Parents often criticize schools for not doing their job. Many blame sc

Responding to a pm:

It is actually not very tricky. I am surprised that many people were taken aback. The only reason I can think of is that they did not understand the argument properly.

The argument says that parents blame the schools for low scores. The question is - whose low scores? their wards' low scores. The parents blame the school for not-so-good performance of their own children. The surprising thing is that most of these parents come from high achieving districts i.e. their wards go to schools which produce better than average results. You would expect that parents of students studying in schools producing better results would be happier.
Hence, here is the paradox.

What can you say to explain this paradox?

Say, most of the toppers come from school A (a fancy private school). The local govt got 50 school complaints this year. Say, 40 of them were from from parents of students studying in school A. How can you explain this?
I can think of various things - Parents who send their kids to school A expect very high scores from their children. Parents see that their kids' classmates are getting very high scores so they are unhappy about avg scores of their own kids. When children get 80%, parents get greedy and want 90% so they complain. etc

We will look at options B and E:

B. Parents have no knowledge of their district's own scores.

It doesn't explain why parents of students studying in school A (just as an example) complain the most. They don't know the school's avg score. So what? Even if they do know that the school's avg is high, it doesn't matter. They will still complain about their children's scores. It doesn't explain why parents of this school are most unhappy about their children's score. Even if they know that the school avg is high, it will not make them happy about their kids' performance. Does not explain the paradox. Is the answer.

E. Most complaints about schools come from political activists, most of whom live in high-achieving districts.
This explains the paradox. Who are the most critical parents? Political activists. They live in high achieving districts (e.g. their children go to school A). The political activists are the most vocal. Wherever they go, they will complain. Since their kids go to school A, they complain about school A. This explains the paradox that most complaints come from school A even though the results there are good.

Answer B
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The paradox is "The Parents from most achieving district complain most frequently."
We have to find an answer that explains the paradox.
I feel that E does not explain the paradox in anyway it just mentions that most complaints come from the political activists, most of whom live in high achieving districts. I agree that political activist may be parents of students but we need an answer why these activist are doing.if we assume that these activists are the parents we are just presenting an example of the paradox presented in the question.

Whereas B to some extends solves the paradox. It states that parents have no knowledge of the own districts's score. Consider if a parent does not know about the marks scored by other students in class than he can either complain about the score or he cannot. If he does than it solves our paradox. In case of E it just says political activists (may or may not be parents) complains about the low score..........................

Parents often criticize schools for not doing their job. Many blame schools for low student achievement scores. Surprisingly, the most frequent and vociferous complaints come from those who live in districts where the achievement scores are high.

All of the following, considered individually, help to explain the apparent paradox EXCEPT:
A. Parents from districts of high achievers are very involved with the schools and are, therefore, more likely to make critical comments.
this explains the paradox because if parents are more involved with the school and the parents who have children with low grades will complain
B. Parents have no knowledge of their district's own scores.
this does not explain the paradox .If the parents do know the scores of their own district how can the parents complain about the school.So the parents with no knowledge will not complain
C. High scores cause parents' expectations to rise leading parents to demand that students achieve even more.
tis explains the paradox .Though their child getting good grades there are parents who think that grade is low,so they complain about the grade to the school
D. High-scoring districts contain low-achieving students whose parents are likely to complain when their children score below the local average.
this clearly explains the paradox
E. Most complaints about schools come from political activists, most of whom live in high-achieving districts.
this expalins the paradox because the districts may have politicians who are eager to appear in media

None of the above explanation gives why D is the answer. Everybody says either B or E. can someone say which is correct and why .. Thanks for the same ..

Posted from GMAT ToolKit

The answer is B. Note that it is an 'EXCEPT' question. All other options explain the paradox. B does not.

(D) explains the paradox too. Parents living in high score districts find that their child gets less than average scores in their district and that could be the reason of complaints. It explains why people living in high score districts would complain the most.
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Can you please provide the OA for this? Both C and E seem to explain the paradox here....B, I think is the correct answer..

Again, note that it is an "EXCEPT" question. ALL options must explain the paradox except the answer. Hence both C and E WILL EXPLAIN the paradox. B DOES NOT EXPLAIN the paradox and that is why it is the answer.
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I picked E.

In E, the word that makes the answer the good one is "most".

If the number of complaints is 100, you need to have according to E, 51 coming from political activists: Most of whom are living in high achivement scores districts. Therefore out of those 51, at least 26 are living in those areas.

We have therefore, 100 complains, but only 26 coming from the high achieving districts... which will not help to explain the apparent paradox...

What do you think?
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Most could be 51 and most could also be 90. In common parlance in fact, most is usually used for 90. Political activists are the most vocal and most of them live in high achieving districts. So it is certainly possible that most complaints come from high achieving districts. So (E) does help to explain the paradox.
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