The task
The two articles below take opposite positions on one question:
Should the state legislature pass the Open Door Act, which would make tuition free at every public college in the state for every resident who attends full time, whatever the family’s income?
Read both. Then analyze both positions to determine which one is better supported by evidence. Use specific evidence from both articles in your answer.
You are not being asked which side you agree with, and you will not be scored on which one you choose. You are being asked to judge the arguing — and either article can be argued for. Allow about 45 minutes.
Article 1
Take Away the Price Tag
1Free public college is not a new idea. For more than a hundred years, the City University of New York charged its students no tuition at all. Generations of working families, many of them immigrants, earned degrees there. The city began charging tuition in 1976, during a budget crisis, and it has charged ever since. What one generation was given, the next was asked to pay for.
2We now have strong evidence of what happens when tuition is taken away. Since 2015, Tennessee has offered free tuition at its community colleges to every new high school graduate, through a program called Tennessee Promise. In May 2026, a team of economists published the most careful study of the program so far. They found that it raised college enrollment among nineteen-year-olds by 5.4 percentage points. It raised the share of twenty-one-year-olds holding an associate degree by 2.9 percentage points, and more students went on to four-year colleges. The program cost the state less than $1,000 per student each year, and the researchers concluded that, under reasonable assumptions about what college is worth, it pays for itself.
3What college is worth is not in doubt. In 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a typical worker with only a high school diploma earned $966 a week. A typical worker with a bachelor’s degree earned $1,578. The unemployment rate for the first group was 4.3 percent; for the second, 2.8 percent.
4At Eastfield, we ask every student who withdraws why they are leaving. Last year, 44 percent of them named cost as the main reason. And those are only the students who enrolled. I have met many more adults who never filled out an application, because they saw a price and stopped there.
5A promise has to be simple to work. Income limits and complicated forms keep out exactly the people who most need the door open. The Open Door Act says one thing that anyone can understand: if you live here, public college tuition is free. That is a promise this state can keep.
Article 2
Free for Whom?
1Nobody at the Keystone Center doubts that college pays. The question in front of the legislature is narrower: is the Open Door Act the best way to spend the money? The legislature’s own budget office estimates that the act would cost $410 million a year.
2The act pays whatever tuition is left after a student’s other aid has been applied. In this state, low-income students already pay little or no tuition, because the federal Pell Grant and the state’s own grant cover it. At our community colleges, 58 percent of students already pay nothing. So the new money would go mostly to students from families with higher incomes. The budget office estimates that more than half of it would go to families earning over $100,000 a year. Even the Tennessee study that supporters cite found that the program cost less than $1,000 per student, because most students already had their tuition covered by other aid.
3Tuition is also not the largest cost of college. New York’s Excelsior Scholarship, the closest example to this bill, pays tuition only. When the program began in 2017, the New York Public Interest Research Group pointed out that fees, books, and room and board could cost a student up to $14,000 a year, and the scholarship paid none of it. Excelsior also requires students to complete 30 credits a year, and the Open Door Act copies that rule. In this state, four in ten community college students attend part time, most of them because they work. The act would leave them out.
4There is a better use for $410 million. The state could give grants for rent, child care, books, and transportation to the low-income students who are already enrolled and are struggling to stay.
5A free-tuition promise sounds generous, and it is easy to put on a sign. But a promise that sends most of its money to families who can already afford college, and that leaves out the working students who need help most, is not as simple as it sounds.
Your 45 minutes
Stop here if you have not written yet. What follows names the evidence in both articles and shows where each one is weak. Read it before you write and you will not be practicing the thing the test measures — which is finding all of this yourself, in forty-five minutes, with nobody helping.
After the clock — what was actually on the table
What each article put in front of you
Take Away the Price Tag
- A history with a lesson drawn from it. CUNY was free until 1976. This shows that free public college has been done before, in this country, at a large scale.
