LSAT Reading Practice Test: Practice Test 7

Coastal governments eager to conserve fish stocks often announce new marine reserves with fanfare, only to discover that compliance falters once the cameras leave. Fishers who suspect that closures will be enforced unevenly—or that promised benefits will accrue elsewhere—have little incentive to bear short-term losses. In several archipelagos, however, policymakers have experimented with a sequence that foregrounds legitimacy before restriction. First, they convene harbor-by-harbor councils that map customary fishing grounds and identify spawning aggregations; those councils then nominate temporary closures that rotate with the seasons. Second, the councils help draft the enforcement rules, including warning protocols and graduated penalties, and appoint liaisons to report violations. Only after two to three seasons of rotating closures, when catch-per-unit-effort data begin to tick up and trust has been built, do authorities designate a smaller set of permanent no-take zones. This approach, characterized by co-management, rotating trial closures, and delayed permanent designations, has produced measurable gains in both biomass near reserve boundaries and voluntary compliance away from them. It also reduces political backlash because the sequence allows would-be opponents to test whether the promised spillover materializes in their own nets. Critics worry that the staged rollouts risk locking in weaker protections if interim compromises harden into norms, but case studies suggest the opposite: communities that see early wins are more willing to accept stricter later limits. The approach is not costless; staffing local councils and maintaining patrols require steady funding, and the patience needed for multi-season experiments can be hard to sustain under budget cycles. Nor is it universally applicable: migratory species that do not aggregate predictably may not respond to rotating closures, and in ports dominated by distant-water fleets, elected councils may not be representative. Still, where nearshore fisheries are central to food security and livelihoods, legitimacy is not a luxury but a prerequisite. Announcing permanent closures without community input risks symbolic reserves on paper and poaching on the water. By contrast, a sequence that invites local knowledge to shape rules and that subjects promises to provisional testing can transform skeptical fishers into stewards who monitor their own peers. As one liaison put it, people comply not because a line was drawn on a map, but because they have seen what lies on either side of it.

The phrase 'This approach' (line 10) refers to which of the following policy strategies?

The recent rush to reevaluate the painter's legacy has yielded two curiously symmetrical distortions. On one side are attempts to rescue reputation by elevating commercial success into proof of artistic profundity, as though auction prices could launder the sentimentalism critics have long decried. On the other are dismissals that treat the work as little more than kitsch, a moralizing shorthand for middlebrow taste, and on that basis consign the artist to the attic of cultural history. Both moves obscure what the paintings actually do on the wall: the careful staging of light, the disciplined orchestration of color, and a compositional intelligence that, however bound to familiar tropes, can be surprisingly exacting.

It is possible to recognize craft without pretending that technique closes the case. The narratives the painter preferred—scenes of rural harmony, domestic piety, and patriotic uplift—are not neutral. They invite viewers to inhabit a world where conflict is tidily resolved and social hierarchies appear as natural as the weather, and they do so with a persuasiveness born of skill. To note this is not to indict the audience; it is to ask for a criticism capacious enough to parse how aesthetic pleasure and ideological comfort coexist. That some admirers bristle at the suggestion is understandable, but anger is a poor argument.

What the new scholarship does best is to complicate rather than invert earlier judgments. It tracks influences that run deeper than previously credited, situates the painter in networks of collaboration rather than lone-genius myths, and shows how market demands shaped choices that were never purely personal. Those accounts neither redeem nor condemn. They clarify. The artist's legacy is not a morality tale about taste or a ledger sheet of sales. It is a record of ambitions and compromises, of technical achievements tethered to reassuring stories that carried more weight because they were so well told. Our task is not to cancel or canonize but to see more clearly what the work asks of us and what we are willing to let it mean.

The author's attitude toward recent reassessments of the painter's legacy is best described as:

Many language revitalization programs begin in schools, where classes are easy to count and tests are easy to administer. The visibility of enrollment numbers and proficiency assessments makes such programs attractive to funders who work with short grant cycles and require measurable outputs. Yet communities that have stabilized or increased the number of fluent speakers consistently report that classroom instruction, though important, is insufficient on its own. Studies comparing cohorts across regions show that gains in vocabulary acquired during after-school programs rarely persist unless students regularly use the language in contexts unrelated to instruction. In places where elders are paired with families in mentorship arrangements and childcare settings default to the heritage language, conversational fluency rises not only among children but also among the adults who interact with them. These initiatives expand the number of hours during which the language is the default medium for basic activities, from buying groceries to scheduling appointments, and thus begin to create domains in which the language is practical rather than merely symbolic. Policymakers, however, often prefer programs that can be launched quickly and reported on comprehensively, such as increasing the number of class sections or setting higher testing benchmarks. The tension is not between schools and communities but between interventions that are easily audited and those that require slower institution building, such as training front-desk staff at clinics or creating vendors who can transact in the language. While there are examples of family pledge programs that produce incremental gains without much institutional backing, even their architects acknowledge high attrition rates when participants cannot find opportunities to use the language beyond the home. The cumulative lesson is that intergenerational transmission stabilizes when children encounter the language in multiple spheres, not just in the classroom, and when adults see practical incentives to participate in those spheres. The author's point is not that schools are unhelpful but that, by themselves, they do not alter the social ecology in which languages either thrive or become vestigial.

