Q3 - Researcher: Any country can determine

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Countries can figure out the best public school system for their country by looking at other countries.
Evidence: We could give nationwide tests in every country, and whichever country has the best scores on the tests would be the "model" school system.

Answer Anticipation:
This argument seems less about sorting out the Missing Links/Ideas and more about thinking of Potential Objections. How would we argue AGAINST this plan? We could say that no test provides a good enough metric to make us believe that "doing best at the test" = "best type of school system". We could also raise typical Comparison concerns and say, "Who's to say that a school system that performs well in Norway will perform comparably well in China?" Maybe there are different cultural / economic barriers that would preclude a system that works well in one place from working well in a different place.

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This looks good! If we negate this, we get a pretty massive objection to the plan: "a type of system that works well in one country would NOT necessarily work well in other countries".

(B) Nothing about this conversation cares about the existence of private schools. If we negated this, we'd be saying "at least some countries are 100% public school". Cool, so what?

(C) You would hope this is true, but the argument doesn't hinge on it. If we negate this and say, "Hey, author, we WON'T be able to figure out which aspects of a given system are making it perform better/worse", she'll just say "Who cares? Just completely adopt whichever system performs best!"

(D) Extreme = "Most". It wouldn't make any difference to this argument whether 49% or 51% of countries already have nationwide tests.

(E) Extreme = "as closely as possible". Again, you'd hope this would be true, but the argument doesn't hinge on it. The testing doesn't have to create the BEST POSSIBLE matches between grade levels, because the author never gets into that level of detail. It's possible that the author would be content with a system of tests that roughly approximates comparable grade levels.

Takeaway/Pattern: When an argument feels like a Plan of Action, try to think about possible ways it could fail to work the way the author envisions. And whenever the author is thinking, "if it's true over HERE, it should be true over THERE" look out for comparison assumptions (strengthen with more similarity / weaken with meaningful differences).

#officialexplanation

[gyfirefire]

i was debating between (A) and (E). Can anyone please help me understand why (A) is the correct answer?
(A) states "A type of school system that ... will work well in ANY other country". "ANY" is the word that convinced me of its illegality since i didn't believe the stimulus needs to assume something as strong as "Any".

But in the mean time, same line of thought should have been applied to (E) since it doesn't need to assume as strong as "as closely as possible". But i guess i was not consistent in the test.

Any explanation on (A) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot in advance.

[aileenann]

No problem.

First, let's think about the core of this argument. The author is essentially arguing that:

we could give nationwide tests in every country and see who does best

THEREFORE ----->

*any* country can determine which school system will work best for it by looking at all other countries

It's important especially to have a handle on the conclusion in making close calls when you are down to two answers in an assumption question.

So why is (A) the answer and not (E)? I will take two methods to answer this. First, let's think about why we might have eliminated (E) regardless of what (A) said. (E) might be helpful, but I would argue that we don't really *need* this to be true (notice the question is asking us which of the following is required - not just helpful). Therefore even if it turns out comparable grades aren't being compared, there are other ways we can imagine comparing the systems - and therefore even if this isn't true, our conclusion and our whole argument as given here, can still hold. So (E) isn't obviously wrong (maybe you don't want to get rid of it on your first sweep through the answers), but it's wrong on closer inspection.

Second, let's think about what is good in (A). I think this gets to the heart of things. What the author seems to presume is that all countries can learn from one another, assuming the data is available. But why should this be so? How do we know that it isn't the case that what works well in one country won't work well in another? If this is so - if school systems don't necessarily translate across national boundaries - then the argument isn't a very good one - or even a tenable one - because knowing what other countries do doesn't have to have anything to do with a country picking its best school system.

Does that make sense? Please do follow up if you have more questions or any comments of your own to share.

[gyfirefire]

hi Aileenann,

Thanks for the explanation. But I still have trouble convincing myself. To me, the correct answer should be something like "A type of school system that works well in one country will work well in at least some (not "any") other countries".

If it is "Any" as in (A), then after negation of it, i don't think it will destroy the original argument, since other countries can still pick up perhaps the second best scored school system for their own use after rulling out the best scored one.

By the process of elimination, (B)~(E) can be out of the picture easily, but i just couldn't sign up for (A) as "required" by the original argument.

[mrudula_2005]

I think it's simplest to just negate (A). When you negate (A), you get:
"A type of school system that works well in one country will work well in no other country."

so then how in the heck could any country determine which type of public school system will work best for it by investigating and then adopting the public school systems of other countries?!?! negating A totally destroys the argument - in mandates that investigating and later adopting the system of the country with the best test scores (as the evidence warrants) will result in a public school system that works well in NO other countries. that is not what we want, so we need to assume (A).

also, i'm not sure I understand your concern about learning from the 2nd best country but this argument is only concerned with all other countries adopting the system of the country "that has the BEST scores"

hope this helps a little.

