LSAT 138 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q14

LR Question 14 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Editorial: A proposed new law would limit elementary…

QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption

CONCLUSION: Small class sizes don’t increase engagement.

REASONING: In one study, smaller class sizes didn’t increase grades.

ANALYSIS: Necessary assumption questions often mix up two terms. Here, the author makes a claim about engagement by using evidence about grades.

These aren’t the same thing; but the author assumes they are. So, that’s going to be the right answer.

Knowing this pattern helps you answer necessary assumption questions more quickly. You can read the argument quickly, spot the gap in terms, and skim the answers to see if one of them mentions this gap. If you don’t find a gap, you can do a second, slower read. But you may not need to, if you can predict the answer and skim to find it.

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1. How on earth would this matter?
   Negation: Medium schools are also appropriate to use for studies.
2. This isn’t relevant. The argument is about the average improvement. So the improvement of the class as a whole is what matters.
    
   LSAC likes to add false requirements like this. Normally, who cares if something is “evenly divided”? Almost nothing in life is precisely equal!
   Negation: Teachers spend 20% more time on problem students.
3. This might support the argument, but it isn’t necessary. The original argument hadn’t said “this happened because of staff reductions”.
   Negation: Reductions in class size could happen without reducing the number of teachers.
4. CORRECT. The conclusion was about engagement. If this isn’t true, then the study provides no evidence about engagement.
   Negation: Grades don’t correlate to engagement.
5. The argument wasn’t saying “smaller class sizes are bad”. It said “this reasoning is questionable”. That refers to parents’ reasoning that small class sizes increase engagement.
   Negation: There are other reasons for parents’ support.