Q13 - Educator: Reducing class sizes

[cdjmarmon]

I can see how E is correct however I have an issue with A and D not being correct and I was hoping someone could give me an explanation for them.

[maryadkins]

Our core is:

reducing class size --> hire more teachers

but already too few qualified teachers

reducing class size --> more indiv instruction, but edu suffers

-->

reducing class size won't improve overall student achievement

We're looking for a necessary assumption--that means it has to be true. How do we test? Negate!

(E) tells us that other, qualified teachers aren't going to move into the area to fill the need for new teachers. If this were true (negating it), the argument would fall apart: reducing class size (by hiring new, qualified teachers) could lead to an overall improvement in achievement.

(A) gives us a "should." Our conclusion isn't about what should or should not happen. This "should" immediately be a red flag (har har)! To draw a conclusion about what will happen, we don't need to assume that something "should" happen.

(B) gives us the opposite of what we want. It conflicts with the conclusion.

(C) is irrelevant. We're not worried about what students value.

(D) is tempting, but it's too extreme. It wouldn't improve ANY student's achievement? That's not necessarily true. Our conclusion is about it not improving education overall--that means, in general. It still leaves room for a new plan to improve some students' performance... just not that many.

Hope this helps!

[alandman]

I had a hard time deciding between B and E. I think that B is wrong because it weakens the conclusion but doesn't really destroy it. When you negate B you get this:

Even if class sizes were reduced, it is not the case that at least some qualified teachers in the school district would be able to improve the overall achievement of students in their classes.

The assumption is that qualified teachers are necessary for improving overall student achievement when reducing class size.

However the only reason B only weakens and doesn't destroy the argument is because:

1) We care about the overall achievement of students, answer choice B narrows the scope saying "would not be able to improve the overall achievement of students in their classes." Maybe these few qualified teachers are assigned to the most difficult classes? My point is just because certain qualified teachers won't improve the overall achievement of students in their classes, doesn't mean that no qualified teachers will be able to improve overall achievement of students.

2) The argument is clear that the school district in question lacks qualified teachers and this is the reason there won't be an overall improvement in student achievement. So hiring the few qualified teachers in the district is inline with the argument as one can say we need many more qualified teachers to improve the overall achievement of students in their classes.

[zana.nanic]

How do you negate D?

[Gerald]

Here's another in-depth explanation. Hope it helps!

PT65, S4, Q13 (Necessary Assumption).

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the educator’s argument?

(A) Class sizes in the school district should be reduced only if doing so would improve overall student achievement.
(B) At least some qualified teachers in the school district would be able to improve the overall achievement of students in their classes if class sizes were reduced.
(C) Students place a greater value on having qualified teachers than on having smaller classes.
(D) Hiring more teachers would not improve the achievement of any students in the school district if most or all of the teachers hired were underqualified.
(E) Qualified teachers could not be persuaded to relocate in significant numbers to the educator’s region to take teaching jobs.

(E) is correct.

The argument has a clearly defined conclusion, signaled by a "therefore," that reducing class sizes in the district would probably not improve overall student achievement. Why not? Because it would require hiring new teachers, there’s a shortage of qualified teachers in the region, and education suffers with underqualified teachers. A bit of a mouthful, but our core looks like this:

Shortage of qualified in region +reducing size means hiring new + education suffers with underqualified --> reducing size probably not improve overall achievement
Any gaps here?

Does a shortage mean we can’t hire qualified teachers? Maybe we can start a training program to get underqualified teachers up to snuff.

Also, does the fact education "suffers" mean we can’t improve overall achievement? Maybe education "suffers" compared to a room with a qualified teacher, but by putting all the hopeless students in the underqualified rooms and all the students with potential in the qualified rooms, we could still see an overall improvement in achievement. We’re falling behind the rest of the world people! Time to get creative.

(A) Out of scope. This sounds like a good rule about when we should act to reduce class size. But does the educator say we should or should not act? No. He says acting probably won’t do anything. This answer is irrelevant to the argument. Eliminate.


(B) This answer does the opposite of what we want, which for some meta-physical reason, seems to make it more tempting. This answer might entice because it tells us qualified teachers improve can improve achievement with smaller class sizes. We might assume, then, that underqualified teachers won’t improve overall achievement with smaller classes. But, we don’t know that. The only thing we can take to the bank after this answer choice is that some students will achieve more. That hurts the argument that overall achievement will probably not improve. Remember, assumptions are things left unsaid that help the argument (indeed, they’re required for the argument to make any sense). We can eliminate. We could also apply the negation test here. The answer becomes: "No qualified teachers would improve overall achievement if class size were reduced." Would this destroy the educator’s argument that reducing size probably won’t improve overall achievement? No. In fact, it helps the argument. Eliminate.

(C) Out of scope. Who cares what students value? Eliminate.

(D) Tempting! But remember, our conclusion says reducing size will probably not improve overall achievement. This answer says hiring more teachers won’t improve the performance of any student. Strong language. Couldn’t one student improve and yet the overall performance of the distract not improve? For example, if one student improved and everyone else got worse? Sure. Eliminate.

Bonus question: would (D) be the correct answer to a Sufficient Assumption question? It’d be even more tempting, but the answer is no! Why? Just because there’s a shortage of qualified teachers in the region does not mean most or all new teachers will be underqualified. Perhaps the new teachers can be trained up, or perhaps the district will tempt qualified teachers away from other regions by promising to bring back corporeal punishment for annoying students.

