The following appeared in a letter to the editor of Parson City's local newspaper."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 cit

Essay topics:

The following appeared in a letter to the editor of Parson City's local newspaper.

"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.

As a parent, I would rightfully be concerned if i read that one city was spending more money on childrens’ education than another. However, the limited amount of information we have in this letter does not allow for a significant argument against Blue City residents.

To start off, although the author of the letter talks about how the two cities are spending tax money, the letter is ultimately aimed at the residents of the cities. This in itself is flawed and invalidates the argument. If the cities are in charge of the tax money and where it is allocated, the residents do not necessarily have a say in their spending. Thus, it is fruitless to put the blame on the residents of the cities rather than the city’s’ governments themselves.

Although the author of the letter tells the reader that Parson City spent almost double the amount that Blue City did on public schools, they do not give them any information on what the money was used for. If the money was used for extra programs for children or private tutoring services, then it would further help the author’s argument. However, if it was used for something like the maintenance of their buildings’ infrastructure, or a pay raise for teachers, this information would significantly invalidate the argument, for these are necessary and useful for the schools.

The letter also claims that Parson City, “recently spent almost twice as much per year”. Using the word “recently” before the phrase “per year” makes one question the validity of the data presented. Saying “per year” implies that the data is a meta analysis of at least a couple of years. However, saying “recently” makes the amount of time a little hazy. Knowing the exact time frame of when the money was spent would make the argument stronger. If it had been 5 years consistently that Parson City had spent more money on their schools, this would be a significant amount of time for the city to be spending so much more money than Blue City. If it were one year, it may not be as valid.

Evidence that may significantly affect the validity of the argument presented would be if there was a difference in grades standardized test scores between the two city’s schools. If Parson City students did significantly better in terms of their test scores than Blue City, then the money must have some significance on the quality of their education, making the author’s argument stronger.

In conclusion, this argument lacks a lot of context information that could make or break their argument, including where the money is being allocated in each city, and the exact time frame of the data presented.

Votes
Average: 6.9 (3 votes)
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Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 49, Rule ID: I_LOWERCASE[2]
Message: Did you mean 'I'?
Suggestion: I
...ent, I would rightfully be concerned if i read that one city was spending more mo...
^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, however, if, may, so, then, thus, at least, in conclusion

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 43.0 55.5748502994 77% => OK
Nominalization: 20.0 16.3942115768 122% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2282.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 451.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 5.05986696231 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.60833598836 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.05163261069 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 202.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.447893569845 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 704.7 705.55239521 100% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 10.0 2.70958083832 369% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.4350209817 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 120.105263158 119.503703932 101% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.7368421053 23.324526521 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.31578947368 5.70786347227 58% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.13876274746 0.218282227539 64% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0560023315856 0.0743258471296 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0509547635823 0.0701772020484 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0879447014747 0.128457276422 68% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0380909300277 0.0628817314937 61% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.3 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.36 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.68 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 83.0 98.500998004 84% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?

---------------------

Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.

Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 451 350
No. of Characters: 2111 1500
No. of Different Words: 193 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.608 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.681 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.537 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 136 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 91 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 74 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.737 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.29 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.737 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.341 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.595 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.117 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5