Which one of the following can be properly inferred from the passage?

Passage A: Citywide evaluations of public bike-share systems suggest measurable reductions in car travel. In Riverport, automated counters at three downtown cordon points recorded a persistent 8% decline in inbound passenger vehicles during weekday commute windows in the twelve months after the system launched, relative to matched control approaches that saw no new cycling infrastructure. The city paired its rollout with station density near rail hubs; member surveys administered quarterly indicated that 38% of trips made on bike-share replaced commutes previously driven alone, and members reported a drop in car-commute frequency from 4.1 to 2.8 days per week. Truck volumes and bus frequencies were unchanged, suggesting the effect was not a general traffic downturn. Similar patterns appeared in Easton after the introduction of a single transit-integrated pass that made bike-share free for first-mile/last-mile connections; inbound car counts at the university cordon fell 10% during morning peaks, while ride-hail pickups at stations also declined. Weather-adjusted models and seasonal controls were applied in both cities to rule out confounding from a mild winter. Although not every neighborhood saw change, the clearest declines clustered near dense station networks and priced parking, a profile consistent with car-trip substitution rather than recreational cycling. Taken together, these direct measurements and user-reported substitutions support the conclusion that bike-share reduces aggregate car usage in cities.

Passage B: Claims that bike-share curbs driving often rest on inferences that are difficult to generalize. Where counts do fall near downtown stations, they may reflect shifts from walking or transit rather than from private cars; weekend usage spikes, for example, track with declines in subway entries far more closely than with any measured changes in car ownership. In Harbor City, a highly publicized bike-share pilot coincided with flat parking-meter revenues and stable gasoline sales, both coarse but citywide indicators of driving that showed no post-launch drop. Moreover, the most enthusiastic users tend to be residents who did not regularly drive before, so surveys that tally "replaced car trips" overstate systemwide effects by extrapolating from an unrepresentative pool. Redistribution vans and maintenance vehicles add nontrivial mileage back into the network, clouding any net reduction. Without comprehensive vehicle-miles-traveled data, it is premature to claim that bike-share reduces overall car use; at most, we can say that it competes with other non-driving modes in dense cores while leaving driving behavior in outlying neighborhoods largely untouched. Isolated cordon counts tell us little about broader modal patterns, and year-to-year fluctuations in employment or retail activity plausibly explain modest dips near job centers.

Which passage provides stronger support for the claim that public bike-share programs reduce overall car usage in cities?

Passage A

Some development economists argue that microfinance can expand opportunity by providing small loans to entrepreneurs who lack collateral. They cite cases in which borrowers used credit to smooth consumption, invest in inventory, or manage emergencies. Yet researchers also report mixed results on long-term income growth, and repayment pressure can be stressful. Accordingly, a careful defense holds that microfinance is most effective when paired with consumer protections, transparent interest rates, and products tailored to local needs, such as savings accounts or micro-insurance.

A qualified claim is that microfinance should not be evaluated solely by business creation. For many households, the primary benefit may be resilience—avoiding predatory lenders or coping with shocks. Thus, microfinance can be valuable even if it does not reliably generate large-scale entrepreneurship.

Passage B

Microfinance is often celebrated as a market-based solution to poverty, but critics argue that it shifts attention away from structural constraints. Small loans cannot substitute for public goods like infrastructure, education, and stable employment. Moreover, emphasizing individual entrepreneurship can imply that poverty persists because of personal deficits rather than because of political and economic conditions.

Critics also contend that microfinance institutions may prioritize repayment rates and expansion over borrower welfare, particularly when they attract commercial investment. They favor directing resources toward social safety nets and labor market policies rather than expanding credit. While they may concede that savings products can help households manage risk, they argue that portraying microfinance as a central development strategy is misguided.

The author of Passage A and the author of Passage B would most likely disagree about

Two influential schools of colonial legal history talk past one another. One, associated with formalist scholars, claims that imperial edicts and court structures dictated outcomes in the provinces: where the metropole extended courts and codes, local disputes were resolved in ways that mirrored the center. Another, favored by social historians, maintains that customary law and village councils continued to determine everyday governance, with imperial pronouncements serving as distant rhetoric ignored in practice. Both views capture something important and yet leave crucial dynamics unexplained. The formalist account struggles to explain why neighboring districts under the same statute implemented it so differently. The customary account cannot easily account for moments when litigants strategically invoked imperial rights language to challenge local elites. The author argues that the key lies in the interactional spaces where these orders met. Edicts arrived not as commands etched in stone but as scripts to be interpreted by colonial judges, translators, and clerks who depended on local notables for information and compliance. In turn, villagers learned to modulate their claims, reframing land and kinship disputes in terms cognizable by imperial forums when doing so offered leverage. The result was not a simple triumph of one system over another but a negotiated hybridity that varied by region and over time. In coastal trading posts, for example, imperial commercial courts introduced new evidentiary standards that merchants used to formalize credit, while in upland districts, magistrates often relied on customary oath-taking to settle boundary conflicts. The author does not deny the influence of statutes or custom; rather, the thrust of the argument is that outcomes depended on who could convene which forum and convert which norms into enforceable decisions at a given moment. That contingency, the author suggests, explains both the patchwork implementation patterns and the documented episodes of juridical innovation from below.

