Writing prompt Grade 10 Social Studies & Civics
Should Yorling High Test Every Fountain Every Year?
A grade 10 argument prompt asking students to recommend annual lead testing, filtered filling stations, or both to a fictional school board, with exemplar and rubric.
Objectives
- Students will state a claim recommending a specific school district policy and defend it with cited evidence.
- Students will answer the strongest counterclaim rather than the easiest one to refute.
- Students will identify what their own recommendation leaves unaddressed.
Vocabulary
- Action level
- A trigger number in lead and copper testing. If too many homes test above this level, the utility must take steps like improving treatment and telling the public.
- First-draw sample
- A water sample taken from a faucet after the water has sat still in the pipes for hours, usually first thing in the morning. It shows how much lead can build up in water that sits in a home's pipes.
Also: fixture, counterclaim, capital cost, recurring cost
Teacher overview
Lead in a school building usually comes from the plumbing and fixtures inside the walls rather than from the water the city delivers, which is why a school can sit on a compliant public system and still have one bad fountain at the end of a hallway. This prompt gives students the two proposals a fictional school board is weighing, annual testing of every outlet or a smaller set of filtered filling stations, and asks for an argument essay recommending one or a combination. Neither proposal settles the question on its own, because testing produces information without repairing anything, while filters treat a few outlets and leave the rest unmeasured. Students should notice that federal action levels apply to public water systems, so what a district does inside its own buildings is largely a policy choice made locally.
Prompt
Background. Yorling High School and the Yorling Community School District are fictional, and the costs below were written for this exercise. The school opened in 1964 and has 84 drinking fountains, classroom sinks, and kitchen taps that students or staff drink from. The city water system that serves the school meets federal standards at the treatment plant and in its distribution system.
Federal rules set a lead action level for public water systems of 15 parts per billion, dropping to 10 parts per billion in 2027 under the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, which also require replacing nearly all lead service lines within ten years. EPA estimates, from the service line inventories utilities reported in 2025, that about 4 million lead service lines remain in service across the country, and EPA notes that lead in drinking water disproportionately affects lower-income communities. Those requirements apply to the water system, not to the fixtures inside a school building. Federal rules do require the city system to sample a high school's outlets if the school asks, but they do not require the school to act on the results, and Yorling's state has no school testing law of its own, so whether Yorling runs its own testing program is decided by the school board.
Two proposals are before the board.
Proposal A, test everything every year. Take a first-draw sample and a flushed sample at all 84 outlets each September, at $32 a sample, plus about $9,000 in custodial and staff time. Post every result on the district website. Shut off any outlet above the action level until it is replaced. Estimated recurring cost is about $14,400 a year, and the cost repeats every year.
Proposal B, filtered filling stations. Install 20 filtered bottle-filling stations at $1,450 each in the hallways and cafeteria, and test only a rotating sample of 15 outlets every three years. Estimated cost is about $29,000 to install, plus about $4,800 a year for replacement filters. The other 64 outlets would remain in use and would rarely be tested.
The facilities line has about $58,000 available this year, and the board has said next year's line is likely to be smaller.
Your task. Write an argument essay addressed to the Yorling Community School District board recommending Proposal A, Proposal B, or a specific combination of the two for the coming school year. State a clear claim. Support it with at least two pieces of evidence from the background. Address the strongest counterclaim to your position rather than the easiest one. End by naming one thing your own recommendation leaves unaddressed, and say what the board should do about it later.
Planning Organizer
Fill in every row before drafting. Each row corresponds to a criterion on the rubric, so a complete organizer is a complete essay in outline.
| Part of the argument | What to write here | My notes |
|---|---|---|
| Claim | The proposal you recommend, stated in one sentence a board member could vote on | |
| Reason 1 | Your strongest reason, in one sentence | |
| Evidence for reason 1 | The specific figure, cost, or fact from the background that supports it | |
| Reason 2 | Your second reason, in one sentence | |
| Evidence for reason 2 | The specific figure, cost, or fact from the background that supports it | |
| Strongest counterclaim | The best argument against your recommendation, stated fairly enough that someone who holds it would agree | |
| Rebuttal | Why your recommendation still holds, including anything you concede | |
| What is left unaddressed | The gap your recommendation does not close, and what the board should do about it later |
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Exemplar & Rubric
Exemplar response.
