Integrate Evidence With Commentary Practice Test

Read the paragraph below from an argumentative essay about school policy.

Claim: Schools should adopt later start times because doing so measurably improves student learning.

Paragraph: A district in Minnesota shifted its high school start time from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. After the change, the district reported that first-period failure rates dropped from 14% to 8% and average attendance rose by 1.7 percentage points. This shows that when school starts later, students do better in first period and come to school more often.

Which revision of the bolded commentary would best explain the significance of the evidence in relation to the paragraph’s claim?

A student is revising a paragraph arguing that cities should invest in urban tree planting. The paragraph’s claim is: Increasing tree canopy reduces heat-related health risks in low-income neighborhoods.

Evidence included: A city health department map analysis found that neighborhoods with less than 10% canopy averaged summer surface temperatures 7°F higher than neighborhoods with more than 30% canopy; the same low-canopy areas also had the highest rates of heat-related emergency calls.

The commentary after the evidence is “Places with fewer trees are hotter and have more emergency calls.”

Which revision of the bolded commentary would best explain the significance of the evidence for the paragraph’s claim?