According to the passage, which statement best distinguishes the author's account from both the formalist and the customary schools described?

Passage:

Public agencies increasingly use algorithmic tools to assist decisions about resource allocation, such as where to inspect restaurants or how to prioritize housing assistance. Proponents emphasize that algorithms can improve consistency and can process more information than individual officials can reasonably consider. Critics counter that such systems can perpetuate inequities if they are trained on historical data reflecting discriminatory practices.

A key difficulty is that “bias” can refer to several distinct problems. An algorithm may predict accurately but still be objectionable if the outcome it optimizes—such as minimizing cost—conflicts with statutory or ethical priorities. Alternatively, an algorithm may embed measurement bias: if certain violations are more likely to be detected in heavily policed neighborhoods, then the data may overstate the true prevalence of violations there. In that case, even a technically well-calibrated model can reinforce uneven surveillance.

Some reformers therefore advocate transparency requirements, including disclosure of model features and performance metrics. But transparency alone may not resolve the normative question of what the system should optimize, and full disclosure may be impractical when models are complex or proprietary. Others propose procedural safeguards, such as allowing affected individuals to contest decisions or requiring periodic audits that test for disparate impacts. These measures can reduce harm, though they may also slow deployment and require agencies to build expertise they currently lack.

The most plausible conclusion is not that algorithmic tools should be categorically embraced or banned, but that their use should be conditional on institutional capacity to monitor, contest, and revise them. Where agencies cannot meaningfully audit models or correct biased data collection, algorithmic assistance may offer only the appearance of objectivity. Where robust oversight exists, such tools may improve allocation decisions, provided that agencies articulate the values the tools are meant to serve.

Which one of the following best describes the scope of the author's claims?

In environmental law, some commentators advocate expanding the use of market-based mechanisms such as cap-and-trade. They argue that setting an overall emissions cap and allowing firms to trade permits can achieve reductions at lower cost than uniform regulation. Critics worry that trading can concentrate pollution in particular communities and that complex markets invite manipulation or lax enforcement.

Supporters often point to the flexibility of trading systems. Firms with low abatement costs can reduce more and sell permits, while firms facing higher costs can buy permits and still comply. In principle, this equalizes marginal abatement costs and minimizes total expense. However, the efficiency result depends on monitoring accuracy and on a cap set tightly enough to produce meaningful reductions.

Opponents respond that even if total emissions fall, local “hot spots” may persist if permits allow continued pollution near vulnerable neighborhoods. They also note that communities experiencing concentrated harms may not view aggregate efficiency as an adequate justification. Some programs attempt to address this concern by restricting trading in designated zones or by layering local air-quality standards on top of the cap. These measures can reduce inequities, though they may also reduce some of the cost-saving advantages of trading.

Thus, the dispute is not merely over economic theory but over which values should guide program design. A system optimized for least-cost reduction may be insufficient if it neglects distributional fairness. Conversely, a system that tightly constrains trading may improve equity while sacrificing some efficiency. The central question is how regulators should balance these aims under real administrative constraints.

The author includes the third paragraph mainly to

Historical claims draw their credibility less from the vividness of any single account than from the patterned convergence of independent sources. Independence matters: ten newspapers repeating one press release are, for evidentiary purposes, closer to one source than to ten. Corroboration is strongest where records produced for disparate purposes, by actors with different incentives, align in their implications. Conversely, where narratives share a common ancestor or a common interest, their agreement adds less than their number suggests. This does not render singular testimony worthless; a lone diary can alert us to possibilities, especially where official records are incomplete. But the weighting should reflect the ease with which a report could have been copied, confabulated, or massaged to serve a cause. Silence must be handled with care: absence of mention can be evidence of absence only when, given the norms and routines of recordkeeping at the time, one would expect the phenomenon to have been recorded had it occurred. The point is not to valorize dull sources over lively ones, but to discipline judgment by privileging convergence from independent channels and by resisting overreliance on sources with shared pipelines or obvious incentives to mislead. Where these criteria conflict, one should explain the tradeoff rather than default to whichever source is most rhetorically compelling. In this way, conclusions become anchored not to the most colorful testimony but to a structure of mutual support that can withstand scrutiny.

Which of the following most accurately applies the principle discussed in the passage?

Legal scholars sometimes treat administrative agencies as either faithful executors of legislative will or as independent actors that pursue their own policy agendas. This dichotomy misses a more subtle feature of modern regulation: agencies operate through a mixture of expertise, delegated authority, and procedural constraints that both enable and limit discretion. The practical question is not whether agencies have discretion, but how that discretion is structured and made accountable.

