4/12/17

Discourse/Representations
Deconstructing discourse reveals hidden power structures in education policy
Brissett and Mitter 17 - (Dr. Nigel Brissett is an assistant professor in Clark Universitys
department of International Development Community and Environment, Ms. Radhika Mitter is
a graduate student in Clark Universitys International Development and Social Change program,
March 2017, "For function or transformation? A critical discourse analysis of education under
the Sustainable Development Goals", http://www.jceps.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/15-
1-9-i.pdf, DOA: 4-12-2017) //Snowball
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the
way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced and resisted by
text and talk in the social and political context (Van Dijk, p. 352). The underlying philosophy of CDA is that
language is a form of social practice that establishes and reinforces societal power relations.
Based on this assumption, CDA denies the possibility of a neutral and rationalist view of the world, instead
viewing the use of language as highly political. If language is the medium through which
hidden power relations are constructed and reinforced, discourse refers to the specific way in
which language is used, in combination with thought and action. According to Gee (1990), discourse is a socially
accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting that can be
used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or a social network (p.1). By virtue of
belonging to a certain group, discourses are highly constructed, as expressed by Stuart Hall (1992) who maintains that a
discourse is a group of statements which provide a language for talking about i.e. a way of
representing a particular kind of knowledge about a topic (1992, p. 201). Hall (1992) further notes that the
construction of a particular discourse limits the other ways in which the topic can be
constructed (p. 201). Halls perceptions of discourse are, of course, reflective of the Foucauldian
conception of discourse as being rooted in the belief that power constructs knowledge, which
in turn shapes discourse and social reality. Dominant ideas, concepts, and facts, therefore, are shaped and
disseminated by those in power, and reinforced by dominant structures. By legitimating and
normalizing these ideologies, dominant structures obscure the relationship between power
and ideology, and ultimately maintain power hierarchies. The notion of critical in CDA is derived
from the Frankfurt School and Jrgen Habermas. Critical theory, from the perspective of the Frankfurt School, claims that social
theory should be oriented towards critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to
traditional theory which is oriented solely towards understanding or explaining society. This understanding of critical theory is based on the
beliefs that critical theory should be directed at the totality of society in its historical specificity, and that it should improve the understanding
of society by taking an integrative approach to analysis (Wodak and Meyer, 2009, p.6). Consequently, critical
discourse analysis
of policy initiatives serves the broader social change goal. When applied to policy texts and
initiatives, CDA can be used as a tool to deconstruct and examine the dominant and marginalized
discourses produced from the policy making process. In practice, CDA includes a detailed textual analysis at
the level of the policy text while also situating the analysis within broader economic and political
contexts and institutions (Luke, 1997). By exploring the relationship between a) discursive practices, events and texts, and b) the
wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes, CDA exposes how policies arise out of and are shaped by
asymmetrical relations of power of competing discourses. (Fairclough, 1995, p.135). The purpose of a critical
discourse analysis is to understand how discourses emerge, and how they become hegemonic and re-contextualized, and finally, how they
become operationalized (Simons et al., 2009, p. 62). Rizvi and Lingard (2009) articulate that in
order to analyze policy, one
must understand policy as not merely a specific policy document or text, but as both a
process and a product; it involves the production of the text, the text itself, ongoing
modifications to the text, and processes of implementation into practice. (Rizvi and Lingard, 2009, p. 5).
As we use CDA, then, we aim to: a) contextualize production of the SDGs generally and thus how they privilege certain values; b) analyze how a
particular discourse gains power over (an)other discourses; and c) analyze what interests the dominant discourse(s) serve and decipher spaces
for contestation. In this way, we
can reveal the positions that the utilitarian or transformative
educational discourses occupy and the process by which this takes place, as well as the extent to which
SDG4 challenges or works within the dominant prevailing neoliberal social order.
4/13/17
 School Suspension Good
Their causal chain is backwards socio-environmental conditions
engineer deviant behavior before schools could even respond to it
at best, thats a huge alternate cause.
Barron, S. (2017, April 12). Students should be removed from school if they hinder education. Retrieved April 12, 2017, from http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/students-
removed-school-hinder-education-article-1.3045191

Reformers have linked school suspension to mass incarceration, and claim that schools function as racist
institutions that funnel young, nonwhite males into jails and prisons. School suspension, according to this argument, inhibits educational development, pathologizes behavior that is considered

students who are disciplined by

harmless when performed by white students, and leads inexorably to increased dropout rates. We often hear that

schools are also more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system, or similar statements
implying a causative link between school suspension and future criminal justice involvement.
But critics are just confusing cause and effect here: It isnt discipline that is causing deviance.
Rather, kids from pathogenic backgrounds exposed to early violence may develop antisocial tendencies that are
expressed throughout their lives. Moreover, a major 2014 study in the Journal of Criminal Justice concluded that teacher bias has no role in suspension rates by
race.

Also, school suspension is key to preserving a functional learning

environment in the end, we must protect the collective good of the
classroom over individual student welfare.
Barron, S. (2017, April 12). Students should be removed from school if they hinder education. Retrieved April 12, 2017, from http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/students-
removed-school-hinder-education-article-1.3045191

Orderliness in the classroom is a prerequisite for learning. Even the most open, child-centered,
collaborative pedagogy requires schoolchildren to communicate calmly, respect their peers
and take direction from their teachers. Reformers have linked school suspension to mass incarceration, and claim that schools function as racist
institutions that funnel young, nonwhite males into jails and prisons. School suspension, according to this argument, inhibits educational development, pathologizes behavior that is considered
harmless when performed by white students, and leads inexorably to increased dropout rates. We often hear that students who are disciplined by schools are also more likely to end up in the
juvenile justice system, or similar statements implying a causative link between school suspension and future criminal justice involvement. But critics are just confusing cause and effect here: It
isnt discipline that is causing deviance. Rather, kids from pathogenic backgrounds exposed to early violence may develop antisocial tendencies that are expressed throughout their lives.
Moreover, a major 2014 study in the Journal of Criminal Justice concluded that teacher bias has no role in suspension rates by race. Is suspending a 7-year-old for nine weeks an ideal policy? As a

when unruly kids are unable to

general rule, probably not, although in this current case the student was receiving alternate instruction while suspended. But

accommodate themselves to classroom structure, the resulting disruption means that 25 other
kids are denied their right to an education. And that is fundamentally more unjust than
temporarily separating one kid from the classroom environment.
4/14/17
 U.S. Scores Bad
U.S. elementary and secondary students are not competitive on international
tests
DeSilver 17 - (Drew DeSilver, Senior Writer at Pew, Feb. 15, 2017, "U.S. students academic
achievement still lags that of their peers in many other countries",
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-
science/, DOA: 4-13-2017) //Snowball
How do U.S. students compare with their peers around the world? Recently released data from
international math and science assessments indicate that U.S. students continue to rank around the
middle of the pack, and behind many other advanced industrial nations. One of the biggest cross-national
tests is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which every three years measures reading ability,
math and science literacy and other key skills among 15-year-olds in dozens of developed and developing countries.
The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in
math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors
the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science . Younger American students fare somewhat
better on a similar cross-national assessment, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. That study, known as TIMSS, has
tested students in grades four and eight every four years since 1995. In the most recent tests, from 2015, 10
countries (out of 48 total) had statistically higher average fourth-grade math scores than the U.S.,
while seven countries had higher average science scores. In the eighth-grade tests, seven out of 37 countries had
statistically higher average math scores than the U.S., and seven had higher science scores. Another long-running testing
effort is the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a project of the federal Education Department. In the most recent NAEP
results, from 2015, average math scores for fourth- and eighth-graders fell for the first time since 1990. A team from
Rutgers University is analyzing the NAEP data to try to identify the reasons for the drop in math scores. The average fourth-grade NAEP math
score in 2015 was 240 (on a scale of 0 to 500), the same level as in 2009 and down from 242 in 2013. The average eighth-grade score was 282 in
2015, compared with 285 in 2013; that score was the lowest since 2007. (The NAEP has only tested 12th-graders in math four times since 2005;
their 2015 average score of 152 on a 0-to-300 scale was one point lower than in 2013 and 2009.) Looked at another way, the
2015 NAEP
rated 40% of fourth-graders, 33% of eighth-graders and 25% of 12th-graders as proficient or
advanced in math. While far fewer fourth- and eighth-graders now rate at below basic, the lowest performance level (18% and
29%, respectively, versus 50% and 48% in 1990), improvement in the top levels appears to have stalled out .
(Among 12th-graders, 38% scored at the lowest performance level in math, a point lower than in 2005.) NAEP also tests U.S. students on
science, though not as regularly, and the limited results available indicate some improvement. Between 2009 and 2015, the average scores of
both fourth- and eight-graders improved from 150 to 154 (on a 0-to-300 scale), although for 12th-graders the average score remained at 150. In
2015, 38% of fourth-graders, 34% of eighth-graders and 22% of 12th-graders were rated proficient or better in science; 24% of fourth-graders,
32% of eighth-graders and 40% of 12th-graders were rated below basic. These
results likely wont surprise too many
people. In a 2015 Pew Research Center report, only 29% of Americans rated their countrys K-12 education in
science, technology, engineering and mathematics (known as STEM) as above average or the best in the world. Scientists
were even more critical: A companion survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that
just 16% called U.S. K-12 STEM education the best or above average; 46%, in contrast, said K-12 STEM in
the U.S. was below average.
4/15/17
 Military Bases Bad
Overseas military bases are counter-productive 7 reasons
Glaser 16 - (John Glaser is Associate Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, 10-
7-2016, "Why We Should Close America's Overseas Military Bases",
http://time.com/4511744/american-military-bases-overseas/, DOA: 4-15-2017) //Snowball
*1. Dont protect homeland, 2. Deterrence doesnt work, 3. Dont solve prolif, 4. Make others
resent U.S., 5. Make U.S. support rights violations, 6. Risk war entanglements through security
guarantees, 7. Technology makes deployment obsolete
Despite our unorthodox presidential election, Americas overseas military bases are largely taken for granted in todays
foreign policy debates. The U.S. maintains a veritable empire of military bases throughout the worldabout 800 of
them in more than 70 countries. Many view our bases as a symbol of our status as the dominant world
power. But Americas forward-deployed military posture incurs substantial costs and
disadvantages, exposing the U.S. to vulnerabilities and unintended consequences. Our overseas
bases simply do not pay enough dividends when it comes to core national interests. Here are seven reasons why its time
to close them. 1. They don't protect the homeland from direct attack. U.S. leaders often argue
that bases are the centerpiece of a liberal, rules-based world order. They claim that bases in Europe protect
European allies from Russia, bases in the Middle East ensure the free flow of oil and contain Iranian influence, and bases in Asia defend our
Asian allies from a rising China and an unstable North Korea. But stationing
80,000 troops at 350 installations in
Europe is not directly related to securing Americans physical safety. The same goes for the more than
154,000 active-duty personnel based throughout Asia. And the argument that maintaining a forward-deployed
military posture in the Middle East protects the free flow of oil is supported by pitifully sparse
empirical evidence. If we brought our troops home, we wouldnt be much more or less safe
than we are now. Thats mostly because we are already the strongest nation economically and militarily by far and
probably the most secure great power in history, isolated from other powerful states by two
great oceans and protected with an arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons. On top of that, the
world is a safer place these days. Interstate conflict has declined dramatically in recent
decades and may even be on a path to obsolescence for reasons that have little to do with all
these military bases. 2. Their deterrence effect is overrated. The deterrence value of bases is frequently
exaggerated. Even during the Cold War, as Robert Johnson has argued, the Soviet threat was subject to undue alarmism, and even
without American forces deployed in Western Europe, a Soviet attack was extremely unlikely. According to international relations scholar
Robert Jervis, The Soviet archives have yet to reveal any serious plans for unprovoked aggression against Western Europe, not to mention a
first strike on the United States. Deterrence can also sometimes have the opposite of the intended effect. For
example, many see the U.S. military presence in Europe as deterring Russian military aggression, but
Russias interventions in places like Georgia and Ukraine derive more from Russian insecurities about the
expansion of U.S.-led Western economic and military institutions than from signs of American
weakness or insufficient military presence in Eastern Europe. Post-Cold War NATO expansion, in particular, is the source
of profound anxiety and lingering resentment in Moscow that arguably makes things less stable, not more. 3. They don't always
effectively prevent nuclear proliferation. Another core argument is that the U.S.s forward
presence prevents arms races, particularly nuclear proliferation, by reassuring allies . The record on
that score is mixed. While U.S. security guarantees to countries like Japan and South Korea have likely dissuaded them from developing nuclear
weapons, thosesame guarantees can provoke nuclear proliferation in other regional actors, like
North Korea. Prior to the recent nuclear deal, Iran built up its nuclear program in large part as a deterrent
to threatening nearby U.S. bases. And allied countries, like Britain, France, and Israel, acquired nukes
despite the protection of in-country or nearby U.S. bases. 4. They can encourage resentment.
Local resentment over the presence of foreign military bases can linger for generations, as was the case
when in 1991 the Philippine Senate assailed [the U.S. military presence] as a vestige of colonialism and an affront to Philippine sovereignty,
and President Corazon C. Aquino ordered full withdrawal. And this past June in Japan, 65,000 Okinawans protested in the streets against the
U.S. presence there. Sometimes such resentment can be extreme. According to Chicago Universitys Robert Pape, the principal cause
of suicide terrorism is resistance to foreign occupation. Indeed, the presence of U.S. military
bases in Saudi Arabia was one of the most prominent grievances cited by al-Qaeda pre-9/11
in order to rally Muslims against America. And since the surge in U.S. military presence in the region
post-9/11, terrorist attacks on troops and bases in the Middle East have dramatically increased.
5. They can cause the U.S. to support brutal dictatorships. In Uzbekistan , the recently deceased dictator
Islam Karimov was famous for massacres and widespread torture, yet nevertheless received U.S.
backing in exchange for basing rights. During the Arab Spring in Bahrain, where the U.S. Navys Fifth Fleet is stationed, the
regime cracked down on peaceful dissent with gross human rights violations . But Washington
kept largely silent (and willing to continue sending money and arms to the regime) because
the base is considered so geopolitically important. 6. They risk entangling us in unnecessary
wars. U.S. bases often cause officials to urge American intervention wherever conflict might
break out. But this risks entangling us in foreign wars that are none of our business. If conflict
breaks out over maritime or territorial disputes in the East and South China Sea, the U.S. may be
obligated to intervene against China to fulfill its security guarantee to Taiwan, Japan, or the
Philippines. Getting into a war with China over some uninhabited rocks of no strategic importance to us is
not in our interests. Before the nuclear deal with Iran, there was apparently a real risk Israel would
preventively strike one of Irans nuclear facilities. Because of American promises to fight for
Israel, U.S. bases in Bahrain would have been a priority target in Iranian retaliatory
strikes.That would have brought us into another desperate quagmire in the Middle East,
which is frankly the last thing we need. 7. Technology has largely made them obsolete. Some
argue that bases allow rapid military response. Thats certainly true to some extent. But modern military
technology has significantly reduced the problems of travel times over long distances. According
to a recent RAND Corporation report, lighter ground forces can deploy by air from the United States
almost as quickly as they can from within a region. Long-range bombers can fly missions up to 9,000 miles, and after
that they can be refueled in the air, reducing the need to have in-place forces abroad. The bottom line is that troops can deploy to
virtually any region fast enough to be based right here in America.But even this misses the point. We
shouldnt be intervening militarily all over the world unless there is a clear and present
danger to U.S. security. Despite the habitual threat inflation in our politics and punditry, the
world is increasingly peaceful, and the U.S. is exceptionally insulated from foreign dangers.
Our remarkable level of security simply doesnt call for such an activist foreign policy .
4/16/17
 Military Bases Bad (Part 2)
Overseas bases are net negative laundry list.
Vine 15 - (David Vine, assistant professor of anthropology at American University, in
Washington, DC, 9-14-2015, "The United States Probably Has More Foreign Military Bases Than
Any Other People, Nation, or Empire in History", https://www.thenation.com/article/the-
united-states-probably-has-more-foreign-military-bases-than-any-other-people-nation-or-
empire-in-history/, DOA: 4-15-2017) //Snowball
As Johnson showed us, there are many reasons to question the overseas base status quo. The most
obvious one is economic. Garrisons overseas are very expensive. According to the RAND Corporation, even when
host countries like Japan and Germany cover some of the costs, US taxpayers still pay an annual average of
$10,000 to $40,000 more per year to station a member of the military abroad than in the United
States. The expense of transportation, the higher cost of living in some host countries, and the need to
provide schools, hospitals, housing, and other support to family members of military personnel mean that
the dollars add up quicklyespecially with more than half a million troops, family members, and civilian
employees on bases overseas at any time. By my very conservative calculations, maintaining installations and
troops overseas cost at least $85 billion in 2014more than the discretionary budget of every
government agency except the Defense Department itself. If the US presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is included,
that bill reaches $156 billion or more. While bases may be costly for taxpayers, they are extremely profitable for the
countrys privateers of twenty-first-century war like DynCorp International and former Halliburton subsidiary KBR. As Chalmers
Johnson noted, Our installations abroad bring profits to civilian industries, which win billions in contracts annually to build and maintain our
far-flung outposts. Meanwhile, many of the communities hosting bases overseas never see the economic
windfalls that US and local leaders regularly promise. Some areas, especially in poor rural communities, have seen short-
term economic booms touched off by base construction. In the long-term, however, most bases rarely create sustainable,
healthy local economies. Compared with other forms of economic activity, they represent unproductive uses of
land, employ relatively few people for the expanses occupied, and contribute little to local economic
growth. Research has consistently shown that when bases finally close, the economic impact is generally
limited and in some cases actually positivethat is, local communities can end up better off when they trade
bases for housing, schools, shopping complexes, and other forms of economic development. Meanwhile for the United States,
investing taxpayer dollars in the construction and maintenance of overseas bases means
forgoing investments in areas like education, transportation, housing, and healthcare, despite
the fact that these industries are more of a boon to overall economic productivity and create
more jobs compared to equivalent military spending. Think about what $85 billion per year
would mean in terms of rebuilding the countrys crumbling civilian infrastructure. THE HUMAN TOLL Beyond the
financial costs are the human ones. The families of military personnel are among those who suffer from
the spread of overseas bases given the strain of distant deployments, family separations, and frequent moves.
Overseas bases also contribute to the shocking rates of sexual assault in the military: an estimated 30% of
servicewomen are victimized during their time in the military and a disproportionate number of these
crimes happen at bases abroad. Outside the base gates, in places like South Korea, one often finds
exploitative prostitution industries geared to US military personnel. Worldwide, bases have
caused widespread environmental damage because of toxic leaks, accidents, and in some cases
the deliberate dumping of hazardous materials. GI crime has long angered locals. In Okinawa and elsewhere, US
troops have repeatedly committed horrific acts of rape against local women. From Greenland to the
tropical island of Diego Garcia, the military has displaced local peoples from their lands to build its bases.
In contrast to frequently invoked rhetoric about spreading democracy, the military has shown a preference for
establishing bases in undemocratic and often despotic states like Qatar and Bahrain. In Iraq, Afghanistan, and
Saudi Arabia, US bases have created fertile breeding grounds for radicalism and anti-Americanism.
The presence of bases near Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia was a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and part of Osama bin Ladens professed
motivation for the September 11, 2001, attacks. Although this kind of perpetual
turmoil is little noticed at home,
bases abroad have all too often generate grievances, protest, and antagonistic relationships .
Although few here recognize it, our bases are a major part of the image the United States presents to the
worldand they often show us in an extremely unflattering light.
4/17/17
 Education Complexity K Impact
Educational complexity solves global challenges.
Fadel, Bialik, and Trilling 15 - (Charles Fadel is a global education thought leader and
expert, Maya Bialik is a writer, editor, and research manager at CCR, Bernie Trilling is founder
and CEO of 21st Century Learning Advisors and the former Global Director of the Oracle
Education Foundation, 2015, "Four-Dimensional Education", DOA: 4-17-2017) //Snowball
//graph omitted
What can we as individuals, and collectively as a society, do to ensure that we have a positive effect on the
world? The goals for a better future can widely be agreed upon: more peaceful, sustainable societies,
comprised of more personally fulfilled people, making full use of their potential. These same goals
can be thought of in a number of wayshigh levels of civic and social engagement, personal health and
wellbeing, employment in good quality jobs, economic productivity, ecological sustainability,
and so on. Educating our children, in theory, is meant to prepare them to fit in with the world of
the future, empowering them to actively work to improve it further. Yet there is growing evidence (as we will see later)
from scientific studies, from employer surveys, from widespread public opinion, and from
educators themselves, that our education systems, globally, are not delivering fully on this
promise students are often not adequately prepared to succeed in todays, let alone
tomorrows, world. One reason is that the world continues to transform dramatically, while
education is not adapting quickly enough to meet all the demands these transformations are bringing. The
challenges and opportunities of today are starkly different from those of the Industrial
Revolution, when the first blueprint for a then-modern education system was crafted. They are even different from the
challenges of just a couple of decades ago, before the Internet. The worlds new, electronic hyper-
connectedness poses an entirely new breed and scale of potential problems. We can see these new
problems in recent events such as the 2008 global economic recession. In the past, when a small number
of banks in one country may have had difficulties, each had to suffer the consequences alone;
now, when one part of a system fails, the negative consequences propagate throughout our
interwoven economic systems, causing major problems worldwide. Our social systems, now
connected into vast, global communication ecosystems, are more vulnerable to widespread
global disruptions; they have grown large and fragile. 1 On top of that, we are struggling to
reconcile our hopes and expectations of economic growth with overpopulation,
overconsumption, and their consequences on our climate and resources. The World Economic
Forum recently brought together experts in economics, geopolitics, sociology, technology, and environmental sciences,
and from business, academia, NGOs, and governments, to compile a list of the most pressing world trends and
challenges. They graphed the interconnections between these various trends, highlighting important connections, such as the links
between rising income disparity and dramatic increases in the risks from social instability, as shown in Figure 1.1.2 These trends and risks
are not ones we could have predicted 50 years ago, and they will continue to interact and
evolve in unexpected and unpredictable ways. Meanwhile students continue to study the
same curriculum, not prepared to face the challenges in our world.
4/18/17
 Music K2 Education
Music education is an important catalyst to general student
development heres a laundry list of benefits.
Recorder, C. (2017, April 16). Music education honored at Walton-Verona. Retrieved April 17, 2017, from http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/local/boone-
county/2017/04/16/music-education-honored-walton-verona/100554076/

