"The birthrate in our city is declining: in fact, last year's birthrate was only one-half that of five years ago. Thus the number of students enrolled in our public schools will soon decrease dramatically, and we can safely reduce the funds budgeted for education during the next decade. At the same time, we can reduce funding for athletic playing fields and other recreational facilities. As a result, we will have sufficient money to fund city facilities and programs used primarily by adults, since we can expect the adult population of the city to increase."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The committee recommendation concludes that the city could safely cut funds dedicated to education and sports due to a dramatic decrease of the city’s birthrate. As solid as the argument may seem, it would need further evidence to be effectively supported, evidence which at the present state is not cogently illustrated or highlighted.
The prompt regarding the decline in birthrate may be proved unwarranted without further specification. In fact, the committee considered a restricted range of time to interpret the birthrate data. A broader analysis should be carried out in order to understand if this decline has been a steady tendency for years, or if there has been a decrease only with respect to the last five years. Moreover, it should be pointed out that no provision is made for future years: the birthrate could grow again, frustrating the whole committee’s forecast and causing a misplacement of the funds, with hard to predict consequences.
Additionally, the claim about the dramatic drop of pupils enrolled in public schools is not substantiated by any evidence. To verify the accurateness of the prompt, we should know the current rate of youngsters attending public school. In fact, if now there is a low enrollment rate, it will not be automatically the same in the future. For example, if during the next years the percentage of children attending public school switched from 50% to 75%, there would be a significantly higher number of students, regardless of the decreased birthrate. Consequently, the lack of funding would inevitably damage the quality of school and activities, causing a paucity of teachers, personnel and resources. An analogous reasoning could be applied to sports activities as well.
Finally, the redirection of funding towards adult-oriented facilities could jeopardize the quality of the present public educational and sports services. The recommendation does not clarify if the reallocated funding would allow improvements in school and sports advancement. Moreover, it is not specified which these adult facilities and programs would be. If education is not adequately funded, in the future the city’s population will be lacking instruments and knowledge to exploit and enjoy those prospected programs, resulting in a waste of time and money. What’s more, subtracting funds to sports fields and recreational facilities will cause enormous difficulties to future adults who will have children and families: the committee did not mention any measure in this sense. There is no evidence of a combined and orchestrated effort towards enhancing overall the quality of life and to prove the proposed measure as effective, a further detailing and description of the transitions of focus from a young to an adult city.
To sum up, the recommendation could reveal as accurate and wise, but with such a lack of evidence and without an explanation of the assumptions which substantiate it, it is impossible carrying out an evaluation. A lot more data and surveys would be necessary in order to reach a complete overview of the present situation and, therefore, to outline a possible future plan.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 498 350
No. of Characters: 2581 1500
No. of Different Words: 249 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.724 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.183 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.068 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 199 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 159 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 119 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 85 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.9 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.972 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.288 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.507 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.06 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 745, Rule ID: TO_NON_BASE[1]
Message: The verb after "to" should be in the base form: 'sport'.
Suggestion: sport
...analogous reasoning could be applied to sports activities as well. Finally, the ...
^^^^^^
Line 13, column 608, Rule ID: TO_NON_BASE[1]
Message: The verb after "to" should be in the base form: 'sport'.
Suggestion: sport
... What's more, subtracting funds to sports fields and recreational facilities will...
^^^^^^
Line 17, column 374, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ore, to outline a possible future plan.
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, consequently, finally, if, may, moreover, regarding, so, therefore, well, for example, in fact, to sum up, with respect to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 21.0 12.9520958084 162% => OK
Conjunction : 22.0 11.1786427146 197% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 13.0 28.8173652695 45% => OK
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2677.0 2260.96107784 118% => OK
No of words: 498.0 441.139720559 113% => OK
Chars per words: 5.37550200803 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.72397222731 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.18368348787 2.78398813304 114% => OK
Unique words: 258.0 204.123752495 126% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.518072289157 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 831.6 705.55239521 118% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 53.4195423043 57.8364921388 92% => OK
Chars per sentence: 133.85 119.503703932 112% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.9 23.324526521 107% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.35 5.70786347227 111% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.143765844353 0.218282227539 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0448742423374 0.0743258471296 60% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0355925171143 0.0701772020484 51% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0744904903603 0.128457276422 58% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0490410816025 0.0628817314937 78% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.4 14.3799401198 114% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 48.3550499002 80% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.22 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.23 8.32208582834 111% => OK
difficult_words: 139.0 98.500998004 141% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.