曾出现基本停滞。(他们的平均分基本保持稳定,原因是,虽然黑人和“西班牙裔”学生的分数在缓慢上升,这些少数民族学生的数量也在扩张。这意味着,他们依旧落后的分数极大地拖了平均分的后腿。两种效应相互抵消了。)

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