Mayor: In each of the past five years, the city has cut school funding

The conclusion of the Mayor's argument is that school officials can implement further cuts without reducing any expenditures for essential services. Let's break down how the Mayor reaches this conclusion:

• Five years ago, the city cut school funding.
• School officials complained that this cut would force them to reduce expenditures for essential services. But when the cut was made, only expenditures for nonessential services were reduced.
• This process (city cut funding, school officials complained, school officials reduced expenditures only for nonessential services) repeated for four more years.
• Therefore, today, school officials can cut further without reducing any expenditures for essential services.

This logic literally isn't adding up. Just because something happened previously doesn't mean that it will happen again in the future! What we really care about is what's going to happen next, and we need the following information to accept the mayor's conclusion:

• How much money the schools have now for essential services and nonessential services.
• How much it will cost to provide essential services and nonessential services when the next cut takes place.

So let's look for the answer choice that most fills in these blanks, making us more likely to believe that the next cut can be implemented without any reduction in essential expenditures.


The schools' efficiency in providing essential services has nothing to do with whether they have enough money in the bank to avoid cutting expenditures on those services. Choice (A) doesn't provide any information that would fill our logical gap, so let's eliminate it.


This helps out quite a bit! If we know that the schools have money in the bank to provide nonessential services, the we know that some (potentially all) of the next cut can be taken out of these particular funds, instead of being taken out of the funds for essential services.

It would be great to know how big the cut will be, but the conclusion is that school officials can implement further cuts, not some specific size of cut. If there are $X in the bank for nonessential services, at least $X can be further cut from overall funding without any reduction in spending on essential services.

Choice (B) doesn't prove the conclusion, but it definitely makes the conclusion easier to believe. Let's keep it around and see if any of the remaining choices are better.


Hm, so choice (C) tells us that the cost of nonessential services isn't much more than it was last year. But how much was it last year? How much is it today? And how does this cost relate to how much funding schools will have after the cut? We still don't have the information we need to assess how the next cut will impact the amount needed for essential services.

As a result, choice (C) doesn't support the mayor's conclusion nearly as much as choice (B), so let's eliminate it and keep going.


The stance of city administrators on these services has nothing to do with how much money the schools have and how much schools need in order to avoid reducing expenditures on those services. Eliminate (D).


The conclusion itself doesn't question the accuracy or honesty of the school officials. The conclusion states that after the next cut, there will be no cuts to expenditures on essential services. Choice (E), like choice (D) and choice (A), doesn't do anything to fill in the gaps that we need to support this conclusion, so we'll eliminate it.

(B) remains the best choice, because it does more than any other choice to make the mayor's conclusion believable.

But between you and me, even if (B) were true, I would never vote for a mayor who is this bad at critical reasoning. Please take these lessons to heart, find success with your MBA, and become a better mayor for your town.