One influential view holds that expertise justifies broad delegation. Legislatures, lacking time and technical capacity, may sensibly authorize agencies to fill in details, especially in domains such as environmental standards or financial risk. On this account, agency discretion is constrained by professional norms and by the need to produce workable rules. However, critics note that expertise does not eliminate value judgments; decisions about acceptable risk, enforcement priorities, or distributional impacts cannot be derived from technical knowledge alone.

Procedural requirements are often proposed as a remedy. Notice-and-comment rulemaking, judicial review, and transparency obligations can force agencies to explain their choices and respond to objections. Yet these mechanisms can also slow regulatory action, sometimes making agencies reluctant to address emerging problems. Moreover, sophisticated stakeholders may dominate the process by submitting extensive comments and litigation threats, effectively shaping outcomes through their greater resources.

A growing body of scholarship therefore emphasizes “internal” constraints, such as professional ethics, career incentives, and organizational culture. These factors can discourage arbitrary decisions even when external oversight is weak. Still, internal constraints are not uniformly reliable; they may function best when an agency’s mission is clear and when leadership rewards careful analysis rather than rapid political responsiveness.

The author's use of the phrase "these mechanisms" most nearly indicates

Passage A

Some legal scholars argue that expanding the use of restorative justice (RJ) in schools can reduce suspensions and improve school climate. RJ practices, such as facilitated circles and mediated conferences, aim to address harm by involving affected parties and developing agreements for repair. Evaluations in certain districts report fewer exclusionary дисципline actions after RJ adoption. Yet implementation fidelity varies widely; programs labeled “restorative” may consist of brief trainings without sustained support. Additionally, declines in suspensions could reflect changes in reporting practices rather than genuine behavioral improvement.

Accordingly, supporters recommend investing in staff capacity, measuring outcomes beyond suspension counts, and conducting audits of program fidelity. They also mention noncentral considerations such as scheduling constraints and space for meetings.

Passage B

Critics caution that RJ is sometimes promoted as a universal remedy without adequate attention to power dynamics. Students may feel pressured to participate in “voluntary” conferences, and harms involving bullying or discrimination can be minimized if facilitators lack training in equity and trauma. Moreover, focusing on aggregate suspension reductions can mask whether certain groups continue to experience disproportionate discipline or whether victims feel safer.

These critics propose evaluation methods that center participant experiences and subgroup outcomes: confidential surveys of perceived fairness and safety, disaggregated discipline data, and qualitative review of agreements’ enforcement. They also urge comparing RJ to complementary measures such as clearer codes of conduct and anti-bias interventions. RJ may be valuable, but its success should be judged by equitable safety and accountability, not simply by fewer suspensions.

Which one of the following best compares the approaches taken in Passage A and Passage B?

Passage A

Urban planners increasingly promote “congestion pricing,” charging vehicles to enter crowded city centers at peak times. Supporters argue that pricing scarce road space reduces traffic, improves bus reliability, and lowers emissions. They often cite pilot programs in which average vehicle speeds rose and transit ridership increased, though these figures can be complicated by unrelated factors such as simultaneous subway repairs or unusually mild weather. Many proponents also emphasize that revenue can be earmarked for public transportation, making the policy both a demand-management tool and a funding mechanism.

Skeptics do not always deny that pricing can reduce traffic; instead, they question the fairness of relying on a fee to ration access. They worry that a flat charge functions like a regressive tax, burdening lower-income drivers who may lack flexible work schedules or viable transit alternatives. Some propose exemptions for certain residents or essential workers, but others warn that too many carve-outs can undermine the policy’s effectiveness and create administrative complexity. A qualified critique, therefore, is that congestion pricing may be defensible only when paired with credible improvements in transit service and targeted rebates that offset distributional harms.

Passage B

Debates about congestion pricing often assume that the central issue is who pays. Yet the more fundamental question may be what pricing reveals about the nature of urban mobility. Traffic is not merely the sum of individual choices; it is produced by land-use patterns, freight logistics, and decades of investment decisions that prioritized private vehicles. From this perspective, a fee at the cordon can be a useful signal, but it is a blunt instrument if treated as the main lever for change.

A policy framework that privileges pricing risks leaving intact the conditions that generate car dependence. Even if traffic volumes fall, households and firms may respond by relocating in ways that shift congestion elsewhere. Accordingly, some analysts favor combining modest pricing with zoning reform, bus-lane enforcement, and curb-management rules that regulate deliveries. While revenue allocation matters, the principal criterion for evaluation is whether the policy package reshapes long-term travel behavior, rather than merely reallocating scarce road space in the short run.

The author of Passage A and the author of Passage B would most likely disagree about

Passage A

Some technology ethicists argue that algorithmic hiring tools can reduce bias if designed and audited properly. They note that unstructured human interviews are susceptible to stereotypes and inconsistent standards, whereas models can be constrained to use job-relevant features. Nonetheless, these ethicists emphasize that training data often reflect past discrimination and that proxies for protected traits can enter through variables like zip code or employment gaps. Therefore, they recommend regular disparate-impact testing, documentation of model changes, and opportunities for applicants to appeal decisions.