The NAMM Foundation designated 527 of the nations 13,515 school districts this year as Best Communities for Music Education and 92 individual schools as SupportMusic Merit Award winners.

comprehensive music education. The designation takes on added

These districts and schools set the bar in offering students access to

significance this year with new research showing strong ties between K-12 school students
who actively participate in school music education programs and overall student success. A
recent study of students in the Chicago Public Schools by brain researchers at Northwestern University, detailed in Neuroscientist and Education Week, builds on
previous findings that participation in music education programs helps improves brain
function, discipline and language development. The links between student success and music
education have now been demonstrated by brain researchers in multiple studies, said Mary Luehrsen of
The NAMM Foundation. The schools and districts our foundation recognizes are building on that connection between music and academics. These schools and districts are models for other

educators who see music as a key ingredient in a well-rounded curriculum that makes music available to all children, regardless of ZIP
code.
4/19/17
 Education Solves Extinction
Current educational trends are leading to resource overconsumption and
human extinction.
Fadel, Bialik, and Trilling 15 - (Charles Fadel is a global education thought leader and
expert, Maya Bialik is a writer, editor, and research manager at CCR, Bernie Trilling is founder
and CEO of 21st Century Learning Advisors and the former Global Director of the Oracle
Education Foundation, 2015, "Four-Dimensional Education", DOA: 4-17-2017) //Snowball
//graphs omitted
The magnitude of the change of scale in human impacts is a relatively new development. Our global human
population has, historically speaking, only recently exploded to an unsustainable rate. 3 Since we are
all in a globally interconnected and interdependent network of life-support systems, this
population explosion has large consequences. Our societies are caught up in a web of
consumption and competition patterns, and we are rapidly using up the resources we rely on to
survive. Globally, the average resources we now use in one year take the earth about 1.5 years to
produce.4 Depending on a countrys lifestyle and degree of consumption, the land needed to support its level of
resource use can translate into the number of earths we would need to support all of
humanity, if everyone on the planet consumed resources at the rate of that one country (as seen in Figure 1.3). 5According to a number of
scientists, we have already effected environmental changes that could cause our extinction.
There are many historic examples of similar collective human dead-end actions operating on
smaller scales. The tribes of Easter Island competed with each other so fiercely (including the competitive creation of the iconic massive
statues) that they used up all the available resources on the island, and their civilization collapsed. According to evolutionary biologist Jared
Diamond, the parallels between the downfall of civilization on Easter Island and todays world
are chillingly obvious. In his book, Collapse, he follows the arcs of several civilizations that have vanished, and shows the
similarities between them and our global civilization today. Diamond writes:

Because we are rapidly advancing along this non-sustainable course, the worlds
environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes
of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will
become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our
choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics, and collapses of
societies.6
The survival of the human race depends on our ability to put our knowledge into action
across disciplines and political divides. Education can be a powerful tool for survival, but the
competencies to meet these challenges are currently not being taught consistently and
effectively.
4/20/17
 Digital Game Based Learning
Educational computer games promote better knowledge of computer science
than traditional methods of teaching- data analyses prove
Papastergiou 09 Marina Papastergiou, Department of Physical Education and Sport Science,
University of Thessaly, Karyes, Digital Game-Based Learning in high school Computer Science
education: Impact on educational effectiveness and student motivation, Computers &
Education 52 (2009) 112, doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2008.06.004, VM
The aim of this study was to assess the learning effectiveness and motivational appeal of a
computer game for learning computer memory concepts, which was designed according to
the curricular objectives and the subject matter of the Greek high school Computer Science
(CS) curriculum, as compared to a similar application, encompassing identical learning
objectives and content but lacking the gaming aspect. The study also investigated potential gender differences in
the games learning effectiveness and motivational appeal. The sample was 88 students, who were randomly
assigned to two groups, one of which used the gaming application (Group A, N = 47) and the
other one the non-gaming one (Group B, N = 41). A Computer Memory Knowledge Test
(CMKT) was used as the pretest and posttest. Students were also observed during the
interventions. Furthermore, after the interventions, students views on the application they
had used were elicited through a feedback questionnaire. Data analyses showed that the
gaming approach was both more effective in promoting students knowledge of computer
memory concepts and more motivational than the non-gaming approach. Despite boys
greater involvement with, liking of and experience in computer gaming, and their greater
initial computer memory knowledge, the learning gains that boys and girls achieved through
the use of the game did not differ significantly, and the game was found to be equally
motivational for boys and girls. The results suggest that within high school CS, educational
computer games can be exploited as effective and motivational learning environments,
regardless of students gender.

Specifically, its more motivational and engages student interest more in the
learning process- not just in CS, but in math and science as well
Papastergiou 09 Marina Papastergiou, Department of Physical Education and Sport Science,
University of Thessaly, Karyes, Digital Game-Based Learning in high school Computer Science
education: Impact on educational effectiveness and student motivation, Computers &
Education 52 (2009) 112, doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2008.06.004, VM
The study demonstrated that the DGBL approach was both more effective in promoting
students knowledge of computer memory concepts and more motivational for students than
the non-gaming approach. It can, thus, be concluded that educational computer games can be
exploited as learning environments within high school CS courses, given that, as deduced
from this study, they can considerably improve both knowledge of the embedded subject
matter and student enjoyment, engagement and interest in the learning process. Those
findings seem to support the outcomes of certain prior studies (Klawe, 1999; Rosas et al.,
2003) and those of a very recent study (Ke & Grabowski, 2007) on school children, which
showed that educational computer games contributed to increased academic achievement
and motivation compared to traditional teaching in areas such as mathematics and science .
However, the findings of the present study are perhaps a stronger indicator in favour of
DGBL, given that in this study: (a) DGBL was not compared to traditional teaching, which
students find boring (Prensky, 2003), but to another appealing form of ICT-based learning,
and (b) the participants were not children, but adolescents who are more difficult to engage
in school learning and harder to motivate than children (e.g. Eccles & Midgley, 1989). In
addition, they suggest that DGBL can be effective in a variety of subjects other than
computer programming in which games have so far been exploited within scholastic CS
education which are included in scholastic CS curricula, and which require factual
knowledge and conceptual understanding, such as the topic of computer memory. Regarding
gender issues, as shown in the study, despite the fact that the boys of the sample exhibited significantly
greater involvement with, liking of and experience in computer gaming outside school as well
as significantly greater initial knowledge of the embedded subject matter, and greater
interaction among them during the intervention, the learning gains that boys and girls
achieved through the use of the game did not differ significantly. Furthermore, no significant
gender differences were found in students views on the overall appeal, quality of user
interface, and educational value of the game used. It can, thus, be concluded that, within high school CS education,
DGBL can be equally effective and motivational for boys and girls. Those findings contrast the findings of certain previous studies into school
children which showed that computer games were more effective with boys than with girls (De Jean et al., 1999; Young & Upitis, 1999) and
meet the outcomes of a recent study into school children (Ke & Grabowski, 2007), which found that gender did not influence the learning
effectiveness and motivational appeal of games.
4/21/17
 AT: Plan is Bipartisan
No education bipartisanship.
Camera 17 - (Lauren Camera, Education Reporter, 2-9-2017, "Bipartisan Education Politics a
Thing of the Past", https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2017-02-
09/bipartisan-education-politics-a-thing-of-the-past, DOA: 4-21-2017) //Snowball
When Congress passed a sprawling rewrite of the federal education law at the tail-end of 2015, it was hailed as a "Christmas miracle."
Drafted, negotiated and passed by members on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers, the Every
Student Succeeds Act, which overhauled the widely reviled No Child Left Behind by returning much of the authority over education
to states, stood out as a shining example of bipartisanship in an ever-partisan, log jammed
political system. A little more than a year later, that milieu of goodwill in the education sphere has seemingly
evaporated. We have been able to work together well for the past two years, and its because we have worked in
good faith and across party lines to make sure we have what we needed to proceed, Sen. Patty
Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Senate education committee, said prior to the committee vote that
cleared billionaire school-choice advocate Betsy DeVos, now Secretary of Education, for consideration by the full Senate. Confirming
DeVos in spite of staunch Democratic opposition, she warned committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., was
a massive break with that strong bipartisan record, and it will dramatically impact our ability
to work together in good faith going forward. Alexander, for his part, accused Democrats of unfairly holding up DeVos'
confirmation process. While DeVos' contentious confirmation garnered the lions share of media attention, across the Capitol and out of the
spotlight House
Republicans were moving on something just as noteworthy: They passed two,
separate resolutions that would block the Department of Education from implementing rules
set by the Obama administration.
4/22/17
 Funding Fails
Increasing funding doesnt affect anything its wasted dollars
Singman 17 - (Brooke Singman, Reporter, 1-25-2017, "Education Department report finds
billions spent under Obama had 'no impact' on achievement",
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/25/education-department-report-finds-billions-
spent-under-obama-had-no-impact-on-achievement.html, DOA: 4-22-2017) //Snowball
The Obama administration pumped more than $7 billion into an education program, first authorized under President
George W. Bush, that had no impact on student achievement according to a report released by the
Department of Education in the final days of the 44th presidents term. The Department of Educations findings were contained in
its School Improvement Grants: Implementation and Effectiveness report. The study could energize the debate over
national education policy just as the Senate considers President Trumps controversial pick to lead the department, Betsy
DeVos, an outspoken school choice advocate who has questioned the way federal education dollars are
spent. The timing of this report is so important and so interesting this could have a positive influence on her confirmation, American
Enterprise Institute resident fellow Andy Smarick told Fox News. The School Improvement Grants (SIG) program, first
introduced in 2001 under the Bush administration, was created to fund reforms in the countrys lowest-performing
schools with the goal of improving student achievement in test scores and graduation rates. The program
directed money to schools with low academic achievement and graduation rates below 60 percent for high schools, among other factors. SIG
was canceled under recently passed legislation, though similar funding can still be sought by school districts. SIG was first funded in 2007,
receiving $616 million under Bush. But it wasnt until 2009, when the Obama administration designated $3.5
billion to the program through the stimulus, that funding soared. The administration continued to
pump more than $500 million annually to the program for the rest of his presidency. The report, though,
focused on data from nearly 500 schools in 22 states that received SIG funding, and concluded
the program had no significant impact on reading or math test scores; high school
graduation; or college enrollment. Overall, we found that the SIG program had no impact on student achievement, co-
author of the report Lisa Dragoset told Fox News. The authors are non-partisan researchers in the Education
Department, according to Tom Wei, project officer from the departments Institute of Education Sciences.
4/23/17
 Funding K2 Solvency
Educational financial needs have outpaced natural economic growth
increased funding is thus a prerequisite to successful education policy.
Jibson , R. (2017, April 22). Tribune Op-ed: Modern society demands excellence in education. Retrieved April 23, 2017, from http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/5198929-155/tribune-op-
ed-modern-society-demands-excellence

consensus presents a chance to bring real change to our schools. But the programs to
This level of

implement each of these policies require funding, and currently there is not enough available to make
a meaningful investment. As our economy grows, so does the need for more infrastructure and
an education system to serve more students. Funding for education from economic growth has
been insufficient in reducing teacher turnover and improving academic outcomes. It's clear
additional revenue sources are essential to elevate education in Utah. In order to maintain Utah's
quality of life, strengthen our economy, and provide students with opportunities for future
success, a significant investment in education is imperative. Failing to do so will drive away
top-notch teaching candidates, suppress student potential, and keep high-paying careers away
from Utah.
4/24/17
 STEM k2 Innovation
STEM efforts are failing now among minorities and in rural areas- but STEM
education is key to innovation, competitiveness, and national security and the
need is only growing
DOE 16 US Department of Education (DOE), Office of Innovation and Improvement,
September 2016, STEM 2026, A Vision for Innovation in STEM Education,
https://innovation.ed.gov/files/2016/09/AIR-STEM2026_Report_2016.pdf, VM
Understanding the Need for a Bold Vision in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education for Lifelong Learning This
report describes a vision (hereafter referred to as STEM 2026) for the future of STEM education, preschool12th grade (P12) and beyond.
STEM 2026 is aspirational but builds on the priorities the Obama Administration has established on improving innovation and equitable access
to high-quality learning experiences in these critical fields. The key components of the vision resulted from a series of workshops and
discussions held in 2015 that were organized by the U.S. Department of Education (the Department), with support from American Institutes for
Research (AIR). Nearly 30 individuals representing a wide diversity of expertise, experience, and perspectives were invited to exchange
knowledge and ideas for leveraging the opportunities of today to design a possible future of STEM education. This vision is not intended to
prescribe a set of activities or practices. Rather,
STEM 2026 is meant to start a conversation about
opportunities for innovation, and propel research and development that can build a stronger
evidence base for what works in various contexts, best serves diverse learners, and motivates
action toward achieving transformative change. As recognized in the Every Child Succeeds Act (ESSA), President
Obamas Computer Science for All initiative, and the competitive priority to focus attention on STEM in several of the Departments
discretionary grant programs, STEM
is a crucial component of a well-rounded education for all
studentsan education that provides access to science, social studies, literature, the arts,
physical education and health, and the opportunity to learn an additional language. The
process of learning and practicing the STEM disciplines can instill in students a passion for
inquiry and discovery and fosters skills such as persistence, teamwork, and the application of
gained knowledge to new situations (Bailey et al., 2015; Betrus, 2015). Experts contend that
these are the types of growth mindsets and habits that demonstrate ones capacity for
academic tenacity and lifelong learning in a rapidly changing world (Dweck, Walton, & Cohen,
2014; Sharples, 2000). A strong STEM educationone that results in the skills and mindsets
just described and opens the door for lifelong learningstarts as early as preschool, is
culturally responsive, employs problem- and inquiry-based approaches, and engages students
in hands-on activities that offer opportunities to interact with STEM professionals. The
development of and adherence to these types of STEM teaching and learning practices is not
widespread, however, and opportunity gaps persist throughout the education system. The
inequities in STEM education along racial and ethnic, linguistic, cultural, socioeconomic,
gender, disability, and geographic lines are especially troubling because of the powerful role a
foundational STEM education can play and because the gaps are so pronounced in STEM.
According to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Issue Brief Civil Rights
Data Collection: Data Snapshot: College and Career Readiness (2014), the STEM fields are the
gateway to Americas continued economic competitiveness and national security, and the
price of admission to higher education and higher standards of living for the countrys
historically underrepresented populations (p. 2). Recent analyses indicate that during the
next five years, major American companies will need to add a total of nearly 1.6 million
employees to their workforce: 945,000 who possess basic STEM literacy and 635,000 who
demonstrate advanced STEM knowledge (Business Roundtable & Change the Equation,
2014).5 Other data suggest that at least 20 percent of U.S. jobs require a high level of
knowledge in any one STEM field (Rothwell, 2013).6 Even outside of the traditional STEM job
sector, there is a need for STEM competencies and skills. Data show that the set of core
cognitive knowledge, skills, and abilities that are associated with a STEM education are in
demand in nearly all job sectors and occupations (Carnevale, Smith, & Melton, 2011;
Rothwell, 2013). Presently, policies and practices that ensure equitable access to the best STEM teaching and learning are not
widespread. States, districts, and schools struggle to provide all students with the STEM experiences required for the 21st century, regardless of
college and career aspirations. In particular, state and local education agencies and school-level educators struggle to close persistent
achievement gaps in core subjects like mathematics and science. National
Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP)7 results, for example, show that, compared with 43 percent of White students and 61
percent of Asian students, just 13 percent and 19 percent of Black and Hispanic students,
respectively, are scoring at or above proficiency in eighth-grade mathematics. NAEP data also show
that other underrepresented groups also perform below their White and Asian peer groups. In eighth-grade science, 45 percent and 46 percent
of White and Asian students, respectively, perform at or above proficiency, compared with 20 percent or less of racial and ethnic minorities.
NAEP performance gaps in mathematics and science also are evident by gender and are troublingly stark by student disability, English learner
(EL) status, and free or reduced-price lunch eligibility status. Eighth-grade students with disabilities and students eligible for free or reduced-
price lunch scored nearly 30 points below their peers in science and mathematics; EL students, nearly 40 and 50 points below their peers in
mathematics and science, respectively. Although gaps are narrowing in mathematics between girls and boys, performance trends over time
continue to show higher percentages of males than females scoring at or above proficiency in the last 10 years. In science, the gender gaps
have remained largely static from 20092011. Data
show that rural schools also are especially challenged in
meeting student performance benchmarks in mathematics and science. Rural children from
lower socioeconomic status families often start kindergarten with lower mathematics
achievement and make less progress during elementary and middle school than their
suburban and urban peers (Graham & Provost, 2012). Rural schools typically are challenged in
their education improvement efforts by geographic isolation, fewer numbers of experienced
teachers, and fewer resources (Boyer, 2006).
4/25/17
 K-12 Education Failing
U.S. K-12 public education is failing
McNealy 16 - (Scott McNealy, Former CEO of Sun Microsystems, 8-1-2016, "Our public
education system 'is failing': Scott McNealy", http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/09/our-public-
education-system-is-failing-scott-mcnealy-commentary.html, DOA: 4-12-2017) //Snowball
The major stakeholders in K-12 public education are at an impasse. Teachers' Unions are
primarily concerned with self-preservation, maintaining extravagant perks for union
administrators and exerting disproportionate political influence. A handful of publishing
houses sell us $8 billion worth of warmed- over text books every year. Testing companies
collectively spent tens of millions lobbying in states and on Capitol Hill from 2009 to 2014.
These politically powerful, entrenched special interests are heavily invested in maintaining
the failing status quo. The U.S. is falling behind other countries in test scores across a broad
range of subjects and grade levels. Polls show growing public dissatisfaction with everything
from school choice, classroom sizes, aging infrastructure, standardized testing and
curriculum. Everyone can criticize our government's public education system, with
justification. Based on any rational review of the facts, it is failing.
4/26/17
 Reform Turn & Politics Link
Passing the plans progressive education reform would force
ideological compromise and effectively legitimize President Trumps
agenda this sacrifices all resistant political capital and turns case.
Williams, C. (2017, January 18). Williams: The Temptation to Compromise With Trump on Schools - and Why It Might Kill Education Reform. Retrieved April 25, 2017, from
https://www.the74million.org/article/williams-the-temptation-to-compromise-with-trump-on-schools-and-why-it-might-kill-education-reform

