While the total enrollment of public elementary and secondary schools

Question

While the total enrollment of public elementary and secondary schools in Sondland is one percent higher this academic year than last academic year, the number of teachers there increased by three percent. Thus, the Sondland Education Commission's prediction of a teacher shortage as early as next academic year is unfounded.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the claim that the prediction of a teacher shortage as early as next academic year is unfounded?

A. Funding for public elementary schools in Sondland is expected to increase over the next ten years.

B. Average salaries for Sondland’s teachers increased at the rate of inflation from last academic year to this academic year.

C. A new law has mandated that there be ten percent more teachers per pupil in Sondland’s public schools next academic year than there were this academic year.

D. In the past, increases in enrollments in public elementary and secondary schools in Sondland have generally been smaller than increases in the number of teachers.

E. Because of reductions in funding, the number of students enrolling in teacher-training programs in Sondland is expected to decline beginning in the next academic year.

ID: 500234

gmatexam439 · Answer

While the total enrollment of public elementary and secondary schools in Sondland is one percent higher this academic year than last academic year, the number of teachers there increased by three percent. Thus, the Sondland Education Commission's prediction of a teacher shortage as early as next academic year is unfounded.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the claim that the prediction of a teacher shortage as early as next academic year is unfounded?

A. Funding for public elementary schools in Sondland is expected to increase over the next ten years.
 We are not worried about the funding.

B. Average salaries for Sondland’s teachers increased at the rate of inflation from last academic year to this academic year.
 We are not worried about the salaries

C. A new law has mandated that there be ten percent more teachers per pupil in Sondland’s public schools next academic year than there were this academic year.
 Correct. If per student 10% more teachers will be required, then there will be shortage.

D. In the past, increases in enrollments in public elementary and secondary schools in Sondland have generally been smaller than increases in the number of teachers.
 Not worried about the proportion of students w.r.t. teachers

E. Because of reductions in funding, the number of students enrolling in teacher-training programs in Sondland is expected to decline beginning in the next academic year.
 We are worried about the teachers and not about the teachers to be.

LakerFan24 · Answer

While the total enrollment of public elementary and secondary schools in Sondland is one percent higher this academic year than last academic year, the number of teachers there increased by three percent.  Thus, the Sondland Education Commission's prediction of a teacher shortage as early as next academic year is unfounded.
 
Which of the following, if true, most seriously  weakens the claim that the prediction of a teacher shortage as early as next academic year is unfounded ?

A. Funding for public elementary schools in Sondland is expected to increase over the next ten years.
- Even if this were the case, who says funding is directly related to the number of teachers? could go to new technology for the school system, book materials, etc.

B. Average salaries for Sondland’s teachers increased at the rate of inflation from last academic year to this academic year.
- Does not give us any future prediction/evidence. What happened last year and this year are irrelevant, we care more about predicting the future

C. A new law has mandated that there be ten percent more teachers per pupil in Sondland’s public schools next academic year than there were this academic year.
- Why would SEC predict a shortage when a law requires more teachers/pupil be substantially higher than this year?

D. In the past, increases in enrollments in public elementary and secondary schools in Sondland have generally been smaller than increases in the number of teachers.
- Same issue as B. Does not give us any prediction about what is coming in the future

E. Because of reductions in funding, the number of students enrolling in teacher-training programs in Sondland is expected to decline beginning in the next academic year.
- out of scope. what are teacher-training programs? we don't care about whatever that is, we only care about total enrollment of public elementary and secondary schools.

adkikani · Answer

@Gmatninja, @GmatninjaTwo,

I think GMAC keeps its head always high by making things SOUND complicated than they really ARE. Is not Q stem simply- Which of the following, if true, would undermine author's claim? I approached this as a simple WEAKEN Q than questioning about implementing a program or questioning a prediction. Is this approach correct too?

GMATNinjaTwo · Answer

adkikani , yes, this is basically a simple weaken question! The author claims that the prediction is unfounded, and we need an answer choice that weakens that claim.

Regardless of how you label the question type, what's important is that you understand the structure of the author's argument, as described in the  post below . If you find an answer choice that weakens that argument, then you've found your answer!

DaniyalAlwani · Answer

Hello folks,

I went through all explanations listed above but still cannot understand why answer choice C is correct and not E?

No where in the passage it states "percent per pupil". In question it says just the percentage of teachers. No where in the question it states % of teachers per pupil. How can we assume that mandate in C will lead to shortage?

ashmit99 · Answer

Hello experts,

I got this question wrong somehow. Can you please help me with this one?

In my opinion the passage says that:

1. 3% increase in number of teachers
2. 1% increase in number of students.
3. So, no shortage of teachers.

Now we need to weaken point 3. So we need to find an option which says something like there'll be shortage of teachers.

So how does C weaken?

C says that suppose there 50 teachers per pupil this year, so from next year we'll have 55 teachers per pupil. So how does it weaken?

Earlier I thought C would strengthen because there would be more teachers, and more teachers wouldn't mean shortage. But now I think C has no impact.

I am a bit confused with this one.

Thank you in advance!

VeritasKarishma   GMATNinja   AndrewN   AjiteshArun 
 EducationAisle

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

To correctly answer the question, we need a choice that answers the following:

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the claim that the prediction of a teacher shortage as early as next academic year is unfounded?

In other words, the choice will provide a reason to believe that there WILL be a teacher shortage.

(C) says the following:

C. A new law has mandated that there be ten percent more teachers per pupil in Sondland’s public schools next academic year than there were this academic year.

So, basically, what (C) says is that,  regardless of how many teachers per pupil there are now , the schools will need 10 percent more teachers per pupil.

While we don't know for sure that that information means there will be a shortage, it does provides some reason to believe that there will be shortage, given that the passage says that the number of teachers at the schools has increased by only 3 percent.

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi  ashmit99 ,

Option C doesn't say that the schools will  have  10% more teachers per pupil next year. Instead, it says that they'll  need  10% more teachers per pupil next year. Let's take a look at C again:

Now, a law can  mandate  anything. Actually following through on that, however, is a different matter. Option C tells us that Sondland's public schools will need 10% more teachers next year if the number of students remains the same (they'll need even more teachers next year if the number of pupils goes up). The problem, of course, is that, given the 3% increase mentioned in the question, 10% (which is significantly more than 3%) looks like it could create some problems for Sondland's public schools.

achloes · Answer

GMATNinja   MartyTargetTestPrep   DmitryFarber

The passage tells us that students have increased by 1% and teachers by 3%, this year. How can we assume that the current ratio doesn't already constitute 10% more teachers per pupil? In other words, why do we need to assume that there are more students than teachers this academic year?

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

achloes

Answer choice C tells us that the teacher/student ratio needs to be 10% more than last year, not that we need 10% more teachers than students. From the information given, we can calculate the change from last year, even though we don't know anything about the actual numbers. If last year, the teacher/student ratio was t/s, this year it is 1.03t/1.01s. That's only about a 2% increase, so no matter what the numbers are, they haven't hit a 10% increase in the ratio, so they will need more teachers.

VerbalBot · Answer

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While the total enrollment of public elementary and secondary schools

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