Two Examples Using Articles about American Education Show What Makes an Opinion Essay Effective

In order to better understand what makes an opinion essay effective, I looked for six opinion articles on US Education. These six articles were narrowed down to the two best and these two articles evaluated for effectiveness.

Explaining the Process for Evaluating Opinion Essays

My process for evaluation worked in three steps:

1.  I narrowed the choices down to two articles.
2.  I came up with criteria for why I felt that these were effective essays. 
3. Then I tested my assumptions by reviewing my grammar lessons and the opinions of others on the subject of essay effectiveness.

The reason for the three step process was to :

1.  Come up with a set of assumptions
2. Test the assumptions against standard assessment factors
3. Evaluate if my opinions about effective articles were based on measurable means or if perhaps they were based on emotional reactions.

The articles selected were from popular newspapers around the United States and selected to get a range of what educational reform meant.  These are the ones selected with the starred links indicating the ones selected for further analysis: [1][2][3]*[4]*[5][6].

What I think are my criteria for selecting two of the six articles as the most effective include the following style issues:

1. The content of the article in some way matches the title [7, p. 331]
2. The article provides reliable information on the article subject , i.e. the argument is supported by research [8] [9][10]
3. The author doesn’t wander off topic  [7, p. 331][8][9]
4. Audience targeting is used [7, 197][10]
5. Clear need for the opinion is demonstrated i.e. relevance[10] 
6. Clear use of arguments based on data or informed opinion[8][9][10] 
7. Opinions offered solutions to any identified problem [7, 223]
8. One of the solutions was a call to action [7, p. 225]
9. The articles were easy to understand, using everyday language and easy to read sentences.[7, p. 208-10]

My general impression is that grammar and style played a less important role than organization and content, although clarity helped. I will test this below.

Some of the non-style issues that may have influenced my selection include:

1. One paper was selected from a set of prize winning articles [4]
2. One paper was written by a well-known writer [5]
3. One paper held an opinion I shared [5]
4. Some titles were printed with lower case words rather than having each letter capitalized except for conjunctions [2][4][6][16]

My analysis of “Rethinking Urban Schools” identifies the author’s use of the following arguments:

Dallas schools can succeed if they plan for change

1. It is time for Dallas to embrace upon new plans for their schools 
2. Big urban schools can succeed if they embrace innovation backed by research, he ends with a need to improve middle school education
3. Big urban schools can succeed if a pipeline of leaders enter the district as teachers and principals
4. Big urban schools can succeed if they use data to back their decisions
5. Big urban schools can succeed if they get buy in from parents

William McKenzie uses the following evidence to support his arguments:

1. Superintendent is leaving
2. Example of Denver and New Yorks scools where teachers use a longer day to get 2 hours of planning time, explanation of charter schools, example of Los Angeles schools placed under the mayor’s watch 
3. Lack of qualified teachers and superintendents can seek candidates from three programs, the Teacher Trust, Teach for America, and New Teacher Project, Houston example, teacher assessment 
4. Parent portals and their time lag, Dell Foundation financing, Denver example
5. Obama example, Harvard study, parent training initiative, Stand for Children

His conclusion is if we don’t educate our children, it affects our economy, health and society. He has one topic with four points backed by several pieces of evidence.

His style features the following:

1. clear connection between argument and an explanation of alternatives [7, p. 331]
2. Parallelism is used in the repetition of “success is possible”, “innovative schools” (which is left undefined), “existing schools are successful” can be better on a small set of factors, and he uses parallelism by returning to the question stated at the start of the opinion essay [7, p. 27].
3. Organization is based on a point by point basis—1-5th points in an outline that is summarized at the end [7, p.331]
4. Change is a continuation of previous superintendent’s work and therefore unthreatening
5. Use of italics and bolding for emphasis [7, p. 289]
6. Specific examples from innovative schools backed by results data (presumed since he calls them innovative schools backed by research)
7. He only explains how the innovative program is backed by results once
8. Audience addressed is limited to Dallas and therefore connects the program to the voters
9. He matches benefits to students, parents, educators, teachers, school districts and voters [10] i.e. the subject matters to the audience
10. His explanation of relevance is split into several parts and not well supported---he assumes a familiar audience
11. His use of tense is always present tense and active and it corresponds to the call for the school district to continue to be innovative
12. He uses a lot of connective words i.e. likewise
13. He uses a lot of subordinate clauses, i.e. after, at Los Angeles which is useful for explaining case studies
14. A lead that invites thought [7, p. 245][10]
15. Use of Cliché—“magic bullet”[7, p.124-5]
16. He uses subordination to set up the desired outcome i.e. “At campuses that want to become an innovation school, teachers, principals, parents and administrators work on a plan that incorporates best practices from other places.” 