And the political question behind that moral one is relatively manageable: Why shouldnt progressives who believe in school choice sign up to
back a hypothetical Trump administration proposal to dramatically expand it? Well, do it for the kids is a much more complicated ask
than it seems. First of all, most of the old education reform priorities that commanded bipartisan support are big, hairy ideas that spark disagreements in the details. For
instance, school choice is not a panacea. Well-crafted choice programs can open doors of opportunity for underserved children. But these are hardly inevitable. Badly designed choice programs
with limited oversight generally do nothing for the students they serve. Though its a fools errand to predict Trumps plans, its fair to say that his team has given no signals that its interested in

In Washington, policy wins

building oversight and accountability into its school choice proposals. Sure, thats a garden-variety challenge of working across party lines.

come at the price of ideological priorities. For instance, in order to secure conservative support for Obamas signature health care reform law,
progressives needed to adopt long-standing conservative policy ideas like the individual mandate. OK, bad example. But you get the drift even if the Trump administrations approach to
school choice (or school accountability, or teacher evaluations, or etc.) isnt ideal, progressive reformers will have to weigh any possible benefits against those costs. At present, theres little

and accountability. Of course, standard-issue bipartisan

evidence to suggest that Trump-branded reform proposals will be even vaguely tempting to progressive reformers animated by equity

trade-offs arent the only challenge. Trump poses a second challenge for progressive reformers who believe in the promise of charter schools
but also work on issues proximate to immigration or civil rights. Consider this relatively likely scenario: the Trump administration moves forward with its regularly reiterated plans to deport
millions of undocumented immigrants and begins proceedings to close the border to Muslims. Meanwhile, his Department of Education announces plans to establish a large federal grants
competition with billions of dollars available to states who expand their charter school sectors. For the purposes of argument, however unlikely it might be, lets assume that the grants

competition includes significant accountability measures that would increase the chance that the program helps underserved children. Progressive education
reformers eager to have more high-quality school options available for these kids would clearly be tempted to support such a proposal. And
yet, any engagement on this would also be a tacit normalization of the extraordinary damage that
Trumps immigration proposals are likely to do to U.S. politics, governance and civil society. Civil rights organizations sympathetic to education reform would be
understandably confused to find progressive allies denouncing Trumps radical immigration policies while assisting his administrations work on education. Is it worth it to

move a few education reform priorities if those efforts permanently cost progressive reformers
their existing networks of allies and supporters? Are short-term reform goals worth that sort of
long-term detonation of political capital? Trump has acted in a whole variety of bigoted ways, says Jeffries. It makes it much harder for people to
work with him. A great many of his policies not only his rhetoric are xenophobic, are Islamophobic ... hes said things that are misogynistic, that are racially insensitive, and that makes it hard

to work with him. Or, to put it another way this wouldnt really be garden-variety bipartisan policymaking. Trump is different from
the usual, as most of D.C.s conservative education reformers admitted when they proclaimed themselves #NeverTrump fellow-travelers. They shouldnt be surprised if progressive reformers balk
at helping Trumps abhorrent behavior soak into American politics and governance. The Song of Solomon verse continues beyond the pastoral rhapsody I quoted above, announcing that, in the

this biblical turtle is really a turtledove, a symbol of peace,

season of change, ... the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. Odd as that sounds to 21st-century American ears,

tolerance and friendship. As the raging Trumpstorm approaches the White House, conservatives hoping to re-establish comity among the education reform
movement might remember that this moment of rebirth is being heralded by the voice of a
much less gracious creature.
4/27/17
 States CP for STEM [needs text/net-benefit]
Counterplan: the governments of the 50 states should [plan].

It competes through non-topicality and net-benefit.

Doesnt link to [spending, federalism, politics].

States are key to K-12 STEM.

Fitzpatrick 7 - (Erika Fitzpatrick is an editorial consultant based in Washington,D.C., 2007,
"Innovation America:A Public-Private Partnership",
https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/sites/default/files/publication/edu/Public_Private%20
Report%20ELECTONIC%20version%209.19.07.pdf, DOA: 4-27-2017) //Snowball
States are pivotal in driving innovation forwardthey set the educational policies and make the
decisions that lead to success. States fund the core of the educational system from kindergarten through college.
They also provide the majority of dollars for workforce training; play a central role in the
provision of infrastructure, including broadband technology; and shape the business climate
through policies and investments. States understand their economic strengths and are familiar with their
industries, resources, and markets. They are attuned to their real and potential human talent pool
and have the policy tools to foster its growth to meet workforce demands. Many states have adopted
effective innovation practicesif not yet a comprehensive innovation agendaby making investments in K12
education and raising science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) standards; using their role as the
main funders of higher education to improve production of math and science-related
degrees; and linking research and development to key industrial, economic, and labor and
skills targets. States have also expanded junior, technical, and community college systems to provide
workforce training to meet the needs of growing, innovative industries, and have established
regional councils and other networks to understand and support business needs.

They solve better than the federal government.

