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  3. "If we want to become a strong economy again, the best thing we can do is have an educated workforce. "Few would object to U. S.

"If we want to become a strong economy again, the best thing we can do is have an educated workforce. "Few would object to U. S.

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问题     "If we want to become a strong economy again, the best thing we can do is have an educated workforce. "Few would object to U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s explanation of why Washington is mobilizing $100 billion to schools and universities as part of February’s giant stimulus package. Indeed, other countries are following suit, with Britain, Germany, Canada, and others making new education funding part of their anti-crisis strategies.
    What’s far less clear is that this money is going where it’s most needed—or likely to have the greatest social and economic payoff. In Germany, the bulk of nearly ￡10 billion in new school spending is being used to renovate buildings, but unlikely to have much effect on the quality of German graduates. In the United States, schools were not using the stimulus money to boost student achievement, as promised by Duncan, but to fund their general budgets. And in still other countries, governments are using money to help build new world-class universities—projects that a World Bank study in July warned risk bleeding resources away from more desperately needed areas.
    The biggest error governments are making is to blindly push for more and better everything at all levels of education; more teachers, flashier facilities, more technology in the classroom, and more elite universities. All such efforts may seem sensible, but studies show that simply spending more on education doesn’t produce better results. Kids don’t necessarily learn more if they sit in smaller classrooms, in more modern and better-equipped schools, or even if their teachers are better-paid. According to Ludger Woessmann of the IFO Institute, merely raising per student spending has zero effect on achievement. The United States, France and Germany have increased spending significantly in past decades only to see performance stagnate, while countries like Sweden and Finland have boosted quality through structural reform.
    Studies suggest another important way education policy should be refocused. They find that the largest returns on investment come not from mobilizing more money toward top or even average performers, but toward those who have been left behind. Raising the achievement of the unskilled and excluded would lead not only to individual payoffs, such as higher incomes and more meaningful lives, but also would generate big benefits for economies, such as higher productivity and greater GDP. It would also result in broad social gains—less crime, less welfare spending, and a greater sense of cohesion. "Improving our education to get the economic growth more broadly shared is the one most important thing we can do," says Benjamin Friedman, a Harvard economist. He argues that changing education in this way would be one of the few ways governments could promote both justice and economic growth—not one at the expense of the other.
Arne Duncan believes that the best way to cope with financial crisis is to______.
选项 A、provide more funds
B、better educate laborers
C、make effective policies
D、build world-class universities
答案B
解析 细节题。根据题干提示定位至第一段。该段首先借用美国教育部部长阿恩.邓肯的话来说明美国应对经济危机的策略，即提高教育质量，进而提高劳动者素质。接下来作者提供了与此相关的背景信息：各国纷纷效仿美国，加大教育投入来减轻经济危机带来的负面影响。因此，应对经济危机、促进经济增长的最佳方案是提高劳动者的受教育程度，故正确答案为[B]。[A]、[C]和[D]都不是应对经济危机的最好办法，故均排除。
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