I believe William McKenzie’s article is strong because it quickly establishes relevance [10]. He speaks directly to an interested audience [7, 197] that directly votes on the topic. His language is simple. He uses specific examples and explains them well, many times using subordinate clauses to establish a set of criteria for where the case would apply. His organization is simple but inside his major points, he wanders from alternative to alternative sometimes offering explanations, sometimes offering benefits, sometimes providing additional problems that maybe belonged at the top in his main argument.  His upbeat style [7, p. 223] eases over any lack of details since the reader can look those up. Examples would be that he could provide some measure for each of the items effectiveness or indicate which of the alternatives has a set of benefits that would maximize implementation or some measure of cost. He makes no grammar mistakes that I noticed. His closing however, brings the reader back to the start, having considered the alternatives and using the echo effect [7, p. 247][10]

An analysis of “The Steve Jobs Model for Education Reform” identifies Rupert Murdoch’s use of the following arguments to examine which approach to education reform should be used:

1. American education reform is needed
2. Effective education reform is gained by deploying technology that rewrites the rules of the game
3.  We should use technology to force the education system to meet the needs of the individual
4. Technology offers savings
5. Teachers are needed but the way they teach can be altered with technology
6. Education requires standards to unlock investments and unleash innovation in order to be competitive in the world of today

This amounts to one topic, with six separate points. Rupert Murdoch uses the following evidence to support his arguments:

1. Statistics on dropout rates, claim that graduates have less skills, claim that graduates are meeting their potential, anecdote about NY Times headlines
2. Examples of how existing system fails to use teachers and technology
3. Statistics on flat line improvement with increased expenditure
4. example lesson, two examples of how to cut costs one technology
5. teaching can improve with altered organization
6. return to initial anecdote about Steve Job (example of an innovator)

His conclusion is that change had to be driven by standardization across the United States and maybe with the world.  Because his arguments sequentially[7, p. 332] build to his conclusion, with each argument followed by evidence leading to the next point [7, p. 331], his essay is effective. His last points explains his thesis, namely, when educators talk about standardization it needs to be in terms of actual lessons and that the overall system needs to be redesigned to allow as many lessons as a person can learn as possible. His tone is upbeat and avoids complaining [7, p. 223]

Rupert Murdoch’s style features the following:

1. audience selection is targeted to the reading public [10][7, 197]
2. his claims rest on his authority as a publisher
3. examples are based on commonly understood difficulties
4. example of personal innovation is based on a popular innovator
5. changes in tense from present to past to future tense
6. he uses parallelism [7, p. 27] in several ways: 
7. his statistics use does not use orderly parallelism but alters it in standard ways about talking about education statistics i.e. the top, the bottom, then all the rest
8. he uses unjust, unsustainable, un-American i.e. repetition
9. he starts with an example of a Steve Jobs commercial and returns to Steve Jobs empire at Apple 
10. his style of organization repeats for every point [7, p. 331]
11. he uses subordination in one example where he is demonstrating what is possible in the future
12. a strong unusual popular keyword lead [7, p. 244]

I believe that Rupert Murdoch’s essay is strong because it quickly establishes relevance[10]. I believe parallelism aids Rupert Murdoch’s argument since it makes it more persuasive. His style of organization is easy to follow since it is repeated and it never wanders off his point. His limited use of subordination makes the two uses stand out as a lesson about the past and sets up a possibility for the future. I believe he relies too heavily on his position to be as effective as he could be—his use of evidence is largely example driven and anecdotal. His continuing changing tenses seem correct for his subject matter, i.e. showing how to transition education to a more modern paradigm; less complicated tenses would simplify reading it. His choice of audience could be narrowed down by the use of a more specific call to action that explains how the change he wants effected could come into being. His closing brings the reader back to the start, having considered the need for innovation using the echo effect [7, p. 247][10].

Overall, I think my criteria for evaluating the essays I read matched the selected papers on writing effective essays and on the textbook for our class. I found the less effective essays had fewer arguments, an unclear thesis or didn’t say anything new. I find the use of lower case titles less effective, although I don’t always notice them. When a writer uses poor grammar, I’m likely to skip the article entirely, although I selected one that had grammar problems [6]. The ones I found effective showed few grammar difficulties if any, used simple sentences, used simple punctuation and very few complex sentences.

References
[1] Paul Krugman, “Ignorance is Strength”, New York Times, Mar 8, 2012

[2] “More time in school”, www.chicagotribute.com, Mar 30, 2012

[3] Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, “Higher Education?”, Los Angeles Times, Aug 2011

*[4] William McKenzie, “Rethinking urban schools”, The Dallas Morning News, Aug 21, 2011

*[5] Rupert Murdoch, “The Steve Jobs Model for Education Reform”, The Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2011

[6] Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler, “Higher education: for a better Florida”, Tampabay.com, Feb 25, 2007

 [7] Pamela Rice Hahn and Dennis E. Hensley, “Alpha Teach Yourself Grammar and Style in 24 hours”, Penguin, 2000

[8] Michael E. Gorman, “What Makes a Good Essay?”,

[9]Daria Przbyla, “How to Write an Opinion Essay: Structure and Argumentation in Personal Approach Writing”, Suite101, Mar 23, 2009

[10] Purdue Owl, “What Makes a Good Literature Paper”, Oct 19, 2011

[11] “Essay Essentials”, Scholastic.com