#23 - Concept Reference, Must Be True

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (B).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[deck1134]

Hello Powersocre staff,

I hope you are doing well.

I missed number 23 on this. I chose answer D because the passage mentioned black schools increased relative to white schools. What threw me was the word "substantially" in answer choice D.

I also missed that "more time to cover material" meant a longer term. I thought that if the terms were shorter, the days were longer, giving about the same instructional time, which, is I understand it, is historically the case.

Any tips on this question? I would appreciate your advice.

[James Finch]

Hi Deck,

This is a fairly difficult question as it relies upon remembering or identifying one key piece of evidence in the passage and applying an implication of that to the correct answer choice. Process of elimination (separating Losers from Contenders) should help here.

Answer choice (A) is something of an obvious trap. We know black schools improved relative to white schools, but are only given evidence of black school improvement, not white schools getting worse. Loser.

Answer choice (B) is a very specific fact, and for this reason should be left as a Contender on a first read (unless you remember clearly that the opposite is true).

Answer choice (C) goes against the idea of the disparity between white and black schools, and should be an immediate Loser.

Answer choice (D) is a mirror image of (A), albeit more attractive. Again, we don't know anything about how the quality of white schools did or didn't change, so we can't make this inference (although it is likely true).

Answer choice (E) runs into the same problem as (A) and (D), requiring knowledge we don't have about white schools to make an accurate comparison. Loser.

This leaves us with (B), but it still needs to be shown true. The evidence for it comes in lines 30-32:

"Although in the mid-1940s term length at black schools was approaching that in white schools"

This means the school terms were shorter in black schools, giving teachers in white schools more time to teach the material.

Hope this helps!