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.
In the preceding argument, the author contends that residents of Parson city value public education more than residents of Blue City do. As a background for such a conclusion the arguer points at twice bigger budget allocated for education in Parson compared to that in Blue City. Though more significant budget may indicate more focus, validation of such a conclusion demands additional examination of provided information and require some new data.
First, the author presumes that the more budget spent at something, the higher the priority of that thing is. But bigger budget may indicate bigger need. For example, population of one city consist of empty-nest type of families predominantly and, thus, does not need that much budget for education; while another one displays quite opposite population compositions and, consequently, require different approach. The argument would benefit if the author provides total number of children that live in each city. That would help to find out budget spent per student and, thus, deduce based on comparable numbers. If average expenditure per public school student is higher, then some schools indeed get more funding compared to others; but if numbers are approximately equal means that one city has more children to teach than the other. Moreover, bigger budget may be interpreted as the very opposite of prioritization if proved that during previous years education was underfunded. The simplest way to find out if that is the case is, first, check average expense per public school student over last 5-10 years – any picks will be visible immediately.
Second, the arguer states that it is city resident’s choice to prioritize education. Typically, city residents, delegate their right for budget distribution to chosen government rather than participate in that kind of decisions. Unless, of course, actions taken by government require residents’ interference. Only in case when we for sure know that city residents let the government to know their will (via referendum, open letters, petitions, demonstration and so on) and their will was satisfied, we can assert that it is city resident who put greater value on education. Unless, that is proved, more probable owner of the decision is government rather than people.
In conclusion, the argument is based on several flawed assumptions and, thus, fails to make a convincing case that public schools of Parsons have unwarranted surplus in budget funding. For the above mentioned reasons the arguments cannot be deemed persuasive.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
the second argument may have issues.
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samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/following-appeared…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 399 350
No. of Characters: 2078 1500
No. of Different Words: 212 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.469 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.208 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.727 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 163 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 112 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 84 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.167 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.018 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.778 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.315 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.504 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.073 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 114, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'years'' or 'year's'?
Suggestion: years'; year's
...tization if proved that during previous years education was underfunded. The simples...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 317, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... any picks will be visible immediately. Second, the arguer states that it is cit...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, consequently, first, if, may, moreover, second, so, then, thus, while, for example, in conclusion, kind of, of course
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 45.0 55.5748502994 81% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2151.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 400.0 441.139720559 91% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.3775 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.472135955 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.87371601763 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 219.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.5475 0.468620217663 117% => OK
syllable_count: 673.2 705.55239521 95% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 60.3740654402 57.8364921388 104% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.5 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.2222222222 23.324526521 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.77777777778 5.70786347227 119% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
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: 0.184378046197 0.218282227539 84% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0583533655109 0.0743258471296 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.052984022716 0.0701772020484 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0943747059643 0.128457276422 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0386746564139 0.0628817314937 62% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.0 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.69 48.3550499002 84% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.1 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.22 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.03 8.32208582834 109% => OK
difficult_words: 109.0 98.500998004 111% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6
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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.