Reading & Writing Practice Test

Passage 1: How Community Solar Programs Work

For decades, the only way to use solar power at home was to install panels on your own roof, an option that worked well for homeowners with sturdy, sun-facing roofs and enough savings to cover the upfront cost. Renters, apartment dwellers, and homeowners with shaded or poorly angled roofs were largely shut out of the solar market, even if they wanted to reduce their energy bills and their reliance on fossil fuels. Community solar programs were developed specifically to close that gap.

A community solar program works differently from a rooftop installation. Instead of placing panels on an individual building, a company or utility builds a single, larger solar array somewhere in the region, often on a field, an old industrial lot, or the roof of a warehouse. Local residents and businesses can then subscribe to a share of that array's output, even if they never see the panels in person. Each subscriber's electricity bill is credited based on their share of the energy the array produces that month, usually at a modest discount compared to standard utility rates. In most programs, subscribers pay no upfront installation cost at all; they simply switch their billing to include the community solar credit.

Critics of community solar point out that the savings are often smaller than rooftop solar would provide, since subscribers are sharing the benefit of one array across many households rather than capturing the full output of their own dedicated panels. Some programs also lock subscribers into multi-year contracts with cancellation fees, which can be a problem for renters who move frequently. Supporters counter that for the millions of households who could never install rooftop panels in the first place, even a modest, no-upfront-cost discount represents real progress, and that competition between providers has started to push contract terms in a more flexible direction.

By the early 2020s, community solar programs were operating in dozens of states, with subscriber numbers growing each year. The technology itself is not new or experimental; what changed was the business model, which made solar accessible to people who had been excluded from it for purely structural reasons, like not owning a roof, rather than for any lack of interest in renewable energy. Some utilities now offer community solar as a default option for new customers, requiring people to opt out rather than opt in, a change that supporters credit with much of the recent growth in subscriber numbers.

Passage 2: Should Overtime Rules Change for Salaried Workers?

Under current federal rules, most hourly workers are entitled to overtime pay -- typically time-and-a-half -- when they work more than forty hours in a week. Many salaried workers, however, are classified as "exempt" and receive no overtime pay no matter how many hours they work, as long as their salary is above a certain threshold and their job duties meet specific criteria. Labor advocates have pushed for years to raise that salary threshold, arguing that it has not kept pace with inflation and that many workers classified as exempt are doing essentially the same tasks as hourly employees, just without the overtime protection.

Supporters of raising the threshold point to cases where salaried assistant managers at retail or restaurant chains work fifty or sixty hours a week for a fixed salary that, once divided by actual hours worked, amounts to less per hour than the cashiers they supervise earn with overtime included. Raising the threshold, they argue, would force employers to either pay these workers overtime or hire additional staff to cover the extra hours, both of which benefit workers. A recent policy analysis estimated that several million workers currently classified as exempt would become eligible for overtime protection if the threshold were significantly raised.

Business groups oppose a sharp increase, arguing that it would force companies to either convert valued salaried employees to hourly status, which many employees experience as a demotion in status even when the pay works out similarly, or cut staff and redistribute work among fewer people to control costs. Small business owners in particular argue that a uniform national threshold does not account for regional differences in cost of living; a salary that comfortably clears the threshold in a rural area might be a relatively low salary in an expensive city, while a national threshold set too high could disproportionately burden employers in lower-cost regions.

Both sides generally agree that the rules have not been updated frequently enough to track changes in pay and cost of living, even when they disagree sharply on what the new threshold should be. Some economists have proposed indexing the threshold automatically to inflation going forward, so that the debate would not need to be relitigated from scratch every time an update became overdue. Whether lawmakers will adopt that kind of automatic adjustment, or continue updating the threshold only through periodic, contentious negotiations, remains an open question that is likely to resurface every few years regardless of which side currently has more political support.

Passage 3: Learning the Clutch (fiction excerpt)

Daniel had explained the clutch three times already, and his son Theo's expression had moved from confident to confused to something closer to despair. "Just ease off it slow," Daniel said, for the fourth time, trying to keep his voice light. "Like letting go of a rope, not dropping it."

The car bucked forward and stalled, again. Theo's hands stayed on the wheel, knuckles pale, staring straight ahead at the empty parking lot they'd chosen specifically because there was nothing to hit. "I'm never going to get this," he said, not quite to his father, more to the windshield.

Daniel remembered, suddenly and clearly, his own father's patience -- or lack of it -- teaching him to drive a stick shift in a church parking lot decades earlier. His father had sighed loudly every time the car stalled, and eventually Daniel had stopped asking questions and just nodded along, pretending to understand things he didn't, just to avoid another sigh. He had sworn, even at sixteen, that he would never teach anyone to drive that way.

"You stalled it," Daniel said now, "which means you're doing it right." Theo turned to look at him, eyebrows raised. "I mean it," Daniel continued. "Everybody stalls it learning. The only way to never stall is to never try. So you're exactly on schedule." He reached over and turned the key himself this time, restarting the engine. "Again. And this time, talk to me while you do it -- tell me what your foot's doing."

Theo exhaled, some of the tension leaving his shoulders, and put the car back in first gear. "Okay. Pressing the clutch down... now I'm trying to feel where it catches..." The car rolled forward, jerky but moving, and didn't stall. Theo laughed, surprised, and Daniel found himself laughing too, not because the moment was particularly funny but because something had loosened in the car that had nothing to do with the clutch at all.

They circled the empty lot twice more before Daniel finally said it was enough for one afternoon. As Theo climbed out, still talking through what he'd felt with his foot on the clutch, Daniel lingered behind the wheel a moment longer, thinking that he had not, in fact, broken the pattern completely -- he had simply chosen which parts of it to keep. The patience, he decided, he would keep. The sighing, he was glad to leave behind in that church parking lot decades ago, where it belonged.

Grammar and Language Conventions: Editing Passage

Read the passage below. Numbers in parentheses indicate sentence numbers. Some sentences contain errors in grammar, usage, spelling, or punctuation.

(1) Last month, the tenant association at Riverside Court held it's first meeting in over a year to discuss a planned rent increase. (2) Nearly forty residents attended, which was more then the association had expected based on past turnout. (3) The meeting's main organizer, a retired teacher named Mrs. Okafor who has lived in the building for over twenty years passed around a sign-up sheet for a follow-up committee. (4) Several residents raised concerns about the increase, others focused instead on long-delayed repairs to the building's elevator. (5) By the end of the meeting, the group having agreed to send a formal letter to the property management company within two weeks. (6) Whether the letter actually changes anything, it remains uncertain, but most residents seemed to feel that organizing was worthwhile regardless of the outcome. (7) Mrs. Okafor reminded everyone that the committee would need volunteers willing to attend a longer meeting in three weeks. (8) Either way, residents left the meeting feeling more informed then they had going in.