Lessons learned

经验教训

Shutting schools has hit poor American children’s learning

关闭学校影响了美国贫困儿童的学习

Evidence is trickling in that this year’s cohort have fallen behind

越来越多的证据表明，今年的学生已经落后了

词汇

 cohort /同期组群

Dec 19th 2020 | WASHINGTON, DC

CLOSED SCHOOLS are bad for all children, but especially bad for poor and disadvantaged pupils. This basic pattern recurs wherever and whenever researchers look for it—in the wake of an epidemic of polio in America in 1916, after teachers’ strikes in Argentina since the 1980s, and after a devastating earthquake in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir in 2005.

关闭的学校对所有的孩子都不好，但对贫穷和弱势的学生来说尤其不好。这一基本模式在研究人员探索的任何时间、任何地点都不断重现——1916年美国脊髓灰质炎流行之后，自20世纪80年代以来阿根廷的教师罢工之后，以及2005年巴基斯坦控制的克什米尔地区发生毁灭性地震之后（都有所体现）。

词汇

Recur/重现；再来

Polio/ 小儿麻痹症；脊髓灰质炎

Most natural experiments in school disruption come after isolated natural disasters. The covid-19 pandemic is leading to a simultaneous global experiment, however. In America, where schools have been significantly disrupted for the better part of a year, the first batches of reliable data are being gathered to assess how bad the damage has actually been. Sorting through them shows that sadly, America has not defied the gloomy predictions.

大多数学校的自然实验都是在孤立的单独灾害之后显现的。然而，2019冠状病毒大流行正在导致一场同步的全球实验。在美国，学校在一年中大部分时间都受到严重干扰，目前正在收集第一批可靠数据，以评估实际损失有多严重。可悲的是，梳理这些数据表明，美国并没有推翻这些悲观的预测。

词汇

 Simultaneous/同时的；联立的

Batch/一批；一炉；分批次处理

 

 

A recent analysis of standardised tests carried out by McKinsey, a consulting firm, found that pupils examined in the autumn had learned 33% less maths and 13% less reading than expected. For schools that are majority non-white, the learning losses were much steeper: pupils there had learned 41% less maths and 23% less reading. NWEA, a producer and administrator of standardised exams used in primary and secondary schools, published its own review of autumn scores that was less worrying. Pupils slid back substantially in maths, but not reading, with few detectable differences along racial or socioeconomic lines. But a substantial share of students, disproportionately poor and non-white, simply did not take the tests this year—which may have flattered the results.

咨询公司麦肯锡最近进行的一项标准化测试分析发现，秋季参加考试的学生学习的数学比预期少33%，阅读比预期少13%。对于以非白人为主的学校来说，学习损失要大得多:学生们学习的数学少了41%，阅读少了23%。NWEA是中小学标准化考试的制作者和管理者，它发表了自己对秋季考试成绩的评论，但没有那么令人担忧。学生们的数学成绩大幅下滑，但阅读成绩却没有，在种族或社会经济方面几乎没有明显的差异。但今年有相当一部分学生(不成比例的贫穷和非白人)根本就没有参加考试——这可能夸大了考试结果。

 

 

In Washington, DC, 73% of white children in kindergarten and 45% of black children typically show adequate reading progress. When examined this year, white children showed a modest drop in adequate literacy, to 67%, while black children experienced a much larger one—to 31%. The gaps are also showing up in coursework, not just exams. Teachers in Los Angeles are reporting a stark increase in the number of failing grades—with the greatest increase in poor neighbourhoods. Researchers from Brown and Harvard universities examining data from Zearn, an online maths-teaching platform, found that pupils in high-income schools are actually performing 12% better in their coursework than in January 2020. But for low-income schools, scores fell by 17%.

在华盛顿特区，73%的幼儿园白人儿童和45%的黑人儿童在阅读方面有一定的进步。在今年的调查中，白人儿童的识字率略有下降，达到67%，而黑人儿童的识字率则大幅下降，仅有31%。这种差距不仅体现在考试上，也体现在功课上。洛杉矶的教师们报告称，不及格的人数明显增加，其中贫困地区的增长幅度最大。来自布朗大学和哈佛大学的研究人员分析了在线数学教学平台Zearn的数据，发现高收入学校的学生在课程作业上的表现实际上比2020年1月时高出12%。但是低收入学校的分数下降了17%。

 

The results suggest that the fears of worsening achievement gaps at the start of the pandemic were justified. There are enormous racial gaps in the kinds of instruction being received: 70% of black and Hispanic children are receiving fully remote education, compared with 50% of white pupils. Parents with the means to do so appear to be pulling their children out of public education altogether. There are 31,000 fewer pupils in the New York City public school system than in 2019; the roster in Austin, Texas, is 6% smaller. Instead, parents are hiring private tutors to teach their children in person. That is almost certain to widen the achievement gap.

这些结果表明，在大流行开始时，对成绩差距进一步扩大的担忧是有道理的。在接受的教育种类上存在着巨大的种族差异:70%的黑人和西班牙裔儿童接受完全的远程教育，而白人学生只有50%。有能力这样做的父母似乎要让他们的孩子完全脱离公共教育。纽约市公立学校系统比2019年减少了3.1万名学生;德克萨斯州奥斯汀市（学校的）花名册则少了6%。相反，家长们开始聘请私人教师亲自教他们的孩子。这差不多肯定会拉大成绩差距。

词汇

 roster / 花名册；执勤人员表

Standardised exams are far from perfect. They do not measure the learning of impatient children well. More meaningful measures of lost learning, such as wages in adulthood, will not be known for years. Yet tests are not all bad. Given third-grade maths scores, researchers can quite accurately pick out which children will go on to become patent-holding inventors. They need not be a counsel of despair. Learning loss is remediable. But it requires the sort of serious investment that only Congress could provide and, so far, the gridlocked House and Senate have not seemed especially interested in providing it. ■

标准化考试远非完美。他们没有很好地衡量沉不下心的孩子的学习情况。关于学习损失的更有意义的指标，比如成年期的工资，在数年内都不会为人所知。然而，测试也不全是坏事。根据三年级的数学成绩，研究人员可以相当准确地判断出哪些孩子将会成为专利持有者。（成绩不好的学生）他们无需自暴自弃。学习损失是可以补救的。但它需要那种只有国会才能提供的认真投资，而且到目前为止，陷入僵局的众议院和参议院似乎对提供这种投资并没有特别的兴趣。■

词汇

counsel of despair/参考短语【adopt a counsel of despair/ 采取自暴自弃的态度】