The state school-board association sent this note to its constituent school-board members.
“It is clear that the proposed 10 percent cuts to state aid affect poor districts more than wealthy districts. If the statewide average cut per student is $500, wealthy districts’ cuts are far below that average, whereas the poorest upstate districts will receive cuts that are nearly twice that average. Since state aid is distributed now in a way that gives more to the poor districts than to the wealthy districts, shouldn’t cuts in state aid be similarly equitable?”
Examine the logic of this argument by discussing what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable.
The argument being made here is that cuts in state aid should be equitable, since the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. However, this argument is based on a number of logical fallacies and assumptions.
Firstly, the statewide average cut per student is 500dollars. The reason that the wealthy district is less affected than the poorer district could be because they have fewer students and therefore, on the whole, seem to be faring better. While the poorest district has twice the average number of students and so receive cuts that are nearly twice the average. Which means that the argument is flawed and that the distribution of state aid cut is actually equal. In order to make the overall aid cut fairer between the two districts, the state could put in place incentives to redistribute students across the region, encouraging families in the wealthy district to send their children to schools in the poorer districts. This would cause the number of students to be more equal and then the cuts received might be perceived as more fair. Alternatively, the state could implement measures to balance economic disparity, but this would be harder to do, in order to distribute the cuts evenly.
Secondly, the wealthy districts surely pay more in taxes than the poorer districts and therefore are more “entitled” to receiving what they paid for. This means that the cuts are equitable as the wealthy paid to get the education their children are receiving while in the poorer districts this may not be the case. However, this is a generalisation of the entire region and there may be individuals in the poorer district paying taxes and should therefore, be getting the same education as the children in the wealthy district.
On the whole, the statewide cut seems to be fair but the state government could take a number of steps to make it seem more fair.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 13 15
No. of Words: 318 350
No. of Characters: 1518 1500
No. of Different Words: 140 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.223 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.774 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.479 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 105 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 76 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 55 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 31 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.462 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.381 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.846 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.372 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.577 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.068 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, first, firstly, however, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, while, on the whole
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 17.0 28.8173652695 59% => OK
Preposition: 35.0 55.5748502994 63% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1569.0 2260.96107784 69% => OK
No of words: 318.0 441.139720559 72% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.93396226415 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.22286093782 4.56307096286 93% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.69845953708 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 145.0 204.123752495 71% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.455974842767 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 486.9 705.55239521 69% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 13.0 19.7664670659 66% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.8438845066 57.8364921388 88% => OK
Chars per sentence: 120.692307692 119.503703932 101% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.4615384615 23.324526521 105% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.92307692308 5.70786347227 139% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.286030656506 0.218282227539 131% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.120207437608 0.0743258471296 162% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0485446592056 0.0701772020484 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.165506269523 0.128457276422 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0775808506389 0.0628817314937 123% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.61 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.0 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 64.0 98.500998004 65% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 7.5 12.3882235529 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.