Strengthen with Necessary Premise Questions - - Question 25
The reforms to improve the quality of public education that have been initiated on the part of suppliers of public ed...
lauraduffy700May 21, 2024
Why is answer choice B out of scope?
Answer choice B states, "Improvement in academic offerings of schools will be enforced by the discipline of the job market in which graduating students compete." The discipline of the job market, I would argue or assume (?), is competition. And this question is about privatizing education to increase competition to drive up the quality of academic offerings... So, it may not be the answer choice but I strongly disagree with LSAT Max's explanation as to why this is the incorrect answer choice. It is not out of scope. The part about job market being something graduated students compete in is just a throw away prepositional phrase, it does not move this answer choice out of scope.
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I personally hate the phrase out of scope, because the reason that an answer choice is wrong is not merely THAT it is out of scope, but the REASON that it's out of scope. So I'm going to try to go through this without using that phrase.
The author argues that since supply based reforms have failed, demand based reforms are the only option, and therefore we should implement a voucher system. For a necessary assumption question we need to see something that author must believe.
The author doesn't have to believe that the job market is the mechanism by which better education will be enforced. The argument depends on parents actually demanding better schools, and the supply side responding to that demand, but this does not require the job market actually reward better education. It's possible that parents merely think it will, but this belief is mistaken. It's possible that parents and students see education as a good in its own right, divorced from the outcomes in the job market.
The author doesn't have to believe B for her argument to work, so it's not correct.
I would challenge you to try to do this when eliminating answer choices. Scoping can be a useful lens but I think digging a later deeper as to why and answer choice isn't actually important to the argument will help you more.