[gyfirefire]

hi mrudula_2005,

thank you very much for your help! Now i realized that i didn't negate (A) is a correct way. If did it as you do, i wouldn't have any questions about this assumption problem.

Thank you so much once again!

[aileenann]

I fully endorse mrudula's explanation

[all_boost]

I'm having a hard time arriving at mrudula_2005's negation...

Page 103 of the LR strategy guide says:
"Do not jump to the most extreme negation of a statement if there's a less extreme version that negates the statement".

In this regard, I had thought this was the correct negation:
"A type of school system that works well in one country will not work well in some other countries."

In which case, I think A) would still be justified given that the foregoing negation undermines the *any* of the Researcher's conclusion by making this testing system - at best - suitable for only some countries.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

I'm having a hard time arriving at mrudula_2005's negation...

Page 103 of the LR strategy guide says:
"Do not jump to the most extreme negation of a statement if there's a less extreme version that negates the statement".

In this regard, I had thought this was the correct negation:
"A type of school system that works well in one country will not work well in some other countries."

You're absolutely right. Sometimes it's easy to get a little sloppy with our negations, since we can often get away with less than perfect presentations of the logical opposite. But your negation above is more precise.

Nice work!

[all_boost]

Thank you for the reply!

[nflamel69]

For some reason this question confuses me still even though I got it right and all others seem to be completely wrong. To me, this one didn't have an argument core really. I didnt' treat the second sentence as the premise as one of the Geeks did. because it we do treat it as a premise, don't we have to assume that the test score is a reliable indicator as how good a public school system is? that was my initial answer after I read the question.

I thought the argument core was :

conclusion: any country to determine which type of public school will work best for it.

premise: we could investigate other country's public school system.

It seems to me that the second sentence is more like a elaboration on the premise by telling us one way they could do it.

Can anyone help?

[magic.imango]

I'm still rather confused by this question.

Core
Nationwide tests given and other countries could adopt system with best scores --THEREFORE-- any country can determine which type of school will work best for it by investigating other school systems.

The way I understood this, the core is about countries figuring out what system to use--and not about actually using that system which is why I chose (E). If the tests target grade levels that are comparable in the different countries, then that would make the scores a more reliable indicator of what school systems are actually the best; if the scores are a more reliable indicator, then the scores could be used to help countries determine the best school system.

Can someone please show me where I am going wrong? I'm about ready to bloody eat paper here this question is driving me mad. And it's only number 3!!! Sweet mercy....

[Mab6q]

This question ask us for an assumption question required by the argument. Assumption questions require us to 1. identify the core of the argument, 2. understanding the reasoning underlying the argument, 3. pin-point the flaw/assumptions in the reasoning, 4. use process of elimination to arrive at the best choice and apply the negation test to confirm the correct answer.

Argument Core:

Conclusion: ANY country can determine which type of public school will work best for it by investigating the public school systems of other countries.


WHY: using nationwide testing, EACH country could adopt the system of the country that has the best scores on these tests.

The author believes that the information from tests could help ANY country determine the best system to use.
A number of gaps I noticed in this argument:

1. Argument assumes that what is the best system for one country will be best for another
2. Argument assumes that other systems can be implemented in other countries
3. Argument assumes that the standardized test shows which types of systems are the best.


We need to keep these gaps in mind, but understanding that this is the necessary assumption, we have to keep our options open.

a. This is a tricky answer. The reason being is that it seems very strong, and it could definitely be a sufficient assumption as well. If we negate it in its proper form, we get: a type of school system that works well in one country might not necessarily work well in any other country. This might suggest that the negation doesn't kill the argument, because it could be only the systems that dont belong to the countries who score the best scores cant do well in another country. But we really don't know that. And understanding the nature of this question, the conclusion is strong. It has to work well in any country. So we have to assume that if it works well in one country, it has to work well in any other country, otherwise we cant have the type of conclusion we have.
b. private school out of score
c. We don’t need to figure out differences, but need to pick best system and go with it
d. So what if they do/dont
e. This seemed like an under the radar defender assumption to me at first. If we negate it, we get: the nationwide testing wont target as closely as possible grade level that are comparable. But we don't know anything about what we need to have a good testing sample. Is it necessary that we have comparable grades? Maybe by knowing that one country's 5th graders score very low and another countries 1st graders score high tells us enough. This also doesn't address the core quite like A does.

For that reason, A is better.

[phoebster21]

I'm having a hard time arriving at mrudula_2005's negation...

Page 103 of the LR strategy guide says:
"Do not jump to the most extreme negation of a statement if there's a less extreme version that negates the statement".

In this regard, I had thought this was the correct negation:
"A type of school system that works well in one country will not work well in some other countries."

You're absolutely right. Sometimes it's easy to get a little sloppy with our negations, since we can often get away with less than perfect presentations of the logical opposite. But your negation above is more precise.

Nice work!

So then is this "more precise" negation at odds or consistent with the stimulus?....