外刊双语： 美国学生成绩单说明了什么？（Part 2）

原文标题：
School catch-up after covid-19
Mountains to climb
America risks fumbling its chance to help schoolchildren catch up
新冠后的学校补习
需要征服的高山
美国可能会错过帮助学生赶上进度的机会

Enormous extra funding is not all being well spent
额外巨资没有花在刀刃上

[Paragraph 7]
Some districts have used relief money to put off unpopular decisions, says Marguerite Roza, who studies education finance at Georgetown University.
乔治城大学研究教育财政的玛格丽特·罗扎说，一些学区用救济金推迟做不受欢迎的决定。

Even before the pandemic many were seeing enrolment decline. Some are now using federal funds to delay inevitable downsizing.
即使在新冠之前，许多学区的入学人数就在下降。一些学区现在正使用联邦资金来推迟这种无法避免的入学人数下降趋势。

At least some schools have created extra staff-training days without lengthening the school calendar. Their pupils are getting even less class time than usual.
至少有些学校在没有延长校历的情况下，增加了员工培训日。这些学校的学生上课时间比平时更少。

[Paragraph 8]
Many districts are spending big dollops of their relief money on infrastructure, with the government’s blessing. That includes new and improved air conditioning; sprightlier classrooms and more computers.
在政府的支持下，许多学区将大笔救济金花在基础设施上。包括买新款改良的空调；用于使教室更明亮和买更多电脑。

These kinds of projects have long been demanded by unions and in most cases will benefit children.
长期以来，工会一直在要求开展这类项目，在大多数情况下，这些项目都会惠及学童。

But they hardly seem good ways of tackling the emergency at hand.
但基础设施似乎很难解决燃眉之急。

They also risk diverting the energy and attention of school administrators who are supposed to be making sure that catch-up schemes pay off.
这还可能分散学校管理者的精力和注意力，因为他们本应有更多精力确保学习进度追赶计划取得成效。

[Paragraph 9]
Educators in some circles still shy away from talk of “learning loss”.
一些教育圈子的工作者仍然回避谈论“学习损失”的话题。

They prefer to say that children are suffering “unfinished instruction” or “interrupted learning”; they insist that children learned other types of lessons during the pandemic. Parents are not always pushing them.
他们更喜欢说孩子们遭遇的是“未完成的学习”或“中断的学习”；他们坚持认为，学童们在新冠期间学到了其他东西。父母也不会一直强迫他们。

Only 9% think their child’s learning will not be back on track within a year or two, according to a survey for Education Next, a journal. Two-fifths think they never fell behind.
根据《下一代教育》杂志的一项调查，只有9%的人不认为孩子的学习会在一两年内回到正轨。2/5的人认为孩子们从未落后。

Lenient grading during remote learning may have given them false reassurance.
远程学习期间的宽松评分可能给了他们错误的信号。

Dan Goldhaber at the University of Washington worries that schools have not always been straight with parents about the scale of losses, in part for fear of being blamed.
华盛顿大学的丹·戈德哈伯担心，学校并不会直接向家长说明孩子们学习损失的程度，部分原因是担心受到指责。

[Paragraph 10]
Politics is making everything more difficult.
政治让一切变得更加困难。

Disruptions to schooling generally lasted longer in blue (Democratic) areas than in red ones. That has given Democratic supporters an incentive to play down the damage.
蓝色（民主党）地区的学校中断时间通常比红色地区更长。这促使民主党支持者淡化了这种损害。

Republicans, meanwhile, see education as an issue that could win votes at the midterms next month.
与此同时，共和党人认为教育是一个可在下个月中期选举中赢得选票的议题。

But instead of focusing on catch-up, firebrands on the right have helped heat up noisy and mostly fruitless debates about how history, sex and race are taught.
但右翼的煽动者们并没有专注于学习进度追赶计划，反而使毫无结果的争论白热化，例如历史、性别和种族的教学问题。

That has made teaching more complex, just when educators most need support.
在教育工作者最需要支持的时候，政治使得教学变得更加复杂。

[Paragraph 11]
Complacency about catch-up will be costly.
只满足于赶上学习进度的代价也巨大无比。

Even before the pandemic almost one in three American adults lacked basic numeracy (the average across rich countries is one in five).
即使在新冠之前，差不多有1/3的美国成年人都缺乏基本的算术能力（而这一方面发达国家的平均数是1/5）。

During covid learning in America appears to have slowed more than it did in places such as England and Spain.
在新冠期间，美国的教学进度似乎比英国和西班牙等地慢得多。

Young pupils in Sweden made good progress throughout the tumult; in parts of Japan pupils have already made up losses.
瑞典的小学生在新冠期间中取得了良好的进步；日本部分地区的学生已经弥补了学习损失。

Culture wars are raging around America’s classrooms. But the real crisis in schools is getting short shrift.
文化战争蔓延到了美国的教室里。但学校真正的危机却被忽视了。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量431/950左右）
原文出自：2022年10月29日《TE》United States版块。
精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路
本文翻译整理: Irene本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【补充资料】（来自于网络）

Learning Loss学习损失的概念一直是各个年龄段的师生都面临的问题。然而，在目前的情况下，学习损失成为了一个更大的问题，严重影响了学生的知识保留，阻碍了他们的进步。降低参与度并对学习产生负面影响的一些最显着因素包括学校日常活动受损、课间休息时间延长、课程安排和教学效率低下。

【重点句子】（3 个）
But they hardly seem good ways of tackling the emergency at hand.
但基础设施似乎很难解决燃眉之急。

Lenient grading during remote learning may have given them false reassurance.
远程学习期间的宽松评分可能给了他们错误的信号。

Complacency about catch-up will be costly.
只满足于赶上学习进度的代价也巨大无比。