Several educational research groups are denouncing the mayor's proposal of a system by which individual teachers would be given raises or bonuses should it be that test scores show their students' mastery of reading skills having improved over a nine-month period.


(A) should it be that test scores show their students' mastery of reading skills having

(B) should it be that test scores show their students' mastery of reading skills have

(C) should test scores showing their students' mastery of reading skills has

(D) if test scores showing their students' mastery of reading skills having

(E) if test scores show that their students' mastery of reading skills has
_________________

E with same reasoning as that of raconteur


[quote="raconteur"]E for me.

A. "should it be that" is wordy/awkward. Also, "students' mastery" and "having" is not //
B. Again, "should it be that" is odd. "students' mastery (singular)" and "have (plural)" is not //
C. Close but "test scores" is not // with "has"
D. "test scores" and "having" is not //
E. "mastery of reading skills" is // with "has". Correct.

Sorry sondendo but I didn't understand ur question.
The verbal tense here in E seems pretty correct.

should.....if test scores show that their students' mastery of reading skills has

72. Several educational research groups are denouncing the mayor's proposal of a system by which individual teachers would be given raises or bonuses should it be that test scores show their students' mastery of reading skills having improved over a nine-month period.

(A) should it be that test scores show their students' mastery of reading skills having
(B) should it be that test scores show their students' mastery of reading skills have
(C) should test scores showing their students' mastery of reading skills has
(D) if test scores showing their students' mastery of reading skills having
(E) if test scores show that their students' mastery of reading skills has

ron:
actually, whenever a situation is purely HYPOTHETICAL, "would" is better than "will", even if the if-clause is rendered in the present tense.

the original poster has (correctly) asserted that "would" is used if the referenced situation is impossible or contradictory to fact, but it's more general than that: if we're dealing with a situation that is purely hypothetical, or when there is doubt as to whether the situation will come to pass, we use "would", "not "will".

example:
a bill that would mandate paternity testing for all live births is up for voting in the Tennessee state senate.
even though this event is happening in the present, the bill's consequences are still hypothetical; there is doubt as to whether the bill will pass. therefore, the conditional is appropriate. (if the sentence were worded as "will mandate", that would seem to imply that the bill will pass for sure.)

my doubt:
how come the subject of the action "improved over a nine-month period." is mastery. Mastery can't improve. It is reading skills that can be improved?

The use of ‘should’ (in the conditional sense) is considered wrong on the GMAT. This is typically old-style British usage. This eliminates A, B, and C.

The ‘if’ part of a conditional sentence definitely needs a verb (as it is a dependent clause). Choice D doesn’t contain a verb (the word ‘having’ is not a verb … in fact, -ING form alone (without a preceding helping verb) are not verbs at all. D is wrong for this reason.

E is correct. It also uses the correct subject verb agreement (mastery … has).
_________________