Fitzpatrick 7 - (Erika Fitzpatrick is an editorial consultant based in Washington,D.C., 2007,
"Innovation America:A Public-Private Partnership",
https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/sites/default/files/publication/edu/Public_Private%20
Report%20ELECTONIC%20version%209.19.07.pdf, DOA: 4-27-2017) //Snowball
It is clear that, given the dynamics of todays economy, this
nation can ill-afford to wait to innovate. States can
and should lead the way by strengthening the innovative processes within their boundaries
and staying ahead of the global competition unleashed by the computing and communications revolution. States
know that they must raise the rigor and relevance of educational systems to meet
international benchmarks and provide students with the 21st century skills that they need to
succeed in the knowledge economy. They must also create entrepreneurial economies that can compete
in the new innovation-based global marketplace. While acknowledging the federal and the
private sector roles in innovation, states hold most of the keys to innovation. An effective
innovation agenda hinges on their willingness to assess their competitive strengths and
weaknesses in concrete and realistic terms. Governors must identify their states competitive advantages and build specific, targeted
policies around them. Developing a comprehensive innovation agenda is a challenging mission, but it
is an imperativeand one that governors and the private sector are well equipped to tackle.
4/28/17
 Decreasing Federal Role
Theres a decreasing federal role in K-12 education under Trump.
Brown 17 - (Emma Brown Reporter Washington, D.C., 26 Apr. 2017, "Trump orders study of
federal role in education", https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/trump-expected-
to-order-study-of-federal-role-in-education/2017/04/26/577dddbc-2a19-11e7-a616-
d7c8a68c1a66_story.html?utm_term=.4d4da33e60c8, DOA: 4-29-2017) //Snowball
President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that requires Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to study
whether and how the federal government has overstepped its legal authority in K-12 schools, a
move he framed as part of a broader effort to shift power from Washington to states and local
communities. Previous administrations have wrongfully forced states and schools to comply with
federal whims and dicate what our kids are taught, Trump said at the White House. But we know that local
communities do it best and know it best. The order does not invest DeVos with any new authority. She already has broad powers
to revise or withdraw policies that her predecessors promulgated. Rob Goad, a department official, said the order gives DeVos
300 days to conduct a review to identify any regulations or guidance related to K-12 schools
that is inconsistent with federal law. The review will be led by a task force headed by Robert Eitel, a senior counselor to
DeVos who previously worked for a for-profit college company. The GOP has long been home to lawmakers who say
that the federal government should not be involved in public education. But complaints of
federal overreach intensified during President Barack Obamas administration as the
department wielded billions of dollars in stimulus funds and promises of relief from the No
Child Left Behind law to push states toward adopting new teacher evaluations and Common
Core academic standards. The bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 transferred much authority over public schools from
the federal government to the states. Many on the right are looking for signs that Trump will do more to
unwind the federal role in education.
4/29/17
 Beautiful Risk of Education
Education always involves a risk one which the Affirmative would rather not
take but this denies human agency and the value of education. The alternative
is to hold an emancipatory dialogue with the other within the school.
Biesta 13 - (Gert Biesta, Professor of Education in the Department of Education of Brunel
University London, 2013, "The Beautiful Risk of Education", DOA: 4-29-2017) //Snowball
This book is about what many teachers know but are increasingly being prevented from talking about: that
education always involves a risk. The risk is not that teachers might fail because they are not sufficiently qualified.
The risk is not that education might fail because it is not sufficiently based on scientific evidence. The risk is not that
students might fail because they are not working hard enough or are lacking motivation. The risk is there because, as W.
B. Yeats has put it, education is not about filling a bucket but about lighting a fire . The risk is there because
education is not an interaction between robots but an encounter between human beings. The
risk is there because students are not to be seen as objects to be molded and disciplined, but as
subjects of action and responsibility. Yes, we do educate because we want results and because we
want our students to learn and achieve. But that does not mean that an educational technology, that is, a situation in
which there is a perfect match between input and output, is either possible or desirable.
And the reason for this lies in the simple fact that if we take the risk out of education, there is a real chance
that we take out education altogether. Yet taking the risk out of education is exactly what
teachers are increasingly being asked to do. It is what policy makers, politicians, the popular press, the public,
and organizations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank increasingly seem to
be expecting if not demanding from education. They want education to be strong, secure, and
predictable, and want it to be risk-free at all levels. This is why the task of schooling is more and more
being constructed as the effective production of pre-defined learning outcomes in a small number
of subjects or with regard to a limited set of identities such as that of the good citizen or the effective lifelong learner. It is also why there is
a more general push for making education into a safe and risk-free space (see Stengel and Weems 2010).
What should have been a matter of degreethe question, after all, is not whether education should achieve something
or not, or whether educational spaces should be safe or not, but what education should achieve and to what extent this can be pre-specified,
and what kind of safety is desirable and at which point the desire for safety becomes uneducationalhas
turned into an either-
or situation in which the opportunity for teachers to exercise judgment has virtually
disappeared. The risk aversion that pervades contemporary education puts teachers in a very difficult
position. While policy makers and politicians look at education in the abstract and from a distance
and mainly see it through statistics and performance data that can easily be manipulated and
about which one can easily have an opinion, teachers engage with real human beings and
realize at once that education cannot be fixed that simplyor that it can only be fixed at a very high price.
The desire to make education strong, secure, predictable, and risk-free is in a sense an attempt to wish this
reality away. It is an attempt to deny that education always deals with living material, that is, with
human subjects, not with inanimate objects. The desire to make education strong, secure,
predictable, and risk-free is an attempt to forget that at the end of the day education should aim at making
itself dispensableno teacher wants their students to remain eternal studentswhich means that education necessarily
needs to have an orientation toward the freedom and independence of those being educated. Surely, it is
possible to make education work; it is possible to reduce the complexity and openness of human learningand one could
even say that the educational practices and institutions that have been developed over the centuries do precisely that (see Biesta 2010a). But
such complexity reduction always comes at a price, and the moral, political, and educational question is,
What price are we willing to pay for making education work? This is partly a pragmatic question, as it has to be addressed in
relation to the question, What do we want education to work for? (see Biesta 2010b). But it always also involves careful
judgment about the point where complexity reduction turns into unjustifiable and uneducational
suppression and where suppression turns into oppression. To simply demand that education
become strong, secure, predictable, and risk-free, and to see any deviation from this path as a problem
that needs to be solved, therefore misses the educational point in a number of ways. One has to do with
the attitude expressed in the desire to make education strong, secure, predictable, and risk-free. The French educationalist Philippe Meirieu has
characterized this attitude as infantile (see Meirieu 2008, p. 12). He argues that to
think that education can be put under
total control denies the fact that the world is not simply at our disposal. It denies the fact that
other human beings have their own ways of being and thinking, their own reasons and
motivations that may well be very different from ours. To wish all this away is a denial of the fact that
what and who are other to us are precisely that: other. It thus exemplifies a form of magical
thinking in which the world only exists as a projection of our own mind and our own desires. Education
is precisely concerned with the overcoming of this original egocentrism, not by overriding or eradicating where
the child or student is coming from but by establishing opportunities for dialogue with what or who is
other (see ibid., p. 13). And a dialogue, unlike a contest, is not about winning and losing but about ways of
relating in which justice can be done to all who take part. To demand that education become
strong, secure, predictable, and riskfree also misses the educational point in that it seems to assume that there
are only two options available for education: either to give in to the desires of the child or to
subject the child to the desires of society; either total freedom or total control. Yet the educational concern
is not about taking sides with any of these optionswhich reflect the age-old opposition between educational
progressivism and educational conservatismor about finding a happy medium or compromise between the two. The
educational concern rather lies in the transformation of what is desired into what is desirable
(see Biesta 2010b). It lies in the transformation of what is de facto desired into what can justifiably
be desireda transformation that can never be driven from the perspective of the self and its desires, but always requires
engagement with what or who is other (which makes the educational question also a question about democracy; see
Biesta 2011b). It is therefore, again, a dialogical process. This makes the educational way the slow way, the difficult way, the
frustrating way, and, so we might say, the weak way, as the outcome of this process can neither be guaranteed
nor secured. Yet we live in impatient times in which we constantly get the message that instant
gratification of our desires is possible and that it is good. The call to make education strong, secure, predictable,
and risk-free is an expression of this impatience. But it is based on a fundamental
misunderstanding of what education is about and a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes education work.
It sees the weakness of educationthe fact that there will never be a perfect match between educational input and
outputonly as a defect, only as something that needs to be addressed and overcome, and not
also as the very condition that makes education possible (see also Vanderstraeten and Biesta 2006). It is this
misguided impatience that pushes education into a direction where teachers salaries and even
their jobs are made dependent upon their alleged ability to increase their students exam
scores. It is this misguided impatience that has resulted in the medicalization of education, where
children are being made fit for the educational system, rather than that we ask where the causes of this misfit lie
and who, therefore, needs treatment most: the child or society. The educational way, the slow, difficult, frustrating, and weak way,
may therefore not be the most popular way in an impatient society. But in the long run it may
well turn out to be the only sustainable way, since we all know that systems aimed at the
total control of what human beings do and think eventually collapse under their own weight,
if they have not already been cracked open from the inside before. The chapters in this book, therefore, come to education from the angle of
its weakness. In them I try to show how, for what reasons, and under what circumstances the weakness of educationthe
acknowledgment that education isnt a mechanism and shouldnt be turned into one
matters. This book is not an unbridled celebration of all things weak, but an attempt to show, on the one hand, that education only
works through weak connections of communication and interpretation, of interruption and
response, and, on the other hand, that this weakness matters if our educational endeavors are
informed by a concern for those we educate to be subjects of their own actionswhich is as much
about being the author and originator of ones actions as it is about being responsible for what ones actions bring about.
4/30/17
 Allocation Not Funding
The problem is resource-allocation not the amount of funding.
Jacobs 17 - (Al Jacobs, a professional investor for nearly five decades, holds a degree in civil
engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 4-28-2017, "A glimpse of reality on public
education in the U.S.", http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/glimpse-reality-public-
education-u-s-article-1.3109432, DOA: 4-30-2017) //Snowball
How can it be that an institution employing a huge work force and consuming a staggering amount of the
nation's resources can function in such a manner? A major impediment to learning is that the
school system was neither designed nor does it operate primarily to deliver an education to
its students. Instruction in America is, at best, a peripheral goal of the public schools. In reality, it
operates for the benefit of many diverse and conflicting groups including elected public
officials, administrative hierarchy of the schools, the teachers and their representatives, non-
credentialed employees, textbook publishers and distributors, and a host of groups and
individuals too numerous to mention. The brutal fact is students are not among the many groups to
whom the benefits are bestowed. And why is this? Students are children and, as such, possess neither
financial nor electoral influence. As they cannot enforce demands, they may safely be
ignored.
5/1/17
 Privates CP
Text: Private sector organizations and businesses should [insert plan]
Private actors solve education problems better while public schools create
inequality and kill freedom and innovation
McCluskey 16 Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institutes Center for Educational
Freedom and maintains Catos Public Schooling Battle Map, Private Schools vs. Public Schools -
Why Private Schools Are Better, August 3, 2016, The Cato Institute,
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/private-schools-vs-public-schools-why-
private-schools-are-better, VM
Public schooling schools run by government is un-American. By its very nature it creates
inequality, forces people into conflict and smothers innovation. Private schooling, in contrast
with money following children and educators able to teach as they want is moored in
freedom and equality. When people contemplate inequality, they tend to think about unequal access or outcomes. Public schooling
suffers mightily in those areas, with the well-to-do able to access good public schools by purchasing homes in affluent districts. And the wealthy
tend to see much better outcomes in terms of test scores, college-going, and jobs. These
are not wholly a function of the
K-12 schools what children experience outside of school has a greater impact on their lives
than what happens in it but the huge barrier to accessing a good school called the price of
a house does not help. That said, the inequality that is even more distinctly un-American is inequality under the law. With all
people having to fund government schools, but only those able to exercise the most political power controlling them, that is what public
schooling creates. America is about liberty, equality under the law and dynamism. When it comes to education, only private schooling is, too.
Want evolution taught, but your district is dominated by creationists? Too bad . Mexican-
American, and you want a course on your history? Youre out of luck in many districts.
Religious, and you believe faith is essential to your childs education? You are absolutely
unequal; teaching religion is impermissible in any public school, but religious people must still
pay for them. Of course, for over a century many public schools were de facto Protestant institutions, rendering Jews, Catholics, atheists
and others second-class citizens. The sad product of this winner-take-all system is not just inequality, but
often painful social conflict, as neighbors are forced to battle neighbors to get what they
want from the schools. The Cato Institutes Public Schooling Battle Map contains nearly 1,500 values and identity-based conflicts in
districts around the country, and probably just captures a fraction those that make headlinesof such battles. What keeps such
conflagrations from being even more common? Either
one side wins, perpetuating discrimination, or all sides
agree to lowest-common-denominator but inoffensive content, such as biology courses
free of human origins, or reading lists bereft of intellectually challenging literature. By
allowing people to choose schools, private schooling steps on the fuse of social conflict,
empowering all people to access coherent, rigorous content consistent with their values and
desires, and no longer pricing access at the cost of a house. It allows educators to establish
schools as they see fit, not according to hand-tying rules dictated by districts, states, or
Washington. And it enables teachers to specialize in the needs of unique children, and
innovate with new pedagogical approaches and ideas. America is about liberty, equality under the law and
dynamism. When it comes to education, only private schooling is, too.
5/2/17
 Trump XO Answer
Trumps executive order cant actually do much bills in place stop
Resmotivs 17 ( Joy Resmotivs April 27th, 2017 What does Trumps executive order on
education do? Not much http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-essential-education-
updates-southern-trump-wants-to-get-the-feds-out-of-your-1493235054-htmlstory.html)
President Trump is giving Education Secretary Betsy DeVos 300 days to look over previous
administrations' actions in search of government overreach in K-12 education. Trump signed
an executive order Wednesday that, according to Rob Goad, a senior Department of Education
official, strikes down "top-down mandates that take away autonomy and limit the options
available to educators, administrators, and parents." The language seem aimed at the Obama
administration, which used funding competitions and the enforcement of civil rights law to
have an outsized impact on education nationwide. The Trump administration already has begun rolling back some
Obama initiatives, such as protections for transgender students. DeVos' staff is creating a task force aimed at curtailing and repealing
regulations they deem to be overstepping local control of schools.
It is unclear, however, whether an executive order
would in any way expand the limits of DeVos' authority. The Every Student Succeeds Act
the successor to the No Child Left Behind Act circumscribes the Education secretary's power,
particularly when it comes to altering states' curriculums or teacher evaluations. Rather than
another executive order, perhaps the president and DeVos need to read the bipartisan Every
Student Succeeds Act," Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a
statement.
 U.S. Hegemony Bad
U.S. hegemony in theory and practice undermines global stability.
Gunnar 17 - (Ulson Gunnar, New York-based geopolitical analyst, 5-2-2017, "US foreign
policy: Hegemony or stability, not both", https://www.sott.net/article/347032-US-foreign-
policy-Hegemony-or-stability-not-both, DOA: 5-2-2017) //Snowball
US foreign policy has for decades been predicated on achieving and maintaining global peace, security and
stability. In reality, it has for over a century constituted an overreaching desire to achieve and maintain
global hegemony. And where US efforts focus on achieving hegemony, division and destruction
follow. From the Middle East to Eastern Europe, and from Southeast Asia to the Korean Peninsula, US intervention politically
or militarily all but guarantee escalating tensions, uncertain futures, socioeconomic instability
and even armed conflict. The Middle East and North Africa US efforts in the Middle East since the conclusion of the
first World War have focused on dividing the region, cultivating sectarian animosity and pitting
neighbors against one another in vicious, unending combat. During the 50s and 60s, the US pitted its
regional proxy, Israel, against its Arab neighbors . In the 1980's the US armed both the Iraqis and the
Iranians amid a destructive 8 year long war. Today, the US props up Persian Gulf states who in turn are
fueling regional, even global terrorism that has destabilized or entirely dismembered entire nations. And from
the Middle East and North Africa, waves of refugees have reverberated outward affecting adjacent
regions who have so far been spared from the chaos directly. In Syria, the United States poses as a central player in restoring
stability to the conflict stricken nation. In reality, it was the US itself that trained activists years ahead of the so called Arab
Spring, as well as funneled money into the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist groups to serve as
militant proxies after the protests were finally underway. Today, militant groups operating under the banners
of Al Qaeda and its various affiliates are almost exclusively funded, armed and trained by the Persian Gulf
states through which the US launders its own support to these groups through. Thus, while the US poses as an
agent of stability in Syria, it is the central player intentionally creating and perpetuating chaos. Likewise, the
North African state of Libya has been rendered all but destroyed, fractured into competing regions
ruled by ineffective warlords, former generals, proxies of ever sort and Persian Gulf sponsored terrorist
networks including the Islamic State. The instability in Libya has afforded the United States, its policymakers
and the special interests who sponsor their work a safe haven for the vast infrastructure
required to maintain regional proxy forces including training camps and weapon depots. This infrastructure,
since 2011, has been used as a springboard to invade Syria, destabilize neighboring North African
states and to fuel a divisive refugee crisis in nearby Europe. Eastern Europe Since the conclusion of the Cold War and
the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has continued to expand toward Russia's borders. Far from a defensive
alliance, NATO clearly serves as a multinational military conglomerate used as cover for
expanding US hegemony worldwide. NATO operations in far-flung Afghanistan and Libya illustrate the shape-shifting nature
of its alleged mission statement, revealing it to be but a pretext for an otherwise unjustified, aggressive front. Its expansion into Eastern Europe
and the ongoing military build-up along Russia's borders mirrors similar tensions fostered by
Nazi Germany during the 1930s. NATO's sponsorship of the violent coup which overthrew the Ukrainian government between
2013-2014 likewise provides an example of how US "stability" often manifests itself instead as failed states,
perpetual violence and the constant threat of further escalation. Asia Over the past 10 years, the United
States has attempted to "pivot" itself back toward Asia. While claiming this "pivot" represented an American
effort to maintain stability across Asia-Pacific, proclamations from the US State Department itself smacked of
literal imperialism. An article published in Foreign Policy titled, "America's Pacific Century," was penned by then US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton all but admitting this. The United States is not an Asian nation, yet despite this obvious fact, it
declared its intent to reassert American primacy across Asia Pacific . In order to do this, the US found
itself fueling political opposition across much of Asia and more specifically, in Southeast Asia. Nations like
Myanmar are now headed by regimes installed into power via decades of US political support,
funding and training. And despite pro-democracy rhetoric accompanying these regimes as they ascend into
power, their true nature is nothing short of despotic, with Myanmar's current government
overseeing systematic violence targeting ethnic minorities, the silencing of political critics and
opponents, the curtailing of free press and other flagrant abuses the US now conveniently
ignores. In nations like Thailand, US efforts to co-opt regional political orders have failed. However, despite
their failure, simmering conflicts remain, threatening sociopolitical and economic stability both
currently and in the near future. On the Korean Peninsula, America's presence continues to
drive instability. Joint military exercises with South Korea often and openly serve as rehearsals for
"decapitation" strikes against the North Korean government, fueling North Korean paranoia and provoking
continued posturing on both sides. In short, the US presence serves to intentionally keep the
neighboring states pitted against one another, undermining, not bolstering regional stability. A
similar strategy of tension is being played in the South China Sea where the US has for two presidencies
now attempted to provoke China both directly and through the use of Japanese, Vietnamese and Philippine
tensions to contest and curtail Beijing's growing military deterrence. The endgame in the South China
Sea for China is to eventually push the United States out of the region, reducing or eliminating its
capacity to target China directly, and reduce America's ability to destabilize China's
peripheries. It should be noted that destabilizing China's peripheries (those nations bordering China) is a stated objective of US
policymakers. Hegemony or Stability, Not Both Ultimately the US seeks hegemony, not stability. Hegemony by
necessity requires the division and destruction of competitors, which in turn requires
constant and ever-escalating sociopolitical and economic instability. While the US has all but
declared its intent to establish global hegemony for decades, it uses the pretext of seeking
global peace, security and stability as cover along the way. Understanding that only through a
multipolar global order in which state sovereignty holds primacy, not multinational alliances,
institutions or openly hegemonic world powers, can a real balance of power be struck, and
only through this balance of power can real global stability be achieved. Until then, as the US
seeks hegemony over the planet, the world can expect an equal but opposite decline in
stability.
5/3/17
 De-dev Turn
Economic growth cannot be sustained and will eliminate life on Earth.
Decoupling the economy from the environment does not solve. There is a rising
movement towards economic and environmental homeostasis, but substantial
GDP increases prevent it from succeeding.
Alexander 16 - (Dr. Samuel Alexander is the co-director of the Simplicity Institute, and a
lecturer at the Office for Environmental Programs, University of Melbourne, Australia, 16th
September 2016, "Growth is unsustainable. Its time to shrink the economy.",
https://www.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/growth-is-unsustainable-its-time-to-shrink-
the-economy/, DOA: 5-3-2017) //Snowball
What would genuine economic progress look like today? The orthodox answer is that a bigger
economy is always better. But this idea is increasingly strained by the knowledge that, on a finite
planet, economies cant grow forever. If developed nations were to grow GDP by 2% over coming
decades, and by 2050 the global population had achieved a similar standard of living, the global
economy would be approximately 15 times larger than it is today in terms of GDP. If the global economy
grew at 3% from then on it would be 30 times larger than the current economy by 2073, and 60 times larger
by the end of this century. iIt is utterly implausible to think that planetary ecosystems could
withstand the impacts of a global economy that was 15, 30, or 60 times larger than it is today. Even
a global economy twice or four times as big should be of profound ecological concern . It has been estimated that
we would need one and a half Earths to sustain the existing economy into the future. Every year this
ecological overshoot continues, the foundations of our existence, and that of other species, are
undermined. Like a snake eating its own tail, our growth-orientated civilisation suffers from
the delusion that there are no environmental limits to growth. But rethinking growth in an age
of limits cannot be avoided. The only question is whether it will be by design or disaster. This
realisation has given rise to calls for economic degrowth. This means a phase of planned and
equitable economic contraction in the richest nations, eventually reaching a steady state that
operates within Earths biophysical limits. At this point, mainstream economists will accuse
degrowth advocates of misunderstanding the potential of technology, markets, and efficiency
gains to decouple economic growth from environmental impact. But there is no
misunderstanding here. Tthe fatal problem with the growth model is that it relies on an extent of
decoupling that quickly becomes unachievable. We simply cannot make a growing supply of
food, clothes, houses, cars, appliances, gadgets, etc. with 15, 30, or 60 times less energy and
resources than we do today. We need to embrace renewable energy, but renewable energy cannot sustain
an energy-intensive global society of high-end consumers. Some countries have shown trends of
decoupling;, but under closer examination, this is generally because of them outsourcing energy and resource-
intensive manufacturing elsewhere. Technology and free markets are not the salvation they promised to be. In order to move
toward a just and sustainable global economy, developed nations must reduce their resource
demands to a fair share ecological footprint. This might imply an 80% reduction or more, if the global population is to
achieve a similar material living standard. But such significant quantitative reductions cannot be achieved if we persist
with the dominant economics of GDP growth. It follows that the developed nations need to initiate
policies for a post-growth economy at once, followed in due course by developing nations.
This is humanitys defining challenge in coming years and decades . A degrowth society
embraces the necessity of planned economic contraction, seeking to turn our environmental
and social crises into opportunities for civilisational renewal. Among other things, we would tend to
reduce our working hours in the formal economy in exchange for more home-production and
leisure. We would have less income, but more freedom. Thus, in our material simplicity, we
would be rich if we manage the transition wisely.
5/4/17
 Giroux K
Their education reform movement is nothing but a right-wing sham that
perpetuates oppression and exploitation - vote negative on presumption if we
win a link because they are treating the wrong causes to create change and they
have no impact on the education system as a whole
Hudson 99 Mark Hudson, Member/Data Analyst, Solidarity, ATC 83, November-December
1999, Education for Change: Henry Giroux and Transformative Critical Pedagogy,
https://www.solidarity-us.org/node/1734, VM (yes this is overhighlighted I know)
THESE ARE DIFFICULT times for teachers in U.S. public schools. The increasing size of schools, chronic underfunding of schools serving working-
class students (especially students of color), work overload, school violence, professional isolation and the deskilling and devaluing of teachers'
work have led to rising rates of teacher burnout in recent decades. The average career trajectory of a teacher in the United States is about five
years.1 Meanwhile, the corporate-controlled media give voice to a conservative chorus calling
for school reform. The reforms demanded include voucher plans and tax credits to force
public schools to compete with private schools in the free-market economy, raising
standards and mandating competencies through statewide and national standardized
testing, and calls for public schools to abandon multicultural and secular humanist curricula in
favor of traditional values and a back-to-basics core curriculum. These calls in reality amount to an
attack on the public education system itself, and on public school teachers in particular. As education theorist Michael Apple has argued,
(T)he political Right in the United States has been very successful in mobilizing support
against the educational system and its employees, often exporting the crisis in the economy
to the schools. Thus, one of its major achievements has been to shift the blame for
unemployment and underemployment, for the loss of economic competitiveness, and for the
supposed breakdown of traditional values and standards in the family, education, and paid
and unpaid workplaces, from the economic, cultural, and social policies and effects of
dominant groups to the school and other public agencies.2 This implies that legitimate
questions of how to improve the U.S. public education system cannot be seriously addressed
without simultaneously addressing the issues of economic exploitation, racist oppression and
patriarchal gender relations that form the socio-economic context in which public schools
operate. In other words, schools are not, as the right claims, the problem; rather, the very
real problems of schools and those who work and learn in them cannot and will not be solved
without a mass-based political movement from below against the injustices of capitalism,
sexism and racism. Thus liberals and other moderates who oppose all or parts of the
conservative education agenda but are silent about the essentially repressive nature of U.S.
society have no real alternative to offer. At best, they can provide isolated examples of
enlightened educational practices that perhaps benefit small groups of students and
teachers but have little if any impact on the public education system as a whole.3
 Cruelly Optimistic Education
Education gives us the cruelly optimistic promise of unending success, but in
doing so indebts us to following an impossible narrative. Resolving the paradox
affirms that meaning, value, and life-affirmation not just data can be
inherited and passed on.
Di Paolantonio 16 - (Mario Di Paolantonio, Associate Professor. PhD, Journal of Philosophy
of Education, Vol. 50, No. 2, 2016, "The Cruel Optimism of Education and Educations
Implication with Passing-on", DOA: 5-4-2017) //Snowball
There is a cruel optimism in education that drives us to constantly work at improving ourselves;
that is, we optimistically attach to things that promise us fulfillment but that actually perpetually
defer any such fulfillment and rather end up impoverishing us. We often undergo an education with
the confidence that it will secure our success in a future good life. Education seems inextricably bundled up
with this elusive drive of bettering ourselves; it offers incitements and exhortations of limitless possibilities
to manage and mortgage our own success. The discourse of life-long learning, for example, is peddled
under the guise that amidst todays constantly changing circumstances, individuals, in order to succeed, need to learn
how to constantly learn (OECD, 2010). Emphasising learning as a transposable mode that can meet any
situation promises that education will allow us to adapt to (and survive) an ever volatile and menacing market. The
cruel paradox here is that under late capitalism this optimism in education quite literally indebts us to
an impossible normative narrative of success. All such optimistic gesticulations and solicitations ultimately
wear us down and lock us down, as it were, within the privative sense that it is all up to the
individual to innovate and improve and to keep innovating and improving herself optimally and
persistently through an education. Putting the burden of such optimism on the individual
consequently alienates and isolates one from what it might mean to hold a world in common. Caught
in the endless pursuit of self-improvement and of managing oneself for success through an education, we
admittedly end up losing not only something of ourselves, but also something worldly and fundamental
about education itself. The cruel irony here is that this optimism in education ends up usurping
what is educational in education. Todays optimism in education, with its emphasis on answering
everything there is to say about education in terms of individual learners and how processes of learning
can secure personal future success, leads us to what Biesta describes as the learnification of education (2005). This
ugly term, according to Biesta, signals a time when the language of learning makes it difficult if not
impossible to speak about the substantive purposes of education (2012, p. 584), and the role that
education plays (or should play) in tending to and forging a common world. The problem, as Biesta varyingly
points out, is that learning basically emphasises the individual in isolation and also accents instrumental self-
serving methods over existential and interpretative world-building approaches. In this hyper-individualised
atmosphere, what is lost is how education is educational precisely because it always implies the
beautiful risk of human interaction, the relational encounter where human beings come together to
influence each other with words and interpretations that work to forge and sustain a common world. While the world was
there before us, and will most likely outlast us, its significance wears down and is in need of repair and renewal
through the words, interpretations and aspirations that we fashion through an education.
Education, at a very basic level, strives to assure the continuation of a common world, passing on
from generation to generation an interpretative repertoire that can sustain and expand our sense
of belonging to a world of significance. As Maxine Greene once put it, what we think of as the common
world [has] come into view over time by means of the understanding that has developed and the
interpretations that have been devised. She goes on to emphasise that this growth of understanding is linked to the
bringing into being of a common world (1982, p. 7). By virtue of passing on and giving on to others a repertoire of
understandings, meanings and visions, which in the first place has itself been received, education seems to
offer a place for a type of organized remembrance or inheritance (Peperzak, 2012, pp. 5859). In fact, if
education involves the housing and transmission of a repertoire of interpretations, understandings and
visions from one generation to the next, the educational is charged with the highest kind of
responsibility to continue and [to] renovate what we have come to value about the world (Peperzak,
2012, p. 60). It is important to emphasise that the remembrance and inheritance housed in education is never
consolidated or finally stored away. Rather remembrance and inheritance becomes educational precisely because
it partakes in the proliferating practice of maintaining, restating and re-signifying itself in a different
context, in which the past is received (and creatively reworked) by other living beings that inhabit their own particular
time.1 In other words, given that the process of transmission (as paradosis, as giving over) is enacted through
language what is passed on through education is necessarily open to contests of interpretation,
recitations, multiple postings, re-description and transformation : hence, to an iteration that always adds and
sends something more to what has come before. To be sure the educational task of transmitting the past in
the present does much more than extend the life of a certain corpus of works; it also adds (and
passes on) the particular ways, the creativity, the sense and sensibility, in which the present
reanimates the past as one of its concerns. In this sense, what is educational in education involves
engaging the past and the present with something more than itself, with something hopeful: with a trans-
generational beyond or sense that for us to meaningfully survive we must pass on rather
than merely repeat (the Same). Our present must pass on (in all senses of the word); that is, our present must inherit
the past (as something readable and transformable) to pass it on, and, at the same time, prepare for its own
passing, in which it itself is handed over to the unpredictable birth of another. Education thus
bears a remarkable affinity to readying ourselves to pass on the past and to pass on for the
future. Moreover, beyond tending to what bridges generations across the abyss of birth and death, education
also binds us together in the very moment of its passing. In other words, we have to appreciate that at a
very basic level, education is constituted by the flow of our passing time together. That is, that through
an education we are given a unique place to become, together, temporal subjects. Education
is where we literally pass the time together (in all senses of the term). We hangout for hours a week,
making time for each other and together spend time working through common material and,
thus, we give time to what is not hereto the past and to the future. And our passing time together through an
education enables us to possibly feel the sense in our fleeting togetherness, to share in a
sensibility and to possibly have the chance of saying yeswe are together in this world
passing time. And in saying so, in saying so many things by this, we might come to feel a bond to each
other and to the world that outlasts even death, that gives us a surplus, a dividend, a
something more, an over-life that would exceed the cruelty of merely serving necessity
(Honig, 2009, p.10). Education as a place, perhapsthe place, chiefly vested and concerned with passing on
does not (thankfully) strive to teach us how to live (finally) or, even, how to die (finally). Rather, as an
exemplar of a place of passing-on, education invites us to affirm the living-on of the
question of what it might mean to live together after all: to forge, sustain and pledge
something of significance in common (and across generations) amidst what is constantly passing away,
against the ruin of time. Educations inevitable embroilment with what passes away, and its very work of passing on
the past into time once again, affords education a particular way of engaging with what threatens to
ruin time and what wears down human significance, a particular way of engaging with our
finiteness that is articulated (sublimated) through what strives to endure. Thus, what is educational
about education fosters the affirmation of life, of what can continue to live on in significance after all. Drawing on
Jacques Derridas notion of survival we could say that education, concerned as it is with the possibility of passing
on (with the paradosis of the variegated traces, remains, latent aspirations, visions, iterable legacies of another time and for another time),
gives us a chance to affirm the sense of our world and our love for the world as surviving, as
living-after-death in excess of death (2007, p. 6). Education, as a place where we become concerned with what it
means to pass on,2 seems to bring us together in a peculiar type of hopeful affiliation that, borrowing
from Derrida again, is forged on the anterior affirmation of being-together in allocution (1997, p. 249).
We have here an affiliation, a sense of being together, forged not through familiarity, kinship or through any
straightforward will or economy but through finding ourselves already charged and called out to
accept our implication with passing on. In other words, we are here tapping into a sense of co-
belonging (a non-chosen relationship) that is cast across different times, before and after my time, in which each
generation stands apart from all others but still remains charged (like all others) with the promise
of maintaining, of interpreting, of thus affirming a common world to pass on. This charge, this feeling
of allocution that the world might live-on after all, forges an affiliation (a covenant) that is infinitely larger and
more powerful than any one present: a common sensibility that gives sense to what might
be other than ourselves, a plus que vie, a something more, that hopefully and thankfully
can survive me.
5/5/17
 Trump Agenda Public Unpopular
The Trump/DeVos education agenda is extremely publicly unpopular.
Weingarten 17 - (Randi Weingarten is an American labor leader, attorney, and educator. She
is president of the American Federation of Teachers, TIME, 4-25-2017, "AFT President: DeVos
and Trump Are Dismantling Public Education", http://time.com/4765410/donald-trump-betsy-
devos-atf-public-education/, DOA: 5-5-2017) //Snowball
The Trump/DeVos agenda not only jeopardizes that work, their view that education is a commodity as
opposed to a public good threatens the foundation of our democracy and our responsibility to provide
opportunity to all of Americas young people. Americans have a deep connection to and belief in
public education. I see it every day as I crisscross the nation talking to parents, teachers, students and
community members about what they want for their public schools. And it transcends politics. Its one
of the reasons we saw such a massive grass-roots response to the DeVos nomination from every
part of the country. A recent poll by Harvard and Politico showed that while parents want good public
school choices to meet the individual needs of their kids, they do not want those choices pit against
one another or used to drain money from other public schools. In other words, the DeVos/Trump
agenda is wildly out of step with what Americans want for their kids. Its what I saw when I took
DeVos to visit public schools in Van Wert, Ohio, last month. This is an area that voted more than 70
percent for Trump, but people there love and invest in their public schools from a strong early
childhood program, to robust robotics and other strategies that engage kids in powerful learning, to a community school that helps the kids
most at risk of dropping out stay on a path to graduation. Its
what I saw at the Community Health Academy of
the Heights in New York City where the school provides a full-service community health clinic,
in-school social workers, a food pantry, parent resource center, and other services for parents
and kids. And its what I saw this week at Rock Island Elementary School in Broward County, Fla.,
where kids participate in robotics programs after school, where there is a library in every
classroom and a guided reading room where kids can build their literacy skills. The great
things happening in these schools are all funded by federal dollars and threatened by the
Trump/DeVos budget. Many of those who voted for Trump did so because they believed he
would keep his promise to stand up for working people and create jobs. They didnt vote to
dismantle public education and with it the promise and potential it offers their children. Now, the person who ran on
jobs and the economy seems intent on crushing one of the most important institutions we
have to meet the demands of a changing economy, enable opportunity and propel our nation
forward. Thats one of the biggest takeaways from Trumps first 100 days.
 Cyber Security and Power Attacks
Demand for cyber security growing, but not enough students are taking STEM to
fill that need Kelley 16
(Debbie Kelley April 10th, 2016 DEMAND FOR CYBERSECURITY WORKERS GROWING, BUT TOO
FEW STUDENTS CONSIDERING FIELD http://gazette.com/cybersecurity/education)
An unending war happening in the nebulous realm of cyberspace needs more troops to fight
the bad guys and protect the innocent. With high-profile security attacks on big-box stores,
hospitals and government agencies, All of a sudden, people are finding out theres a cyberwar
going on, said Edward Chow, a University of Colorado at Colorado Springs computer science
professor. But there arent enough cybersecurity workers to stop hackers from invading and
stealing information. Or enough students considering the field as a profession. Theres a
tremendous demand for these skills, said Martin Carlisle, director of the Air Force Academys
Center for Cyberspace Research in Colorado Springs. We are seeing corporations as well as the
government constantly being attacked in the cyber domain, and we just arent producing
enough professionals who can handle the threat. A record 79 percent of American businesses
reported some sort of cybersecurity incident in 2014. And the 238,158 job postings for
cybersecurity positions represented a 91 percent increase from 2010, according to a Burning
Glass Technologies report. Last year, aerospace and defense contractor Raytheon and the National
Cyber Security Alliance commissioned a survey to assess cybersecurity career interest and
preparedness. Released in October, the survey showed about two-thirds of nearly 3,900
millennials in 12 countries who responded were unaware they could pursue a career in
cybersecurity. And 58 percent said they were not taught in classrooms about ways to stay safe
online or were unsure they learned that. We have these crazy ideas that are crazy enough to work. But nobody wants to
give us a chance. - Andrew Dubiel, Vista Ridge The combination of not knowing about the field and not being taught cybersecurity principles
has contributed to the industry shortage. Todd Probert, vice president for mission support and modernization at Raytheon Intelligence,
Information and Services, said he wasnt surprised by the survey results. Were focused on getting the message out there that we need more
folks, he said. With the proliferation of cellphones, our toasters talking to our refrigerators and other technology, if we dont have that
workforce, we will be at a disadvantage globally.

