The following appeared as a recommendation by a committee planning a ten-year budget for the city of Calatrava.
"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.
In the given recommendation planning committee talks about decrease in birth rate which was only one-half than five years ago. The committee wants to cut the fund from school education, athletic playing filed and from recreational facilities. The argument made by committee planning for ten years budget for the city of Calatrava seems to be impractical and short-sighted.
First of all, the planning committee assumes that the birth rate will again decrease in next five years or the decline will be constant for next ten years. There is no evidence like population survey or governments population census which show decrease in birth rate. The sudden decline in the population can be true but then there may be several reasons for that. One of them can an epidemic in the city and it is major reason low birth rate. Without thinking about reason for downfall in birthrate the committee takes decision to reduce the funds from education of the students which is not appropriate in any manner. If we assume that for a while the birth rate will decline, even then the remaining fund allotted to education can be used for innovation.
Moreover, Education is backbone of any society it accelerates the development. Today’s developing countries spend money for research on education system and make it strong. Therefore, planning committee should not cut the fund for education system and plan to spend it in systematic way. A family also tries to spend more on education of the children and for that parents try to withdraw from other expenses. Therefore reducing funds from school system might put a burden on parents.
Additionally, the committee thinks of reducing funds for athletic playing fields and recreational facilities which is also impractical. Every child should practice in routine so that they stay physically as well as mentally healthy. The city should promote athletics and motivate the children to join clubs. In every society government tries to give larger benefits to population belonging to childhood. That’s why the recommendation made by planning committee does not have solid reasoning.
Also, the committee focuses on the adult population and plans to spend funds on programs used primarily by adults. Spending the funds on the adult programs may not be needed as they already might have sufficient funds. And in next ten years there might not be enough increase in adult population as the plans are quite short term.
However, one might argue that committee should work on practical tasks like basic living need of the population then work on programs for athletics. The basic facilities should reach to all so that the city gets developed. But as stated in earlier points it should not be done by cutting funds from student population.
Finally, on the basis of reasons discussed above we can conclude that it is a bad idea to transfer funds from education to other accounts. And the committee should take into account other outcome which might be a bad side effect of this decision.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 27 15
No. of Words: 498 350
No. of Characters: 2470 1500
No. of Different Words: 229 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.724 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.96 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.606 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 167 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 132 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 105 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 63 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.444 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.637 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.593 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.282 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.547 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.107 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 7 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 415, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
...ts try to withdraw from other expenses. Therefore reducing funds from school system might...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, therefore, well, while, as well as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 22.0 12.9520958084 170% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2540.0 2260.96107784 112% => OK
No of words: 498.0 441.139720559 113% => OK
Chars per words: 5.10040160643 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.72397222731 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.70973352262 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 234.0 204.123752495 115% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.469879518072 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 779.4 705.55239521 110% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 0.0 4.96107784431 0% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 27.0 19.7664670659 137% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 25.8014472005 57.8364921388 45% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 94.0740740741 119.503703932 79% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.4444444444 23.324526521 79% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.18518518519 5.70786347227 73% => OK
Paragraphs: 7.0 5.15768463074 136% => Less paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.205954500198 0.218282227539 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0596424158209 0.0743258471296 80% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0787274141361 0.0701772020484 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.109113721953 0.128457276422 85% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.105073905799 0.0628817314937 167% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.8 14.3799401198 82% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 48.3550499002 110% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.3 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.99 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 109.0 98.500998004 111% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Maximum six paragraphs wanted.
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.