What point is the author making?
Read an Informational Passage · ELPAC Grades 9–10 reading. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.
A longer factual text, with questions about the main idea, supporting details and vocabulary.
Read the passage. Then answer the questions.
Where the Shade Is
On a July afternoon in a California city, two neighborhoods four miles apart can differ in air temperature by as much as fifteen degrees. The difference is not weather. It is surface.
Dark asphalt and dark rooftops absorb sunlight and release it slowly as heat, which keeps a paved block warm long after sunset. Researchers call this effect the urban heat island. Trees work against it in two ways. Their canopy blocks sunlight before it reaches the pavement, and the water they release through their leaves cools the surrounding air, much as sweat cools skin.
Canopy is not spread evenly across a city. In most large American cities, the neighborhoods with the least shade are also the ones with the lowest household incomes, a pattern that traces back to how those blocks were built rather than to anything the residents chose. Streets laid out for warehouses and freeways were paved wide and planted thin. Once the concrete is down, adding trees becomes slow and expensive work: sidewalks have to be cut, roots need far more soil than a narrow planting strip holds, and a young tree has to be watered for three to five years before it can survive on its own.
The consequences are measurable. Emergency room visits for heat-related illness rise faster in low-canopy neighborhoods during a heat wave, and summer electricity bills there run higher because air conditioners run longer. Several California cities have responded with canopy targets, which are public commitments to reach a set percentage of shade cover by a given year, and have begun planting on the hottest blocks first instead of spreading trees evenly across every district.
Progress is slower than the targets suggest. A city can plant ten thousand trees in a season and lose a third of them within five years if no one is responsible for watering them. The cities with the best survival rates are the ones that pay for maintenance contracts and hire neighborhood residents to check on the trees, which is less visible than a planting day and considerably more effective.
The question
Choose the best answer.
The passage ends by saying that paying for maintenance and hiring neighborhood residents is “less visible than a planting day and considerably more effective.” What point is the author making?
- Steady care of trees already in the ground does more good than large one-time planting events.Correct answer
- Cities should stop holding planting days because they waste public money.
- Neighborhood residents plant trees more skillfully than city crews do.
- Cities should raise their canopy targets well above current levels.
Why “Steady care of trees already in the ground does more good than large one-time planting events.” is correct
This asks the student to read an author's judgment rather than a stated fact. The sentence before it supplies the evidence, that a third of newly planted trees can die within five years without watering, and the closing contrast between what is visible and what works carries the author's point. The skill being tested is separating a measured claim from an exaggerated version of it.
Why the other answers are wrong
- Cities should stop holding planting days because they waste public money. — The author calls planting days less effective, not worthless, and never recommends ending them.
- Neighborhood residents plant trees more skillfully than city crews do. — Residents are described as checking on trees after planting, not as better planters.
- Cities should raise their canopy targets well above current levels. — The passage suggests current targets already outrun what cities achieve, so raising them is not the conclusion.
Practice more of this
More reading practice for Grades 9–10, or see the ELPAC practice test for grades 9–10. For other grades, see free ELPAC practice tests by grade.
This is an independent study resource. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the California Department of Education or the official ELPAC program. All questions here are original practice material written to match the published task formats.