Bayside citizens need to consider raising local taxes if they want to see improvements in the bay side school district Test scores graduation and college admission rates and a number of other indicators have long made it clear that bayside school district

The author’s argument is that raising local taxes will improve the student performance in the Bayside School District. There are several fallacies in the argument presented.

First of all is the sample size. The sample size for the analysis is fairly small – the author has just considered the Bayside District and New Harbour for making his point. It might be a coincidence that New Harbour – where a greater amount of money is spent per student – has better student performance. There is no way to know whether it is a fact or a coincidence until more data is collected, and patterns are looked at.

Second, the author has disregarded many other parameters that contribute towards student performance, like number of teachers in schools, qualifications of the teachers, infrastructure of the schools and methods of teaching. The only factor which is being focused is the amount spent per student, and that is what is used to drive the comparison with the schools in New Harbour. It may be possible that the schools in New Harbour have better infrastructure or a larger number of more qualified teachers. All this is not considered in the argument.

Third, it is not necessary that a raise in taxes will guarantee an improvement in students’ performance. The extra revenue collected may or may not be spent on education reforms. The structure of revenue distribution has to be understood to make such a claim. What if the extra revenue generated by raising local taxes is used in building roads instead of investing on infrastructure of the schools? It is not known whether raising taxes will directly lead to improvement in the infrastructure in the schools.

Also, while the author states that there are a “number of indicators” to check the level of education in the youth of the district, he goes on to focus on only two of them, i.e. test scores and college admission rates. He does not discuss the other parameters affecting the student performance. This might be a deliberate attempt to conceal information to make a point. Maybe the Bayside School District fares better when these other indicators are taken into account. So, the author only circles around two factors to make his point while there might be others which contradict his point.