📐 SAT
📝 ACT
🎓 AP Exams
About Contact Blog Privacy Policy

AP English Language: Claims and Evidence (Drill 1)

Drill 1 · Reading · Claims and Evidence

0 / 5
Next drill
Drill 2
→
More Ap English Language Claims And Evidence drills
Drill 1 — current you are here
Drill 2 5 questions →

About This Drill

AP English Language: Claims and Evidence (Drill 1) is a Reading practice drill covering Claims and Evidence. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

Read the passage carefully, then answer all five questions. Claims and Evidence questions ask you to identify a writer's central claim, analyze how evidence supports or qualifies that claim, and evaluate how the writer handles opposing arguments.

Passage

The following text is adapted from a speech delivered by education reformer and writer James Cortland to a state legislature's education committee in 1963, during debates over school funding equity. I want to speak to you today about a word that appears frequently in education legislation and almost never in schools: opportunity. Your committee has debated, at considerable length, the question of whether this state's funding formula is equitable. I am not here to dispute the formula. I am here to tell you that the formula measures the wrong thing. What the formula measures is input, dollars per pupil, classroom square footage, textbooks per student. What it does not measure, and what no funding formula I have seen attempts to measure, is whether those inputs translate into genuine opportunity for the children who receive them. A school can be funded at the state average and still systematically deny its students access to the courses, teachers, and expectations that would allow them to compete on equal terms with students in wealthier districts. The money arrives. The opportunity does not. I have visited forty-three schools in this state over the past two years. I have sat in classrooms where the textbooks were current and the ceilings were intact and the teacher had given up. I have sat in classrooms where the books were ten years old and the heat was unreliable and the teacher made every child feel that their future was both possible and their own responsibility. Funding matters. It is not the only thing that matters, and pretending otherwise insults the teachers and students who make the best of inadequate conditions every single day. What I am asking this committee to consider is a different question: not whether districts receive equal funding, but whether students receive equal preparation. That requires measuring outcomes, graduation rates, college enrollment, performance on assessments that actually test higher-order thinking, not merely compliance with curriculum. It requires holding districts accountable not for spending money correctly but for producing results that justify public trust. And it requires being honest with ourselves about which students, in which zip codes, are being prepared for full citizenship and which are being prepared for something less. The children sitting in the schools I visited did not choose their zip codes. They did not choose their tax base. They did not choose the teachers their districts could afford to hire or retain. What they deserve, what this committee has the power to give them, is a reckoning with what opportunity actually means, and a commitment to measure whether they are receiving it.

Questions & Explanations

Question 1. Cortland's central claim in the speech is best summarized as

  • A) current education funding formulas measure inputs rather than the genuine opportunity students actually receive. ✓
  • B) state education budgets must be increased substantially before meaningful school reform can occur.
  • C) teacher quality is a more important determinant of student outcomes than per-pupil funding levels.
  • D) school funding should be reallocated away from wealthier districts toward poorer ones to achieve equity in this context.

Explanation: Choice A is correct. Cortland explicitly states that the funding formula 'measures the wrong thing', inputs rather than whether those inputs produce genuine opportunity. This is the claim he develops throughout the speech. Choice B is not his argument; he does not call for increased budgets but for better measurement of outcomes. Choice C mischaracterizes the third paragraph, where teacher quality is offered as a complication, not a central claim. Choice D introduces a reallocation argument Cortland never makes.

Question 2. In the third paragraph, Cortland's descriptions of the two contrasting classrooms he visited primarily function to

  • A) argue that a teacher's motivation is entirely independent of the funding level of their school.
  • B) provide evidence that the state's current funding formula has successfully reached most schools.
  • C) illustrate that the relationship between funding and opportunity is more complex than the formula assumes. ✓
  • D) demonstrate that students in underfunded schools consistently outperform students in well-funded schools in the context described.

Explanation: Choice C is correct. The two classrooms, one adequately funded but effectively hopeless, one underfunded but alive with expectation, complicate any simple equation between dollars and opportunity. This supports Cortland's central claim that funding is necessary but insufficient. Choice A overstates the point; Cortland does not claim teacher motivation is entirely independent of funding. Choice B is contradicted by the passage; neither classroom is described as a success story of the formula. Choice D inverts the passage's logic and is not supported.

Question 3. The phrase 'The money arrives. The opportunity does not.' in the second paragraph is best described as

  • A) a concession acknowledging that school funding is ultimately irrelevant to the outcomes students achieve.
  • B) a rhetorical juxtaposition that crystallizes the gap between the formula's measure and its intended goal. ✓
  • C) a direct quotation from a district administrator that Cortland uses to support his argument.
  • D) a transition signaling that the speech will shift from policy analysis to personal testimony.

Explanation: Choice B is correct. The two short declarative sentences create a sharp contrast, money as a measurable input versus opportunity as an unmeasured outcome, capturing the essay's central distinction in its most compressed form. The parallelism and brevity give it rhetorical force. Choice A misreads the passage; Cortland argues funding matters, just that it is insufficient alone. Choice C is not supported; there is no indication this is a quotation. Choice D misidentifies its function; personal testimony begins in the following paragraph.

Question 4. Cortland's acknowledgment that 'Funding matters' in the third paragraph most likely serves to

  • A) introduce a counterargument that he will ultimately reject in the fourth paragraph.
  • B) shift the speech's focus from school funding to the broader question of teacher recruitment.
  • C) concede a point to critics who argue that his speech undervalues the role of resources in education.
  • D) prevent his argument from being misread as a claim that money is irrelevant to educational outcomes. ✓

Explanation: Choice D is correct. After describing the underfunded but effective classroom, Cortland explicitly states 'Funding matters', preempting any inference that he is arguing resources don't count. This protects his argument from a predictable misreading while allowing him to proceed to the more important point. Choice A misreads the function; 'Funding matters' is not a counterargument he will reject. Choice B is not supported; the speech does not pivot to teacher recruitment. Choice C misidentifies the audience for the concession; it is directed at potential misreaders of his logic, not critics of his policy position.

Question 5. The final paragraph's reference to children who 'did not choose their zip codes' primarily serves to

  • A) introduce a new argument about the causal relationship between residential segregation and school quality.
  • B) reinforce the ethical urgency of the speech's claim by emphasizing the involuntary nature of educational disadvantage. ✓
  • C) acknowledge that geographic factors make equitable school funding practically impossible to achieve.
  • D) shift responsibility for educational inequality from the legislature to local school boards and administrators in this instance.

Explanation: Choice B is correct. By emphasizing what children did not choose, zip codes, tax bases, available teachers; Cortland underscores that the inequity is not the result of individual choices children made, making the case for legislative action more morally urgent. Choice A is not supported; Cortland mentions zip codes as a proxy for inequity, not as the beginning of an argument about residential segregation. Choice C inverts the passage's logic; Cortland is arguing that the legislature has the power to act. Choice D is not supported; the final paragraph directs its appeal to the committee, not away from it.