Without cyber-security, the US Power Grid is left open to attack Morgan 16

(Steve Morgan, Major cyber attack on U.S. Power Grid Likely February 7th, 2016
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevemorgan/2016/02/07/campaign-2016-major-cyber-attack-
on-u-s-power-grid-is-likely/#31da79204110)
In his New York Times bestselling investigation, Koppel reveals that a major cyberattack on
Americas power grid is not only possible but likely, that it would be devastating, and that the
United States is shockingly unprepared. U.S. investigators recently found proof that a cyber
attack can take down a power grid. A destructive malware app known as 'BlackEnergy' caused a
power outage on the Ukranian power grid this past December, resulting in a blackout for
hundreds of thousands of people. Ukranian officials have blamed Russia for the cyber attack. A
CNN article states that U.S. systems aren't any more protected than those breached in Ukraine.
Koppel asks us to imagine a blackout that could last months - where millions of Americans over
several states are without running water, refrigeration, light, and a dwindling supply of food
and medical supplies. A blackout could shutdown banks, challenge the police as they've never
been before, and lead to widespread looting. A logical conclusion is that cyber security is a
complex topic which the media and the candidates are not equipped to knowledgeably discuss
in public. It is a sorry state of affairs for a potential cyber strike on U.S. power grids to be kept
quiet during an election year.
5/6/17
 AT: CO2 = Root Cause Warming
Framing CO2 as the root cause of warming is reductive and ignores the complex
set of factors that contribute to it.
Shellenberger and Nordhaus 4 - (Michael Shellenberger is a strategist for foundations,
organizations and political candidates, Ted Nordhaus is Vice President of Evans/McDonough,
one of the countrys leading opinion research firms, 2004, "The Death of Environmentalism",
https://www.thebreakthrough.org/images/Death_of_Environmentalism.pdf, DOA: 5-6-2017)
//Snowball
Most environmental leaders would scoff at such framings of the problem and retort, Disaster preparedness is
not an environmental problem. It is a hallmark of environmental rationality to believe that
we environmentalists search for root causes not symptoms. What, then, is the cause of
global warming? For most within the environmental community, the answer is easy: too much carbon in the
atmosphere. Framed this way, the solution is logical: we need to pass legislation that reduces carbon
emissions. But what are the obstacles to removing carbon from the atmosphere? Consider what would happen if we
identified the obstacles as: The radical rights control of all three branches of the US government. Trade
policies that undermine environmental protections. Our failure to articulate an inspiring and
positive vision. Overpopulation. The influence of money in American politics. Our inability to craft
legislative proposals that shape the debate around core American values. Poverty. Old
assumptions about what the problem is and what it isnt. The point here is not just that global warming has
many causes but also that the solutions we dream up depend on how we structure the problem.
The environmental movements failure to craft inspiring and powerful proposals to deal with
global warming is directly related to the movements reductive logic about the supposedly root
causes (e.g., too much carbon in the atmosphere) of any given environmental problem. The problem is that once
you identify something as the root cause, you have little reason to look for even deeper
causes or connections with other root causes. NRDC attorney David Hawkins, who has worked on environmental
policy for three decades, defines global warming as essentially a pollution problem like acid rain, which was
addressed by the 1990 Clean Air Act amendment. The acid rain bill set a national cap on the total amount of acid rain
pollution allowed by law and allowed companies to buy pollution credits from other companies that had successfully reduced their emissions
beyond the cap. This cap-and-trade policy worked well for acid rain, Hawkins reasons, so it should work
for global warming, too. The McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act is based on a similar mechanism to cap carbon
emissions and allow companies to trade pollution rights.
 STEM Omnibus Turn
STEM education kills creativity and creates inflexible thinkers- that turns
innovation, reduces American competitiveness, and kills American jobs in the
present and future due to computerization- only broad based liberal education
can solve and keep Americas economy strong
Zakaria 15 Fareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Post. He is also the host of
CNNs Fareed Zakaria GPS and a contributing editor for The Atlantic. Washington Post, Why
Americas obsession with STEM education is dangerous, March 26, 2015,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-stem-wont-make-us-
successful/2015/03/26/5f4604f2-d2a5-11e4-ab77-
9646eea6a4c7_story.html?utm_term=.d041a7d09c68, VM
*also an indict of OECD test rankings which show US doing poorly consistently
If Americans are united in any conviction these days, it is that we urgently need to shift the countrys education toward the teaching of specific, technical skills.
Every month, it seems, we hear about our childrens bad test scores in math and science and about new initiatives from companies, universities or foundations to
expand STEM courses (science, technology, engineering and math) and deemphasize the humanities. From President Obama on down, public officials have
cautioned against pursuing degrees like art history, which are seen as expensive luxuries in todays world. Republicans want to go several steps further and defund
these kinds of majors. Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? asked Floridas Gov. Rick Scott. I dont think so. Americas last bipartisan
cause is this: A liberal education is irrelevant, and technical training is the new path forward. It is the only way, we are told, to ensure that Americans survive in an

This dismissal of broad-based learning,

age defined by technology and shaped by global competition. The stakes could not be higher.

however, comes from a fundamental misreading of the facts and puts America on a
dangerously narrow path for the future. The United States has led the world in economic
dynamism, innovation and entrepreneurship thanks to exactly the kind of teaching we are
now told to defenestrate. A broad general education helps foster critical thinking and
creativity. Exposure to a variety of fields produces synergy and cross fertilization. Yes, science
and technology are crucial components of this education, but so are English and philosophy.
When unveiling a new edition of the iPad, Steve Jobs explained that its in Apples DNA that technology alone is not enough that its technology married with

Innovation is not simply a technical

liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.

matter but rather one of understanding how people and societies work, what they need and
want. America will not dominate the 21st century by making cheaper computer chips but
instead by constantly reimagining how computers and other new technologies interact with
human beings. For most of its history, the United States was unique in offering a well-rounded education. In their comprehensive study, The Race
Between Education and Technology, Harvards Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz point out that in the 19th century, countries like Britain, France and Germany
educated only a few and put them through narrow programs designed to impart only the skills crucial to their professions. America, by contrast, provided mass
general education because people were not rooted in specific locations with long-established trades that offered the only paths forward for young men. And the
American economy historically changed so quickly that the nature of work and the requirements for success tended to shift from one generation to the next. People
didnt want to lock themselves into one professional guild or learn one specific skill for life. That was appropriate in another era, the technologists argue, but it is
dangerous in todays world. Look at where American kids stand compared with their peers abroad. The most recent international test, conducted in 2012, found
that among the 34 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranked 27th in math, 20th in science and 17th in
reading. If rankings across the three subjects are averaged, the United States comes in 21st, trailing nations such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia and

Since 1964,
Estonia. In truth, though, the United States has never done well on international tests, and they are not good predictors of our national success.

when the first such exam was administered to 13-year-olds in 12 countries, America has
lagged behind its peers, rarely rising above the middle of the pack and doing particularly
poorly in science and math. And yet over these past five decades, that same laggard country
has dominated the world of science, technology, research and innovation. Consider the same
pattern in two other highly innovative countries, Sweden and Israel. Israel ranks first in the
world in venture-capital investments as a percentage of GDP; the United States ranks second,
and Sweden is sixth, ahead of Great Britain and Germany. These nations do well by most
measures of innovation, such as research and development spending and the number of high-
tech companies as a share of all public companies. Yet all three countries fare surprisingly
poorly in the OECD test rankings. Sweden and Israel performed even worse than the United
States on the 2012 assessment, landing overall at 28th and 29th, respectively, among the 34
most-developed economies. But other than bad test-takers, their economies have a few
important traits in common: They are flexible. Their work cultures are non-hierarchical and
merit-based. All operate like young countries, with energy and dynamism. All three are open
societies, happy to let in the worlds ideas, goods and services. And people in all three nations
are confident a characteristic that can be measured. Despite ranking 27th and 30th in math, respectively, American and
Israeli students came out at the top in their belief in their math abilities, if one tallies up their responses to survey questions about their skills. Sweden came in
seventh, even though its math ranking was 28th. Thirty years ago, William Bennett, the Reagan-era secretary of education, noticed this disparity between
achievement and confidence and quipped, This country is a lot better at teaching self-esteem than it is at teaching math. Its a funny line, but there is actually
something powerful in the plucky confidence of American, Swedish and Israeli students. It allows them to challenge their elders, start companies, persist when
others think they are wrong and pick themselves up when they fail. Too much confidence runs the risk of self-delusion, but the trait is an essential ingredient for
entrepreneurship. My point is not that its good that American students fare poorly on these tests. It isnt. Asian countries like Japan and South Korea have

But technical chops are just one ingredient needed for

benefitted enormously from having skilled workforces.

innovation and economic success. America overcomes its disadvantage a less-technically-

trained workforce with other advantages such as creativity, critical thinking and an
optimistic outlook. A country like Japan, by contrast, cant do as much with its well-trained
workers because it lacks many of the factors that produce continuous innovation. Americans should be
careful before they try to mimic Asian educational systems, which are oriented around memorization and test-taking. I went through that kind of system. It has its
strengths, but its not conducive to thinking, problem solving or creativity. Thats why most Asian countries, from Singapore to South Korea to India, are trying to
add features of a liberal education to their systems. Jack Ma, the founder of Chinas Internet behemoth Alibaba, recently hypothesized in a speech that the Chinese
are not as innovative as Westerners because Chinas educational system, which teaches the basics very well, does not nourish a students complete intelligence,
allowing her to range freely, experiment and enjoy herself while learning: Many painters learn by having fun, many works [of art and literature] are the products of
having fun. So, our entrepreneurs need to learn how to have fun, too. No matter how strong your math and science skills are, you still need to know how to learn,
think and even write. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon (and the owner of this newspaper), insists that his senior executives write memos, often as long as six
printed pages, and begins senior-management meetings with a period of quiet time, sometimes as long as 30 minutes, while everyone reads the narratives to
themselves and makes notes on them. In an interview with Fortunes Adam Lashinsky, Bezos said: Full sentences are harder to write. They have verbs. The

paragraphs have topic sentences. There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking. Companies often
prefer strong basics to narrow expertise. Andrew Benett, a management consultant, surveyed 100 business leaders and found that 84
of them said they would rather hire smart, passionate people, even if they didnt have the exact skills their companies needed. Innovation in

business has always involved insights beyond technology. Consider the case of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg was a classic
liberal arts student who also happened to be passionately interested in computers. He studied ancient Greek intensively in high school and majored in psychology
while he attended college. And Facebooks innovations have a lot to do with psychology. Zuckerberg has often pointed out that before Facebook was created, most
people shielded their identities on the Internet. It was a land of anonymity. Facebooks insight was that it could create a culture of real identities, where people
would voluntarily expose themselves to their friends, and this would become a transformative platform. Of course, Zuckerberg understands computers deeply and

Twenty years
uses great coders to put his ideas into practice, but as he has put it, Facebook is as much psychology and sociology as it is technology.

