English Language Arts: Adding Supporting Details (TEKS.ELA.9-12.10.B.ii)

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Texas High School ELA › English Language Arts: Adding Supporting Details (TEKS.ELA.9-12.10.B.ii)

Questions 1 - 4
1

CRISPR gene editing is often described as precise, but precision depends on biological context that is far from simple. Cellular repair pathways compete, chromatin accessibility varies across cell types, and guide RNA design interacts with genomes in ways that complicate predictability. Ethical debates hinge on these technical uncertainties: when edits create mosaics or unintended changes, risk assessments must account for probabilities rather than binaries. Yet public discourse tends to flatten these gradients into 'safe' or 'dangerous.' A more useful frame compares editing to dosage in pharmacology, where effect and error exist on a continuum influenced by delivery method, target site, and organismal development. Regulatory frameworks, however, lag behind such nuance, treating all edits as equivalent acts. The core problem is not whether CRISPR works, but how to measure and communicate its variable reliability across contexts. This draft lacks concrete instances that could anchor the abstractions in observable outcomes for readers.

Which revision best develops the draft's sophisticated ideas with specific, relevant details and engaging examples that clarify CRISPR's variable reliability across contexts?

Add a paragraph contrasting consequentialist and deontological bioethics to show that different moral theories evaluate gene editing differently.

Include general examples from medicine and agriculture to show that CRISPR can help people and improve crops.

Insert concrete cases: in ex vivo sickle-cell trials, off-target edits measured by GUIDE-seq were reduced below 0.1% at several candidate sites after high-fidelity nuclease selection; early embryo editing reported mosaicism above 30%, producing divergent cell lineages within one blastocyst; in tomato yield edits, base editing avoided double-strand breaks but produced bystander edits at nearby NGG sites, requiring guide redesign and re-testing.

Add a historical overview of CRISPR's discovery in bacteria, summarizing milestone papers and the timeline of technological breakthroughs.

Explanation

Choice C strengthens the abstract claims with precise, relevant cases and outcome measures that illustrate variability across clinical, embryonic, and plant contexts. The other options are either too general (B), tangential to the technical question (A), or off-topic background (D), and thus do not deepen the draft's sophisticated argument.

2

Accounts of Juneteenth often treat June 19, 1865 as a timeless origin point, but the holiday's meanings in Texas have been repeatedly renegotiated by communities facing different constraints. Civic ritual can encode competing claims about freedom: whether it is restitutionary, aspirational, or transactional with the state. In that sense, Juneteenth functions less as a commemoration than as a periodic referendum on access to land, education, and safety. Yet our narratives flatten these functions, offering a celebratory through-line that minimizes discontinuity. The holiday's geography also matters; its spread beyond Texas altered its idioms and funding structures, shifting the balance between grassroots practice and institutional sponsorship. When businesses or municipalities adopt observances, they can redistribute authority over the calendar while exporting a Texas-born vernacular ritual. Without concrete episodes, however, this argument risks abstraction. The analysis needs vivid, situated examples showing how Texas communities revised the holiday's form to meet changing political realities.

Which revision best develops the draft's sophisticated ideas with relevant, specific details and engaging examples that illuminate how Juneteenth's meanings shifted in Texas over time?

Describe specific Texas cases: the 1872 purchase of Houston's Emancipation Park by Black community leaders to secure space for celebration; Galveston parades that waned under Jim Crow ordinances restricting assembly; 1960s events linking the holiday to voter registration drives; and recent municipal sponsorships that introduced security perimeters and corporate tents, altering who controlled program schedules.

Add examples from different decades to show that the holiday changed a lot.

Restate that Juneteenth has multiple meanings and that geography matters when the holiday spreads beyond Texas.

Compare Juneteenth's evolution to European national days like Bastille Day, noting similarities in state appropriation of popular rituals.

Explanation

Choice A supplies concrete, Texas-centered episodes that make the abstract claims legible and compelling. The other options are too general (B), merely repetitive (C), or tangentially comparative without supporting the draft's core argument (D).

