The Hours and Academic Achievement 时间分配与学业成就 作者：Bryan Caplan @ 2015-05-13 译者：史祥莆（@史祥莆）                   校对：Marcel ZHANG（@马赫塞勒张） 制图：amen（@治愈系历史） 来源：Library of Economics and Liberty http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/05/the_hours_acade.html Adults love controlling the way kids spend the hours of the day. What's the payoff for all their meddling? Hofferth and Sandberg's "How American Children Spend Their Time" (Journal of Marriage and the Family) provides some fascinating answers for kids ages 0-12. 成年人总喜欢控制孩子们每天支配时间的方式。然而这样多管闲事的结果是什么呢？Hofferth和Sandberg在“美国儿童如何支配时间”（刊于《婚姻与家庭杂志》）一文中针对12岁以下儿童给出了一些让人着迷的答案。 After compiling the basic facts about kids' time use from the 1997 Child Development Supplement to the PSID, H&S regress measures of academic achievement on time use, controlling for child's age, gender, race, ethnicity, head of household's education and age, plus family structure, family employment, family income, and family size. All test scores have a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, and all time use is expressed in hours per week. 在将1997年《儿童发展附录》中有关儿童时间使用的基本事实编入PSID之后，Hofferth和Sandberg对学业成就和时间利用进行了分组回归，分别控制了儿童年龄、性别、种族、民族、家长教育程度与年龄，以及家庭结构、家庭就业状况、家庭收入和家庭规模等变量。所有测试结果都以100为均值且以15为标准差，所有的时间利用都以每周的小时数表示。 结果： The big result is the lack of results. Controlling for family and child background, time in school and studying barely help - and television viewing barely hurts. Contrary to wishful assertions that exercising the body improves the mind, sports don't matter either. Out of nineteen activities, only two predict greater academic success across the board: reading and visiting. 最大的结果就是没有结果。控制家庭和儿童的背景因素之后，在学校和学习中花费的时间鲜有助益，而看电视也看不出什么坏处。运动和锻炼身体有益心智这样的断言，也被证明是一厢情愿的。在19种活动之中，只有两项活动预示着学业成功：阅读和游历。 The estimated effect of visiting is modest. Reading, however, is a huge deal. Ceteris paribus, 10 extra hours of reading per week raise letter-word comprehension by .5 SDs, and passage comprehension, applied problems, and calculations scores by .4 SDs. 评估中参观的影响适中，而阅读则关系显著。其他条件相同时，每周10小时的额外阅读，会将字词理解能力提高0.5个标准差，段落理解能力、应用问题能力和计算能力也会提高0.4个标准差。 Despite obvious worries about reverse causation - smart kids enjoy books more - much of this is plausibly causal. After all, many smart kids don't read much, and H&S include a lot of solid control variables. And you really can learn a lot from books. 尽管相反的因果关系显然也值得考虑——聪明的孩子更热衷读书——但上面提及的因果关系貌似更可信。毕竟，很多聪明孩子不怎么读书，并且Hofferth和Sandberg纳入了很多牢靠的控制变量，而且你确实可以通过读书学到很多。 I've long argued that the effects of parenting are overrated. H&S's results lead to a separate but related result: How kids spend their time is overrated, too. If adults really wanted to raise kids' test scores, they'd adopt the maxim, "If the kid has a book in his hands, leave him in peace." 我一向主张，家长的影响被高估了。Hofferth和Sandberg的结果给出了一个不同而又相关的结论：儿童支配时间方式的影响也被高估了。如果成年人真的希望提高孩子的考试分数，他们应该采纳这条箴言：“子执卷，汝勿扰。” Which, by sheer coincidence, was the maxim young Bryan Caplan vainly begged all the adults in his life to embrace. Reading rules, school drools. 无巧不成书，这正是后生Bryan Caplan徒然规劝天下父母以终身信奉的格言：阅读至上，学校误人。

Nevada Enacts Universal School Choice 内华达州颁布普适择校法案 作者：Lindsey M. Burke @ 2015-6-8 翻译：乘风（@你在何地-sxy） 校对：Eartha（@王小贰_Eartha) 来源：National Review，http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419438/nevada-enacts-universal-school-choice On Tuesday night, Nevada governor Brian Sandoval signed into law the nation’s first universal school-choice program. That in and of itself is groundbreaking: The state has created an option open to every single public-school student. Even better, this option improves upon the traditional voucher model, coming in the form of an education savings account (ESA) that parents control and can use to fully customize their children’s education. 6月2日晚，内华达州普适择校方案经州长Brian Sandoval签署后成为法律，这是全国第一个普适择校方案。这本身是一个创举：每位公立学校的学生都将获得一个全新的选择。更妙的是，这一选择自由是对传统的教育券模式的进一步改良，家长将拥有一个教育储蓄账户（education saving account, ESA），可以完完全全地量身定制子女的教育。 Yes, school choice has often advanced through the introduction of vouchers and charter schools — which remain some of the most important reforms for breaking up the government education monopoly. But vouchers were, to quote researcher Matthew Ladner, “the rotary telephones of our movement — an awesome technology that did one amazing thing.” States such as Nevada (and Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, and Tennessee) have implemented the iPhone of choice programs. They “still do that one thing well, but they also do a lot of other things,” Ladner notes. 