"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 in the letter asseverates that Parson City residents must have underscored more the importance of good public-school education than do Blue City residents and the author’s supposition is predicated on the ground that Parson City has been spending twice as much per year as Blue City on the public education in recent years. Though the argument appears ostensibly appealing, several pieces of evidence are needed in order to fully justify the soundness of the argument made in the letter.
First and foremost, the author needs to supply relevant evidence on whether the monetary measurement is the only yardstick that can be utilized to appraise the inferiority or superiority of a city’s public school education. If the evidence indicates that there are other variables that factor into the quality of public school education, then the argument proposed might become tenuous. For instance, it might be the case that the administrative office in Blue City realizes the exact deficiency of its public school system and therefore apportions an appropriate amount of money to iron out the issue. Conversely, Parson city officials do not pinpoint the root cause of the deficiency in their public schools, and therefore, have been allocating a huge amount of money to solving problems, the underlying cause of which, however, is not properly addressed. Much money is spent each year, but few problems are truly solved. However, if the author could have incorporated the evidence that money, all things being equal, is the surest way to measure the quality of public-school education, then the author’s argument would have been further cemented.
Another aspect that demands more evidence is that although both cities have the same number of residents, do both cities have the same number of students? If the answer to this question is negative, this might have tremendous repercussion on the foothold of the argument. For instance, maybe Blue City has a smaller number of students attending public schools than Parson City does. Therefore, Parson City would certainly need to spend more on each student. In this case, one single student might in actuality benefit more from Blue City’s budgetary priority, given the small number of the students in Blue City. This would certainly repudiate the central claim made in the argument about Parson City residents valuing more a good education in public schools. Instead, one could make a cogent case that it might be the Blue City residents who value more its public-school education since each student could receive more, proportionally, from the city government.
The largest leap in the argument is that allocating more funds to public school education does not necessarily equate to a higher value on good education. There are a wide array of reasons as to why Parson City needs to budget more of its tax revenues to the betterment of public-school education. Such a question as exactly why Parson City is investing more financially into the public education has to be properly addressed. Students attending public schools in Parson City might underperform, academically, than their counterparts in Blue City, thereby forcing the Parson City government to finance more its public school system. Students in Blue City need not demand many financial resources as those in Parson City because they may have been equipped with better curricular designs and teaching faculty in public school system from the inception. Therefore, one plausible scenario is that residents in both city equally value the importance of good education in public schools in their respective cities; however, Parson City might just need to budget more its finance to the public-school system simply because the students there do not fare that well academically, whereas students in Blue City generally stand out academically. If the evidence proves that this is the case, then the validity of the argument might be weakened since the residents in both cities emphasize the significance of the public-school education.
All told, although the author puts forth a cogent case at first blush regarding Parson City residents valuing more the public-school education system, more apropos evidence needs to be properly discussed and taken into account. These pieces of evidence, if not limited to, entail whether money or public fund is the only way to measure the value of good public education system, the proportion of students in each city, and other factors that can contribute to the quality of public school education.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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flaws:
No. of Words: 729 350
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 729 350
No. of Characters: 3750 1500
No. of Different Words: 276 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.196 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.144 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.659 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 290 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 203 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 153 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 97 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 30.375 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.441 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.625 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.402 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.549 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.145 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 725, Rule ID: MORE_A_JJ[1]
Message: Did you mean 'a more good'?
Suggestion: a more good
...ent about Parson City residents valuing more a good education in public schools. Instead, o...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 824, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... make a cogent case that it might be the Blue City residents who value more its p...
^^
Line 7, column 173, Rule ID: THERE_RE_MANY[3]
Message: Possible agreement error. Did you mean 'arrays'?
Suggestion: arrays
...lue on good education. There are a wide array of reasons as to why Parson City needs ...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, conversely, first, however, if, may, regarding, so, then, therefore, well, whereas, as to, for instance
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 21.0 12.9520958084 162% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 90.0 55.5748502994 162% => OK
Nominalization: 48.0 16.3942115768 293% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3848.0 2260.96107784 170% => OK
No of words: 729.0 441.139720559 165% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.27846364883 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.19615242271 4.56307096286 114% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.78666025509 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 288.0 204.123752495 141% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.395061728395 0.468620217663 84% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1220.4 705.55239521 173% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 30.0 22.8473053892 131% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 73.7602629394 57.8364921388 128% => OK
Chars per sentence: 160.333333333 119.503703932 134% => OK
Words per sentence: 30.375 23.324526521 130% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.5 5.70786347227 79% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 15.0 8.20758483034 183% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.328359722121 0.218282227539 150% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.127907429111 0.0743258471296 172% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0678043111653 0.0701772020484 97% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.216880252992 0.128457276422 169% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0527275930616 0.0628817314937 84% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.6 14.3799401198 129% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 32.57 48.3550499002 67% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 16.2 12.197005988 133% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.94 12.5979740519 111% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.53 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 157.0 98.500998004 159% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 20.0 12.3882235529 161% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.0 11.1389221557 126% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
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.