3

Debate about zoning reform often assumes that deregulation automatically yields affordable housing, but the causal chain involves multiple frictions. Supply elasticity depends on labor capacity, materials markets, and the time-value of capital; regulatory relief can accelerate permits without guaranteeing starts. Meanwhile, demand is segmented by school districts, transit access, and amenity bundles that price discriminate in practice if not in law. Equity arguments hinge on whether new market-rate units trigger filtering that is both geographically and temporally relevant to cost-burdened households. Yet policy memos often substitute slogans for analysis: 'build more' versus 'protect neighborhoods.' A better lens treats zoning as one tool within a metropolitan housing production system governed by capital flows and infrastructure commitments. Still, the discussion here lacks concrete urban cases or metrics. Without specific timelines, parcel typologies, and yield estimates under different codes, the reader cannot test whether the conceptual model predicts outcomes across varied metropolitan regimes.

Which revision best develops the draft's sophisticated ideas with relevant, specific details and engaging examples that test the model of how zoning changes affect production and equity?

Add a global history of zoning's origins, including early twentieth-century experiments and international contrasts, to broaden the theoretical frame.

Include a brief anecdote about one family being priced out after a developer bought a nearby home.

Reiterate that supply and demand interact in complex ways, highlighting that deregulation is not a guarantee of affordability.

Compare cases with metrics: after allowing triplexes on formerly single-family lots, a city permitted dozens of small plexes in two years concentrated on 40–50 foot lots near transit; a mid-rise corridor upzoning tied to reduced parking minimums cut approval times by months and raised typical floor-area ratios from about 1.5 to 3.0, yielding 60–90 units per acre; by contrast, a by-right system in a dense Asian metropolis shows continuous small-lot infill where wide permissive envelopes enable filtering without rezones.

Explanation

Choice D introduces concrete parcel types, timelines, and yield metrics that operationalize the abstract framework and let readers evaluate claims. The other options are tangential (A), anecdotal and insufficiently analytical (B), or repetitive without new support (C).

4

Debates over Edwards Aquifer management frame water as a scarce common pool resource, yet the policy problem is less about absolute scarcity than about allocation under hydrologic variability. Permit systems, environmental flows, and agricultural pumping form interlocking claims whose priorities shift with precipitation cycles. The aquifer's karst architecture complicates monitoring: recharge is episodic and spatially uneven, making annual caps feel both prudent and arbitrary. Conservation messaging appeals to shared identity, but equity questions remain: who bears curtailment costs when drought triggers reductions, and on what evidentiary basis? Current narratives emphasize technological fixes—metering, leak detection, aquifer storage—without confronting the governance rhythms that determine who can plan. A more rigorous debate would integrate hydrogeology with institutional design to model scenarios across wet and dry years. This draft, however, lacks site-specific illustrations or stakeholder cases that could turn abstractions about variability and equity into understandable, decision-relevant implications for central Texas communities and utilities.

Which revision best develops the draft's sophisticated ideas with specific, relevant details and examples that clarify allocation tradeoffs in the Edwards Aquifer?

Add discussion of coastal desalination plants and international water markets to show how technology might expand supply statewide.

Provide site-specific illustrations: explain how springflow protection targets at Comal and San Marcos Springs trigger staged pumping reductions using a rolling average; show how a small irrigator in Hays County fallowed acreage under Stage 3 while a municipal utility buffered cuts by leasing permits through a voluntary suspension program; and contrast recharge spikes from tropical storms with dry-year permit accounting.

Note that Texas has droughts and floods, so managers should plan for both extremes.

Restate that karst systems are complex and that recharge is episodic and uneven, reinforcing the need for prudence.

Explanation

Choice B deepens the argument with concrete program mechanics, locations, and stakeholder responses that make variability and equity legible. The other options are off-topic (A), superficial (C), or repetitive without adding new understanding (D).