是的，教育券和特许学校的引入推进了教育选择计划，而且这项改革仍然属于破除政府教育垄断的最重要的改革之列。但是，用研究人士Matthew Ladner的话来说，教育券是“我们事业中的拨盘式电话——一项令人称奇的出色技术，”内华达（以及亚利桑那、佛罗里达、密西西比及田纳西）等州则已经安装上了择校方案中的iPhone。如Ladner所言，它们“仍能发挥以前的作用，但同时也增加了许多新功能”。（见：http://excelined.org/news/icymi-5-questions-matthew-ladner-foundation-excellence-education/） As of next year, parents in Nevada can have 90 percent (100 percent for children with special needs and children from low-income families) of the funds that would have been spent on their child in their public school deposited into a restricted-use spending account. That amounts to between $5,100 and $5,700 annually, according to the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. 从明年起，Nevada将把拟用于公立学校学生的资金中的90%存入家长的指定用途消费账户（对于有特殊需求或贫困家庭的学生，转存比例是100%）。据Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice说，资金数额约在每年5100-5700美元之间。 Those funds are deposited quarterly onto a debit card, which parents can use to pay for a variety of education-related services and products — things such as private-school tuition, online learning, special-education services and therapies, books, tutors, and dual-enrollment college courses. It’s an à la carte education, and the menu of options will be as hearty as the supply-side response — which, as it is whenever markets replace monopolies, is likely to be robust. 资金分季度打入一张借记卡，父母可将其用于购买多种多样与教育相关的服务和产品，如私立学校学费、线上学习、特殊教育服务及治疗、书本、家教、双学分大学课程。这是一种点菜式教育，菜单选项的丰盛度将视乎供应方对此作出的响应而定——任何时候，只要市场取代垄断，供方的响应总是相当活跃的。 Notably, families can roll over unused funds from year to year, a feature that makes this approach particularly attractive. It is the only choice model to date that puts downward pressure on prices. Parents consider not only the quality of education service they receive, but the cost, since they can save unused funds for future education expenses. 值得注意的是，家庭可以将尚未使用的资金连年转存，这一点使得上述办法特别具有吸引力。这是迄今为止唯一能对价格施压的选择模式。家长们不但会考虑孩子所受教育的质量，还会考虑价格，因为存下来的资金能用于未来的教育开支。 Accountability is infused throughout the ESA option. Funding is distributed into the accounts quarterly, and parents provide receipts for expenditures to the state. In the event there is a misuse of funds, the subsequent quarter’s distribution can be withheld and used to rectify it. Students must also take a national norm-referenced test in math and reading, a light touch that doesn’t dictate students take a uniform state test. ESA方案设置了充分的问责机制。资金按季发放至各个账户，家长们则需向州里提供消费收据。一旦出现资金滥用，就可以扣留下一季度的分配资金用于纠正此前的滥用。学生们还必须参加数学和阅读常模参照测验（norm-referenced test）【译注：一种考评方式，评价的是被测者在同类人中的相对水平，而非知识或技能的绝对掌握程度，后一种测量通常要求采用标准参照测验（criterion-referenced test）】，这是一种轻规制（light touch）模式，不要求学生参加全州统考。 So imagine now what the future of education could look like in Nevada. Instead of being assigned to brick-and-mortar schools based on their parents’ ZIP codes, students can instead have their state funds deposited into an ESA. Parents can then craft a learning plan that matches best to the unique learning styles and needs of their children. 现在你可以想象未来内华达州的教育会是何种情形了。学生们不会再根据其父母的邮政编码被分派到传统实体校园里面，取而代之的是拥有一个储存州教育资金的ESA账户。家长们可以根据其子女独特的学习方式和需求，精心拟定最为合适的学习计划。 Perhaps that means Johnny spends the morning at a private school, and then in the afternoon gets private instruction in algebra from a tutor who meets him at home. At night, Johnny takes a dual-enrollment college course online. 这可能意味着强尼上午会在一个私立学校学习，下午在家里接受代数家教的单独辅导，晚上则选修一门双学分大学网络课程。 The future of education financing is here. And the future is about separating the financing of education from the delivery of services. ESAs don’t dismantle public financing of education; they just recognize that education, although publicly financed, doesn’t have to be delivered through government schools. 教育财政的未来已经到来。这个未来就是，教育财政将与教育服务的提供相分离。ESA并不会削弱教育的公共财政性质，它只是承认，公共财政支持的教育并不是非得由公办学校提供不可。 Nevada understands that, and understands it to such an extent that state policymakers and Governor Sandoval went all-in with a universal option. In other words, families in the Silver State have struck gold. 内华达州充分理解了这一点，该州政策制订者们和Sandoval州长已经把赌注全部押在了普适择校方案上。换句话说，银山州【译注：这是内华达州的别称】的家家户户都找发现了金矿。 *Lindsey M. Burke is the Will Skillman Fellow in Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation. *Lindsey M. Burke是美国传统基金会教育政策方向Will Skillman研究员。 （编辑：@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

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