2015考研英语阅读英文原刊《经济学人》：电子教学

　　The value of teachers

　　教学理念

　　The arrival of a powerful new tool thus does not replace the other necessary element ineducation reform, the raising of teacher quality. Good teaching is the single biggest variablein educating pupils, bigger than class size, family background or school funding, says EricHanushek, an education expert at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. And crucial tohaving better teachers is evaluating them properly, hiring, firing and promoting on merit.

　　在教育改革中，这种强大的新型教学工具不会喧宾夺主影响师资力量的提高。斯坦福大学胡佛学院的教育专家Eric Hanushek表示，比起课堂规模、学生的家庭背景和校方的资金水平来说，唯独教学质量在小学教育中最容易改善。想要招募到优秀老师，关键是要有合理的评价机制，在老师的聘用解雇或是升迁问题上要注意举贤用能。

　　The teachers’ unions, however, are fighting all attempts to move away from systems in whichpay and tenure are linked only to seniority and credentials. In some places, such asWashington, DC, the reformers have won a few skirmishes; in others, such as Los Angeles, theunions are digging in for a long war. The core question is how, even whether, teachers can beevaluated fairly on the basis of exam results or classroom observation (given that some pupilsare from educated families, others from poor areas, and so on). The unions are doing their bestto ensure that evaluations have no consequences in staffing.

　　然而，仅仅凭借工龄和文凭来定薪资和评职称的这套体系正是教师工会竭尽所能所要改变的。这样的改革在一些地区，比如华盛顿，已经稍有成效;而在另一些地区，比如洛杉矶，工会已经陷入了一场持久战。关键的问题就是，如何利用考试成绩和课堂观摩的方法(因为有的孩子出身于书香门第，有的孩子则来自贫困家庭，等等)公正的评价老师的水平，甚至这两种指标的有效性也值得商榷。工会现在正努力确保这些评级不会对老师的职位产生影响。

　　Technology can play a part here, because, in essence, evaluation is an information problem.Today’s standardised tests are deservedly unpopular with teachers and parents because, first,the “standards” tend to be low (and easily lowered further); second, teaching to the test is aform of dumbing down; and third, the tests take place only once or twice a year.

　　科学技术可以在这派上用场，因为从本质上来说，评教的根本问题出在了信息的匮乏。老师和家长并不看好如今的标准考试，因为第一，它所谓的“标准”太低，(而且标准还很容易继续降低);第二，应试教育会简化教学内容;第三，这种考试一年只有一两次。

　　By contrast, spend a few minutes playing with theKhanAcademy dashboard of a class in Los Altos, andyou see a vision of the future. You can follow theprogress of each child—where she started, how sheprogressed, where she got stuck and “unstuck” (asMs Thordarson likes to put it). You can also view theprogress of the entire class. And you couldaggregate the information of all the classes taughtby one teacher, of an entire school or even district,with data covering a whole year.

　　相反，花点时间用Khan软件看看Los Altos学校一个班级的学习情况，你就会发现这种教学工具大有可为。你可以跟踪每个学生的学习进度——她从哪开始，如何进步，在哪遇到了困难又如何“解开”了难题(Thordarson老师总是这么说)，还可以看到整个班级的进步。由于全年都有数据覆盖，对于同一个老师的授课信息，整个学校甚至是整个市区的教育信息你都能了如指掌。

　　Dennis van Roekel, the president of the National Education Association (NEA), the largest labourunion in America with 3.2m members, goes ballistic at this suggestion. “Don’t demean theprofession” by implying that you can rate teachers with numbers, he says. Besides, this sort ofthing would introduce destructive competition into a culture that should be collaborative, headds (without explaining why data-driven evaluations have not destroyed collaboration inother industries).

　　国家教育协会(简称NEA，全美最大的劳工协会，有320万成员)的主席Dennis van Roeke十分反对这种提议。他表示，不要总说老师是按照分数进行评价的，这是在“贬低这项职业”。另外，他补充到，这种教学工具会带来灾难性的竞争，而我们需要却是互帮互助的文化氛围。(但他并没有解释为什么数据化的评价体系不会破坏其他行业的合作。)

　　The NEA and its supporters will eventually lose this fight, says Kate Walsh, the president ofthe National Council on Teacher Quality, a think-tank that unions love to hate. “It will beconsidered fair game to collect the data” and to use them to get better teachers in America’sclassrooms, she says. It may or may not be KhanAcademy’s software that produces thisinformation. Nonetheless, the academy, “by offering a different model, is forcing the issue thatpeople have speculated about”, says Mr Hanushek at Stanford. “These technological ideas offerthe possibility of breaking a logjam.”

　　全国教师水平委员会引起了国家教协的极大反感，该委员会主席Kate Walsh表示国家教协及其支持者注定会失败。她说，“收集教育数据这种评价方法是公平的”，而且我们要用这种方法找出更优秀的老师来在课堂上授课。不管是不是Khan学院的软件提供了这些信息，毕竟是这个学院“通过提供不同的模式来让大家关注到一个曾经考虑过的问题”。“这些技术给打破僵局提供了新思路。”

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