A qualified claim is that algorithmic tools should be used to assist, not replace, human judgment, particularly in early screening. The goal is to standardize certain evaluations while preserving space for contextual information that models may miss. Some firms also use structured interviews alongside algorithms, a detail that complicates simple “human versus machine” comparisons.

Passage B

The promise that algorithmic hiring will reduce bias rests on an assumption that bias is primarily an informational defect. Critics argue that hiring decisions are embedded in organizational incentives: firms may seek to minimize training costs or prefer candidates from familiar institutions. In such settings, algorithms can entrench existing hierarchies by optimizing for historical “success,” which may itself be defined in ways that reflect exclusion.

Moreover, auditing regimes may be insufficient because key models are proprietary and because the relevant harms are not always captured by statistical parity measures. Critics therefore urge limiting algorithmic screening, especially for high-stakes roles, and strengthening human accountability through clearer criteria and anti-discrimination enforcement. They contend that technical fixes cannot substitute for institutional reform.

The author of Passage A and the author of Passage B would most likely disagree about

Some scholars of evidence law argue that rules governing expert testimony should be structured to reduce the risk that jurors will treat an expert’s credentials as a substitute for evaluating the reliability of the expert’s methods. They observe that jurors may be impressed by prestigious affiliations and may therefore give undue weight to opinions grounded in weak or untested techniques. The scholars propose a principle: admissibility should depend less on the expert’s status and more on whether the reasoning process is transparent, testable, and subject to meaningful cross-examination.

The scholars acknowledge that courts cannot replicate peer review. They therefore advocate procedural proxies for reliability: requiring disclosure of data and assumptions, permitting adversarial testing through cross-examination, and, when feasible, using court-appointed neutral experts to clarify methodological disputes. They qualify the principle by noting that in some specialized domains, full transparency may be limited by privacy or security constraints; in those cases, courts should seek alternative checks, such as in camera review or independent verification.

They offer an example from forensic science. A lab analyst’s claim that a fingerprint “matches” may carry an aura of certainty, but the reliability depends on error rates, standards for declaring a match, and the possibility of confirmation bias. Requiring disclosure of protocols and blind verification can help jurors assess reliability. Conversely, allowing an expert to present a conclusion without revealing the basis invites deference to authority.

The principle is that expert evidence should be screened and presented in ways that foreground methodological reliability and enable testing, rather than relying on prestige as a proxy for truth.

Which one of the following judgments most closely conforms to the principle above?

For decades, the dominant account of the first peopling of the Americas placed the Clovis culture at the beginning of the story: big-game hunters bearing distinctive fluted spear points, moving southward through an interior, ice-free corridor that opened between retreating Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets roughly 13,000 years ago. Proponents of this model have argued that the seeming absence of older sites and the rapid spread of Clovis technology align with an inland route timed to deglaciation.

Yet a chorus of researchers has challenged the idea that Clovis came first or that an interior passage was the sole gateway. Coastal-migration advocates point to well-dated pre-Clovis sites, such as Monte Verde in Chile and Page-Ladson in Florida, and to a plausible maritime corridor along a kelp-rich Pacific shoreline that could have supported small, mobile foragers traveling by boat. They note that early shorelines now lie under water due to postglacial sea-level rise, making the archaeological record there selectively invisible. Geneticists complicate the picture further, suggesting multiple pulses of migration and periods of isolation, which could accommodate both coastal and interior movements at different times.

Clovis-first defenders remain unconvinced. They question whether all purported pre-Clovis sites are truly secure and argue that exceptional claims require extraordinary evidence. In their view, the clustering of reliable early sites inland, the logistical challenges of ice-margin voyaging, and the timing of corridor opening keep the traditional model intact until more definitive coastal sites are found.

The author argues that the debate is best understood not as a zero-sum contest but as a mosaic in which different routes were used as opportunities emerged. On this view, early peoples likely exploited a narrow interior window when it existed and, at other times, coastal resources and travel. Crucially, the author sides with coastal researchers on a methodological point: the current paucity of shoreline sites should not be treated as dispositive because the relevant terrain is submerged and underexplored. Until systematic underwater surveys fill that gap, insistence on interior primacy risks privileging the most discoverable evidence over the full range of possibilities.

Which of the following statements would the author and coastal-migration researchers most likely agree with, but Clovis-first proponents would most likely reject?

Why do certain ancient texts survive while others do not? A common answer points to climate: papyrus, parchment, and early paper decay rapidly in humid air and fare better in dry, stable environments. On this view, the long shelf life of documents from deserts and high plateaus is less a product of cultural priorities than of favorable conditions. The climate hypothesis has intuitive appeal and boasts famous supporting cases, like the preservation of papyri in the sands of Egypt. Yet the pattern of survival across languages and regions complicates the picture. Substantial bodies of Greek and Latin works circulated in relatively moist climates, while many literatures that arose in dry zones left sparse textual traces.

