Q10 - The reforms to improve

[nshapkar]

I cannot figure out the argument core to this question and it's making it really difficult to attack...it almost feels like every sentence is completely unrelated to the next.

[zl7391e]

Yeah, I agree it's not a good argument.
My understanding is that the argument centers on the issues of what should be done to improve the public education. And the author proposed a demand-side reform.
1st sentence: on the supply side, reforms to improve public education is not enough to improve the public education.
2nd sentence: reforms must therefore come from the demand side (with the assumption that demand side reforms must have something that supply side can't offer).
The rest of stimulus in turn offers reasons why the reforms from the consumers (parents) is necessary to improve public education.
3rd sentence: a normative proposal (the content of the demand-side reform) as what parents/consumers should do.
4th sentence offers the key reason/premise why the proposal in 3rd sentence would work.
Academically underachieving schools will be forced to improve their academic offerings to attract student. Why? Because parents would spend vouchers (=money) at schools that are more academically achieving rather than those that are underachieving. So in order to be a valid argument, it must assume those factors that determines which schools parents/consumers would spend the vouchers must include academic considerations of the schools. And further in order for the 4th sentence to be true, academic considerations must override other non-academic considerations.

Therefore, A is required by the argument.

Also to see why A is necessary, negate A and the argument for the proposal wouldn't work.

Hope my writing is not too unclear, since I'm pretty tired from a long day.

[giladedelman]

Very nice explanation! And I agree with you guys, this is a bizarrely written argument. It almost feels like there are two separate cores:

supply-side reforms insufficient --> consumer-driven reforms necessary

parents should have vouchers --> underachieving schools will have to improve academically

The answer ultimately deals with the gap in the "second" core: how do we know that underachieving schools will have to improve academically? Maybe they could attract students (or already do) by having nicer facilities, or better sports teams, or friendlier school nurses, or who knows? So I agree that (A) is the correct answer.

(B) is incorrect because the post-graduation job market is out of scope. The issue is parents' use of the vouchers.

(C) is out because the argument isn't about how specifically to educate, just about how to improve schools generally.

(D) is incorrect because we don't need to assume that children know anything or will influence parents' decisions. The issue is, how will the parents' choices affect school academic quality?

(E) was tempting, but I got rid of it because it's about "each" school; we only care about the underachieving ones.

Good discussion!

[WaltGrace1983]

I'd also add that you can get rid of (E) also because you don't need to assume that all schools will approve all academic offerings. The argument is talking about a net betterment of academic offerings. Thus, maybe 8 out of the 10 subjects that each school offers will improve but subjects like music and history will stay about the same.