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 author of the letter claims that Parson City residents value providing a good education more than residents of Blue City. To justify his claim, the author makes some unwarranted assumptions based on the comparison between the amount of the funds that each city spends on the city-run public schools. This argument lacks of concrete evidence, so it does not hold ground.
First of all, the author assumes that because Parson City spends twice than Blue City on the public schools, then the residents of Parson City place a higher value on the good education. There is no correlation between these assumptions. The funds mostly come from the taxes that are collected by each city government. Does each city government ask their residents how to spend these taxes? There is no evidence in the argument that depicts that the residents of each city decided how to spend their taxes. If Parson city’s government solely decided to spend twice as much per year as Blue City’s government. Therefore, the residents’ role in this decision is nothing and consequently, it’s uncertain that Parson City’s residents care more about a good education than Blue City’s residents. Hence, the argument will be unsound.
Moreover, the argument does not provide any evidence about the ratio of the students’ population to the total residents for each city. it’s possible that the population of children who need education in Parson City is more than Blue City, despite the equality of their total population. In this case, it would be acceptable that the amount of the funds for the education of the Parson City’s public school is more than Blue City’s, despite their attention about having a good education. Without knowing specifically about each city’s demographics, the argument cannot hold water.
Finally, the argument mentions about the city-run public schools and there is no information about other type of schools in each city. Based on only one type of school and its funds, the author should not conclude that Parson City residents place higher value on providing a good education. Perhaps, Blue City residents are wealthy and send their children to private schools which do not need government’s funds. If they care more about good and acceptable education, the author fails to provide a convincing argument. There should be precise statistics about other types of schools in each city to have a better and logical comparison.
All in all, the argument, as it stands now is flawed due to its considerable lacking of solid evidence. The author should examine some pieces of evidence, each city’s demographics and more accurate statistics to be able to provide more persuasive argument.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 440 350
No. of Characters: 2193 1500
No. of Different Words: 170 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.58 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.984 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.485 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 157 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 109 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 78 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.952 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.539 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.381 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.396 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.396 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.12 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 135, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: It
...n to the total residents for each city. it’s possible that the population of child...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
consequently, finally, first, hence, if, moreover, so, then, therefore, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 32.0 16.3942115768 195% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2272.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 440.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 5.16363636364 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.57997565096 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.64801110457 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 183.0 204.123752495 90% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.415909090909 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 702.9 705.55239521 100% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.2848592674 57.8364921388 77% => OK
Chars per sentence: 103.272727273 119.503703932 86% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.0 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.81818181818 5.70786347227 67% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => 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: 0.32780416369 0.218282227539 150% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.123231480282 0.0743258471296 166% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0913109090152 0.0701772020484 130% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.197532169017 0.128457276422 154% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0827748148339 0.0628817314937 132% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.9 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.65 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.71 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 86.0 98.500998004 87% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.