An alternative explanation foregrounds institutions rather than air: texts endure because communities repeatedly copy them. A scroll may last a generation; a manuscript tradition, if nourished by schools, scriptoria, or other copying centers, can last centuries. On this account, survival depends less on the ideal conditions of a single artifact and more on the sustained labor of scribes who replace fragile carriers before they fail. Evidence for this institutional model comes from places where humidity should have been fatal but was offset by routine reproduction—monasteries in temperate Europe, for example, that recopied theological and classical works in cycles that outpaced decay. Conversely, in some dry regions, when copying declined due to political disruption or economic collapse, the textual record thinned despite climate advantages.

Climate clearly matters at the margins: a well-made codex stored in a cool, arid room will outlast the same codex in a sweltering one. But the regularity with which texts cross material thresholds hinges on human practices—curricula that keep certain works on syllabi, funding for scribal labor, and norms that valorize preservation. When decisions about what to keep are institutionalized, a humid library can maintain a canon as effectively as an arid cave. The more plausible account, then, treats climate as a background condition and institutional copying as the decisive mechanism, with the added caution that copying reflects cultural priorities that can narrow as well as preserve a tradition. Survival is not merely the luck of the weather; it is the consequence of organized attention.

The author develops the passage primarily by doing which one of the following?

In environmental economics, “discounting” is used to compare costs and benefits that occur at different times. A higher discount rate makes future benefits appear smaller in present terms, which can make long-term environmental projects look less attractive. The practice is often defended as reflecting opportunity costs and uncertainty.

Yet critics argue that standard discounting can undervalue harms borne by future generations. If the discount rate is set too high, policies addressing slow-moving risks—such as sea-level rise—may seem unjustifiably expensive even when they prevent catastrophic outcomes. Some propose using lower rates for intergenerational problems or employing declining discount rates over long horizons.

Defenders of discounting reply that low rates can justify enormous present sacrifice based on speculative future scenarios. They also note that future generations may be wealthier and better able to adapt. Still, this rebuttal depends on assumptions about growth and technological change that may not hold under severe climate disruption.

A careful position therefore treats discounting as a necessary tool but not a purely technical one. Rate selection embeds ethical judgments about how to weigh future well-being against present consumption, and those judgments should be made explicit rather than hidden in models.

The author mentions sea-level rise primarily in order to

The following passage considers how historians use counterfactuals.

Counterfactual reasoning—asking what would have happened if some event had not occurred—has long been suspect among historians, who worry that it licenses speculation unconstrained by evidence. On the strictest view, the historian’s task is to explain what did happen, not to imagine alternative worlds. Yet counterfactuals are difficult to avoid, because causal claims implicitly compare actual outcomes to some baseline in which the purported cause is absent.

One approach is to confine counterfactuals to “minimal rewrites,” altering only a single variable while holding background conditions fixed. This can clarify whether an event was necessary for an outcome, but it may also understate the extent to which historical actors would have adapted to changed circumstances. A different approach uses counterfactuals to identify structural constraints: if many plausible alternatives still yield similar outcomes, the historian can argue that deeper forces, rather than contingent decisions, were decisive.

Neither approach fully resolves the evidentiary concern. The further a counterfactual departs from documented possibilities, the less it can be disciplined by sources. Still, when counterfactuals are tethered to contemporaneous plans, publicly debated proposals, or known constraints on action, they can illuminate the range of options perceived by historical actors and thus sharpen explanations of why certain choices were made.

Thus, counterfactuals are best treated as analytical tools with limited jurisdiction. They can help specify causal claims and clarify perceived alternatives, but they should not be mistaken for narratives of what “really would have happened.”

Which one of the following best describes the scope of the author's claims?

Passage A

Some public administration scholars argue that performance-based funding for universities can improve accountability by tying public subsidies to measurable outcomes, such as graduation rates or employment metrics. They contend that when budgets are disconnected from results, institutions may have weak incentives to support student completion. Yet they acknowledge that metrics can be gamed and that outcomes depend partly on student preparation and local labor markets. Therefore, they recommend using multiple indicators and adjusting for student demographics.

A qualified endorsement holds that performance funding should be modest in scale and should complement, not replace, baseline funding. Excessive reliance on outcomes can encourage institutions to become more selective or to steer students away from challenging majors. Properly designed, however, performance elements can prompt investments in advising and tutoring without undermining access.

Passage B

Performance-based funding is often framed as neutral accountability, but critics argue that it imports a narrow conception of educational value. Emphasizing completion and earnings can marginalize disciplines whose benefits are less immediately monetized and can pressure institutions to treat students as units of output. Moreover, adjusting metrics for demographics may not prevent perverse incentives; institutions might still reduce support for students who require more resources.

Critics therefore favor direct investment in capacity—faculty hiring, mental health services, and need-based aid—rather than financial penalties for institutions serving disadvantaged populations. While they accept that transparency about outcomes is valuable, they argue that using funding formulas to enforce performance can deepen inequality across institutions.