That leaves (E): Qualified teachers could not be persuaded to relocate in significant numbers to the educator’s region to take teaching jobs.

This addresses one of the gaps we saw: that a shortage of qualified teachers in the area might not mean the new hires will have to be underqualified. We suggested a training program, but (E) contemplates attracting qualified teachers to move to the area. Let’s try negating it. "Qualified teachers could be persuaded to relocate..." If qualified teachers relocated, the district wouldn’t have to hire underqualified teachers and the educator’s argument falls apart. This is our answer.

#officialexplanation

[gplaya123]

Bonus Question!!!

What if B has said:
"at least some qualified teachers in the school district would be able to improve the overall achievement of students in their classes?"

So B is a no longer conditional.

This is what I think:

This argument hinges on an assumption that qualified teachers are actually able to raise overall students achievements.
Why?

Because the reason that the argument claims that overall achievement isn't going to go up is because we have a "shortage of qualified teachers" and "we are not gonna get more of them because of that shortage."

So, this implies that qualified teachers, if they are actually available, in Educator's district, then the argument falls apart like the negated E has said.

So B, if worded as above, is saying that some qualified teachers are able to raise the achievement, implying that they have the capability of doing so.

If there were not able to do that in the first place, the argument falls apart.

What do you think?

[steves]

If (D) were less extreme, would it still be incorrect as a premise booster since the passage already states that "education suffers when teachers are underqualified"?

[ohthatpatrick]

No, it could probably be usable if it were hedged more in strength.

If (D) said
"Hiring more teachers is unlikely to improve overall student achievement if more hired teachers are underqualified", then it seems pretty safely aligned with the author's thinking.

And it's not just a premise booster, as it bridges from PREM language ("underqualified teachers") to CONC language ("not improving overall student achievement").

What we know from the premise is that "education suffers" when teachers are underqualified, but that's such a nebulous term that I think LSAT would still consider there to be a missing link between "hiring any new underqualified teachers" and "overall student achievement probably not improved".

[kyuya]

The argument states that reducing class sizes in the district would not improve overall student achievement.

Why?

1.) because they would need to reduce class sizes + hire more teachers, but that requires qualified teachers(which there is a shortage of)

The assumption is that we cannot get these qualified teachers to come work at the school district.

(A) only if is a red flag here. The stimulus is not pointing toward a sole reason for something; there could be various reasons for wanting class sizes reduced but the stimulus only mentions one. This means it would not make the argument fall apart if negated.

(B) if we stick to the core, this assumption seems irrelevant. We are assuming we cannot get any more qualified teachers !

(C) very off - never speaks about student opinion at all.

(D) ANY ? we don't really know and also, it says education would SUFFER , but does that mean no students would improve with the bad teachers coming in? Not necessarily, so this is not necessary for the argument

(E) here is the assumption . if they could be persuaded in significant numbers, this argument falls apart.

I think the key to this (much like other questions) is to make sure that you break down the argument in terms of premise and conclusion in the most bare bones way you can. Why can't reducing class sizes improve overall achievement? It requires qualified teachers. Oh, so.. you mean we CAN't get qualified teachers?

[andrewgong01]

Was another assumption in the argument that the benefits of individual attention (even if it is from 'bad' teachers) is less than education as a whole? For example, it could be true that education does take a hit if "bad" teachers are hired but what if at the same time the benefits of 1 on 1 attention outweighs the negative effects. For example, sure education takes a hit but students are still better off anyways because of the individual attention they received thanks to smaller class sizes even if the teachers are not the best teachers?

There is an ambiguous sentence that just says "education suffers when teachers are under qualified" but I am not sure if that applies to both the instance of 1) 1 on 1 education and 2) Education to students as whole. In other words, is this a blanket statement that just means the moment you have under qualified teachers education - in all instances- plummets in quality?



Nevertheless, this was a tricky question where the answer choice was defending a potential objection through an example (namely, it assumes there are no qualified teachers through an example of an inability to recruit teachers from elsewhere) that was hard to see especially when the core made mention that there is a shortage of teachers so "E" at first sounded like it was boosting the premise that there are indeed no qualified teachers... However since the conclusion makes a prediction on the future outcome of something, we need to rule out potential changes that could occur 'today' that cast doubt on the outcome

[ohthatpatrick]

I was feeling some of that same idea of "can we argue that the GAIN of the 1:1 attention is better than the DRAIN of suffering education, when it comes to having underqualified teachers?"

But there are technically two conditional ideas there:
"When classes are smaller, more indiv attention"
"When teachers are underqualified, education suffers"

If you made a class smaller by using an underqualified teacher, I think you'd have to still believe that education ended up worse than it was previously.

The conclusion is measuring overall student achievement, and it sounds like "education suffers" would mean a negative move along that metric.

So as long as we use underqualified teachers, the conclusion will probably be right.

[JorgeL203]

How do you negate choice D?

[Laura Damone]

Because "any" is a word that connotes 100% conformity, you can negate "any" by showing a single outlier. So, you could negate D by saying there is 1 single student that hiring more teachers would help, even if most or all were underqualified.

Alternatively, D is conditional, so you could negate it by showing that the sufficient condition doesn't actually guarantee the necessary condition. In other words, if most or all of newly hired teachers are underqualified, that doesn't guarantee that no students would achieve more.

I tend to prefer the first option, because I think it makes it clear why quantifiers that connote 100% conformity are almost never correct: that single outlier is almost never enough to break the argument.

Hope this helps!