1AC Flashcards
Contention 1 - Inherency
Federal Title I regulations fail in the status quo. The Every Student Succeeds Act does not ensure equal educational opportunities for students. Black ’17.
The ESEA is a regulatory regime that promotes random equality. States have ability to manipulate accountability system to produce desired outcomes. The majority of lowperforming schools and students will fly under the regulatory radar. Schools outside that group continue their current practices, even if that means doing a poor job educating their students. Poor and minority students are exposed to inexperienced, uncredentialed, and unqualified teachers at twice the rate as other students. States’ funding practices are just as problematic equity. The districts hurt the most are often those with high concentrations of student poverty. 20 percent of all Title 1 money for poor students ends up in school districts with a higher proportion of wealthy families. The ESEA was enacted on the notion that certain communities would not do what is necessary to provide appropriate educational opportunities for disadvantaged students.
Contention 2 - Inequality Advantage
First, lack of equality impairs access to an adequate education for poor and minority students. Robinson ‘16
Minority students experience less access to courses that prepare students for college. High-poverty learning environments consistently perform worse than other schools and often lack effective teachers, adequate resource, appropriate class sizes, and motivated and engaged parents, as well as other factors that improve student achievement.
Second, rigorous studies confirm that inequality kills via structural violence. Bezruchka’14
Economic inequality is a major reason for our poor health. Inequality kills through structural violence. It’s critical to identify approaches to change the system that isn’t working.
Third, allowing structural violence to continue is unethical. Ansell ‘17
This unequal advantage and violence is built into the very rules that govern our society and can overwhelm an individual’s ability to live a free healthy life. Countless nationwide are suffering from it, and people are dying needlessly young as a result. Beyond racism, poverty and income inequality are singular agents of transmission of disease and early death. When these illnesses and deaths are occurring one at a time in neighborhoods that society has decided not to care about they seem easy to overlook. The tide of prosperity in America has lifted some boats while others have swamped.
Finally, the cumulative effects of structural violence are comparatively greater than and a motivating factor for global conflict. Gilligan ‘97
The 14-18 million deaths a year caused by structural violence compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict This is the equivalent of an accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide, perpetrated on the wear and poor, every year of every decade, throughout the world.
Contention 3 - competitiveness advantage
First, the social costs of an inequitable education system contribute extensively to the national debt.
Equal educational opportunity remains elusive within the US. Our nation is home to many substandard schools and offer students inferior educational, career, and postsecondary opportunities. Research establishes that the nation loses $156 billion in tax and income revenues over the lifetimes of each annual cohort of eighteen-year-old high school students who fail to graduate high school. The nation would save $1.4 billion annually by raising the high school completion rate by 1% for males between ages twenty and sixty. Improving educational attainment for high school graduates could save $10.8 billion.
Second, expansion of the national debt slows economic growth and undermines US influence in the world - it undermines structural resiliency and creates crises. Haass ‘17
The public debt now is equal to roughly 75% of GDP and in a decade will rise to between 80 and 90% of GDP. It is a question of when and not if the amount of debt comes to far exceed GDP. Mounting debt will raise questions around the world about the US’ inability to deal with debt and will detract from the appeal of the American political and economic model. It will make others less likely want to emulate the US. The result will be a world less democratic and increasingly less deferential to US concerns in matters of security. Mounting debt will leave the US vulnerable and could absorb funds that could otherwise be usefully invested at home. High levels of debt will increase the cost of debt financing and further crowd out other spending and depress growth. Mounting debt will hasten the demise of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
Third this results in military retrenchment and global great power conflict. Khalilzad ‘11
If interest rates were to rise significantly, annual interest payments - which already are larger than the defense budget - would crowd out other spending or require substantial tax increase that would undercut economic growth.Such scenarios would reshape the international order. The stakes are high. American retrenchment could have devastating consequences. Without a security blanket, regional powers could rearm in an attempt to balance against emerging threats. There would be a heightened possibility of crises spiraling into all-out conflict.
Finally, resolving inequality of education would solve for the nation’s debt. Edley and Cuéllar ‘13
US students are no longer competitive with students across the developed world. Imagine what we could achieve if we made American public schools competitive. As our higher-skill-level students entered the labor force, they would produce a faster-growing economy. If, on average, African American and Hispanic students performed academically at the level currently achieved by white students. The historical evidence indicates that the impact would be staggering - adding some $50 trillion to our economy. Our education system is ever more segregated by wealth and income, and often again by race. Given that low-income students, English-language leaners and students color together form a majority of our young people and the fastest-growing population in the nation - and that America’s future economic vitality depends on their success - this practice is not only unjust but also unwise.
Thus, the plan -
The United States federal government should phase in regulations requiring states to provide proportionally larger resources to low-income schools and substantially increase funding to assist states in meeting these goals.
Contention 4 - solvency
First, federal regulation of educational equality motivates states to act by creating ‘race of the top’ incentives. Black ‘17
The ESEA should set strict equity requirements over time and could adopt a standard that sets fixed requirements of varying difficulty. The first would set an absolute requirement that states provide schools serving high percentages of low-income students with the proportionately larger supplemental resources they require. The second could provide the remaining states interim relief while still pushing them to make progress. A third would provide a metric of equality: one based on academic achievement. States and districts with below-average achievement would improve either their achievement or their resource equity.
Second, federal funding ensures state compliance - it generates the necessary leverage and capacity to induce change. Black ‘17
The federal financial stake in education should substantially increase funding necessary to provide adequate educational opportunities. States lack the resources to fund education adequately and equitably. Many states with relatively high fiscal capacity have taken very little initiative in equalizing education. Funding can be widely unequal across districts. Helping low-capacity states requires federal assistance and motivating high-capacity states requires federal leverage. Both involve substantial additional money. The federal government has the capacity to make this investment with relatively little effort. These federal funds would create the leverage and capacity the federal government needs for states to comply with equity provisions.
Finally, federal statutory duty to increase Title I funding is the only sustainable way to guarantee funding. The federal signal is vital to overcoming shifting state and local political coalitions that will undermine funding over time. Hinson ‘15
Historically, a lack of resources has been the main cause of failed efforts to solve funding gaps between the poorest and wealthiest school districts. Studies show that here can be no effective enforcement of a mainstreaming scheme without a statutory duty. The US Department of Education would monitory the implementation. It is imperative that Congress commit to a mainstreaming equality funding scheme for public education. In designing a statutory duty for mainstreaming equality and the consequent allocation of targeted fundes, Congress should target funds based on new definitions of layered disadvantage.
Conclusion
States work at different capacities required to enforce the federal legislation. These frustrations often go to inadequate funding. The US must acknowledge that poverty in the United States is intricately linked to discriminatory systems. A federal mainstreaming equality school funding scheme will create a moral imperative and mission at the federal level. Targeted federal funds will arrive not at schools with already rich resources but in the accounts of the most needy institutions
