The following appeared in a letter to the editor of Parson City's local newspaper.
"In our region of Trillura, the majority of money spent on the schools that most students attend — the city-run public schools — comes from taxes that each city government collects. The region's cities differ, however, in the budgetary priority they give to public education. For example, both as a proportion of its overall tax revenues and in absolute terms, Parson City has recently spent almost twice as much per year as Blue City has for its public schools — even though both cities have about the same number of residents. Clearly, Parson City residents place a higher value on providing a good education in public schools than Blue City residents do."
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.
In a local newspaper a person wrote to the editor claiming that Parson City values providing good education in public schools more than the Blue City does. The author presents that the proportion of tax revenues and its absolute cost spent on public schools differs by scale of two between the Parson City and the Blue City. However, in order to properly evaluate this suggestion, there are three questions to be answered beforehand.
First of all, more details about how many students does budgets cover must be provided to compare between both cities’ schools. For instance, albeit double budgets being spent on Parson City school, it might have twice more students than the Blue City. If such is the case, then it is likely that the Blue City can utilize the same amount of budget per student compared to the Parson City. If Parson city and Blue city schools have similar number of students, then the author’s suggestion might hold water.
Second of all, further details regarding the status of each school must be illustrated. The schools’ environment, such as the difference in facilities, faculties can completely change how the budgets need to be spent. For example, Parson city school might be much older than the Blue city since being established. The facilities and buildings might need lots of maintenance and repair which can cost large amount of budget. Another possibility is that the Parson City public school has much more faculties than the blue city, which requires huge amount of money for their payroll. If such cases are true, than it is more justifiable to say that Parson City needs more budget. Meanwhile, the quality of education being provided to both schools might not differ as much as its budgets.
Lastly, simply spending more money might not necessarily connect to the conclusion that residents value more on good education. There are other factors which can effect the quality of education being provided except money. The parents can focus on the education being provided to their children by paying much attention themselves. For example, some parents can zealously participate in parent volunteering events like tutoring and supplement classes. If the author wants to justify the claim, he or she should provide objective data showing that more budgets led to better education by some kind of results like grades or students’ satisfaction.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands now, is considerably lacking its viability because of unwarranted assumptions. If the author is able to answer the three questions above and offer more evidence for the claim, then it will be possible to fully evaluate the logical soundness of the proposed claim that Parson City residents values providing good education in public schools than the Blue City residents.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 457 350
No. of Characters: 2282 1500
No. of Different Words: 209 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.624 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.993 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.442 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 170 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 118 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 77 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 50 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.762 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.934 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.35 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.436 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.1 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 3 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 606, Rule ID: COMMA_THAN[1]
Message: Did you mean 'then'?
Suggestion: then
... their payroll. If such cases are true, than it is more justifiable to say that Pars...
^^^^
Line 5, column 412, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...c schools than the Blue City residents.
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, however, if, lastly, regarding, second, so, then, while, for example, for instance, in conclusion, kind of, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2345.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 457.0 441.139720559 104% => OK
Chars per words: 5.13129102845 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.62358717085 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.56407154531 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 221.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.483588621444 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 713.7 705.55239521 101% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.0091724103 57.8364921388 76% => OK
Chars per sentence: 111.666666667 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.7619047619 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.47619047619 5.70786347227 113% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 1.0 6.88822355289 15% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 12.0 4.67664670659 257% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.26674691055 0.218282227539 122% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.097612654774 0.0743258471296 131% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0908810555924 0.0701772020484 130% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.181822820339 0.128457276422 142% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0949317373231 0.0628817314937 151% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.6 14.3799401198 95% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.47 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.31 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 105.0 98.500998004 107% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6
---------------------
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.