LSAT 134 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q9

LR Question 9 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Robert: The school board is considering adopting …

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken

ARGUMENTS: ROBERT’S ARGUMENT: The year-round school schedule should be adopted. Teachers need to cover more new material than they currently do.

SAMANTHA’S ARGUMENT: The schedule won’t actually allow teachers to cover more new material. The total number of school days will be pretty much the same.

ANALYSIS: Rob thinks we should get rid of summer break so teachers can get through more new material.

Sam thinks that won’t help. Although the long summer vacation disappears, it’s replaced with several shorter breaks. So the total number of school days stays about the same.

Her point is simple: same number of school days = no extra time to teach new material.

We want to weaken that. Rob needs to show that even without adding school days, teachers would still have more time to teach new material.

___________

1. This addresses whether teachers would accept the change. Sam’s argument is strictly about whether it would allow teachers to cover more material.
2. This gives a different reason for adopting the schedule. It doesn’t respond to Sam’s claim that teachers won’t gain instructional time.
3. That’s not the type of school we’re looking at. This answer says “increases the number of school days”. In our proposal, we know the number of school days isn’t increased. So this doesn’t answer her objection.
4. CORRECT. This directly answers Sam. Even if the total number of school days stays the same, teachers would spend much less time reviewing old material after shorter breaks. That leaves more time to cover new material, exactly as Rob claimed.
5. Student preferences don’t address Sam’s argument. The issue is whether teachers would actually gain time to teach more new material.