The Yorling board should adopt Proposal A this year and add filling stations only after the first round of results is in. Testing every outlet is the only proposal that tells the district where the problem actually is, and without that information the board would be spending money on a guess.
The strongest reason is coverage. Proposal B installs filtered stations at 20 locations and leaves 64 outlets in use with almost no testing, and those 64 include the classroom sinks and kitchen taps that students and staff drink from every day. A first-draw and a flushed sample at every outlet each September, at $32 a sample plus about $9,000 in staff time, costs about $14,400 a year and covers every fixture in the building. The school opened in 1964, which means its plumbing is old enough that lead solder and brass fittings are plausible anywhere in it, and lead in a school building comes from those fixtures rather than from the city water, which meets federal standards at the plant and in the mains.
The second reason is that testing produces a public record. Proposal A posts every result on the district website, so families can see the outlet nearest their student's classroom. Federal rules already push in the direction of tighter limits, since the action level for public water systems drops from 15 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion in 2027, and a district that has its own outlet-by-outlet data will be ready to answer questions about its buildings when that change arrives.
The strongest argument against Proposal A is that testing does not make water safe. A sample tells the district which fountain is bad; it does not replace the fountain, and the plan's only remedy is to shut an outlet off until someone finds the money to fix it. Proposal B, by contrast, delivers filtered water at 20 locations on the day the stations are installed. That objection is serious, and it is the reason the recommendation here is not to test forever and do nothing else. The first year of results should tell the board which outlets need replacement and where filling stations would do the most good, and the $58,000 available this year is enough to run the full test and begin installing stations in the locations the data identifies.
What this recommendation leaves unaddressed is the recurring cost. Proposal A repeats every year, the board has said next year's facilities line is likely to be smaller, and a testing program that lapses after one year is worse than one that was designed to be affordable from the start. The board should decide this spring whether to move to every-other-year testing once every outlet has a baseline result, and should ask the district to seek state assistance funds for fixture replacement before the next budget is written.
Rubric.
| Criterion | Advanced | Proficient | Developing | Emerging |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claim | States a specific, voteable recommendation and holds to it throughout, including any conditions attached. | States a clear recommendation that the essay follows. | States a position that shifts or stays vague about which proposal is recommended. | No identifiable claim, or a summary of both proposals with no recommendation. |
| Evidence and reasoning | Cites three or more specific figures or facts and explains how each supports the reason it is attached to. | Cites at least two specific figures or facts and connects each to a stated reason. | Cites evidence generally, or attaches a figure to a reason without explaining the connection. | Argues by assertion with no evidence from the background. |
| Counterclaim and rebuttal | States the opposing side's strongest argument fairly, concedes what is true in it, and shows why the claim still holds. | States a real counterclaim and answers it. | States a weak counterclaim, or names one without responding. | No counterclaim. |
| Closing analysis | Names a real gap in the writer's own recommendation and proposes a specific next step with a timeframe. | Names a gap and suggests a next step. | Mentions a limitation without saying what to do about it. | Ends without acknowledging any limitation. |
| Organization and conventions | Paragraphs follow the organizer's structure, transitions carry the argument, and errors are rare. | Clear structure with occasional errors that do not obscure meaning. | Structure is present but the order wanders, or errors interrupt reading. | Little structure, or errors make the argument hard to follow. |
Differentiation
Support
Provide the organizer with the claim row already completed for each of the two proposals, so students choose a side and build outward rather than starting from a blank first row. Give a paragraph map showing which organizer rows belong in which paragraph, and allow the essay to run four paragraphs rather than five.
Extension
Ask students to write the one-paragraph statement they would deliver at the board meeting in two minutes, which forces the argument down to its strongest reason and its concession. Then have them write a second version addressed to families rather than to the board, and explain in two sentences what they changed and why.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "action level," "first-draw sample," "fixture," "recurring cost," and "counterclaim," using a labeled sketch of a fountain, the pipe behind it, and water sitting overnight. Allow the organizer to be completed in phrases, provide claim and rebuttal sentence frames such as "The board should ... because ... . Some argue that ... , yet ... ," and permit a first draft in the student's stronger language for the reasoning rows before writing in English.
Extensions
Have students find whether their own state requires schools to test drinking water outlets, and what it requires be done with the results. A short follow-up paragraph can compare the state requirement with the two Yorling proposals and say which of the two the state rule most resembles.