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  3. Education Standards Are Not the Answer Sen. Christopher Dodd and Rep. Vernon Ehlers have recently proposed a bill to create

Education Standards Are Not the Answer Sen. Christopher Dodd and Rep. Vernon Ehlers have recently proposed a bill to create

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问题                     Education Standards Are Not the Answer
    Sen. Christopher Dodd and Rep. Vernon Ehlers have recently proposed a bill to create a national curriculum in reading and math. The bill’s supporters rightly tell us that by the end of high school, American students have fallen behind their international peers. Dodd and Ehlers use that observation to conclude that we need such a curriculum "to compete in the global economy." But how exactly would homogenizing our curriculum and testing make us more competitive? "National standards would help propel U.S. economic competitiveness, because they would allow the country to set expectations higher than those of our international competitors," write Rudy Crew and Paul Vallas, the superintendents of the Miami and Philadelphia school districts, in a recent Education Week commentary.
    This idea of higher standards has a certain appeal. In many other areas of life, higher standards are associated with better performance. It’s much harder to qualify for a U. S. Olympic team than for a typical high school sports team—and Olympic teams are demonstrably better. Japanese automakers generally set higher reliability standards in the 1970s than did American automakers, and they produced more reliable vehicles. But sports and manufacturing are competitive fields, while public schooling currently is not. Standards advocates mistakenly assume that high external standards produce excellence, but in fact it is the competitive pursuit of excellence that produces high standards.
    Michael Petrilli, a scholar at the Ford-ham Foundation, recognizes the role of competition in education, but contends that national standards are necessary to facilitate it. In order for any market to work effectively, Petrilli claims, "consumers need good information," and in his view, that information can only be delivered by a national system of standards and tests.
    Yet around the world, free education markets are already thriving with no such standards in place. One such market exists in the United States: after-school tutoring. By contrast, there is no evidence that imposing government standards improves the performance of true education markets. On the contrary, by placing all intellectual eggs in the same basket, a single national curriculum would hamper competition and magnify the damage done by every bad decision.
    As Jared Diamond so compellingly argued in his Pulitzer Prize winning Guns, Germs , and Steel, diversity is as important to the health of human societies as it is to the survival of ecosystems. We need education diversity as much as we need biodiversity. A dynamic, competitive system is better able to survive mishaps than a monolithic, centralized one.
    It is ironic that standards advocates urge us to improve our schools in response to competitive pressures from abroad, but then discount the ability of the same competition and consumer choice to drive improvement at home. It is the competitive pursuit of excellence spurred by market forces that drives up standards, not the other way around. The sooner we realize that, the better off our children will be.
The national curriculum in America was proposed to______ .
选项 A、increase the academic competence of students
B、narrow the achievement gap among schools
C、improve the current educational system
D、improve high-school level education
答案A
解析 本题考查事实细节。国家课程提出的背景及原因集中在第一段。该段第一句指出了国家课程的设定对象：阅读和数学。第二、三句指出制定国家课程的动机：美国学生在高中阶段末期就已经落后于其它国家的同龄人。末句指出了国家课程的作用：给美国的学生设定高于其他国家同龄人的期望值，从而增强美国的经济竞争力。由此可见，制定国家课程是为了方便政府统一地制定高标准，以提高美国学生的学习效果，并进一步增强美国的国际经济竞争力。[A]正确选项。文中只提及了美国学生的学习能力落后于他国学生，并没有提及各学校之间的差异，也没有提及美国教育体制的不完善，所以[B]、 [C]都无中生有。[D]的干扰源于第一段第二句。但“到高中结束时美国学生已经落后于他国学生”并不意味着“只有高中水平教育需要提高”。
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