PT5.S3.Q10 - schools, reforms and vouchers

ang_whitlock

help why is the answer A and not E?

canihazJD

The argument is that if parents are given the ability to pick schools, academically underachieving schools will be forced to improve their academic offerings.

Assumption: academics are the criteria parents would use to pick a school

A. is necessary because if parents used criteria other than academic achievement, schools would not be forced to improve academics... they would likely improve whatever the other criteria is that parents are using to select a school.

E. has a few problems, but to oversimplify... it's a lot of stuff that still doesn't lead to the conclusion. Schools would each improve all of their academic offerings and would not tend to specialize in one particular field to the exclusion of others.

For the proposed voucher system to cause underachieving schools to improve academics, we don't need all schools to improve all of their offerings, nor does the fact that they would mean it was a result of parents being able to pick a school... the event described in the conclusion (note: not the conclusion itself) happens as a subset of this answer choice, but that is only the first half: Schools would each improve all of their academic offerings.

When you add: and would not tend to specialize in one particular field to the exclusion of others, that definitely does not have to happen, nor does it have any bearing on our argument. So improvement must take place at ALL schools across ALL areas, and also be of equal magnitude of improvement within each school across subject areas? That is not supported at all.

Aside from all of that the conclusion is that schools (just underachieving ones) will be forced to improve... as a result of the proposed system, not just that they will for any reason improve.

ang_whitlock

ok, I get it now. Thanks!