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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.
Which of the following reflects the author’s opinion?
选项 A、Standards are impossible to be set in education field.
B、A diverse educational system can help avoid some bad decisions.
C、All schools should be set free to face competition.
D、High standards don’t necessarily produce excellence.
答案D
解析 本题考查作者观点。第二段作者运用具体事例说明：“高标准产生高质量”适用于竞争性行业，但并不适用于教育行业。[D]为此观点的综合表达，为正确选项。作者虽然认为国家标准没有必要(第四段第一、二句)，具有危害性(第四段末句)，但并没有说无法对教育制定标准，[A]错误。第四段末和第五段只是说明：单一的国家课程会放大错误决策的危害。第五段说明：多样化、动态的、竞争的教育体系更有利于避免意外事件的影响。所以，文中只是说明了：单一的国家课程会放大错误决策的危害，动态的教育体系有利于降低错误决策所造成的破坏，而非能够避免错误决策的产生，[B]错误。第五段末句和第六段说明，作者认为应该重视并充分利用竞争的作用但这并不意味着国家要彻底地放手学校，让其自由竞争，排除[C]。
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