The controversial restructuring plan for the county school district

Should be D. E seems wrong because the phrase 'decrease teachers in school' makes it seem that the teachers themselves are going to be decreased rather than their numbers in school. D corrects that mistake.

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+1 for D.

Would is aptly used to show an estimation/possibility if the proposed plan comes into action. So, the split is mainly between the D and E here. D , though a bit wordy compared to E , conveys the intended meaning more clearly. The proposed plan would lead to a decrease in the "number of" teachers. To say it would decrease the teachers is not apt.

I am not sure about this question, To be honest A and D are kinda on par... I mean we are not talking about a totally hypothetical situation with slim chances to happen;

if it is approved by the governor, will make there be fewer teachers
-yes ı know it sounds extremely weird but so does D.
Also this is Type 1 If Clause;
If + Present Simple/ Present Continuous/ Present Perfect/ Present Perfect Continuous + Future Simple/
Can/ May/ Might/ Could/ Must/ Should + Present Bare Infinitive

if approved by the governor, would result in a reduction of the number of teachers
This one is Type 2 If Clause;
If + Past Simple/ Past Continuous + Would/ Could/ Might + Present Bare Infinitive

Since we are talking about something with somewhat decent chances to happen, using Type 1 is OK IMO.

IF CLAUSES TYPE 1 vs TYPE 2

The choice between first or second conditional is often not so clear. Sometimes, we choose the first or second conditional based on our opinion of a situation. In other words, if we feel something or someone can do something, then we'll choose the first conditional because believe it is a real possibility.

Examples:

If she studies a lot, she will pass the exam.
They will go on holiday if they have the time.

On the other hand, if we feel that a situation is not very possible or that a situation is improbable we choose the second conditional.

Examples:

If she studied harder, she would pass the test.
They would go away for a week if they had the time.

Agree with your assessment but when we are confonted with two or more sentences with acceptable meaning, our safest bet is to go for a sentence that has the cleanest construction. Purely on the basis of sentence construction, D does beat A imo.

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Shikhar22
I see what you are saying, also as an another note for D, ı should say that, as far as ı know, "reduction in the number" is more widely used, though it doesn't necessarily mean that "reduction of the number" unidiomatic, it just sounded to me a little bit strange...
I am not an expert so ı can't comment further, but on brevity you are right A sounds funky as hell
I think these non-official questions are far too open for debate...

Here the stats for reduction in the number vs reduction of the number
https://textranch.com/70393/the-reducti ... number-of/

That's an interesting link. Thanks for sharing. On a sidenote, what i have learned working my way through Gmat SC is that as the level of the question increases, the trick then that really works is that not to get too lost in meticulous details and rules of english grammar. The correct answer is often a free flowing sentence that obeys the most basic grammar rules such as parallelism, modifiers etc. Harder the question the more it decieves us into being pedantic. This is something that i have learned and it works for me. So i only obsess about the basic rules and the rest is all about clean, meaningful sentence construction. I could be wrong here and answer may well not be D, but this is my reasoning behind choosing D as the answer

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The official explanation is here.