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A local school board has passed a measure requiring principa

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by aditya8062 » Sun Aug 31, 2014 11:29 pm
A local school board has passed a measure requiring principals provide parents with course materials so as to improve the quality of their children's education.

A) provide parents with course materials so as to
B) to provide parents with course materials so as to
C) provide parents with course materials in order that they
D) to provide parents with course materials so that they can
E) provide parents with course materials and

my doubt: what is the meaning difference between "so as to" (as used in B) and "so that they" (as used in D)
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by David@GMATPrepNow » Mon Sep 01, 2014 7:21 am
Hi aditya8062,

Good work eliminating answer choices A, C and E - which all are missing the necessary "to" before the verb "provide."

WIth respect to choosing between B and D, notice that answer B's "so as to" is unclear about who is improving the quality of their children's education. The "their" refers to the parents, logically, and parallelism and sentence clarity rules requires us to use "so that they can."

Keep up the good work.
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by GMATGuruNY » Tue Sep 02, 2014 3:58 am
Generally, so as to refers to the MAIN SUBJECT AND VERB of the preceding clause.
B implies the following:
A local school board has passed a measure so as to improve the quality of their children's education.
Since their (plural) cannot refer to a local school board (singular), the structure in B is not viable.
Eliminate B.

D: A local school board has passed a measure requiring principals to provide parents with course materials so that they can improve the quality of their children's education.
Here, they (plural) clearly refers to parents (the nearest preceding plural noun), so it is crystal clear that PARENTS will improve the quality of their children's education.
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