Logical Reasoning

PT135 · S4 · Q13 Educator: Reducing class sizes

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Educator: Reducing class sizes in our school district would require hiring more teachers.

Conclusion

Reducing class sizes in our district probably wouldn't improve overall student achievement.

Evidence

Even though smaller classes can help students get more individualized instruction, reducing class sizes would require hiring more teachers, and there is already a shortage of qualified teachers. Education suffers when teachers are underqualified.

Evaluation

The author is thinking that since this move would result in us needing more teachers, and since we already have a shortage of qualified teachers, we'd end up hiring underqualified teachers, and education suffers when teachers are underqualified.

To argue that this move would result in overall improvement of student achievement, we could take a couple different angles: - maybe we could argue that it's still a net gain (the improvement to education caused by more individualized instruction might outweigh the degradation to education caused by having less qualified teachers).

- maybe we could argue that there are ways to solve the potential problem of "underqualified" teachers. Maybe teachers could rotate to different classes, so that all classes had a qualified teacher at least part of the time. maybe it doesn't take very long for an underqualified teacher to become qualified (maybe on the job training very quickly turns them into qualified teachers)

Goal

Find an answer that, if negated, would weaken (i.e. would help us argue that reducing class sizes could still lead to improved student achievement).

Or look for an answer spelling out the author's assumption that .

13.

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the educator's argument?

Class sizes in the school
Too Strong
Too Strong: only if Out of Scope: should be The author isn't ever saying anything should / shouldn't be done. He is just talking about whether reducing class size probably would / wouldn't improve overall achievement. We can't infer that the author is assuming a harsh conditional that "the only reason you'd ever reduce class size is to improve student achievement". If we see conditional answers, we can always ask ourselves, "Did the author make this move?" Did this author say student achievement should not reduce wouldn't be reduced → class size ? Nope.
6% picked this
At least some qualified teachers
Illegal Opposite Negating it Strengthens
This answer is trying to bait people into thinking that an Inference we can (supposedly) derive is the same as an assumption. Since the author said that underqualified teachers hurt educational outcomes, this answer acts like the author must be assuming the idea that "qualified teachers help educational outcomes". We aren't allowed to flip statements like that. I can say that "green knives are dangerous for babies" without that meaning that I'm assuming that "non-green knives are not dangerous for babies". If we negated this answer and said that "even the qualified teachers wouldn't be able to improve the overall achievement if class sizes were reduced", then that would only support the author's conclusion.
3% picked this
Students place a greater value
Out of Scope: students place value
It's irrelevant what students place greater value on. This argument only cares what is more likely to improve overall student performance. We don't know if students place greater value on things that are necessarily more likely to improve their performance. They might place greater value on "long recess" than on "lots of homework".
2% picked this
Hiring more teachers would not
Too Strong: most, all, any
Our author is assuming that "if some of the teachers we're hiring are going to be underqualified, then it will probably hurt overall student achievement". But she doesn't have to be committed to the idea that "not one single student's achievement would be improved". It's certainly conceivable in the author's mind that if most of the new hired teachers are underqualified, it will still reduce class sizes in some classrooms with qualified teachers, and in those classrooms there could be some students that benefit from more individualized attention and thus obtain improved achievement. Her conclusion is "probably" that "overall" achievement would go down. A tentative claim about overall / average achievement is way weaker than this definite claim about every single student.
23% picked this
Correct
Qualified teachers could not be
Why this is right
Because this has the appealing ruling out language ("not") that we see in lots of correct Necessary Assumption answers, our first reaction would be to go to the Negation Test and see if this turns into an Objection. If we were to say that "qualified teachers could be persuaded to relocate in significant numbers to the region", would that be an Objection? Yes! Our author was primarily concerned that we would need to hire underqualified teachers since there's a shortage of qualified teachers in the region. But negating this answer is saying, "You don't need to worry about that --- we can persuade significant numbers of qualified teachers to relocate here, so the newly hired teachers could very well all be qualified teachers."
Skill tested: Necessary Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
66% picked this

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