The school board ruling mandating that physically handicapped students

Question

The school board ruling mandating that physically handicapped students  be placed in regular classroom settings whenever possible also assured all children who have a reading problem  of special aid.

(A) be placed in regular classroom settings whenever possible also assured all children who have a reading problem

(B) should be placed in regular classroom settings whenever possible also assures all children that have a reading problem

(C) are placed in regular classroom settings whenever possible also assures those children who are having reading problems

(D) be placed in regular classroom settings whenever possible also assured children with reading problems

(E) should be placed in regular classroom settings whenever possible also has assured all those children with a reading problem

daagh · Accepted Answer

If you say,  mandating , then - also assured - is no problem. That becomes a simple sentence with one subject and one verb

If you say  mandated , then there is a problem. A simple sentence can have only one verb; the second verb  assured  (in all the choices) becomes additional and the sentences are run-ons.

This is a fit case for the use of command subjunctive and the base form verb  be ; Among 1, 2 and 4, 2 is wordier, when it uses  children who/that/ have a reading problem, in comparison to 4’s , also assured children with reading problems;   1 and 2 also call their reading problems as a single problem, which does not go well with the plural structure of children

evensflow · Answer

Okies Mr. Curly,

Here's your answer.

The choices we are dealing herewith are all horrible.

However having said that this question has still to be answered.

My vote is for D.

Reasons:

1. The sentence is of type Subjunctive.

Whenver you see words like mandate, demand, insist, recommend, request, require, etc. the sentence is of type subjunctive.

In a subjunctive sentence the verb is always of a form "be". For example, verbs like "is", "are", etc will appear as "be" or in short you shall have verbs in thier base form.

eg:- His requirement is that everyone is computer literate. - Wrong.
His requirment is that everyone be computer literate. - Correct.

So having said that, only choices A and D remain.

D is my opinion is not a run-on as you think.

The reason being, Choice A simply suggests that School board ruling ............... assures Children have a reading problem of special aid.

Remember??? Know your relative pronouns :!:

While Choice D clearly conveys that....

School board ruling ................. assures children with reading problems of a special aid.

HTH

While Choice D clearly conveys that.... School board ruling ................. assures children with reading problems of a special aid. HTH

AkamaiBrah · Answer

Are you SURE you got copied this sentence correctly. None of the choices make sense unless the beginning of the sentence reads: 

The school board ruling  mandating  that physically handicapped students . . . .

kk_tiger · Answer

AkamaiBrah,
 why is "Mandated" wrong? 

Can someone explain why option 4 is correct. should not there be 'and' between "whenever possible" and "also".

Thanks,
K

AkamaiBrah · Answer

I thought "mandated" was a typo because, as you pointed out, the school board would have done two things: "mandated" AND "also assured". Since none of the sentence had a connnecting word between the two, the sentence was awkward. The sentence now as written reads "The school board (mandating some stuff) also assured...." Where everything after "mandating" is now a modifier of "school board". (You could also use "mandated" if the word "which" preceeded it: "The school board which mandated (stuff) also assured...")

Curly changed the sentence to its proper wording.

Curly05 · Answer

Captain Akami,

 Please listen to the discussion. Is "also assured" right,
 thanks buddy.

 VT

AkamaiBrah · Answer

You, having the good fortune to be enlightened by Evensflow's explanation of the subjuctive, can be also assured that "also assured" is just fine in all of the choices.

yogi_d22 · Answer

"reading problem"(Singular) should have been "reading problems"(Plural) in 'A'.

died4me · Answer

Is it same thing that HongHu mentioned?


"people shook their heads" instead of "head"?

Children cannot have a problem?

tennis1ball · Answer

D 2.

subjunctive mode and the correct plural use.

vanam52923 · Answer

daagh  
can u explain the last line
why we need problems here ?
the children with heart problem are fine now.
is this wrong?
will we say :
the children with heart problems are fine now.
can u plz elabroate

daagh · Answer

vanam
You mean all children jiontly have one problem? Again there are so many kinds of heart problems such as a hole in any of the chambers, or a non-working valve, or a blocked artery etc etc. 
However, what is the point in calling all these problems as just a problem? 
WE don't say people have a problem in their life. We say people have problems in their leives, becuase all have theor own lives and their own problem. Don't they?

sampriya · Answer

please explain the difference between options A and D

EducationAisle · Answer

Hi Priya, for A to be correct, following version would be more  parallel :

The school board ruling mandating that students who are physically handicapped  be placed in regular classroom settings whenever possible also assured all children who have a reading problem  of special aid.

So, this would have ensured a more  parallel  structure, by using  relative  clauses consistently:
i) students  who  are physically handicapped
ii) children  who  have a reading problem

anand0310 · Answer

what are the splits that we notice here.
In first words in all the five sentences : "be placed" or "should be" or "are placed", which one is correct usage and why?

Debayandc · Answer

POE : 
1. Eliminate A, B, E on basis of SVA 
2. Eliminate C on basis of subjunctive rule : All request/ order words should have "be" succeeding them . 
3, Correct answer is D

Snehaaaaa · Answer

As per my understanding, the sentence structure of A is-
The school board ruling 
 mandating that physically handicapped students be placed in regular classroom settings whenever possible also 
assured all children 
 who have a reading problem of special aid.

Here, school board ruling is the subject and assured is its verb; mandating that physically handicapped........possible also is the modifier
But the subjunctive form is applied to the ing- modifier, is that acceptable?

The subjunctive form used here is
Subject + bossy verb + that + something be done

I assume that subjunctive should be applied to SV + that.....is my understanding wrong?? If not, then how does the construction of the above sentence makes sense?

Experts!
It would be of great help if any Verbal expert can reply
 mikemcgarry ,  GMATNinja ,  chetan2u ,  KarishmaB ,  souvik101990

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

Snehaaaaa

That's right, we're forming a subjunctive in the modifier starting with "mandating." This is actually correct!

However, the question as a whole needs to be thrown out. You can't "assure children of aid." You can assure them of the existence of Santa Claus, but not of a service that they need to have. This usage is completely unidiomatic. Also, one might think that "children [plural] who have a reading problem [singular]" is unambiguously wrong, but not so. Check out the plural-singular noun-modifier matchup in the correct answer to this official question: https://gmatclub.com/forum/neanderthals ... l#p2710951

Namangupta1997 · Answer

EducationAisle  
So the main reason to chose D over A was this subtle parallelism error? I couldn't find anything glaringly wrong with option A. Maybe I am missing something ?

The school board ruling mandating that physically handicapped students

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The school board ruling mandating that physically handicapped students

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