2016年6月英语六级真题（第3套）

Manufacturers of products that claim to be environmentally friendly will face tighter rules on how they are advertised to consumers under changes proposed by the Federal Trade Commission.

The commission's revised "Green Guides" warn marketers against using labels that make broad claims, like "eco-friendly". Marketers must qualify their claims on the product packaging and limit them to a specific benefit, such as how much of the product is recycled.

"This is really about trying to cut through the confusion that consumers have when they are buying a product and that businesses have when they are selling a product," said Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the commission.

The revisions come at a time when green marketing is on the rise. According to a new study, the number of advertisements with green messages in mainstream magazines has risen since 1987, and peaked in 2008 at 10.4%. In 2009, the number dropped to 9%.

But while the number of advertisements may have dipped, there has been a rapid spread of eco-labeling. There are both good and bad players in the eco-labeling game.

In the last five years or so, there has been an explosion of green claims and environmental claims. It is clear that consumers don't always know what they are getting.

A handful of lawsuits have been filed in recent years against companies accused of using misleading environmental labels. In 2008 and 2009, class-action lawsuits (集体诉讼) were filed against SC Johnson for using "Greenlist" labels on its cleaning products. The lawsuits said that the label was misleading because it gave the impression that the products had been certified by a third party when the certification was the company's own.

"We are very proud of our accomplishments under the Greenlist system and we believe that we will prevail in these cases," Christopher Beard, director of public affairs for SC Johnson, said, while acknowledging that "this has been an area that is difficult to navigate".

Companies have also taken it upon themselves to contest each other's green claims.

David Mallen, associate director of the Council of Better Business Bureau, said in the last two years the organization had seen an increase in the number of claims companies were bringing against each other for false or misleading environmental product claims.

"About once a week, I have a client that will bring up a new certification I've never even heard of and I'm in this industry," said Kevin Wilhelm, chief executive officer of Sustainable Business Consulting. it's kind of a Wild West, anybody can claim themselves to be green. Mr. Wilhelm said the excess of labels made it difficult for businesses and consumers to know which labels they should pay attention to.

America's education system has become less a ladder of opportunity than a structure to transmit inequality from one generation to the next.

That's why school reform is so critical. This is an issue of equality, opportunity and national conscience. It's not just about education, but about poverty and justice.

It's true that the main reason inner-city schools do poorly isn't teachers' unions, but poverty. Southern states without strong teachers' unions have schools at least as awful as those in union states. Some Chicago teachers seem to think that they shouldn't be held accountable until poverty is solved. There're steps we can take that would make some difference, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel is trying some of them—yet the union is resisting.

I'd be sympathetic if the union focused solely on higher compensation. Teachers need to be much better paid to attract the best college graduates to the nation's worst schools. But, instead, the Chicago union seems to be using its political capital primarily to protect weak performers.

There's solid evidence that there are huge differences in the effectiveness of teachers. The gold standard study by Harvard and Columbia University scholars found that even in high-poverty schools, teachers consistently had a huge positive or negative impact.

Get a bottom 1% teacher, and the effect is the same as if a child misses 40% of the school year. Get a teacher from the top 20%, and it's as if a child has gone to school for an extra month or two.

The study found that strong teachers in the fourth through eighth grades raised the skills of their students in ways that would last for decades. Just having a strong teacher for one elementary year left pupils a bit less likely to become mothers as teenagers, a bit more likely to go to college and earning more money at age 28.

How does one figure out who is a weak teacher? Yes, that's a challenge. But researchers are improving systems to measure a teacher's performance throughout the year, and, with three years of data, it's usually possible to tell which teachers are failing.

Unfortunately, the union in Chicago is insisting that teachers who are laid off—often for being ineffective—should get priority in new hiring. That's an insult to students.

Teaching is so important that it should be like other professions, with high pay and good working conditions but few job protections for bottom performers.

This isn't a battle between garment workers and greedy bosses. The central figures in the Chicago schools strike are neither strikers nor managers but 350,000 children. Protecting the union demand sacrifices those students, in effect turning a blind eye to the injustice in the education system.