A nationwide poll of students, parents, and teachers showed that over 90 percent believe that an appropriate percentage of their school’s budget is being spent on student counseling programs.
Conclusion
If we're gonna add to the school budget, we should spend money on something besides student counseling programs.
Evidence
A huge poll of students, parents, and teachers show that over 90% of them think an appropriate percentage of the budget is being spent on student counseling.
Evaluate
Given the poll, wow could we argue that if we add money to the school budget, we should spend more money on student counseling?
Our first reaction could just be, But it is a nationwide poll of students / parents / teachers, so LSAT is giving us no reason to doubt the poll. There must be some other wiggle room.
They're shifting from talking about "an appropriate percentage" in the evidence (in the poll) to the idea of "an increased amount" in the conclusion. So we should think about this % vs. # distinction.
Say the budget is currently $100k, and 1% of it goes to student counseling ($1,000). In the poll, over 90% said .
The poll doesn't comment on whether $1,000 is an appropriate amount to allocate.
If we increased the budget by $50k, and now the budget is currently $150k, then the $1000 we're giving to student counseling will only 0.67% of the budget.
We actually would be failing to comply with the poll if we didn't spend more money on student counseling, because we would have gone from the 1% of budget that they approve of to a lower 0.67% that they might not approve of.
Goal
Look for an answer that speaks to the percentage vs. amount confusion, or that points out that if we add new money to the budget, then the people in this poll would want X% of that new money (the appropriate percentage they agree on) to go to student counseling.