Passage One

Questions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.

Nationally, one in six children miss 15 or more days of school in a year. Education officials have deplored all this missed instruction.

These chronically absent students suffer academically because of all the classroom instruction they miss out on. In 2015, the U.S. secretary of education responded to this crisis, urging communities to support every student to attend every day and be successful in school. His open letter stated that missing 10% of school days in a year for any reason—excused or unexcused—is a primary cause of low academic achievement.

Worrying about whether children attend school makes sense. After all, if students don't show up, teachers can't teach them.

But what if America's attendance crisis is about much more than students missing class? What if, instead, it is a reflection of family and community crises these students face—such as being ejected from the family apartment, fearing for their safety in their neighborhood or suffering an illness?

As social scientists we investigated how excused and unexcused absences relate to children's academic achievement.

We find that absences excused by a parent do little to harm children's learning. In fact, children with no unexcused absences—but 15 to 18 excused absences—have test scores equal to their peers who have no absences.

Meanwhile, the average child with even just one unexcused absence does much worse academically than peers with none.

We believe unexcused absence is a strong signal of the many challenges children and families face, including economic and medical hardships. Unexcused absences can be a powerful signal of how those out-of-school challenges affect children's academic progress.

Our evidence suggests unexcused absences are problematic, but for a different reason than people often think. Absence from school, and especially unexcused absence, matters mainly as a signal of many crises children and their families may be facing. It matters less as a cause of lower student achievement due to missed instruction.

How we choose to think of school absences matters for educational policy. School attendance policies typically hold schools and families accountable for the days children miss, regardless of whether they were excused or unexcused absences.

These policies assume that missing school for any reason harms children academically because they are missing classroom instruction. They also assume that schools will be able to effectively intervene by reducing student absences. We find neither to be the case.

As a result, these attendance policies end up disproportionately punishing families dealing with out-of-school crises in their lives and pressing schools who serve them to get students to school more often.

We instead suggest using unexcused absence from school as a signal to channel resources to the children and families who need them most.

Passage Two

Questions 51 to 55 are based on the following passage.

GDP growth is not a good indicator of how well a country is performing, and should not be the primary goal of governments. Unlimited growth is not sustainable, and economic thinking is moving toward the idea that we should aim for sustainability in our economic models. But while a sustainable economy is vital to our future, it is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

The idea that governments should focus on happiness has its critics. There are concerns about how happiness can be measured. Is happiness not a fleeting and subjective psychological state? Don't different people experience different levels of happiness? Even on the broadest interpretation of‘happiness’ as prosperity or‘life satisfaction’, people want different things.

Of course, governments cannot impose life satisfaction on citizens. But our happiness relies on collaborative efforts as a society. A government's obligation lies in creating conditions that promote prosperity. And there is good reason to suppose that such conditions exist, are globally applicable, and are discoverable through research.

In a recently published article, philosopher Julian Baggini suggests we should focus on‘real wealth’ for citizens, which does not depend on GDP growth. Access is key: people do not need to own, but rather access things that enable them to live well. Technological advances and changes in social behavior enable us to make more efficient use of the assets that we already have. And focusing on access to the resources people need to live better lives could help reduce inequality.

As far as it goes, this has much in common with proposals tabled by‘happiness’ advocates. But it sets the bar far too low for what governments can and should be doing for their citizens.

For example, it's not clear how a‘real wealth’ economy would remedy the epidemic of mental ill-health that plagues our society. In Western countries, at least—poor mental health is more detrimental to well-being than poverty. Over and above a vastly improved provision of therapeutic mental healthcare, there are preventative measures for improving mental health that governments could and should adopt. The WHO recommends establishing institutions that facilitate community participation— educational programs and interventions that provide skills for promoting mental well-being. It says a lot, however, that the WHO feels the need to appeal to the economic benefits of improving mental health to persuade governments that the cost of taking proposed measures is justified. As long as the economy is their priority, governments need go no further than ensuring citizens' continued productivity.

To demand that governments set the ' happiness' of citizens as their highest priority is to demand that they view citizens as ends in themselves.