#14 - Superintendent: Within the school district overall, 11

[Dana D]

Complete Question Explanation

Flaw in the Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (D).

The flaw in this argument is the conflation of a causational relationship out of what might just be a correlation.

Answer choice (A): Evidence to support the conclusion would simply be verifying the percentages of students who drop out generally versus those in work internships who drop out. This information could easily be disproven, so this answer choice is false and it also fails to describe the flaw.

Answer choice (B): Use of the term is consistent, and this fails to address the flaw.

Answer choice (C): This does not occur in the stimulus; the superintendent speaks about two general populations and draws a conclusion from that. Also fails to address the flaw.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice. This answer choice states the flaw - the superintendent assumes that the correlation between students participating in work internships and the lower dropout rate means the work internships are actually causing the decrease in dropout rates, but that may not be the case.

Answer choice (E): This describes circular logic, which is not being used in this stimulus.

[theamazingrace]

This stimulus is saying that participation in internships decreases the chance that a student will drop out. I don't really see a flaw with this except maybe that it generalizes somehow and that is why I chose C. Why is D correct?

Thanks

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Grace,

The author here suggests a causal relationship. The stimulus suggests that the work participation causes the better graduation rate. But how does the author support that causal conjecture? Are there other causes that could be possible? Causal relationships are inherently suspect, and easily weakened by suggesting an alternate causes among other things. In this case, we have no reason to think that the work program is causing the better graduation rate. Both things may be caused by a third cause, for example, a hard working disposition. Or perhaps only students who have good grades are allowed to participate in the work program. That would also weaken the causal relationship.

The key point here is that the author of the stimulus does not adequately rule out any of the discussion above, nor do they provide any support for why they think they have identified the correct cause. Answer choice (C) here says that the author is drawing from a single instance. We don't have that here. The author cites the results of many students, district-wide numbers. However, answer choice (D) here is correct. The author mistakenly determines that there is one causal explanation for the data, where other explanations are not ruled out.

Hope that helps!

[gwlsathelp]

I saw this as both an issue of mistaken cause and effect and an issue of over-generalization. Why is this a case of D over C?

C states that the stimulus "generalizes from a single instance of a certain kind (drop-out rates of kids in a work internship) to all instances of that kind (the drop-out rate of the whole of the school student population)", while D states that the stimulus "infers a specific causal relationship from a correlation that might well have arisen from another cause."

[KelseyWoods]

Hi gwlsathelp!

Answer choice (C) states: "generalizes from a single instance of a certain kind to all instances of that kind." That would mean that the premise would have to provide a single instance and the conclusion would have to be applying whatever happened in that single instance to all instances of that kind. This would be a good description if the argument said something like "George participated in a work internship and did not drop out, therefore all students who participate in a work internship will not drop out." But that's not the argument we have. Instead, the author is taking percentage data (which by definition is not a "single instance"--a percentage is always out of the total) and using it to make a causal conclusion. The author is not taking the data about the work internship students and applying it to all students. The author is comparing the drop out rate of work internship students to the drop out rate of all students and then inferring a causal relationship.

For Flaw questions, always first specifically identify the conclusion and the premises and then ask yourself why don't those premises prove that conclusion. For this argument we have:

Premise: A smaller percentage of work internship students drop out of high school as compared to all students (1% vs. 11%)
Conclusion: Having a work internship causes students to not drop out

Why doesn't that premise prove that conclusion? Just because a smaller percentage of work internship students drop out as compared to students as a whole doesn't mean that the work internship is what is causing them to not drop out. There could be several other explanations for this relationship. Maybe being hard working causes students to both not drop out and to participate in work internships. Maybe the students who have work internships are also students that have attentive parents who push them to excel and not drop out. Etc.

The point is that in a Flaw question you have to pay close attention to what specifically the conclusions and premises are saying. When you have a causal conclusion like this, you have a causal flaw. This conclusion is not trying to apply a single instance to a much larger group. It is trying to explain the difference in the drop out rate of work internship students as compared to all students with a specific causal relationship.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[gwlsathelp]

Thank you, Kelsey! That was a great and thorough explanation! That definitely clears up any confusion about the problem.