单选题 Competition makes losers as well as winners.This fact makes a simple rule for judging when it is useful to society and when it is dangerous.Can we afford to look after the losers?They are not going to vanish. Education is a typical example.The market，and the self-interest of parents，would ensure that good schools flourished and bad ones—well，they would disappear.Yet authorities still must ensure that every child has a school place in order to avoid discontent among parents even while the means to do so has largely vanished now that two thirds of secondary schools in Britain are academies which they do not control.

By encouraging parental choice in schools，successive governments hoped to harness the ambition of families to give their children the best education possible.But this ambition is by its nature limited.It does not extend to Other people's children.In fact，"it is not enough to succeed;others must fail".The burden of student loans increases the price of failure for those who fail to get into the "right" universities or study the "right" subjects.The result is an increase of inequality without any corresponding increase in quality at the top.

One measure of this is house prices.State schools with a good reputation increase the price of houses in their catchment areas (学生来源地区) substantially.A survey showed that outside London parents were willing to pay up to three times the average price for a house to get their children into desirable schools.Catchment areas operate as a kind of pre-exclusion mechanism，which keeps poorer children out of good schools.In all this，both schools and parents are responding to the competition as a zero-sum game.We are all poorer as a result.

It is arguable that the cost of bad schools to society，as well as to the children involved，far outweighs the benefits that competition has brought the good ones.School systems should be judged on the basis of their worst performances，not their best.

What does the author imply about school systems?无
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】推理判断题。由题干中的school systems定位到第五段第二句。根据定位句可知，学校体系应基于其最差表现而不是最好表现来评判，由此推断学校体系的最差表现即是衡量标准，故答案为A)。

全文翻译 

竞争产生失败者和胜利者。这一事实造就了一项简单的规则，用来判断它何时对社会有益，何时危险。我们能负担得起关照那些失败者吗？他们不可能消失。

教育是一个典型的例子。市场和父母的利己之心将使得好学校蓬勃发展，而差学校则会消失。然而，政府部门仍然必须确保每个孩子都有学上，以免父母们产生不满情绪，即使这样的手段已基本消失，因为在英国，三分之二的中学是他们无法控制的职业学校。

通过鼓励父母择校，历届政府都希望能利用家庭想为其子女提供尽可能最好的教育的抱负。

但这种野心本质上是有限的。它不会扩展到其他人的孩子身上。事实上，“（你的）成功远远不够，（因为）其他人必须失败”。学生贷款的负担增加了那些没能进入“正确”大学或学习“正确”专业的人失败的代价。结果则是不平等的增长，而顶层的质量并没有任何相应的增加。房价就是一种衡量手段。声誉良好的州立学校大大提高了学区内的房价。一项调查显示，为了让他们的孩子进入理想的学校，伦敦以外的父母愿意支付房屋均价的三倍。

作为一种预先排除运行机制，学区使贫困孩子远离好学校。这一切表明，学校和家长只是把竞争作为一种零和博弈。其结果是，我们都变得更穷了。差学校的社会成本及其对孩子的影响是否远远超过了竞争带给好学校的益处，这一点还有争议。

学校体系应基于其最差表现而不是最好表现来评判。