Both Texts, Not the Best Text
Your class is comparing two short texts about a school phone ban. Text 1, a principal's newsletter: "Since the ban began in September, office referrals have dropped 12 percent. Students are calmer, and teachers report reclaimed instructional time." Text 2, from a teacher's blog: "Referrals were already falling in the two years before the ban, during our hallway-pass pilot. And the 12 percent counts office referrals only - not the classroom conflicts teachers now handle alone. I'm not against the ban; I'm against calling it proven." Item 22 asks: "Which statement is best supported by both texts?" Options: (A) the ban reduced misbehaviour; (B) the ban's effects cannot be separated from other changes; (C) referrals are a poor measure of behaviour; (D) teachers support the ban.
1. Choose the answer and explain why C, though tempting, fails the item's actual constraint.
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B. Text 1 offers an effect; Text 2 supplies a competing cause (the earlier pilot, the falling trend) and notes what the measure leaves out. A reader holding both cannot attribute the drop to the ban alone. B is the only option that both texts can sit inside.
C fails on scope, which is where most students lose the mark. Text 2 says referrals count office referrals only - a claim about coverage. "Referrals are a poor measure of behaviour" is a general verdict about validity, and Text 2 explicitly declines that stance ("I'm not against the ban"). Text 1, meanwhile, relies on referrals and reports teacher perception, so C would require you to rule Text 1 out.
The constraint to underline in the stem is "both texts." An answer that is well supported by one text and contradicted or unaddressed by the other is a distractor by construction, no matter how sensible it sounds.
2. What would you need to see before A became the best answer?
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A requires a causal claim, so you would need the shape of a comparison that the two texts do not provide:
- A pre-ban baseline that is stable or rising, so the September drop is a departure rather than a continuation of the trend Text 2 describes.
- A comparison group - a similar school without a ban whose referrals held steady over the same months - which controls for seasonality, staffing changes, and reporting habits.
- A consistent measure, or at least a note on whether classroom-managed incidents were counted before and after.
Notice that none of this is exotic; it is what any reader would demand of a before-and-after claim. The judgment being tested is that plausible-sounding evidence can be insufficient without being false. Text 1's 12 percent is real, accurately reported, and still unable to carry option A on its own.
3. A classmate writes: "Text 2 is biased because the writer is a teacher." Evaluate this reasoning.
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It confuses interest with bias. A teacher has a stake in the question, but stake is not distortion, and Text 2 shows several markers of a careful argument: it concedes the ban may be fine, it names a specific alternative cause, and it identifies a limitation in the data rather than dismissing the data.
A stronger bias claim would point at language or omission. "I'm not against the ban; I'm against calling it proven" is a hedge that narrows the writer's claim - the opposite of the overreach you would expect from a partisan. By contrast, Text 1 does contain an unearned inference: "Students are calmer" and "reclaimed instructional time" are impressions offered as findings alongside the 12 percent.
The transferable rule for Part B: bias is argued from textual evidence - loaded diction, missing voices, unsupported leaps - never from the identity of the speaker. Reaching for the speaker's job is the fastest way to pick a distractor dressed as critical thinking.