ago, tech companies might have survived simply as product manufacturers. Now they have to
be on the cutting edge of design, marketing and social networking. You can make a sneaker
equally well in many parts of the world, but you cant sell it for $300 unless youve built a
story around it. The same is true for cars, clothes and coffee. The value added is in the brand
how it is imagined, presented, sold and sustained. Or consider Americas vast
entertainment industry, built around stories, songs, design and creativity. All of this requires
skills far beyond the offerings of a narrow STEM curriculum. Critical thinking is, in the end, the
only way to protect American jobs. David Autor, the MIT economist who has most carefully
studied the impact of technology and globalization on labor, writes that human tasks that
have proved most amenable to computerization are those that follow explicit, codifiable
procedures such as multiplication where computers now vastly exceed human labor in
speed, quality, accuracy, and cost efficiency. Tasks that have proved most vexing to automate
are those that demand flexibility, judgment, and common sense skills that we understand
only tacitly for example, developing a hypothesis or organizing a closet. In 2013, two
Oxford scholars conducted a comprehensive study on employment and found that, for
workers to avoid the computerization of their jobs, they will have to acquire creative and
social skills. This doesnt in any way detract from the need for training in technology, but it
does suggest that as we work with computers (which is really the future of all work), the
most valuable skills will be the ones that are uniquely human, that computers cannot quite
figure out yet. And for those jobs, and that life, you could not do better than to follow your
passion, engage with a breadth of material in both science and the humanities, and perhaps
above all, study the human condition.
5/7/17
 Increase Federal Regulation on CMOs
Federal Regulation over charter schools is insufficient now and is causing
massive waste, fraud, abuse, and poor quality education
OIG 16 Office of Inspector General, United States Department of Education, September 2016,
Nationwide Assessment of Charter and Education Management Organizations: FINAL AUDIT
REPORT, https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/auditreports/fy2016/a02m0012.pdf, VM
Internal controls are integral to the operations of any organization. They are a means of identifying and managing risks associated with Federal
programs and a key component in preventing and detecting fraud, waste, and abuse. The Federal Government has reemphasized the
importance of internal controls through recent updates of various regulations and guidance, such as Title 2 of the Code of Federal Regulations
Part 200 Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards and the U.S. Government
Accountability Office Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government issued by the Comptroller General of the United States. The
development and implementation of adequate internal controls is even more important when dealing with emerging operating environments,
such as the CMOs that were the focus of this audit. We determined that charter school relationships with CMOs
posed a significant risk to Department program objectives. Specifically, we found that 22 of
the 33 charter schools in our review had 36 examples of internal control weaknesses related
to the charter schools relationships with their CMOs (concerning conflicts of interest,
related-party transactions, and insufficient segregation of duties).5 See Appendix 1 for details regarding the
State summaries of 6 States and 33 charter schools we reviewed. We concluded that these examples of internal
control weaknesses represent the following significant risks to Department program
objectives: (1) financial risk, which is the risk of waste, fraud, and abuse; (2) lack of
accountability over Federal funds, which is the risk that, as a result of charter school boards
ceding fiscal authority to CMOs, charter school stakeholders (the authorizer, State
educational agency (SEA), and Department) may not have accountability over Federal funds
sufficient to ensure compliance with Federal requirements; and (3) performance risk, which is
the risk that the charter school stakeholders may not have sufficient assurance that charter
schools are implementing Federal programs in accordance with Federal requirements. We
also found that the Department did not have effective internal controls to evaluate and
mitigate the risk that charter school relationships with CMOs pose to Department program
objectives. The Department did not have controls to identify and address the risks related to CMO relationships because it did not believe
the risk to be materially different than risks presented by other grantees that received Department funds. In addition, Department officials
stated that OII uses a risk-based strategy in the monitoring and administration of CSP grants. Further,
the Department did not
implement adequate monitoring procedures that would provide sufficient assurance that it
could identify and mitigate the risks specific to charter school relationships with CMOs. With the
exception of the SIG and the CSP non-SEA programs, the Department did not include in its monitoring tools any steps to review the
relationships between charter schools and CMOs or to review the SEAs oversight of those relationships. Also, the Department did not ensure
that SEAs monitored the relationships between charter schools and CMOs in a manner that would have addressed financial risk, lack of
accountability, and program performance risk. This occurred in part because the Department did not collect
and analyze information needed to perform a risk assessment and then tailor its monitoring
procedures accordingly. Without performing a risk assessment, the Department did not provide guidance to SEAs related to the
potential risks posed by charter schools with CMOs. As a result, the Departments internal controls were
insufficient to mitigate the significant financial, lack of accountability and performance risks
that charter school relationships with CMOs pose to Department program objectives .
Specifically charter schools with CMOS are not properly regulated, creating
financial risk, misuse of public funds, and horrendous education standards
OIG 16 Office of Inspector General, United States Department of Education, September 2016,
Nationwide Assessment of Charter and Education Management Organizations: FINAL AUDIT
REPORT, https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/auditreports/fy2016/a02m0012.pdf, VM
We identified significant risk to Department program objectives based on our audit procedures performed at 33 charter schools in 6 States for
the audit period July 1, 2011, through March 31, 2013, including reviewing the related State and local audit reports, as well as trends identified
by Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigative cases involving CMOs performed nationwide from January 2005 through June 2016. To assess
the current and emerging risk that charter school relationships with CMOs pose to Department program objectives, we performed reviews at
selected SEAs and charter schools with CMOs that received Federal funds during our audit period. We judgmentally selected 33 charter schools
with CMOs in 6 States; therefore, the rate of occurrence of these internal control weaknesses cannot be projected to the universe of all charter
schools with CMOs. However,
through these case studies, we determined that similar systemic
internal control issues could occur at other charter schools. We selected the 33 charter schools based on a
variety of factors including, but not limited to: 1. information from the Internal Revenue Service form 990;24 2. findings related to charter
school relationships with CMOs from State and local audit reports, where available; 3. news article searches regarding charter school
relationships with CMOs; and 4. management and operational characteristics, such as the CMOs for-profit/nonprofit status, the number of
States in which the CMOs operated, the number of years that the charter schools were open, and the charter schools LEA status. We
found 36 examples of internal control weaknesses, conflicts of interest, related-party
transactions, and insufficient segregation of duties concerning charter school relationships
with CMOs at 22 of the 33 charter schools we reviewed. Furthermore, we identified additional examples of
internal control weaknesses from other audit reports and nationwide OIG investigative cases. We determined that the internal
control weaknesses we identified have the potential to affect charter schools entity-wide
operations and consequently pose risk to all State and Federal funds awarded to the schools.
Specifically, we concluded that the examples we found of internal control weaknesses
represent the following significant risks to Department program objectives: 1. Financial risk.
This is the risk of waste, fraud, and abuse resulting from conflicts of interest, related-party
transactions, and insufficient segregation of duties. 2. Lack of accountability over Federal
funds. This is the risk that, as a result of charter school boards ceding fiscal authority to
CMOs, charter school stakeholders (the authorizer, SEA, and Department) may not have
sufficient accountability over Federal funds to ensure grantees and subgrantees are
complying with Federal requirements. As a result, the CMO may spend Federal funds on
expenditures that are not in accordance with Federal law, regulation, and grant
requirements. 3. Performance risk. This is the risk that, as a result of charter school board
ceding operational authority to CMOs, charter school stakeholders may not have sufficient
assurance that grantees and subgrantees are implementing Federal programs in accordance
with Federal requirements. As a result, the CMO may not provide charter school students
with services that are in accordance with Federal program requirements. We found that 13 of
the 36 examples of internal control weaknesses were applicable to multiple categories of
significant risk to the Department. Therefore, the number of internal control weaknesses is different from the number of
significant risks discussed below.
5/8/17
 Foucault and neolib K link
Education reform is a repressive technique of control and power and creates
neoliberalism within education systems
Skourdoumbis 16 Andrew Skourdoumbis, Senior Lecturer in Curriculum and Pedagogy with
major research interests in curriculum theory, education policy analysis, teacher practice, and
teacher effectiveness, Deakin University (Australia), 2016, New directions in education? A
critique of contemporary policy reforms, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 36:4, 507-509, DOI:
10.1080/02188791.2014.961896,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02188791.2014.961896?needAccess=true, VM
The work of Michel Foucault, in particular his studies of discipline, bio-politics and government, considers the repressive techniques of control
and exertions of power that seek to constrain. The practice of teaching operates within an economic and political context that shapes and/or
subjectifies. Foucaults conception of governmentality illustrates that the art of government emphasizes specific forms of rationality that centre
on regulatory control of populations. Foucaults theoretical tool-box, especially his work on
governmentality is well suited to recent changes in the professional lives (Binkley &
Capetillo, 2009, p. xiv) of teachers and to the critical analysis of education policy as it can
reveal current manifestations of a science of government (Peters, 2007, p. 166) through
policy control. To be exact, ruling discourses that document and objectify student learning, student achievement and classroom
teaching. Governing the work of teachers through the ... bodies of knowledge, belief and
opinion (Dean, 2010, p. 24) in which education is engaged relies on corresponding
interactions of power and authority. Foucault is concerned with the rationalization of political affairs and how issues of
power, truth and identity, are expressed in the ... general axes of government corresponding to ... its techne its episteme and its ethos
(Dean, 2010, p. 27). His idea of governmentality focuses upon aspects of political economy that regulate behaviour and define actions. In
terms of education policy, Foucaults conception of governmentality highlights issues of
public trust in the teaching profession. Sachs (2003), for example, points to the close scrutiny
of teachers at both the public and private level, and she also highlights the often made claim
that alleged poor standards in academic achievement link directly to teaching practice. She
suggests that: ... development and implementation of standards and regimes in the UK, the
US and elsewhere can be seen in this light. Governments want control over a compliant
teaching profession and see that standards regimes provide the regulatory framework to
achieve this end. (Sachs, 2003, p. 6) Furthermore, the connection between standards and
control integrating enhanced regulation and system enforcement of sanctions are specific
features of governmentality as it applies to educational practice. To be exact, the
administrative attitudes, and prescribed conduct of conduct (see Dean, 2010) found within
teaching standards provides the necessary reasoning, thinking about and systematic
reckoning needed to control teachers and teaching. The relevance of governmentality to a critical examination of
education policy concerning teaching interrogates new formative statements about teaching practice. The DEECD Discussion
Paper for instance uses a series of regulatory statements about teaching, learning, teacher
performance, and teacher education as a system of rules (Allen, 2010, p. 149). In other
words, their emergence validates system-imposed norms of verification and coherence
(Allen, 2010, p. 149) as an exercise in power that regulates behaviour, and more broadly,
defines actions. Importantly, as economies of power, regulatory specifications about teacher
performance communicate a particular techne, and legitimized epistemology (modes and
styles of teaching) signifying and indeed authenticating a standardized pedagogical ethos
regularized forms of teaching practice. To be precise, a conceded logic of pedagogy with characteristic, distinctive and
specific forms and ways of understanding, pondering, and mediating teaching practice. Germane to the work of Foucault and governmentality
is then the prioritization of the specific question, how are teachers and teaching practice(s) to be governed? This means examining the current
education policy regime in Victoria as a techne of government, gripped by the particular policy vocabularies and tools of post-Fordist neo-
liberalism. Neo-liberal conditions The
neo-liberal ambition and ascendancy in education, represents an
economic and political programme (of governmentality) that reflects an intensification of
economic matters and their application to schools. Giroux (2013, p.1) asserts that neo-liberalism is: ... part of a
broader project of restoring class power and consolidating the rapid concentration of capital. It is a political, economic, and political project that
constitutes an ideology, mode of governance, policy, and form of public pedagogy. As an ideology, it construes profit making as the essence of
democracy, consuming as the only operable form of citizenship, and an irrational belief in the market to solve all problems and serve as a model
for structuring all social relations. As a mode of governance, it produces identities, subjects, and ways of life free of government regulations,
driven by a survival of the fittest ethic, grounded in the idea of the free, possessive individual, and committed to the right of ruling groups and
institutions to accrue wealth removed from matters of ethics and social costs. As a policy and political project, neoliberalism is wedded to the
privatization of public services, selling off of state functions, deregulation of finance and labor, elimination of the welfare state and unions,
liberalization of trade in goods and capital investment, and the marketization and commodification of society. Peters
(2002)
documents the neo-liberal policy-making focus as one that embraces the extension of
economic rationality into all spheres of life. The political and economic move towards neo-
liberalism marks a post-Keynesian framework reflecting as Lingard (2000) states a
restructured managerialist, competitive performative state apparatus, along with the
ministerialisation of policy production (p. 29). The social imaginary of neo-liberal political
and economic reform has a double edged focus. At one level designed to forge a shared
implicit understanding of the problems to which policies are presented as solutions, seeking a
sense of political legitimacy and on the other disciplining the population and guiding and
shaping their conduct (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010, p. 36). Under neo-liberalism, education policies
are often configured to meet economic purposes. Corrective interventions re-formulate
educational practice towards an economization of schooling and teaching. Human capital
considerations dominate as development of national economic competitiveness counts.
Modifying schools is an implicit intention as teachers and their performance becomes a core
matter of concern. Specific incantations of the preferred teacher (Smyth & Shacklock, 1998, p. 107) mapped against a specified
accountability regime becomes a preferred managerial option. Smyth (2006) itemizes it namely that (1) we have a
crisis in schools, attributable to schools, teachers, and teacher education; (2) the way of fixing these
alleged problems is by cutting schools and higher education institutions loose from a public education system and allowing them to be
disciplined by market forces; (3)
the way of improving quality in education is by requiring close
adherence to arbitrarily determined standards and targets, and ensuring compliance through
forms of prescribed accountability; (4) the language, rhetoric, models and modes of thought
of the business sector are preferable and more appropriate to anything that can be
developed by schools, students, teachers or teacher educators; (5) the role of parents is that of judicious
consumers exercising choice of school that provides the best deal for them and their children, rather than active citizens interested in a
system of education that is in the interests of everyones children, not just those most adept at working the system. An
unremitting
and permanent assessment of students, teachers and schools moderated alongside and in
response to test results and their official public descriptions (see Lingard & Sellar, 2013) is the
embedded intent of a neo-liberal accountability regimen. The added constituent for teachers
and teacher education under this regime with its emphasis upon testing and quantitative
measurement of academic performance, is a concomitant influence on teachers learning
which see such learning as enabled by information provided by test providers (Hardy & Boyle, 2011,
p. 216), in brief, the stylized treatment of teaching practice.
5/9/17
 Federalism Link and Turns Case
Federal education reform staves off federalism the link alone turns the case by
creating a worse model of education.
Hess and Kelly 15 - (Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American
Enterprise Institute, Andrew P. Kelly is a resident scholar and director of the Center on Higher
Education Reform at the American Entrprise Institute, 9-15-2015, "More Than a Slogan",
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/09/15/5-reasons-federalism-in-
education-matters, DOA: 5-9-2017) //Snowball
Those seeking to do more and more of the nation's education business in Washington fail to
recognize that federalism has its own unique strengths when it comes to education. Now, those arguing
for a larger federal role have reasonable points to make. Some states do have a history of ignoring failing schools or doing too little for disadvantaged students. It is
also true that states can ignore federal inducements in order to go their own way (though that's easier said than done when non-participation comes with a giant

price tag). The response to these concerns should not be shallow sloganeering around the virtues of limited government, but a competing
vision of how to order our community affairs and an explanation of why, at least in the American system, the
federal government just isn't well suited to govern education. Anything less makes it all too easy
for liberals, and even well-intentioned moderates, to dismiss federalism as an inconvenient obstacle to be overcome rather than

an asset to be embraced. Federalism matters for at least five reasons. It's a matter of size. Education
advocates suffer from severe bouts of Finland and Singapore envy. They tend to ignore that most of these nations
have populations of 5 million or so, or about the population of Maryland or Massachusetts. Trying to make rules for
schools in a nation that's as large and diverse as the U.S. is simply a different challenge. It aligns
responsibility and accountability with authority. One problem with tackling education reform
from Washington is that it's not members of Congress or federal bureaucrats who are charged with
making things work or who are held accountable when they don't. Instead, responsibility and blame
fall on state leaders and on the leaders in those schools, districts and colleges who do the actual work. The more authority moves up the ladder in
education, the more this divide worsens. It steers decisions towards the practical . No Child Left Behind

promised that 100 percent of students would be proficient in reading and math by 2014. President
Barack Obama wants to ensure that all students can attend community college for "free" though most of the funds would

come from states. It's easy for D.C. politicians to make grand promises and leave the consequences to

someone else. State leaders must balance the budget and are answerable to voters for what
happens in schools and colleges; this tends to make them more pragmatic in pursuing reform. When
policymakers are embedded in a community, as mayors and state legislators are, there is also more trust and opportunity for compromise. That kind of practicality

It leaves
might disappoint firebrands eager for national solutions, but it's a better bet for students than the wish lists and airy promises of Beltway pols.

room for varied approaches to problem-solving. One of the perils of trying to "solve" things
from Washington is that we wind up with one-size-fits-all solutions. No Child Left Behind
emerged from a wave of state-based efforts to devise testing and accountability systems. Those state efforts were
immensely uneven, but they allowed a variety of approaches to emerge, yielding the opportunity to learn,
refine and reinvent. That's much more difficult when Washington is seeking something that can be

applied across 50 states. It ensures that reform efforts actually have local roots. The Obama
administration's Race to the Top program convinced lots of states to promise to do lots of
things. The results have been predictably disappointing. Rushing to adopt teacher evaluation
systems on a political timeline, states have largely made a hash of the exercise . Free college proposals
make the same mistake; they depend on states and colleges promising to spend more money and adopt federally sanctioned reforms, an approach that seems
destined to frustrate policymakers' best-laid plans.
5/10/17
 Adv CP U.S. Econ/Poverty/Fiscal Federalism
Counterplan: The United States federal government should streamline public
welfare by eliminating federal welfare bureaucracy and ceding the authority to
state governments and providing them a capped global block grant* and
incentives to establish individualized programs that emphasize the well-being of
welfare recipients.

The counterplan solves healthy economic growth, fiscal federalism, and

eliminates poverty existing programs are a hyper-inefficient piecemeal that
drains national spending.
Alexander 17 - (Dr. Gary Alexander was Secretary of Human Services for the Commonwealth
of Pennsylvania from 2011-2013, FEB 17, 2017, "Taming Public Welfare Can Fix Our Economy
And Eliminate Poverty", https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/02/17/taming-public-
welfare-can-fix-our-economy-and-eliminate-poverty/#460d83701bfa, DOA: 5-10-2017)
//Snowball
*capped global block grant means states receive a set amount of funding and flexibility over
how to use that (to tailor it to the state), but the USfg can provide incentives (raising the cap)
for states that do a good job, so it promotes innovation/competition even though it results in
less federal spending by reducing inefficiencies
No nation has ever spent itself into prosperity. Yet the United States annually spends over $1 trillion on
means-tested or unearned public-welfare programs, covering one in three residents. Total expenditures for these
programsincluding Medicaid, cash assistance, food stamps, housing, energy assistance and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability
programs have more than doubled since 1989 and outpace all categories of federal spending.
Comprising over 40% of state budgets and 60% of every tax dollar, welfare continues to crowd
out necessary services like education and infrastructure. As a former state official who spent nearly two decades managing
public welfare programs in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, I can attest that these programs are broken and riddled with
inefficiencies, abuse and fraud. The only way to reverse this is a new federal-state agreement
that harnesses the proven power of the states as laboratories of democracy and downsizes and
limits the top-down, heavy-handed, federal government approach to conduct the limitless
war on poverty, a war that Ronald Reagan said we lost. President Donald Trump and Republicans would
do well to quickly fix this systems runaway growth and the serious threat that it poses to Americas
economic health. This new agreement should abolish the current 70-plus programs and thousands of
onerous and redundant rules engrained in at least nine federal agencies and replace them with a
simplified system that consolidates federal-funding streams into super or global block
grants of defined dollars diverted directly to the states from the U.S. Treasury
circumventing the federal agencies. Replacing the current matching schemes of individual programs that reward states for
growing welfare, this new laws scope must be global, encompassing all programs across agenciesnot an
individual piecemeal fix. It should set compatible goals and broad outcomes across populations, focusing on
work, self-sufficiency, education and training, health improvement and spending reductions,
while establishing performance measures that will finally hold bureaucrats accountable. A
mechanism like this will provide states flexibility to strategically innovate and tailor programs and
benefits to their unique characteristics, resulting in increased competition, improved quality
and downsized bureaucracies, saving taxpayers hundreds of billions. In a 2016 Ernst and Young audit done
for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), HHS officials said they couldnt track how much the
government spent on welfare overpayments and waste. States certainly dont need more money
to spend. They need strong federal government oversight to improve every recipients health,
education and employment status without tying their hands with onerous regulations that
create waste, fraud and bloated bureaucracies. This reform doesnt mean just providing health
coverage. It means working with the whole personbody, mind and spiritto improve health and
economic status, smoothing out the cliffs that recipients hit so that they quickly move off the system. Flexibility and
accountability will create partnerships with the private sector to craft programs that provide
recipients with goals and outcomes that actually improve their future and instill a sense of
personal responsibility. To make this work, the federal government should provide states with a
capped global block grant of federal dollars based on a states previous spend. Since this is a major
undertaking, states will need time to fully transition from the current complex system to one that works more like the private sector. Funding
could be renegotiated only in case of a disaster. Why is a
funding cap important? It changes the culture from a
financing structure that automatically increases the federal share as state spending increases
to a system that forces states to be fiscally responsible. States will still have a chance to be
rewarded with additional federal dollars, but only if they are accountable, spend less,
innovate and hit health, education, employment and spending-reduction benchmarks.
Funding caps force fiscal discipline, something that all levels of government desperately need. Many
single mothers with multiple children have told me that they choose welfare over work because, if
they make over a certain amount of money, they end up losing benefits. This is what I have
repeatedly called hitting the welfare cliff, leading a recipient to choose roughly $45,000 in benefits instead of taking a $25,000-a-
year job. Couple this with the federal governments incentivizing states to conduct extensive
welfare advertising to persuade residents, including non-citizens and even the middle class, to sign up for free
benefits like Obamacare, and the complexities of multiple programs with competing rules siloed
across different federal and state agencies; then we ask why generations remain on the
system. This reforms flexibility and accountability will fix all of this. The welfare dysfunction begins at
the top. Most elected and nonelected government officials, including bureaucrats operating these
programs, dont understand the systems complexities or care about the people trapped in it.
During my tenure in Rhode Island attempting to gain federal approval for a global Medicaid waiver that provided the state with unprecedented
flexibility, a senior federal official asked us, If we give you this type of relief, what will our job be? This is exactly why every welfare
bureaucracy perpetuates its own existence, forcing states to spend billions hiring oodles of consultants and lobbyists that attempt to deal with
what Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence lamented as a multitude of offices and officers sent to harass our people and to eat
out our substance. Medicaid, the largest of the means-tested welfare programs, covers
one in four residents, costing
$600 billion per year. Its law, however, requires that it offer services for recipients to attain self-
care or independence. Decades of disjointed piecemeal additions, thousands of onerous
rules, dreadful management at the federal and state levels and Obamacares massive
expansion have created anything but. In fact, Rhode Island even once paid for an animal to receive health services. A
global fix like this is not untested. A block-grant model ensured the success of the bipartisan legislation
that created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in 1996. It also worked with
Medicaid after Rhode Island, in 2009, secured a five-year global waiver from federal red tape in
exchange for a funding cap. Instead of unlimited deficit spending, one global program broke down silos
and drove expenditure reductions and quality improvements. The flexibility spurred innovation and
competition and allowed Americas most liberal state to keep growth to just over 1% compared to a
national average of close to 7%. Draining the swamp is more than rhetoric. It will take mammoth
strength to consolidate and banish the current system that has created this mess . In Pennsylvania
alone, the ratio of workers to welfare recipients has narrowed from about 3.3 workers to 1 recipient in 2001 to about 2 to 1 in 2015. Although a
strong safety net is necessary for the most needy, the
Trump Administration would give our economy and
those who truly need help a huge boost by scrapping the entire system and starting over. If
Trump initiates a complete public welfare overhaul based on state flexibility, capped global
block grants, outcomes and accountability, and abolishes the current maze of federal public
welfare programs, the nation might finally have a chance to eliminate poverty, offer the
middle class high-wage jobs and fix our fiscal house. Finally, by focusing on servant leadership,
the Republicans might fulfill their promise to follow the Constitution and transfer authority
back to the states to solve problems that the federal government is unequipped to handle.
5/11/17
 2AC States CP Template
Permutation do both its dual solvency and apportions the net benefit
between the two.

