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  3. Passage Two (1) Results day has a time-worn rhythm, full of annual trope

Passage Two (1) Results day has a time-worn rhythm, full of annual trope

游客2024-11-03  23
问题     Passage Two
    (1) Results day has a time-worn rhythm, full of annual tropes: local newspaper pictures of envelope-clutching girls jumping in the air in threes and fours, columnists complaining that exams have gotten far too easy, and the same five or six celebrities posting worthy Twitter threads about why exam results don’t matter because everything worked out alright for them.
    (2)  But this year, it’s very different. The coronavirus pandemic means exams were cancelled and replaced with teacher assessments and algorithms. It has created chaos.
    (3)  In Scotland, the government was forced to completely change tack after tens of thousands of students were downgraded by an algorithm which changed grades based on a school’s previous performance and other factors. Anticipating similar scenes for today’s A-level results, the government in England has introduced what it’s calling a "triple lock"—whereby, via stages of appeals, students will effectively get to choose their grade from a teacher assessment, their mock exam results, or a resit(重考) to be taken in the autumn.
    (4)  While that should help reduce some injustices, the results day mess could still have a disproportionate effect on students from disadvantaged backgrounds, with knock-on effects on their university applications and careers. The mess shines a light on huge, long-term flaws in the assessment, exams and university admissions systems that systematically disadvantage pupils from certain groups.
    (5)   Forget the triple lock, ethnic minority students from poorer backgrounds could be hit with a triple whammy. First, their teacher assessments may be lower than white students because of unconscious bias, argues Pran Patel, a former assistant headteacher and an equity activist at Decolonise The Curriculum. He points to a 2009 study into predictions and results in Key Stage 2 English which found that Pakistani pupils were 62. 9 per cent more likely than white pupils to be predicted a lower score than they actually achieved, for example. There’s also an upwards spike in results for boys from black and Caribbean background at age 16, which Patel says corresponds to the first time in their school careers that they’re assessed anonymously.
    (6)  This year, because of coronavirus, those potentially biased teacher assessments were modified—taking into account the school’s historical performance and other factors that may have had little to do with the individual student.
    (7)   This means that a bright pupil in a poorly performing school may have seen their grade downgraded because last year’s cohort(一群人) of pupils didn’t do well in their exams. "Children from a certain background may find their assessment is downgraded," says Stephen Curran, a teacher and education expert. This is what happened in Scotland, where children from poorer backgrounds were twice as likely to have their results downgraded than those from richer areas.
    (8)  There’s injustice in the appeals process too—particularly in England, where the decision over whether or not to appeal is up to the school, not the pupil. There will be huge differences in which schools decide or are able to appeal—inevitably, better resourced private schools will be able to appeal more easily than underfunded state schools in deprived areas. "The parents will pressure them, and they’ll be apoplectic if their child does not achieve the grades they expected," says Curran. In the state system, meanwhile, "some schools will fight for their kids, and others won’t," and teachers are on holiday until term starts anyway.
    (9)  On August 11, Gavin Williamson announced the triple lock that would allow students to pick from their teacher assessed grade, their mock exam result, or doing a resit in the autumn if they don’t agree with the grade the system gives them initially.  But there are huge problems there too.
    (10)   The government is still figuring out exactly how mock results will be used, but there are vast discrepancies in conditions that mocks are taken in, and no centralised record of mock results. Some schools don’t even collect that data centrally for their own pupils. Sometimes teachers will downgrade results in a mock exam in order to scare certain students into working harder for the remainder of the year, says Patel. He doesn’t think including mocks will do anything to help repair bias. "Not in the slightest," he says. "Because the teacher who is assessing your grade is the same teacher who marked your mock exam. "
    (11)  That means it will be difficult for teachers, who Patel stresses may not have much experience marking exam papers, to untangle their conscious or unconscious perceptions from the words on the page in front of them. "Teachers are now being asked to make decisions that are potentially life-changing by completing a task that they’re not qualified or suitably trained to do," he says.
    (12)  Teachers are aghast(吓呆的) at the mess that’s been allowed to unfold. Universities are also eyeing the situation nervously. The people we spoke to have been looking at the situation in Scotland, and suspect that many pupils—at least those from schools that can afford the appeals—will essentially end up getting whatever grade they want. That will have an impact on university places, which are generally over-allocated to account for people missing their targets. Some universities will have far too many people who have made their grades, while those lower down the rankings may find themselves scrambling for students.
    (13)  A smarter use of data could help tackle the problem, Patel argues. Exams regulator Ofqual has used data about school performance to head off grade inflation, when instead, it should be using data about hidden bias to counteract societal injustice.
    (14)  Oversubscribed universities could look inside the black box and see which pupils were downgraded and why, and use that information to make assessments about who to give places to. Arguably they should be doing that more often anyway, with contextual offers that take into account how much easier it is to get good grades for people from certain social or economic backgrounds. "Teacher assessment is prone to bias, but there are lots of other ways of assessing pupils, and if you embrace lots of different techniques you can ameliorate that impact," Patel says. "There’s no ideal situation, but the problem here is that exams were never a great metric for learning or success anyway. "  [br] Children from disadvantaged backgrounds may suffer from all the following hits EXCEPT________.
选项 A、being downgraded by their biased teachers
B、having fewer access to the appeals process
C、getting lower scores in anonymous assessments
D、being affected by their poorly-performing schools
答案 C
解析 细节题。根据题干定位到第五段。第五段首句就指出，少数民族贫困学生可能遭到三重打击，随后的第二句提到，教师有可能出于无意识的偏见，而给贫困的少数民族学生评估分较低，因此排除[A]；第七段第一句说到，个人表现好的学生可能会因为其学校表现不佳而被压低成绩，故可排除[D]；而由第八段第一、二句可知，申诉的程序也并非绝对公平的，经济条件较差的公立学校的学生较难申诉，故排除[B]；第五段后半部分提到，匿名考试中受歧视的学生成绩可能会提高，可知[C]与原文相悖，故为答案。
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