The annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll of attitudes towards public education released this week found that a majority of Americans feel it is important to put a "qualified, competent teacher in every classroom". Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association (NEA), the main teachers’ union, wasted no time in pointing out that this will require raising teachers’ salaries so that more qualified candidates will enter the profession and stay there. A study by two economists suggests that the quality of America’s teachers has more to do with how they are paid rather than how much. The pay of American public school. teachers is not based on any measure _of performance; instead, it is determined by a rigid formula based on experience and years of schooling. factors massively unimportant in deciding how well students do. The uniform pay scale invites what economists call adverse selection. Since the most talented teachers are also likely to be good at other professions, they have a strong incentive to leave education for jobs in which pay is more closely linked to productivity. For dullards(笨蛋), the incentives are just the opposite. The data are striking: when test scores are used as a proxy (代替物) for ability, the brightest individuals shun the teaching profession at every juncture. Clever students are the least likely to choose education as a major at university. Among students who do major in education, those with higher test scores are less likely to become teachers. And among individuals who enter teaching, those with the highest test scores are the most likely to leave the profession early. The study takes into consideration the effects of a nationwide 20% real increase in teacher salaries during the 1980s. It concludes that it had no appreciable effect on overall teacher quality, in large part because schools do a poor job of recruiting and selecting the best teachers. Also, even if higher salaries lure more qualified candidates into the profession, the overall effect on quality may be offset by mediocre teachers who choose to postpone retirement. The study also takes aim at teacher training. Every state requires that teachers be licensed, a process that can involve up to two years of education classes, even for those who have a university degree or a graduate degree in the field they would like to teach. Inevitably, this system does little to lure in graduates of top universities or professionals who would like to enter teaching at mid-career. What can we learn from the passage
A. NEA is the largest society for teachers.
B. The pay of American teachers is based on their performance.
C. Some teachers in the U.S. are not qualified enough.
D. How much the teachers are paid is the most important factor.
Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance were determined by technologists, artisans, designers, inventors, and engineers--using nonscientific modes of thought. Many features and qualities of the objects that a technologist thinks about cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions; they are dealt with in the mind by a visual, nonverbal process. ①In the development of Western technology, it has he en nonverbal thinking, by and large, that has fixed the outlines and filled in the details; and rockets exist not because of geometry or thermodynamics (热力学), but because they were first a picture in the minds of those who built them. The creative shaping process of a technologist’s mind can be seen in nearly every artifact that exists. For example, in designing a diesel engine, a technologist might impress individual ways of nonverbal thinking on the machine by continually using an intuitive sense of rightness and fitness. What would be the shape of the combustion chamber Where should the valves be placed Should it have a long or short piston Such questions have a range of answers that are supplied by experience, by physical requirements, by limitations of available space, and not least by a sense of form. Some decisions, such as wall thickness and pin diameter, may depend on scientific calculations, but the nonscientific component of design remains primary. Design courses, then, should be an essential element in engineering curricula. Nonverbal thinking, a central mechanism in engineering design, involves perceptions, the stock in trade of the artist, not the scientist. ②Because perceptive processes are not assumed to entail. "hard thinking", nonverbal thought is sometimes seen as a primitive stage in the development of cognitive processes and infeiror to verbal or mathematical thought, ③But it is paradoxical that when the staff of the Historic American Engineering Record wished to have drawings made of machines and isometric(等比例 的)views of industrial processes for its historical record of American engineering, the only college students with the requisite abilities were not engineering students, but rather students attending architectural schools. ④If courses in design, which in a strong]y analytial engineering curriculum provide the backgound required" for practical problem solving, are not provided, we can expect to encounter silly but costly enors gccurring in advanced engineering systems. For example, early models of high-speed railroad cars loaded with high-tech controls were unable to operate in a snowstorm because the fan sucked snow into the electrical system. ⑤Absurd random failures that plague automatic control systems are not merely trivital aberrations(失常); they are a reflection of the chaos that results when design is assumed to be primarily a prgblem in mathematics: The example of the early models of high-speed railroad cars is used to ______.
A. weaken the point that math is a necessary part of the study of design
B. support the idea that errors in modem engineering systems are likely to increase
C. illustrate the topic that courses in design are the most effective cost-reducing means
D. exemplify the thesis that inadequate attention to nonscientific design may result in poor design