Acme Cоmpаny mаnufаctures numerоus prоduct lines and applies manufacturing overhead using an activity-based costing system. With respect to batch-level costs, the cost per batch:
Pаssаge D Milliоns оf Americаn students came back tо school in recent weeks, navigating new classroom rules and cafeteria social hierarchies. For some, the hardest part of the day was simply getting to school. A chronic shortage of school bus drivers is making it difficult for many children to get to class. Some districts have had to shorten school days; others have even canceled school because too few children could attend. The fix requires a shift in mind-set. School systems’ obligations to students should start when children step out their front doors, rather than when they walk through the schoolhouse gates. The idea of a school-specific public transportation system is the product of very American forces. The westward expansion of the 1800s, the suburbanization of the post-World War II era and the consolidation of neighborhood schools into larger institutions distanced children from their classrooms. Compulsory attendance laws made finding reliable transportation imperative. And the rise of the car inspired a wave of innovation that culminated in the iconic yellow school bus. Underlying these developments was a sense that the state had a duty to get children to school. In 1929, just 8.9 percent of kids were transported to school at public expense, according to the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics. By the 1983-1984 school year, the figure was nearly 61 percent. Yet, as children’s homes and schools got farther apart, the number served by public school transportation systems fell. Increasingly, it’s parents, not bus drivers, who get behind the wheel for the school commute. That’s true even for short distances. Between 1969 and 2009, the number of children aged between 4 and 15 and living within a mile of school who got there on foot or by bicycle fell from 89 percent to 35 percent, according to the National Center for Safe Routes to School. In theory, it makes sense for parents to be responsible for getting kids to school. It’s not as though principals are going door to door to negotiate with kindergartners who only want to wear the T-shirt at the bottom of the hamper or to rouse drowsy high school juniors and bundle them off to trigonometry. But not all parents have work schedules that align with the school day, access to reliable transportation or even a fixed address. Sixty percent of children from low-income families rely on school buses. For kids with additional needs who must attend faraway specialized schools, that transport is crucial. Any solution will cost money. But if kids can’t get to school, they can’t benefit from new phonics curriculums or fancy technology anyway. When the wheels on the bus stop going ’round and ’round, kids suffer. Let’s reclaim a sense of collective responsibility to get our littlest citizens between home and school. Which of the following best summarizes the main idea of the passage?
[Nоte: Steve Wоnder аnd Rаy Chаrles, well-knоwn musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries, both lost their vision during early childhood.] Passage E The music of Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles supports the common belief that losing one sense can enhance another. Italian researchers have better evidence. They find that after only 90 minutes, blindfolded people can develop a keener sense of touch — a sign that the portion of the brain dedicated to vision can help process other senses. Although such neurological flexibility used to be considered a feature of a developing brain, "we know now that, even in adults, it is possible to find plastic interactions. If you change the input, you can recruit a part of the brain for a different function," says Salvatore Aglioti, a neurologist at the University of Rome La Sapienza and the Santa Lucia Foundation. Aglioti and a colleague asked 28 test subjects to place their fingers on a series of plates marked with grooves of varying sizes, with the width of the grooves equal to the distance between them. Some of the grooves were so fine that the surface of the plate felt smooth. After being blindfolded, however, people were able to feel grooves that were more subtle than the smallest ones they could discern in a previous test. Repeating the test 130 minutes after the blindfolds were removed, the subjects' sense of touch had reset to normal. "Forgetting is as important as learning," Aglioti says. "If we don't forget quickly, we don't have enough room for other functions." The experiment described in the passage most strongly suggests that
Pаssаge C The centerpiece оf the student debt-relief plаn that President Biden annоunced last mоnth is his decision to cancel up to $20,000 per borrower in federal loans. But the more far-reaching — and, over time, more expensive — element of the president’s strategy is his blueprint for a revamped income-linked repayment plan, which would sharply reduce what many borrowers pay every month. It could, however, have unintended consequences. Unscrupulous schools, including for-profit institutions, have long used high-pressure sales tactics, or outright fraud and deception, to saddle students with more debt than they could ever reasonably hope to repay. By offering more-generous educational subsidies, the government may be creating a perverse incentive for both schools and borrowers, who could begin to pay even less attention to the actual price tag of their education — and taxpayers could be left footing more of the bill. “If people are taking out the same or more amount of debt and repaying less of it, then it’s just taxpayers bearing the brunt of it,” said Daniel Zibel, the chief counsel at the National Student Legal Defense Network, an advocacy group. Experts are particularly concerned about how the new subsidies could be manipulated by for-profit colleges, many of which have a record of persuading people to take on high debt for degrees that often fail to deliver the kind of earnings boost the schools advertise. Which of the following conclusions about for-profit colleges can most reasonably be drawn from the passage?