Inferences & Conclusions

Correct answer: B. The store's business had declined and Ruth was reducing what she could keep up with.

Why: Three details in paragraph 2 point the same way: the display stops changing, hours are cut, and stock is not replaced. Together they indicate a business winding down.

Every choice, explained

• A.Ruth had lost interest in her customers. — Contradicted by the ending, where customers line up and Ruth stays open to sell through her stock.
• B.The store's business had declined and Ruth was reducing what she could keep up with. — Correct. The unchanged display, reduced hours, and unfilled shelves are three separate signs of decline.
• C.A larger hardware chain had opened nearby. — Outside knowledge. Competition is a plausible cause in life, but this passage never mentions another store.
• D.Ruth had become too ill to work. — Overreach. Illness is one possible explanation, but the passage gives no evidence for it over any other.

Correct answer: C. Several people in the final line had not bought anything at the store in years.

Why: People who had not shopped there in years still came to stand in line. That separates the store's meaning from its function as a place to buy things — which is exactly the claim.

Every choice, explained

• A.The store had been open for forty-one years. — Establishes longevity, which is background rather than evidence about meaning.
• B.The window display changed with the seasons. — Shows Ruth's care for the store, not the neighborhood's attachment to it.
• C.Several people in the final line had not bought anything at the store in years. — Correct. Non-customers showing up is evidence of value that is not commercial.
• D.Ruth wrote closing prices on masking tape by hand. — A poignant detail about Ruth, but it says nothing about the neighborhood.

Correct answer: C. Ruth was forced out of business by rising rent on Fulton Street.

Why: Rising rent is a common cause of small-business closures, but this passage never mentions rent. That makes it outside knowledge, not an inference.

Every choice, explained

• A.Ruth was closing the store deliberately rather than suddenly. — Supported. The gradual sequence from March through September shows a planned wind-down.
• B.The closing was noticed by people in the neighborhood. — Supported. The line past the laundromat is direct evidence.
• C.Ruth was forced out of business by rising rent on Fulton Street. — Correct — this is the unsupported one. The passage gives no financial cause at all.
• D.The store's stock was reduced in its final months. — Supported. Paragraph 2 states that gaps in the shelves did not fill in.

Correct answer: C. the demands of work at the mill, not a lack of interest in the classes

Why: Paragraph 4 never says why seats were empty, but it lines attendance up against the mill's schedule: fewer than half the names checked in weeks of long days, and not enough chairs in the short weeks of April. When work eased, the room filled. That pattern points to work, not to a loss of interest.

Every choice, explained

• A.that the lessons had become too difficult for many students — Contradicted. If hard lessons were driving students away, the room would empty as the year went on. Instead, in April the teacher had to borrow chairs.
• B.the weather on class nights — Not supported. The only weather in the passage is a snowstorm, and it is mentioned to show who came anyway — not who stayed home.
• C.the demands of work at the mill, not a lack of interest in the classes — Correct. Empty seats line up with long days at the mill, and extra chairs line up with short weeks. The passage never states the reason, but the pattern supports it.
• D.that the youngest students had stopped coming — Not supported. The ledger records ages, but the passage never connects age to attendance. This choice borrows a real detail to build a conclusion the text never makes.

Correct answer: B. "In weeks when the teacher noted that the mill was running long days, fewer than half the names are checked; in April, when the mill ran short weeks, she borrowed chairs from the room next door."

Why: The answer to the previous question has two halves: work kept students away, and their interest did not fade. Only one sentence shows both — empty seats when the mill ran long days, and not enough chairs when it ran short weeks. The other sentences are real details, but each supports a different point.

Every choice, explained

• A."Classes began at half past seven, an hour and a half after the mill whistle ended the day shift." — Shows how little time students had between work and class, but that was true every night. It cannot explain why attendance changed from one week to the next.
• B."In weeks when the teacher noted that the mill was running long days, fewer than half the names are checked; in April, when the mill ran short weeks, she borrowed chairs from the room next door." — Correct. It sets attendance against the mill's schedule in both directions: heavy work, empty seats; lighter work, not enough chairs.
• C."Beside the change she wrote, 'Fewer heads down.'" — Close, because it suggests students were tired. But it describes students who were in the room, not the ones who stayed away, so it cannot explain the empty seats.
• D."A small group of eleven names is checked on nearly every night of the year, including a week in February when snow closed the day school." — About attendance, but about the wrong students. It describes the most faithful group, not the weeks when many seats were empty.

Correct answer: D. Students never missed class unless the mill was running long days.

Why: The strong word in this choice, never, turns a pattern into a rule with no exceptions. Paragraph 4 shows a pattern — fewer students in weeks of long days, more in short weeks — but the ledger does not give the reason for any single absence. The direction is right; the strength is not.

Every choice, explained

• A.Interest in the evening school grew after its first year. — Supported. The teacher entered thirty-eight names in the first week; the second year opened with seventy.
• B.The teacher judged students' progress partly by what they could do outside the classroom. — Supported. The column with no heading records tasks like "signed own name at bank" — things done outside the classroom, not lessons finished inside it.
• C.Someone other than the first teacher kept the records in the school's second year. — Supported. A ledger "kept in a different hand" was written in someone else's handwriting. The passage does not say why, and this conclusion does not claim to know.
• D.Students never missed class unless the mill was running long days. — Correct — this is the unsupported one. The pattern in paragraph 4 is real, but this choice turns it into a rule with no exceptions. The ledger gives no reason for any single absence, so it cannot rule out anything else that kept a student home.

Model response: The students wanted reading and writing they could use in their everyday lives, not school lessons for their own sake. In paragraph 3, the teacher stopped using the primer her daytime pupils used and taught from a newspaper, a train timetable, the notice at the mill gate, and the students' own pay envelopes. In paragraph 5, the column with no heading records tasks such as "signed own name at bank" and "read letter from sister aloud," which happen outside the classroom. Neither paragraph states this outright, but together they show that success at the school was measured by what students could do at the bank, at home, and at work.

Why: A complete answer does three jobs: it states a conclusion the passage never says outright, it supports that conclusion with details from at least two different paragraphs, and it stays within what those details can prove. The third job is where most answers slip — claiming, for example, that every student learned to read, which the ledger never shows.