States dont solve hollow promises and an impending shift back to federal
control.
Camera 15 - (Lauren Camera, Education Reporter, 12-9-2015, "Education Shifts to the States",
https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2015/12/09/new-federal-education-law-
shifts-power-to-states, DOA: 5-11-2017) //Snowball
Even if states are successful in electing or appointing education chiefs who have ambitious plans
for closing achievement gaps and turning around failing schools, the political environment at
the state level presents a challenge all its own, says Aldeman. "While I appreciate what individuals are saying, I
don't expect the system will let them stay and execute all of their plans," Aldeman says. "There is
such churn at the states level in the people and plans that it's hard to believe any promises
people make." Kress, for his part, believes that four or five years from now the pendulum will swing back
toward a meatier role for the federal government. "I think there will be a recognition a few years
out that this was a mistake," he says. "It may have felt good, it may have been a natural response to an
unfulfilled No Child Left Behind and a response to [the Obama administration's use of executive authority]. But
I think people will say we should have stayed the course instead of throwing our hands up ."

50 states counterplans are a voting issue for fairness and education-

1. Its unfair and unsupported by literature for 50 states to act in unison.
2. The judge only has jurisdiction over federal action.
3. Multiple-actor fiat has no literature and isnt reciprocal to the Affirmative
or realistic to the world.
4. They reduce the breadth of education by shifting the debate to repetitive
federalism discussions.
5. It lets the Negative steal the 1AC, which is 8 minutes of strategic
Affirmative offense.

Permutation do the counterplan its equally as fair to sever the federal

government as it is to run a CP that isnt a logical opportunity cost to the federal
government.
Financing Turn-
A) State approaches cause funding deficits.
Bowman 16 - (Kristi L. Bowman, Vice Dean For Academic Affairs And Professor Of Law, Nov
30, 2016, "The Failure Of Education Federalism", DOA: 5-11-2017) //Snowball
Education federalism is failing our children. Especially since the Great Recession, states have been
increasingly unlikely to invest in public schools and have been even less amenable to structural
education reform initiatives. In some states, the executive or judiciary has attempted to counteract this trend. In a small but
growing number of other states, checks and balances effectively no longer occur, at least when it
comes to financing public education. Because of the relationship between the states and federal government regarding
education, the federal government is largely unable to intervene via statute, regulation, or court order. The
debates that emerge from this situation are not new: Questions about federalism, courts ability to produce
social change, and the degree to which money matters in schools all have been at the heart of
American education law and policy for quite some time. In one form or another, these themes are woven throughout
more than a half-century of vigorous discussions about education funding reform by judges, legislators, and researchers.2 In fact, from the 1966
fountainhead of modern education research, the Coleman Report, 3 through today, ample
research has sought to unpack
the impact of funding and a new consensus may be emerging, documenting that court orders and
legislative reforms that result in increased school spending create short- and long-term gains
for students in the affected schools. This finding is especially significant because it is unusual to
identify a variable in a problem as complex as educational quality and poverty that one can
influence as easily as funding.

B) That creates inequalities between and within states.

Brown 15 - (Emma Brown Reporter Washington, D.C., June 8, 2015, "Inequitable school
funding called one of the sleeper civil rights issues of our time",
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/08/inequitable-school-funding-
called-one-of-the-sleeper-civil-rights-issues-of-our-time/?utm_term=.be357f394207, DOA: 5-
11-2017) //Snowball
Funding for public education in most states is inadequate and inequitable, creating a huge
obstacle for the nations growing number of poor children as they try to overcome their circumstances, according to a
set of reports released Monday by civil rights groups. Students in the nations highest-spending state (New York)
receive about $12,000 more each year than students in the lowest-spending state (Idaho), according
to the reports, and in most states school districts in wealthy areas spend as much or more per
pupil than districts with high concentrations of poverty. In addition, many states were spending
less on education in 2012 than they were in 2008, relative to their overall economic productivity,
according to the reports. The two reports the Education Law Centers fourth annual report card on school finance and a companion piece co-
authored with the Leadership Conference Education Fund are meant to help galvanize policymakers and activists to take on longstanding
school funding disparities. School funding decisions are one of the sleeper civil rights issues of our
time, said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Leadership Conference Education Fund. The
evidence from across the country is clear and compelling: Our
nation must dramatically change the way that
educational resources are distributed so that there is true equity in Americas classrooms.

Permutation pass the plan through cooperative federalism solves and

shields the net benefit.
Kurzweil 15 - (Martin A. Kurzweil, Director, Educational Transformation Program, Ithaka S+R;
Lecturer in Law, Columbia Law School, 2015 California Law Review, "Disciplined Devolution and
the New Education Federalism", http://www.californialawreview.org/wp-
content/uploads/2015/07/Kurzweil_Devolution-Education-Federalism.pdf, DOA: 5-11-2017)
//Snowball
Cooperative federalism permits the state government to distribute benefits or regulate in
ways that are tailored to local conditions,83 including further devolution of authority to the local
level. Local decision making yields policy that is not only a closer fit to local needs, but also more closely
resembles selfgovernment. State and local political representatives and administrative officials are more familiar
(sometimes personally so) with the people affected by their policies. With less separation between government and
citizenry, there also may be greater opportunity for those affected to participate in or influence the policy-making process.84
Decentralizing policy formulation may also help evade national political gridlock. Inviting
state participation in federal policy formulation may go further and disrupt that gridlock.85
States that favor the federal governments policy are empowered to implement it and even
go beyond what the federal government would do; states that generally oppose the federal
governments policy have greater leverage to change or resist it.86
 ---Links to Politics
States counterplan links to federal politics opposition manifests in lawsuits
and political negotiations.
Green 17 - (Emma Green is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers politics, policy, and
religion, 1-4-2017, "Democrats Have Badly Neglected State and Local Politics",
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/the-ideological-reasons-why-
democrats-have-neglected-local-politics/512024/, DOA: 5-11-2017) //Snowball
Practically speaking, the narrative that progressives favor federal policymaking while conservatives
favor state and local action is far too simplistic. Both parties tend to use federal power when they
have it. George W. Bush, as a matter of ideology, cared a lot about states, Young pointed out. But the first thing
he did as president was to shift power to the federal government in the area of education, which
had been a terribly important area of state predominance. Conversely, both parties have used
state-level litigation to intervene in federal policymaking when theyve been out of power. Take
Massachusetts vs. Environmental Protection Agency, the Bush-era Supreme Court case in which 12 states, several cities,
and advocacy groups sued to force the EPA to begin regulating greenhouse gases. During the Obama
years, other states pulled a similar moveTexas sued the administration over deferred
immigration enforcement for people in the country illegally, for example. Broadly, I think federalism is not a
conservative or liberal thing, or a Republican or Democrat thing, Young said. It offers a way of not having all
your eggs in one basket when changes in who controls various institutions occur. Its also a way
of making sure one party doesnt force the other permanently out of power at the national
level: As Democrats are now discovering, its hard to get elected in districts that Republican-
heavy state legislatures have gerrymandered to favor their own party. But theres a reason why the United
States is not a constellation of self-determining city-states. Federalism is a political orientation,
not a body of clear-cut policy prescriptions. The negotiation of power between national and state
governmentsand, relatedly, between state and local governmentsis complicated and partisan. Larger bodies
of government, led by Democrats and Republicans alike, often threaten smaller bodies with litigation or
funding cuts if they dont follow certain policies. During the Reagan years, the federal government
famously used this method to get states to comply with its policy on the legal drinking age. And in 2016, the
Obama administration used a similar method when it sent a letter to school districts instructing
them to comply with federal guidance on accommodations for transgender students .
 Education Funding and Competitiveness
States have drastically cut funding to public education Leachman et al 16
(MICHAEL LEACHMAN NICK ALBARES KATHLEEN MASTERSON MARLANA WALLACE January
25th, 2016 Most states have cut school funding, and some continue cutting
http://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/most-states-have-cut-school-funding-
and-some-continue-cutting Michael Leachman is Director of State Fiscal Research with the
State Fiscal Policy division of the Center,

These cuts weaken schools capacity to develop the intelligence and creativity of the next
generation of workers and entrepreneurs. Our survey, the most up-to-date which analyzes state tax and
budget policy decisions and promotes sustainable policies that take into account the needs of
families of all income levels.)
Most states provide less support per student for elementary and secondary schools in some
cases, much less than before the Great Recession, our survey of state budget documents over the last three months finds.
Worse, some states are still cutting eight years after the recession took hold. Our countrys future depends
crucially on the quality of its schools, yet rather than raising K-12 funding to support proven reforms such as hiring and retaining excellent teachers, reducing class

These cuts weaken schools

sizes, and expanding access to high-quality early education, many states have headed in the opposite direction.

capacity to develop the data available on state and local funding for schools, indicates that, after adjusting for inflation: At least 31
states provided less state funding per student in the 2014 school year (that is, the school year ending in 2014)
than in the 2008 school year, before the recession took hold. In at least 15 states, the cuts exceeded 10
percent. In at least 18 states, local government funding per student fell over the same period. In at least 27 states, local funding
rose, but those increases rarely made up for cuts in state support. Total local funding nationally for the states
where comparable data exist declined between 2008 and 2014, adding to the damage from state funding cuts. While data on total school

funding in the current school year (2016) is not yet available, at least 25 states are still
providing less general or formula funding the primary form of state funding for schools
per student than in 2008. In seven states, the cuts exceed 10 percent. Most states raised general funding per student slightly
this year, but 12 states imposed new cuts, even as the national economy continues to improve. Some of
these states, including Oklahoma, Arizona, and Wisconsin, already were among the deepest-cutting states since the recession hit.

Education funding is key to competitiveness without funding competitiveness

is killed Epstein 11
(Diana Epstein September 6th, 2011 Investing in education Powers US competitiveness
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/reports/2011/09/06/10376/investing-in-
education-powers-u-s-competitiveness/)
Education is the key to American competitiveness and a strong economy, and continued federal
investment in education is needed in order to support improvements in student achievement
and put our economy on the path to sustained growth. The United States suffers from
persistent differences in achievement between groups of students defined by race/ethnicity or
family income, and our students also rank well behind those in economically competitive
countries on international tests. We must continue to invest in education in order to create a
system that is more equitable and that produces American students who are more competitive
in the global marketplace for talent. Too few of our students are performing at the levels
needed to compete for the high-skill jobs that allow us to maintain global competitiveness. Only
33 percent of fourth graders and 33 percent of eighth graders scored at or above proficient in
reading on the 2009 NAEP exam; only 39 percent of fourth graders and 34 percent of eighth
graders were at or above proficient in mathematics. Furthermore, achievement tests
demonstrate that international competitors are performing better than U.S. students, and in a
globalized economy we cannot afford to fall any further behind. Research shows that
investment in education is essential for our countrys short- and long-term economic growth. A
recent report by McKinsey & Company estimates that bringing lower-performing states up to
the national average between 1983 and 1998 would have added $425 billion to $710 billion to
our 2008 GDP. Closing the racial/ethnic and income achievement gaps between 1983 and 1998
would have also added to our GDP. The estimates are that closing the racial/ethnic gap would
have added $310 billion to $525 billion by 2008 and closing the income achievement gap would
have added between $400 billion and $670 billion to our 2008 GDP. Continuing to tolerate
these achievement gaps is tantamount to accepting a chronic, self-induced economic recession.
Closing the international achievement gap between 1983 and 1998 would have added
$1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion to our 2008 GDP. Another study found that increasing students
scores on the PISA test by 25 pointsone-fourth of a standard deviationbetween 2010 and
2030 would result in economic gains for OECD countries. U.S. students currently rank below the
students from many OECD countries on this test, but if the United States and other countries
improved by this amount, the payoff to the United States would be more than $40 trillion by
2090.
5/12/17
 Culture Aff/K
Increasing diversity creates a necessity to change pedagogy to reflect
culturally relevant leadership
Horsford 11- (Sonya Douglass Horsford is a senior resident scholar of education with The
Lincy Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where she focuses on the history of
education in the U.S., politics of education, and role of schools in society.
Her research has been featured in journals such as Educational Administration Quarterly, Urban
Education, The Urban Review, and Journal of Negro Education. She is also editor of the book
New Perspectives in Educational Leadership: Exploring Social, Political, and Community
Contexts and Meaning (Peter Lang, 2010) and author of Learning in a Burning House:
Educational Inequality, Ideology, and (Dis)Integration (Teachers College Press, 2011).
Horsford is the recipient of the 2011 Emerging Scholar Award by Division A of the American
Educational Research Association (AERA), an award that recognizes a pre-tenure scholar who
has made outstanding contributions to the field of leadership, administration, or organizational
theory.)

The social and cultural contexts of today's schools are diverse in ways that require greater
attention to the educational philosophies, epistemologies, and perspectives of school leaders. In those environments
where educators are not aptly prepared or willing to meet the sometimes unique needs of
students who represent underserved racial, ethnic, and cultural groups, these matters move
beyond the personal and become professional, as they are further complicated by high-stakes accountability
standards and the prioritization of "closing the achievement gap" in schools and districts. As such, the purpose of this article is
to explore more fully the research literature on culturally relevant and antiracist pedagogy in ways that can inform the practice
of school leadership and explore the yet-untapped possibilities of speaking across areas of theory, research, and practice within
the field of education. Specifically, we offer a framework for culturally relevant leadership that includes the following four
dimensions: the political context, a pedagogical approach, a personal journey, and professional duty. Finally, we conclude with
implications for research and practice.

The social and cultural contexts of today's schools are diverse in ways that require greater attention to the educational
philosophies, epistemologies, and perspectives of school leaders (Brooks & Miles, 2010; Dancy & Horsford, 2010; Dantley &
Tillman, 2006; Horsford, 2009, 2010; Marshall & Oliva, 2006; Rusch & Horsford, 2009; Skrla, McKenzie, & Scheurich, 2008;
Scheurich & Young, 1997; Tillman, 2002). Whether the classroom teacher or building principal, the cultural and racial identities
of students and those who serve them have long continued to represent not only a demographic divide (Milner, 2007), but
growing degrees of cultural mismatch, which occurs when students experience incompatibility between their school and home
cultures (Boykin, 1986; Delpit, 1995; Gay, 2000, 2002; Hale-Benson, 1986; Hilliard, 1967; Irvine, 1990; Ladson-Billings, 1994). In
some instances, this mismatch results in cultural conflict (Delpit, 1995), cultural collision (Beachum & McCray, 2004, 2008), and,
in more troubling scenarios, the practice of cultural collusion, where teachers and school leaders implicitly usher out those
students whose culture is not recognized or valued in the classroom or school setting (Beachum & McCray, 2004). In other
cases, schools actively attempt to erase or "subtract" students' cultures through what Valenzuela (1999) described as
"subtractive schooling" in her ethnographic study of U.S. Mexican youth in a Texas high school.

In those environments where educators are not aptly prepared or willing to meet the sometimes unique needs of students who
represent underserved racial, ethnic, and cultural groups, these matters move beyond the personal and become increasingly
professional when further complicated by high-stakes accountability standards and the prioritization of "closing the
achievement gap" in schools and districts. In this climate, teachers and administrators are preoccupied with "making AYP"
(adequately yearly progress) to comply with a policy that is arguably designed to close these gaps in achievement and promote
academic and educational excellence (i.e., No Child Left Behind Act of 2001). Subsequently, the strained relationships,
discourse, and compromised learning opportunities in such sites of cultural conflict present
an educational challenge that becomes critical not only for teachers to understand but also
for school leaders to both recognize and manage successfully as education professionals. Add
the complexity of multiple conceptualizations, definitions, and interpretations of what culture is generally and how it functions
within schools specifically, and we discover how limited our knowledge and research base regarding culture is in the study and
practice of educational leadership (Brooks & Miles, 2010). This is particularly troubling given what we already know about the
significance of culture in organizations and how it informs the values, behaviors, and work of educational leaders, who in turn
influence the organization, its members, and those it serves.

In educational leadership, the research literature on organizational culture and school culture has dominated most discussion
and analysis concerning what culture is and the role that it plays in schools and school leadership (Brooks & Miles, 2010). While
organizational culture has been defined as "the shared philosophies, ideologies, values,
assumptions, beliefs, expectations, attitudes, and norms that knit a community together "
(Mllman, Saxton, & Serpa, 1986, p. 89) and "the interwoven patterns of beliefs, values, practices, and artifacts that define for
members who they are and how they are to do things" (Bolman & Deal, 1997, p. 217), its link to leadership, according to Schein
(1992), is the ways in which leaders "create and manage culture ... and their ability to understand and work with culture" (p. 5).
Similarly, school culture has been defined using nearly identical terms and constructs, limited only by the characteristics and
confines of the school context. For example, Deal and Peterson (1991) defined school culture as "the character of a school as it
reflects deep patterns of values, beliefs, and traditions that have been formed over the course of its history" (p. 7) and is largely
developed, fostered, and sustained by the school leader. What the educational leadership research literature has not yet
explored in deep and critical ways is how sociocultural differences at the individual and group levels inform leadership
dispositions and behaviors and how failure to acknowledge such differences problematizes the knowledge base on which we
study issues of culture in educational leadership (Brooks & Miles, 2010).

For the purposes of this article, we frame our discussion on culture in educational leadership by using Lindsey, Robins, and
Terrell's (2009) definition of culture as "everything you believe and everything you do that enables you to identify with people
who are like you and that distinguishes you from people who differ from you" (pp. 24-25). We
recognize that race,
ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, language, social class, and faith tradition are just a few
examples of what shapes a person's individual and group culture and, in turn, are significant
to one's multiple constructions of identity and representation (Larson & Murtadha, 2002; Tatum, 2000;
Terrell & Lindsey, 2009). Due to our respective research interests on race and racism in education, however, we focus much of
our discussion in the article on the construction of race as an aspect of culture, recognizing the words of Beverly Tatum (2000),
who in her book chapter entitled "The Multiplicity of Identity: Who Am IT' wrote, "Even as I focus on race and racism in my own
writing and teaching, it is helpful to remind myself and my students of the other distortions around difference that I (and they)
may be practicing" (p. 11).

