Rising crime rates in East Side neighborhoods during the 1980s created an urgent need for community-based solutions. Maria Rodriguez responded...
GMAT Craft and Structure : (Structure) Questions
Rising crime rates in East Side neighborhoods during the 1980s created an urgent need for community-based solutions. Maria Rodriguez responded by organizing safety walks that brought neighbors together while deterring criminal activity. The success of these walks led to requests from other communities, prompting Rodriguez to expand her approach across the metropolitan area. In 1990, she formalized these efforts as the Community Safety Alliance, which now coordinates multiple programs including conflict mediation, youth mentorship, and emergency response training. The Alliance's comprehensive approach demonstrates how grassroots organizing can effectively address complex urban challenges.
Which choice best describes the overall purpose of the text?
To analyze the effectiveness of community-based crime prevention strategies
To trace how community organizing evolved to address urban crime challenges
To highlight Maria Rodriguez's leadership skills in community development
To compare different approaches to neighborhood safety programs
Step 1: Decode and Map the Passage
Create Passage Analysis Table
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
|---|---|
| 'Rising crime rates in East Side neighborhoods during the 1980s created an urgent need for community-based solutions.' |
|
| 'Maria Rodriguez responded by organizing safety walks that brought neighbors together while deterring criminal activity.' |
|
| 'The success of these walks led to requests from other communities, prompting Rodriguez to expand her approach across the metropolitan area.' |
|
| 'In 1990, she formalized these efforts as the Community Safety Alliance, which now coordinates multiple programs including conflict mediation, youth mentorship, and emergency response training.' |
|
| 'The Alliance's comprehensive approach demonstrates how grassroots organizing can effectively address complex urban challenges.' |
|
Passage Architecture & Core Elements
Main Point: The text traces how Maria Rodriguez's response to 1980s crime evolved from simple safety walks into a comprehensive community organization that demonstrates the power of grassroots organizing.
Step 2: Interpret the Question Precisely
This is a fill-in-the-blank question asking us to choose the best logical connector. The answer must create the right relationship between what comes before and after the blank.
Step 3: Prethink the Answer
- The passage follows a clear progression: it starts with a problem in the 1980s, shows Rodriguez's initial response, then traces how that response grew and evolved over time into something much bigger
- The key pattern here is evolution and development - we're seeing how community organizing changed and expanded from simple safety walks to a comprehensive Alliance with multiple programs
- The right answer should capture this sense of tracing development or evolution of community organizing over time
To analyze the effectiveness of community-based crime prevention strategies
- This suggests the text examines how well community-based strategies work
- The passage doesn't analyze effectiveness - it simply describes what happened
- There's no evaluation or comparison of different strategies' success rates
To trace how community organizing evolved to address urban crime challenges
- This perfectly captures the chronological development we mapped out
- The passage literally traces the evolution from safety walks (1980s) to Community Safety Alliance (1990) to current comprehensive programs
- 'Community organizing evolved' matches exactly how Rodriguez's approach developed over time
To highlight Maria Rodriguez's leadership skills in community development
- While Rodriguez is featured throughout, the text focuses on how her approach evolved, not on her leadership qualities
- The passage doesn't describe her leadership skills or personal attributes
To compare different approaches to neighborhood safety programs
- The passage only describes one approach (Rodriguez's) as it developed over time
- There's no comparison between different neighborhood safety programs