The reforms to improve the quality of public education that have been initiated on the part of suppliers of public ed...

bcross June 15, 2020

I thought A was out of scope

When I first read A, I thought it was out of scope since the passage didn’t mention anything about sports or convenient location. How is this answer not out of scope when other choices in other questions are often eliminated for the same reason?

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shunhe June 15, 2020

Hi @bcross,

Thanks for the question! So the conclusion of this passage is that to attract students, academically underachieving schools will be forced to improve their academic offerings. Now we’re looking for an assumption of this argument. And one thing that should pop to mind is, what if it’s not the academic offerings? What if it’s other kinds of offerings, like sports or something, that draws people to schools? The author is basically assuming that these other potential explanations aren’t as valid. And so in (A), when the argument assumes that in selecting schools parents would tend to prefer a reasonable level of academic quality to greater sports opportunities or more convenient locations, it’s not out of scope, since (A) is saying that the argument is saying that these other possible explanations aren’t it.

Note here too that we can use the assumption negation technique. Let’s say that (A) isn’t true; in selecting schools, parents wouldn’t tend to prefer a reasonable level of academic quality to greater sports opportunities or more convenient location. Well, then the argument that schools will have to improve their academic offerings falls apart, since it’s other reasons that draw parents to schools.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

Matthew10134 August 26, 2021

Hi I got the question right but was extremely hesitant, I understand the negation technique (which is why I used to finally select the answer) but wouldn't it be more appropriate if instead of specifically pointing to sports and convenient location it said something more general...