- A published study of a real program. Tennessee Promise: enrollment up 5.4 percentage points, associate degrees up 2.9 points, a cost of under $1,000 per student, and the researchers’ conclusion that it pays for itself.
- National earnings figures. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics: $966 a week with a high school diploma, $1,578 with a bachelor’s degree, and a lower unemployment rate for degree holders.
- A local measurement. Eastfield’s exit survey: 44 percent of students who withdrew named cost as the main reason.
Free for Whom?
- A cost figure. The budget office estimates $410 million a year.
- An explanation of how the money would flow. Because grants already cover tuition for low-income students, most of the new money would go to families with higher incomes. He supports this with two local figures: 58 percent of community college students already pay nothing, and more than half of the money would go to families earning over $100,000.
- The other side’s own study, turned around. He uses the Tennessee cost figure from Article 1 to make his own point.
- A comparison program with a known gap. New York’s Excelsior Scholarship pays tuition only, while other costs could reach $14,000 a year. Its 30-credit rule, which the act copies, would leave out the four in ten students who attend part time.
Where each one is thin
Neither article is the right answer. Each has evidence a careful reader can question. Naming those weak points, in specific words, about a specific sentence, is most of what the first scoring trait rewards.
Take Away the Price Tag
- The CUNY history is a story, not a measurement. It shows that free college once existed. It does not show what free college would do in this state today, at today’s prices.
- The Tennessee program is smaller than the Open Door Act. Tennessee Promise covers community colleges only, and only new high school graduates. The Open Door Act covers every public college and every resident. A careful reader should ask whether results from the smaller program tell us what the larger one would do, and what it would cost.
- “Pays for itself” comes with a condition. Dr. Ferreira reports it honestly: “under reasonable assumptions about what college is worth.” That means the savings depend on a guess about future earnings, not on money already counted.
- The earnings figures compare two groups of people. People who finish a bachelor’s degree differ from people who do not in other ways, too. The gap in pay shows that degree holders earn more. It does not prove that the degree caused all of the difference.
- She never gives the cost of the act. Article 2 opens with that number. Article 1 does not mention it.
- The adults who “never filled out an application” are people she has met. There is no number behind that sentence.
Free for Whom?
- His two biggest numbers come from one estimate. The $410 million and the “more than half to families over $100,000” both come from the budget office. He does not explain how the office reached them, and nothing else in his article checks them.
- His Excelsior evidence is old. The $14,000 figure was published when the program began, in 2017. He does not say what has happened to Excelsior students since.
- He does not answer Tennessee’s main finding. Enrollment and degrees went up. If tuition did not matter to students, it is hard to explain why more of them enrolled when it was taken away. He uses the study’s cost figure and passes over its results.
- His alternative has no evidence behind it. Paragraph 4 proposes grants for rent, child care, and books. He gives no cost and no example of such grants working anywhere.
Two essays, either of which could score well
If both of those look like real essays to you, the set is working as intended. On the test you will have two articles built the same way, and no time to find a perfect answer, because there is not one. Choose the side you can support in forty-five minutes, and support it.
Check your own
The Extended Response is scored on three traits. Read your draft against them, one at a time — and then read How the essay is scored, which has the full rubric and two responses to the same task, one earning a 6 and one earning about a 2.
- Analysis of argument and evidence. Did you say which article is better supported, in a sentence, near the beginning? Did you quote or name specific evidence from both articles — not just the one you chose? Did you say what is wrong with the evidence on at least one side, rather than only what is right?
- Development and organization. Does each paragraph do one job? Does a reader who has not seen the articles know what they said? Did you get to the end, or did you run out of clock in the middle of a paragraph?
- Clarity and command of English. Read it aloud. Sentences that you stumble over reading are sentences a scorer stumbles over too. Check that every sentence has a subject and a verb and ends where it should.
One more, which is not on the rubric and costs you the most: did you argue about which side is right instead of which side is better supported? That essay can be beautifully written and still score low, because it answers a question nobody asked.