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 writer of the letter believes that Parson City takes its public education more seriously than Blue City, a city with a similar total population, based on the proportion and overall amount of tax revenue that is spent on its public schools. This argument is lacking sufficient evidence to properly corroborate its claims.
Primarily, the argument lacks any data about the current state and quality of the public schools in both cities. If the public education in Blue City is already well-developed and well-maintained, then perhaps it does not need as much of tax revenue as compared to a city with public education of lower quality. If the schools in Parson City lack many of the required amenities, they would clearly need more funding in order to improve. Without any data about the current state of the schools in these cities, it cannot be conclusively inferred that Parson City takes its education more seriously than Blue City. Hence, in order to improve the writer's claim, there needs to be some statistics about the standard of education and facilities of the public schools in both the cities, which can conclusively prove that the extra revenue devoted to the public schools in Parson City is linked to a higher standard of education than the public schools of Blue City.
Secondly, the argument lacks any information about what the tax revenue is spent on specifically. It might be possible that Blue City is directly funding the hiring of new staff, construction of better classrooms, laboratories, and so on, while Parson City might be spending the money more on sports events or something else not directly related to education. As such, spending more money does not imply that more monetary resources are directly devoted to improving the quality of education. If the writer were to present some data about what exactly every tax dollar was funding, it would make his/her argument more convincing.
Lastly, the argument lacks any information about the age demographics of both the cities. Perhaps there are fewer children in Blue City, which would mean that there do not need to be as many public schools as those in Parson City. In this case, it might not be a problem if less of the tax revenue is spent on public schools as long as sufficient tax revenue is spent on the few public schools within the city. If the writer were to provide some age demographic data, his/her argument would be more conclusive about how seriously these cities take their public education.
In conclusion, the writer presents a very shallow argument about why he/she believes that Parson City's residents place greater importance on public education compared to the residents of Blue City. If there was more data to substantiate his/her arguments, it might make the argument more convincing.
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: 17 15
No. of Words: 471 350
No. of Characters: 2280 1500
No. of Different Words: 180 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.659 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.841 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.546 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 161 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 118 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 75 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.706 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.164 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.647 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.409 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.595 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.154 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
hence, if, lastly, second, secondly, so, then, well, while, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 25.0 16.3942115768 152% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2337.0 2260.96107784 103% => OK
No of words: 467.0 441.139720559 106% => OK
Chars per words: 5.00428265525 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.64867537961 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.62893644879 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 181.0 204.123752495 89% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.387580299786 0.468620217663 83% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 746.1 705.55239521 106% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 68.4088057627 57.8364921388 118% => OK
Chars per sentence: 137.470588235 119.503703932 115% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.4705882353 23.324526521 118% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.29411764706 5.70786347227 75% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.207458770727 0.218282227539 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0806651798031 0.0743258471296 109% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0599643757121 0.0701772020484 85% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.131693448052 0.128457276422 103% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0524620577299 0.0628817314937 83% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.9 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.07 48.3550499002 91% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.02 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.98 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 89.0 98.500998004 90% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.