【经济学人】美国教育该何去何从|2016.12.03|总第748期

FOR those looking for encouraging signs about what a Trump administration might accomplish, the nomination of Betsy DeVos as education secretary deserves a cautious welcome. The welcome is because giving parents choice over where their children are educated is a good thing. The caution because there have been enough failures in school reform to suggest that promising ideas can be discredited if done badly.

对于那些正在寻找令人鼓舞的信号的人，事关川普政府可能做出的成绩，任命贝琪狄维士担任教育部长只会受到谨慎的欢迎，因为给予父母权利为孩子选择接受教育的地方，这实在是一件好事。但之所以要报以谨慎的态度是因为在教育改革上已经有过太多的失败了，这表明好的想法如果不能得以好好实施，就不会被人们信任。

我也不知道我想说什么，那就不说哦吧~

Both Republicans and Democrats suffer from blind spots on education reform. On the left there is a tendency to ignore bad public schools, pander to unions and indulge underperforming teachers. On the right the assumption is often that private is always better and that, once a voucher scheme has been set up, the work of school reform is done. The evidence suggests that what happens in the classroom is at least as important as the structure of the school system. This means recruiting and training teachers who give rigorous lessons and have high expectations of their pupils (see article).

共和党和民主党的成员都面临教育改革的盲点所带来的问题。民主党倾向于忽略低劣的公立学校、一昧迎合工会、放任业务能力不够的教师。共和党则想当然地认为私立的总是好的，并且一旦建立起学券制度，学校改革就宣告结束。有证据表明，教室里发生的事情至少和学校体制结构一样重要。这也意味着要聘请和培训那些上课严厉，对学生寄予厚望的老师。（详见文章）

二逼青年欢乐多~

Mrs DeVos has put money and effort behind vouchers, which parents can spend at private schools, and charter schools—public schools operating autonomously. In Michigan, her home state, the results have been poor. In a state where test scores have declined over the past decade, 80% of charters are below the state average in reading and maths. This is partly because Michigan ignored lessons from elsewhere.

贝琪•狄维士投入资金和精力推行学卷，家长可以在私立学校和特许自主办学的公立学校使用。但在她的家乡密歇根的成绩并不理想。在一个考试成绩已经连续十年下降的州地区，已经有八成的特许学校在阅读和数学上的成绩低于州平均水平。这其中部分原因是密歇根没有吸收其他地区的经验教训。

ese is to exercise oversight. Milwaukee, the city in Wisconsin where school-choice was pioneered, began by allowing virtually anyone to open a school. This invited chancers, including a convicted rapist and a man who used taxpayers’ money to buy himself a pair of Mercedes-Benz cars. As a result, Milwaukee is now more careful about who can start a school. So is Massachusetts, which has some of the best charters in the country. Michigan, in contrast, has favoured quantity over quality: the state is home to three of the ten school districts with the highest share of charter students in America.

第一，行使监督。威斯康星州的密尔沃基在择校问题上首开先河，刚开始允许所有人开办学校。这招致了很多投机份子，其中包括一名强奸犯和一名利用纳税人的钱为自己购买两辆梅赛德斯奔驰汽车的人。因此，密尔沃基现在对开办学校的人更加谨慎。即使马萨诸塞州有一些较好的特许学校，也对此十分谨慎。相反，密歇根却更着眼于特许学校的学生的数量而非学校的质量。美国特许生所占比例最高的前十的学区中有三所在密歇根。

也许这所学校就是你的目标（斯坦福），漂亮可爱帅气聪明无敌机智勇敢霸道总裁以及女王式的小哥哥小姐姐们加油~

A second principle is that oversight remains necessary even when vouchers and charters are up and running. Although the absence of bureaucracy is one of the biggest advantages of such schools, light-touch regulation is not the same as no regulation. As Milton Friedman, patron saint of the school-choice movement, put it, schools must meet “certain minimum standards laid down by the appropriate governmental unit”. In New Orleans, which has a successful charter-school scheme, the school district is ruthless about weeding out poorly performing schools. Worryingly, Mrs DeVos led a campaign against preventing underperforming charters in Michigan from expanding.

原则二，即使凭证和章程运行正常，但也需要监督。虽然这些学校的一大优势是不存在官僚管理，但轻度监管不等于没有监管。作为择校运动中的守护神，米尔顿·佛里德曼提出，所有学校必须符合“正规政府单位提出的某些最低标准”。在新奥尔良，特许学校计划成功实施，学区会无情地淘汰运行不佳的学校。但令人担忧的是，DeVos夫人领导了一场运动，反对在密歇根阻止运行不佳学校的扩张。

聪明 绝顶 的弗里德曼~

As Friedman also knew, markets work well only if buyers have the data with which to make an informed choice. That leads to the third principle: schools receiving public money should publish facts and figures about their performance. The best gauges are based on pupil improvement and other measures of value-added, rather than raw test scores. Alas, Michigan’s charters are among the country’s least transparent.

因为佛里德曼也知道，只要买家根据数据，在知情的情况下做出明智的选择，市场就能运行良好。这就引出了原则三，即接收公款的学校要公布事实，拿出数据来表示他们的运行状况。最好的指标是以学生的提高和其他措施的增值为基础的，而不是原始成绩。可是，密歇根的特许学校却是这个国家最不透明的学校。

Put your hands up for Detroit

支持底特律

America’s education system is decentralised: federal money makes up just under 9% of funding for secondary schools. But Mrs DeVos can still make a big difference. Federal dollars change behaviour at the margins: witness the impact of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top programme, which gives extra money to successful states. If states take the encouragement offered by the Trump administration to expand school choice, they should thank Mrs DeVos—then study how her home state could have done better.

美国的教育系统是分散的，联邦资金中只有不到9%的资金投入中学。不过，DeVos夫人有很大的影响力。联邦资金对政府的行为有轻微的作用：见证了奥巴马政府力争上游的计划的影响，这个计划在很多州都实施成功了，并为他们提供了额外的资金。 期待您的翻译，第二天会有解析的哟~

翻译 ▍栏目刘第二组

审核 ▍开心学英语

编辑 ▍毛毛