| Critical Reasoning Butler: February 2025 |
| February 3 | CR 1 | CR 2 |
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CR 1 Fact 1: Elementary school teachers are struggling to provide individualized attention to their students: the proportion of students in a class that the teachers can recall the grades of is decreasing.
Fact 2. Elementary school teachers recall the grades of the lowest ranked and highest ranked students in their classes far better than they recall the grades of the students who fall in the middle ranks.
Fact 2 would be most likely to contribute to an explanation of fact 1 if which of the following were also true?
A. The average elementary school teacher currently recalls fewer than half the grades of middle ranked students.
B. The average duration of elementary school classes is decreasing.
C. The average number of students in a class is increasing.
D. The average number of classes taken by an elementary school teacher is increasing.
E. The average number of hours that elementary school teachers spend in grading is decreasing.
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CR 2 A political party hopes to expand its voter base by temporarily freezing repayments on government loans taken by residents of small towns and villages. Doing so will reduce the party’s support among urbanites, as they will interpret the freeze as unfair regional favoritism, but because the freeze will be heavily publicized, the party hopes that it will attract voters away from rival parties. The party’s long-term hopes are that voters initially won over by the temporary freeze will become party loyalists.
Which of the following would be most useful in evaluating the likelihood that the party’s plan will succeed?
A. Whether the party considered the possibility that the freeze may be deemed unfair among urban residents
B. Whether the repayment freeze will be publicized by the public relations team that the party presently employs
C. Whether repayments on some types of loans will be frozen for longer than repayments on others will
D. Whether it is probable that the party’s rivals will respond by promising a loan repayment freeze as well
E. Whether using a different approach might allow the party to increase its support among residents of small towns and villages and, simultaneously, maintain a stable or decaying support level among all voters