#13 - Educator: Reducing class sizes in our school district

[Kristina Moen]

Hi lsatstudier,

You did an excellent job diagramming the stimulus, so I will quote it here and work from it:

Reducing class size --> hiring more teachers

shortage of qualified teachers in region (not SN)

smaller classes-->individualized attn

teachers underqualified -->education suffers

C: RCS --> not improve overall student achievement

I do want to clarify that the conclusion is not a conditional statement. It uses the word "probably," so you want to be cautious there. You might even rewrite it as RCS --probably--> Not improve overall student achievement.

Take a look at the first two sentences. There is a disconnect there. Yes, reducing class size would require hiring more teachers. And yes, there is a shortage of qualified teachers in the region. Answer choice (E) addresses this disconnect. So here's the thing about Assumption questions - there are often MANY, MANY assumptions that an argument makes. For example, if I say "A study supports my conclusion," I am assuming any number of things - the study was not biased, it used a representative sample, the data was recorded correctly, etc. The trick here is to negate an answer choice and see if the conclusion fails. When you negate answer choice (E), you get: "Qualified teachers could be persuaded to relocate in significant numbers to the educator’s region to take teaching jobs." Well, there goes the argument! The school district could hire qualified teachers outside the region and thus reduce class size, and student achievement could go up! The negated version of answer choice (E) kills the conclusion.

Let's take a look at answer choice (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.

It's a conditional statement, which are often a little tricker to negate. Say you have a conditional statement "If A, then B." The negated version will be "If A, then not necessarily B." You can also think of it this way: "B is necessary for A." The negated version is "B is not necessary for A." So let's apply that principle here.

Original: "If most or all of the teachers hired were underqualified, then hiring more teachers would not improve the achievement of any students in the school district."

The negated version is:
"If most or all of the teachers hired were underqualified, then hiring more teachers could improve the achievement of any students in the school district." That doesn't kill the conclusion because we haven't actually been told that the teachers hired will not be underqualified. We only know that there is a shortage of qualified teachers in the region. That's why answer choice (E) works.

Hope this helps.

[lunsandy]

Hi Powerscore,

To add onto what Kristina was saying in the previous post, would D be a reason to get rid of being of "any" students instead of "overall" student achievements? In other words, if we do the Negation Test on D, Most/All THUQ HMTIAAS (hiring more teachers...improve the achievement of any students...). Improving the achievement of any student does not completely ruin our conclusion because our conclusion is dealing with the "improving overall student achievement." Is that a reason to get rid of D for?

[Claire Horan]

Yes, perfect! Nice job, Lunsandy!

[ericau02]

Hello so two things;
1.) Is there another way for you to explain how answer choice B is incorrect. I don't see how t undermines the conclusion from the initial description above. How does this statement make it less likely for classes to be reduced in size when it states at the end "...if classes were reduced."

2.)How is answer choice D unnecessarily restrictive and what is the best way to notice and categorize an ac like D to be unnecessarily restrictive?

Thanks!

[Brook Miscoski]

Erica,

The stimulus points out that smaller class sizes would require hiring more teachers, but there is a shortage of overqualified teachers. On those facts, it concludes that smaller class sizes won't work. The right choice will address those logical elements and will be required for the argument to be possible.

(B) fails to address the logical elements, because it's about the qualified teachers we do have instead of the shortage. Thus, there's no possibility that (B) is correct, and it can be eliminated immediately. It doesn't matter what the qualified teachers can do, only what the unqualified teachers can do or what we can do about the shortage.

(D) iis problematic because of the use of the word "any." It's not necessary that zero students benefit, it's just necessary that on average hiring unqualified teachers would not solve the school's problems. So "any" is too restrictive. The other part, "all or most" (referring to unqualified teachers), is not problematic. The stimulus does assume that if some (including all or most) teachers are unqualified, achievement on average ("overall") will not be increased.