Robert: The school board

Answer choices

1. A

   Out Of Scope1% picked this

   Teachers would be willing to accept elimination of the traditional three-month summer vacation as long as the total vacation time they are entitled

   Out Of Scope: “teachers willing to except” This doesn’t do anything to explain how the new way of taking 12 weeks off helps students cover more new material.

   1%
2. B

   Unclear Impact1% picked this

   Most parents who work outside the home find it difficult to arrange adequate supervision for their school-age children over the

   Would parents find it any easier to cobble together daycare and babysitting if we broke 12 weeks up into six 2-week installments? That sounds even harder. More importantly, this doesn’t explain how students would end up covering more new material.

   1%
3. C

   Out of Scope10% picked this

   In school districts that have adopted a year­ round schedule that increases the number of school days per year, students show a deeper understanding

   Out of Scope: “increases number of days” / Unclear Impact This is about a different plan than the one being analyzed. In this plan, they actually have more school days / fewer vacation days. The fact that a plan with more school days is having positive effects on student comprehension isn’t relevant to the objection of “How could we get more done if it’s the same number of days missed?”

   10%
4. D

   Correct88% picked this

   Teachers spend no more than a day of class time reviewing old material when students have been away from school for only a few

   Why this is right

   This identifies a salient difference between stacking those 12 weeks into three months of summer break vs. spreading the 12 weeks out in six 2-week sessions. Students don’t forget that much over two weeks, so teachers only spend one day of class for review. That means they use six days a year for post-break review. Meanwhile, with the summer break schedule, teachers spend close to a whole month on post-break review. The savings of 6 review days vs. 30 review days is how the new plan would allow teachers to cover more new material.

   Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   88%
5. E

   Out Of Scope: “prefer” / Opposite0% picked this

   Students prefer taking a long vacation from school during the summer to taking more frequent but shorter vacations

   What students prefer is irrelevant. We are trying to explain to Samantha how the new plan would allow for covering more new material. (Additionally, if students prefer the summer break schedule, it would be a reason not to adopt the new plan. Robert is arguing for adopting the new plan, so this isn’t an appealing idea to his side anyway.)

   0%