The author of Passage A and the author of Passage B would most likely disagree about

Passage A

Some education researchers argue that the effectiveness of remote learning should be assessed by focusing on instructional design rather than on the medium itself. They claim that many negative findings about online instruction conflate emergency remote teaching—implemented rapidly during crises—with purpose-built courses that incorporate frequent feedback, structured pacing, and interactive assessments. These researchers cite meta-analyses suggesting that when online courses are designed with these features, average learning outcomes can be comparable to those of in-person instruction, though they note that results vary by age and subject.

They also caution that access to devices and quiet study space can shape outcomes independently of pedagogy. Thus, they recommend distinguishing between the effects of course design and the effects of household resources, and they propose targeted supports such as tutoring and device lending.

Passage B

Other scholars argue that the core limitation of remote learning is not design quality but the loss of informal social regulation present in physical classrooms. They contend that even well-designed online courses struggle to replicate the subtle cues and routines that help students remain engaged, particularly for younger learners. They emphasize attendance patterns, camera-off norms, and the difficulty of monitoring comprehension in real time. From this perspective, studies showing “comparable outcomes” may mask increased variance: some students thrive while others disengage.

These scholars also stress that scaling high-quality online instruction can be difficult because it demands intensive teacher training and sustained technical support. They do not claim that remote learning is always inferior, but they argue that evaluations should weight distributional effects and engagement indicators more heavily than average test scores.

Which one of the following best compares the approaches taken in Passage A and Passage B?

Passage A: Park agencies confronting crowding and maintenance backlogs often adopt modest user fees for parking or entry. Proponents argue that fees align costs with use, dampen spur-of-the-moment trips that cause peak damage, and create a reliable revenue stream insulated from annual budget swings. In three western states, a seasonal fee reportedly funded trail resurfacing, invasive-species removal, and restroom upgrades that had languished for years. Administrative data showed that overall visitation rebounded after the initial implementation period, suggesting that regular users adapted to the new system. Surveys conducted by one state found most respondents viewed small, predictable fees as reasonable if they were earmarked for visible improvements. Agencies also typically exempt school groups and offer annual passes that reduce per-visit costs for frequent visitors. These measures, administrators contend, spread the burden fairly while guarding against the tragedy of overuse. Although some critics worry that any charge introduces a barrier to entry, fee advocates counter that, without dedicated funding, deterioration will itself exclude users by making trails unsafe or unpleasant. From this perspective, carefully calibrated fees are a pragmatic, equitable tool that protects access by ensuring parks remain usable.

Passage B: Budget gaps are real, but fees change who shows up. A longitudinal study of 60 municipal and state parks over eight years compared usage before and after fee adoption. Total visits fell 12% in the two years following a new charge, but the decline was not evenly distributed: visits originating in census tracts below the regional median income dropped by 30%, while usage from affluent tracts held nearly steady. Youth sports teams and community groups from lower-income neighborhoods reported canceling outings when transportation and entry fees combined to exceed their budgets. One parks director described a cascade effect: after fees were imposed, a bus route was curtailed for low ridership, further reducing access for households without cars. The same study found that fee eliminations led to rapid recoveries among low-income visitors, even when total visits rose only modestly. The authors concluded that revenue mechanisms other than point-of-entry fees—such as voluntary memberships, philanthropic partnerships, and expanded permitting for concessions—can fund maintenance without erecting income-sensitive barriers. Community-led stewardship days also generated in-kind labor that improved facilities while deepening residents' sense of belonging.

Which passage provides stronger support for the claim that user fees disproportionately exclude low-income visitors from public parks?

Urban streets embody competing aims: moving vehicles efficiently and safeguarding people outside of vehicles. A defensible principle for design choices is to prioritize interventions that reduce the risk of severe harm—fatalities and serious injuries—unless there is good evidence they impose disproportionate harms elsewhere. Minor increases in average travel time or driver inconvenience are not disproportionate; the relevant comparison is whether a measure that measurably lowers crash severity creates offsetting safety problems, such as significantly delaying emergency response or shifting serious crashes onto adjacent streets. This principle does not enshrine any particular treatment; rather, it directs decision-makers to (a) use credible local evidence, (b) pilot interventions when uncertainty is high, (c) measure serious-harm outcomes, not just throughput, and (d) scale what works while monitoring for unintended consequences. Treatments like daylighting corners, raised crosswalks, curb extensions, narrower effective lanes, and lower design speeds have repeatedly been shown to reduce severe injuries in many contexts. But even effective measures should be tested in situ: a raised crosswalk on a bus route might require profile adjustments to avoid excessive delays to high-occupancy vehicles or emergency apparatus. Where a treatment meaningfully reduces severe harm with only modest side effects, it should be preferred over designs that prioritize free-flow speeds. Conversely, where a safety treatment would plausibly cause a comparable safety harm elsewhere, designers should iterate or choose alternatives rather than reflexively favoring cars. The burden of proof lies with those advocating for speed or capacity at the expense of demonstrable safety gains; vague fears of delay do not outweigh measured reductions in serious harm.

Which of the following most accurately applies the principle discussed in the passage?

