【教书匠阿伦-外刊精读】“选校"这件事儿，究竟选择上公
The debate is, it seems, as old as schools themselves: do students benefit more and perform better in a private school environment? Even when the local public school system is excellent?
争论的焦点似乎和学校历史一样悠久：即使当地公立学校制度系统健全，学生在私立学校是否受益更多表现更好？
These are some of the questions facing Canadian parents today, Sachin Maharaj writes in a column in the Toronto Star. According to a 2012 Ipsos-Reid poll cited in the article, two-thirds of Canadian parents said they would send their children to private schools, rather than their local public schools, if they could afford it. There appears to be a vast preference among Canadian parents for the supposedly superior education provided by private schools – despite the fact that Canada’s public school system is consistently ranked among the world’s best.
Sachin Maharaj在《多伦多明星报》一篇专栏中写道：这是加拿大家长如今面临的一些问题。根据该文章引用的2012年Ipsos-Reid民调，三分之二的加拿大家长表示如果负担得起，他们会把孩子送到私立学校而非公立学校。尽管加拿大公立学校一直被归为世界上最好的学校之列，但加拿大家长似乎普遍倾向于私立学校提供的所谓“优越的教育”。
Private schools, clearly, are doing a better job of promoting their benefits, using university admissions data and a dizzying array of extra-curricular activities to convince parents that they would do their child a disservice by leaving him or her to languish in a public school. Yet there are plenty of public schools that also help their students gain admission to top universities and offer coding clubs or lacrosse teams.
显然，私立学校在提升入学附加值方面做得更好，通过利用大学招生数据和琳琅满目的课外活动说服家长们相信，他们的孩子在公立学校学习会不利于个人发展。然而仍有许多公立学校的学生顺利获得顶尖大学的录取通知书，而且公立学校也为学生开设了编程俱乐部和曲棍球队。
Perhaps a more significant difference, writes Maharaj, is the fact that private school students, on average, attain better academic outcomes than their public school counterparts. A recent Fraser Institute ranking of Ontario’s top elementary schools, for example, placed adisproportionate number of private schools among the highest spots on the list. Only about 6 percent of Canadian school age children attend private schools, but more than a third of the top-ranked schools on the Fraser list were private schools. Private school students in Canada also score higher overall on comparative assessments like the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests.
Maharaj写道，也许更重要的区别在于，私立学校学生平均成绩比公立学校学生更高。比如Fraser研究所最近对安大略省顶尖小学进行的排名，极大比例的私立学校居于榜单前列。只有约6%的学龄儿童在私立学校就读，但在Fraser榜单排名靠前的学校中，有超过三分之一是私立。加拿大私立学校学生在经合组织的国际学生评估方案（PISA）测试中总体得分也较高。
《多伦多明星报》是加拿大发行量最大的英文对开日报，在多伦多市出版。1892年由多伦多印刷工人创办，创刊时曾名《明星晚报》，每期仅4版，自称“人民的报纸”（a newspaper for the people），1900年起改用现名。现由多伦多明星报有限公司经营，不属任何报系。该报的国内新闻内容较多，经常刊登反映人民生活和社会现象的消息和文章。此外，该报颇具自由主义观点，早在20世纪初即要求实行失业保险、养老金和其他社会改革，宣传加拿大在国际上应有更高的地位等，故其读者主要为城市居民以及一些中产阶级知识分子。据统计，目前该报平日版发行量达55万份，周末版约80万份。
■ 托福写作/SAT写作/GRE写作批改服务（48h内回复）
*更多TOEFL丨SAT丨AP | GRE实用的提分秘籍和有趣好玩的视频课程，关注微信公众号"SATPEDIA"。
