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.
The conclusion from the letter is that the Parson city holds higher value on education in public schools than Blue city due to the twice spending they put per year. However, it is plausible and can easily be challenged with further examination of details.
First of all, it is only known that the budget put for the public schools is twice more in Parson city. However, this comparison is not valid if there is no evidence relating to the total number of the overall budget. In other words, it is possible that the sum of the budget in Parson city is already twice more than Blue city. If that’s the case, it is premature to claim that Parson city spends more than Blue city in education, since the portion compared to the overall budget may be exactly the same for both of the cities. Therefore, it is more reasonable to compare the percentage spending in education, rather than the exact number.
Continuing on the same logic as mentioned above, even if the percentage spending in education is higher in Parson city, the claim of higher value on education is still dubious due to the missing evidence of the demography differences between these two cities. It is common that the diffusion of the budgets is based on the population formation in that city. To be specific, if there are more elders in Blue city than Parson city, it is reasonable to spend more on elderly care facilities than the public schools since fewer students need the education. Therefore, it is possible that Blue city treasures the value of education at the same level as Parson city, but they put less budget there merely because of the less demand resulting from dissimilar demographic conditions between two cities.
Another dimension should be considered is that even though the budget both comes from the tax, the design of the proportion of overall tax revenues and the absolute terms may differ between these two cities. It is another influential factor for the final budget that can be taxed from the residents. In other words, more budget poured into public education may purely be the outcome of the regulatory design of the tax regime, instead of any value preference. Without the evidence to confirm that the budget regulations and the tax regime are identical between two cities, it is hardly to conclude that the value of public education is more vital in one city than another.
In conclusion, the monetary value for public education is insufficient to prove that Parosn city emphasizes more on education than Blue city. More evidence relating to the overall budget, the demography and the regulations as well as the tax regimes are required to define whether the statement is valid or not. Otherwise, it is a problematic comparison based on false assumptions.
Comments
e-rater score 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: 18 15
No. of Words: 471 350
No. of Characters: 2237 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.659 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.749 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.496 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 162 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 107 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 74 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 55 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.167 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.453 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.397 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.588 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.111 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 383, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... comparison based on false assumptions.
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, may, so, still, therefore, well, in conclusion, as well as, first of all, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 32.0 19.6327345309 163% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 64.0 55.5748502994 115% => OK
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2296.0 2260.96107784 102% => OK
No of words: 471.0 441.139720559 107% => OK
Chars per words: 4.87473460722 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.65859790218 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.56400524723 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 189.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.40127388535 0.468620217663 86% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 755.1 705.55239521 107% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 12.0 4.96107784431 242% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.5815772392 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 127.555555556 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.1666666667 23.324526521 112% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.27777777778 5.70786347227 110% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.179441281766 0.218282227539 82% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0675004555469 0.0743258471296 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0673279726677 0.0701772020484 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.126857664822 0.128457276422 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0467625311965 0.0628817314937 74% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.6 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.26 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.35 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 98.500998004 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4 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.