Passage A: Standard cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in climate policy discounts future harms at rates that render catastrophic losses to future generations comparatively negligible in present-value terms. This practice embeds contestable ethical assumptions about intergenerational equity and ignores the deep uncertainty that characterizes climate sensitivity and tail risks. If we accept that the welfare of distant generations matters and that irreversible harms cannot easily be monetized, CBA must be supplemented—if not supplanted—by decision rules that reflect precaution. A declining discount rate better tracks uncertainty about long-run growth and interest rates, and minimum-safety thresholds can rule out policies that risk crossing ecological tipping points regardless of expected net benefits. Distributional weighting can account for the fact that marginal dollars mean more to the global poor than to wealthy emitters. These are not tweaks; they represent a shift from optimizing an aggregate sum toward honoring obligations across time and income. To continue to present CBA as neutral science is to obscure value judgments in the choice of discount rate and the metrics of welfare, which should be surfaced and deliberated rather than embedded in spreadsheets.

Passage B: Calls to abandon CBA mistake the tool for its implementation. Discounting does not imply indifference to future people; it reflects opportunity costs and empirical expectations about growth. Where uncertainty about long-term rates is substantial, textbook CBA already supports using declining discount rates, and sensitivity analysis can transparently show how conclusions shift under alternative ethical parameters. Precautionary constraints can be incorporated as side constraints within CBA—ruling out options that breach critical thresholds before comparing remaining alternatives. Similarly, distributional concerns are real, but they are better addressed through the tax-and-transfer system and project-specific weighting than by discarding net-benefit maximization altogether. The virtue of CBA is its clarity: it forces trade-offs into the open, enabling institutions to debate and adjust assumptions rather than bury them. Instead of rejecting CBA, we should refine it to reflect ethical and empirical uncertainties while preserving a common language for policy appraisal.

Which one of the following best describes the relationship between Passage A and Passage B?

In literary studies, the concept of the “author” has been alternately elevated and diminished. Traditional criticism often treated the author’s intentions as the key to a text’s meaning, assuming that interpretation should recover what the author meant to convey. Later approaches, influenced by structuralism and poststructuralism, argued that meaning arises from language systems and readerly practices rather than from an originating consciousness.

The intentionalist position draws support from ordinary communicative norms: in many contexts, understanding an utterance involves inferring what a speaker intended. Literary works, on this view, are complex utterances for which drafts, letters, and biographical context can provide relevant evidence. Yet intentionalism faces difficulties when authors contradict themselves, when evidence is sparse, or when a work’s effects seem to exceed what its creator could have foreseen.

Anti-intentionalist approaches emphasize that texts circulate beyond their creators and acquire meanings in new contexts. They also note that appeals to intention can function as gatekeeping, privileging interpretations endorsed by institutional authorities. Still, few critics deny that authorial context can sometimes illuminate allusions or historical references; the dispute is over whether such context is decisive or merely one resource among others.

A moderate position treats intention as one interpretive constraint among several. It allows that authorial evidence can rule out readings that conflict with explicit statements, while also recognizing that linguistic ambiguity and cultural change generate legitimate interpretive plurality. This position does not settle every dispute, but it clarifies why appeals to intention can be both informative and limited.

The author includes the third paragraph mainly to

The "polluter pays" principle circulates freely in policy rhetoric, but its meaning is often flattened into a slogan. At its most basic, the principle holds that parties responsible for environmental harm should bear the costs of preventing and remedying that harm. How those costs are assigned and collected, however, varies across legal regimes, and the details matter. Two families of implementation recur. One is ex ante: charges are levied in advance through fees or taxes calibrated to expected emissions. The goal is to make pollution more expensive up front, nudging firms toward cleaner processes while building a fund for mitigation. The other is ex post: liability is imposed after harm occurs, with polluters required to compensate victims or restore damaged ecosystems. This model promises tailored responsibility pegged to actual harms but wrestles with proof and delay. Recent negotiations over a transboundary river treaty illustrate the tension. Downstream states favored a robust liability regime to ensure they would be made whole for fish kills and water treatment costs; upstream states warned that litigating causal chains across jurisdictions would paralyze cleanup and fuel rancor. The adopted text attempts a hybrid. It sets a basin-wide discharge fee scaled by sector and pollutant class, collected quarterly into a restoration fund managed by a joint commission. At the same time, it preserves a streamlined claims process for specified acute events—mass die-offs, toxic spills—where causation is relatively clear, capping damages for small operators while removing caps for repeat offenders. The hybrid is not an evasion of the principle but a recognition that its animating idea—internalizing environmental costs—can be realized through different institutional pathways. Ex ante charges shape behavior and provide steady resources for ongoing work; ex post liability signals that certain harms are intolerable and will trigger specific obligations. In practice, the mix can be tuned to the river's risks and the parties' administrative capacities. To say the polluter pays is not to settle on a single instrument; it is to insist that, somewhere in the system, payment is due, and then to design mechanisms that reliably collect it.

The author develops the passage primarily by doing which one of the following?