Unlike the field of teacher education, which has engaged in research that considers sociocultural contexts and factors, as
evidenced in the literature on multicultural education (Banks, 1993, 2005; Banks & Banks, 1988; Grant, 1992; Nieto, 1999;
Sleeter & Grant, 1996; Sleeter & McClaren, 1996), culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1998),
culturally responsive instruction (Gay, 2000, 2002), and antiracist pedagogy (Cochran-Smith, 1995; Kailin, 2002; Lawrence &
Tatum, 1997; Lee, 1998, 2006; Trepagnier, 2006), such considerations remain understudied in the field of educational
leadership. There is, however, as Bustamante, Nelson, and Onwuegbuzie (2009) noted in their work on schoolwide
cultural competence and leadership preparation, a growing body of research that documents how
"culturally responsive educational leadership positively influences academic achievement and
students' engagement with the school environment" (p. 794). Although we do not entirely attribute
persistently racialized gaps in educational achievement and student performance to cultural mismatch, conflict, or collusion, we
do believe such contexts warrant serious attention to the ways that such manifestations of cultural and racial incongruence
affect and inform the work of not only teachers but the administrators who lead them and, through action or inaction, shape
school culture (Brooks & Miles, 2010; Deal & Peterson, 1999).

The purpose of this conceptual project is to explore more fully the research literature on culturally relevant
pedagogy and antiracist pedagogy in ways that can inform the practice of school leadership. As Brooks
and Miles (2010) explained, it is important that we "connect our research and practice more directly to that of our colleagues in
other fields of education and in the social sciences" (p. 23). And as emerging scholars representing the fields of educational
leadership and teacher education, we seek to make these connections by exploring the yet-untapped possibilities of speaking
across educational contexts in ways that result in improved leadership practice for school leaders. Through a selected review of
the teacher education research literature on culturally relevant and antiracist pedagogy and cultural proficiency in educational
leadership, we endeavor to further strengthen emergent connections between these fields of study in ways that advance
culturally relevant and antiracist pedagogy in leadership research and practice. To better contextualize and emphasize the
significance of such a review of literature, the next section offers a brief discussion of culture and its multiple
conceptualizations in present-day U.S. schooling contexts, with attention to demographic trends and data as they inform and
relate to the cultures of students, teachers, and school leaders.

The increasing significance of culturally relevant, responsive, and competent leadership in schools is made clear given the sheer
increases in the number and percentages of schoolchildren representing a diversity of racial, ethnic, and linguistic populations
in the United States.
While the White population is expected to increase by only 7% by 2050, the
U.S. Census Bureau projects an 188% among the Hispanic population, 213% among Asians, and 71% among Blacks. As
a result, in 40 years, Whites will only make up roughly one half of the U.S. population (Young &
Brooks, 2008). Furthermore, the demographic divide (Milner, 2007) between students and educators in the United States
presents unique challenges for teaching, learning, and leading in these diverse educational contexts. Children, families,
teachers, and school leaders bring varied cultural assumptions, perspectives, experiences, and expectations to the school
environment, and as a result, "subcultures in schools often develop naturally around content areas, grade levels, and among
educated and students who share specific values not fully held by the larger group" (Brooks & Normore, 2010, p. 58). Thus,
the potential for cultural conflict resulting from conflicting values among subcultures as well
as the racial incongruence that occurs given the significant demographic differences among
schoolchildren and families and the teachers and leaders who serve them require school
leaders to "be mindful of how their practice and decisions helps create an environment
where subcultures can collaborate synergistically or potentially pit them in adversarial stances" (p.58). In this
section, we briefly present data on the racial and ethnic demography of students, teachers, and school leaders in U.S. public
schools to contextualize our discussion of culturally relevant and antiracist pedagogy and approaches to school leadership.

According to U.S. data from the 2006-2007 school year, as reported by the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at
University of California, Los Angeles, "continued declines in the proportion of white students, increase in minority growth,
particularly of Latino and Asian students, and deepening segregation of black and Latinos by race and poverty" (Orfield, 2009, p.
9) reflect the changing demography of U.S. public schools. At the national level, during the 2006-2007 school year, White
students represented 56.5% of the public school population, followed by 20.5% Latino, 17.1% Black, 4.7% Asian, and 1.2%
American Indian. This demonstrates a dramatic shift from the 1988-1989 school year, where 68.6% of students were White,
15.5% Black, 11.5% Latino, and 3.4% Asian.

Many of these percentage changes can be attributed to the overall decrease in the number of White students as part of the
overall school-age population, the increase in the number of students of color (primarily Latino and Asian students), and
demographic trends of suburbanization, resegregation, immigration, and migration (Clotfelter, Vigdor, & Ladd, 2005; Horsford,
2010; Orfield, 2009). It is also important to note that these percentages look very different when disaggregated by geographic
region. For example, in 2007, the largest numbers of Black, Hispanic, Asian/ Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Native
Alaskan students were in the West, surpassing the percentage of White students enrolled in that region (Planty et al., 2009). In
fact, projections show that between the years 2000 and 2020, the White student population is expected to decline from 64.8%
to 55.6% while the Hispanic population will grow from 15.3% to 22.9% and the Asian population, from 4.1% to 6.3% (Fowler,
2009). As Fowler (2009) warned, "in
thinking about the demographic policy environment, school
leaders are truly dealing with a moving target. Those who do not stay abreast of these
changes risk creating the impression that they are hopelessly out of date" (p. 68), and in turn, unable
to meet the educational needs of their students and their families.

As the U.S. student population in public schools becomes increasingly Latino, Asian, and African American, the racial and ethnic
demographic data on U.S. schoolteachers reveal a much different picture. For example, while the percentage increase of non-
White full-time teachers increased from 13% to 17% between 1993-1994 and 2003-2004, the teaching force remains
overwhelmingly White and female, with a 2003-2004 teaching staff that was 83.3% White and 74.8% female,
representing only a fairly subtle shift from data collected 10 years prior (i.e., 86.6% White and 72.9% female; National Center
for Education Statistics, 2007). Specifically, during the 2003-2004 school year, only 7.8% of full-time teachers were Black, 6.2%
Hispanic, 1.6% Asian/Pacific Islander, and 0.5% American Indian/Alaska Native, numbers starkly different from those of the
While we know that the racial or ethnic identity of a teacher
student populations that teachers serve.
does not solely determine the ability of that teacher to meet the needs of students
representing historically and perpetually underserved racial, ethnic, and cultural groups (see
Ladson-Billings, 1994), the demographic divide in the classroom underscores the importance of culturally relevant and antiracist
pedagogical practices that work to bridge the divide in meaningful ways.

Research demonstrates the critical role that classroom teachers play in delivering curriculum,
engaging students, and influencing, either positively or negatively, student learning and
academic success (Darling-Hammond, 1990; Kozol, 1991; Ladson-Billings, 2000; Marzano, 2003; Nieto, 2000). While
traditional teacher education programs work diligently to produce graduates who are "highly qualified" (meaning they have
completed required coursework and earned passing scores on certification exams), manytraditionally trained
teachers soon discover they are not adequately prepared for the challenges of the diverse
classroom. Haberman (2005) argued, "Traditional university-based teacher education has demonstrated over half a century
that it cannot provide teachers who will be effective and who will remain in these schools for longer than brief periods" (p. 35).
Thus, this growing racialized demographic divide between students and teachers, coupled
with limited training in culturally relevant and antiracist epistemologies and educational
practices, has significant implications for student learning, engagement, and achievement in
cultural and racially incongruent contexts.

The affirmation begins with Pan-humanism as to unite mankind under

a culturally diverse landscape
Larsen 06- (Rune Engelbreth Larsen (born 1967) is a Danish writer, M.A. History of Ideas,
columnist and blogger at the daily newspaper Politiken. Main-website in Danish: Humanisme.dk
A frequent participant in the public debate in Denmark since the mid-nineties speaking out
against xenophobia, supression of minorities and the undermining of civil rights in general. Also
a poet whose online-poems can be found at Polifilo.dk, and a photographer of nature with
hundreds of online-photos from Denmark: Danarige.dk. Former national boardmember of
European Network Against Racism (ENAR) 2001-2010, and European boardmember 2007-2010.
Boardember og Danish PEN since 2012.)

Humanism is a worldview that dawns in the European Renaissance, especially the Italian Renaissance, although the word itself
the so-called renaissance
wasn't coined untill the early nineteenth century. However, from the roots of
humanism stems an accentuation of education and skills within several fields of knowledge,
as well as a pluralistic approach to culture that revives and reevaluates aspects of classical
culture in a synthesis with various Christian traditions.

Rather than an ideology it was a cultural frame of ideas with an emerging non-absolutistic
approach to any truth. It emphasized the uniqueness of the individual and often unfolded an
intimate connection between man and nature, in which Amor was depicted as a natural or cosmic principle.

At the core of Renaissance humanism we find the concept of humanitas that in many ways unites and
elaborates these elements:

Humanitas meant the development of human virtue, in all its forms, to its fullest extent. The
term thus implied not only such qualities as are associated with the modern word humanity -
understanding, benevolence, compassion, mercy - but also such more aggressive
characteristics as fortitude, judgment, prudence, eloquence, and even love of honour.
Consequently the possessor of humanitas could not be merely a sedentary and isolated philosopher or man of letters but was
of necessity a participant in active life. Just as action without insight was held to be aimless and barbaric, insight without action
was rejected as barren and imperfect. Humanitas called for a fine balance of action and contemplation, a balance born not of
compromise but of complementarity. The goal of such fulfilled and balanced virtue was political in the broadest sense of the
word. The purview of Renaissance humanism included not only the education of the young but also the guidance of adults
(including rulers) via philosophical poetry and strategic rhetoric. It included not
only realistic social criticism
but also utopian hypotheses, not only painstaking reassessments of history but also bold
reshapings of the future. In short, humanism called for the comprehensive reform of culture,
the transfiguration of what humanists termed the passive and ignorant society of the 'dark'
ages into a new order that would reflect and encourage the grandest human potentialities.
Humanism had an evangelical dimension. It sought to project humanitas from the individual into the state at large.

This is the definition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, and not only does it reflect the meaning of a word, but to some extent the
very spirit of the Renaissance - and thereby also characterizes the inheritance of humanism.

One of the key purposes of this website is to emphasize the need for a new and genuine
humanism in the twenty-first century, inspired by the historical foundations of the
Renaissance, for which humanitas is essential.

A humanism that is concerned with the diversity of all mankind as a source to cultural
renewal as well as respect for cultural traditions. Dedicated to the dignity of any individual, regardless of
political, philosophical or religious views and values - but at the same time sticking to and fighting for precisely such humanistic
values that allows for the greatest possible individual liberty, while opposing any law or dogma that limits freedom beyond the
necessesary protection of another individual's freedom.

Or as stated in the French Declaration of Human Rights in 1789, thus, the exercise of the natural rights of every man has no
bounds other than those that ensure to the other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights.

A humanism which neither denounces nor prescribes religious beliefs as such, but in accordance with
the individualistic outset of this frame of ideas places Man - rather than e.g. God or gods - at the fulcrum.

Thus, any religion, ideology or science will inevitable have to be experienced, acknowledged or believed by man to become the
basis of any life-experience or worldview. Whether one person's life or worldview is believed to revolve around God(s) or not is
up to that person's own beliefs - but either way, man is at the beginning of the equation in a humanistic view.

Since man is not one man, but all men, and because no two people are alike, man cannot be at the fulcrum of existence, unless
this fulcrum is comprised of man's individual diversity.

By using the term panhumanism as a common denominator for humanistic implications of

these basic principles, I wish to stress a humanism that calls for a pluralistic view on modern
society as well as an individualistic view on man as the basis of cross-cultural understanding
and respect in a globalized world.

For this reason man's individual diversity becomes the starting point of this particular
humanism.

And for this reason also, the struggle for encouragement and respect of human and cultural diversity becomes a goal as well as
a consequence of humanism.
 Gee K (kritik of traditional learning)
Policymakers have bungled education and learning completely which causes a
laundry list of impacts- 12 different warrants!
Gee 4 James Paul Gee, MA Linguistics (1974), PhD Linguistics, Stanford University (1975),
Currently Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State
University(2007-present), Previously Professor at UW-Madison(1998-2007), Clark
University(1993-1997), USC(1989-1993), Boston University(1982-1988), Northeastern
University(1981-1982), Hampshire College (1976-1981), Stanford University (1971-1976)
SITUATED LANGUAGE AND LEARNING: A critique of traditional schooling, Taylor and Francis,
2004, http://networkedlearningcollaborative.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/james-paul-
gee-situated-language-and-learning-a-critique-of-traditional-schooling-2004.pdf, VM
1 Whats hard about school is not learning to read, which has received the lions share of
attention from educators and policy-makers, but learning to read and learn in academic
content areas like mathematics, social studies, and science (students cant get out of a good high school, let
alone get out of any decent college, if they cant handle their content-area textbooks in biology or algebra). Unfortunately, a good
many students, at all levels of schooling, hate the types of language associated with academic
content areas. Indeed, many people in the public dont very much like us academics and our ways with words. 2 Whats hard
about learning in academic content areas is that each area is tied to academic specialist
varieties of language (and other special symbol systems) that are complex, technical, and
initially alienating to many learners (just open a high-school biology or algebra textbook).
These varieties of language are significantly different from peoples everyday varieties of
language, sometimes called their vernacular varieties. 3 Such academic varieties of
language are integrally connected (actually married) to complex and technical ways of
thinking. They are the tools through which certain types of content (e.g. biology or social
studies) are thought about and acted on. 4 Privileged children (children from well-off,
educated homes) often get an important head start before school at home on the acquisition
of such academic varieties of language; less privileged children (poor children or children
from some minority groups) often do not. The privileged children continue to receive support
outside of school on their academic language acquisition process throughout their school
years, support that less privileged children do not receive. 5 Schools do a very poor job at
teaching children academic varieties of language. Indeed, many schools are barely aware they
exist, that they have to be learned, and that the acquisition process must start early. At best
they believe you can teach children to think (e.g. about science or mathematics) without
worrying too much about the tools children do or do not have with which to do that thinking.
Indeed, schools create more alienation over academic varieties of language and thinking than they do understanding. 6 All children,
privileged and not, can readily learn specialist varieties of language and their concomitant
ways of thinking as part and parcel of their popular culture. These specialist language
varieties are, in their own ways, as complex as academic varieties of language. The examples I use in
the book involve Pokmon and video games. (If you dont think things like Pokmon involve specialist language and ways of thinking connected
to it, go get some Pokmon or Digimon cards.) There are many more such examples. While confronting specialist academic languages and
thinking in school is alienating, confronting non-academic specialist languages and thinking outside school often is not. 7
The human
mind works best when it can build and run simulations of experiences its owner has had
(much like playing a video game in the mind) in order to understand new things and get ready
for action in the world. Think about an employee roleplaying a coming confrontation with a boss, a young person role-playing an
imminent encounter with someone he or she wants to invite out on a date, or a soldier roleplaying his or her part in a looming battle. Such
role-playing in our minds helps us to think about what we are about to do and usually helps
us to do it better. Think about how poorly such things go when you have had no prior experiences with which to build such role-
playing simulations and you have to go in completely cold. Furthermore, a lecture on employee-employer relations, dating, or war wont help
anywhere near as much as some rich experiences with which you can build and run different simulations to get ready for different
eventualities. 8
People learn (academic or non-academic) specialist languages and their
concomitant ways of thinking best when they can tie the words and structures of those
languages to experiences they have hadexperiences with which they can build simulations
to prepare themselves for action in the domains in which the specialist language is used (e.g.
biology or video games). 9 Because video games (which are often long, complex, and difficult)
are simulations of experience and new worlds, and thus not unlike a favored form of human
thinking, and because their makers would go broke if no one could learn to play them, they
constitute an area where we have lots to learn about learning. Better yet, they are a domain
where young people of all races and classes readily learn specialist varieties of language and
ways of thinking without alienation. Thus it is useful to think about what they can teach us
about how to make the learning of specialist varieties of language and thinking in school
more equitable, less alienating, and more motivating. 10 In the midst of our new high-tech
global economy, people are learning in new ways for new purposes. One important way is via
specially designed spaces (physical and virtual) constructed to resource people tied together,
not primarily via shared culture, gender, race, or class, but by a shared interest or endeavor.
Schools are way behind in the construction of such spaces. Once again, popular culture is ahead here. 11
More and more in the modern world, if people are to be successful, they must become
shape-shifting portfolio people: that is, people who gain many diverse experiences that
they can then use to transform and adapt themselves for fast-changing circumstances
throughout their lives. 12 Learning academic varieties of language and thinking in school is
now old. It is (for most people) important, but not sufficient for success in modern society.
People must be ready to learn new specialist varieties of language and thinking outside of
school, not necessarily connected to academic disciplines, throughout their lives. Children are having
more and more learning experiences outside of school that are more important for their futures than is much of the learning they do at school.
 T School Choice
Interpretation: the Affirmative must increase funding or regulation of
education.

Increase is to make greater.

Dictionary.com - (Dictionary.com, Increase, "the definition of increase",
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/increase, DOA: 5-11-2017) //Snowball
to make greater, as in number, size, strength, or quality; augment; add to: to increase taxes.

2 Violations:
1. Regulation - they are de-regulation, not an increase.
Encyclopedia.com 4 - (School Choice, Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and
Society, COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc., "School Choice",
http://www.encyclopedia.com/children/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/school-
choice, DOA: 5-11-2017) //Snowball
Deregulation of public education, especially in the form of charters and vouchers, raises a
number of policy issues. Will school choice plans lead to more equitable access or will school
choice plans further stratify education? Is school choice related to improved student learning?
What evidence is there that school choice leads to more innovative educational opportunities?
How economical are school choice programs, especially in an era of declining resources?

2. Funding - the Affirmative rearranges funding instead of increasing it.

EdChoice - (EdChoice is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization for school choice,
"What is School Choice?", https://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/what-is-school-choice/,
DOA: 5-12-2017) //Snowball
OUR DEFINITION School choice allows public education funds to follow students to the
schools or services that best fit their needswhether thats to a public school, private school,
charter school, home school or any other learning environment parents choose for their kids.

Limits they un-educationally justify endless resource adjustments and a slew

of school choice and financial aid Affirmatives.
Ground they skirt the issue of education itself unfairly spikes any ground
about whether or not funding and regulation are good.

Fairness is key to even debates and competitive equity.

Education is vital to scholarship and skill development.

Prefer competing interpretations reasonability is subjective and self-serving.

5/13/17
 Achievement Gaps = Permanent Recession
Internal and international achievement gaps are the economic equivalent of a
permanent recession for the U.S.
McKinsey & Company 9 - (McKinsey & Company is a global management consulting firm
that serves leading businesses, governments, non governmental organizations, and not-for-
profits, April 2009, "The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in Americas Schools",
http://mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education/achievement_gap_report.pdf,
DOA: 5-13-2017) //Snowball
Put differently, the persistence
of these educational achievement gaps imposes on the United States the
economic equivalent of a permanent national recession. The recurring annual economic cost of
the international achievement gap is substantially larger than the deep recession the United
States is currently experiencing.4 The annual output cost of the racial, income, and regional or
systems achievement gap is larger than the US recession of 198182. While the price of the
status quo in educational outcomes is remarkably high, the promise implicit in these findings is
compelling. In particular, the wide variation in performance among schools and school systems
serving similar students suggests that the opportunity and output gaps related to todays
achievement gap can be substantially closed. Many teachers and schools across the country are
proving that race and poverty are not destiny; many more are demonstrating that middle-
class children can be educated to world-class levels of performance. Americas history of
bringing disadvantaged groups into the economic mainstream over time, and the progress of
other nations in education, suggest that large steps forward are possible.
 Cap K link
Education reform is another sham support for capitalism- our entire education
system is complicit in capital
Perera 16 Sanjay Perera, author, Capitalism and the efficacy of education reform,
Philosophers for Change, February 09, 2016,
https://philosophersforchange.org/2016/02/09/capitalism-and-the-efficacy-of-education-
reform/, VM
*really good link for standardized testing good/quantitative data collection good affs
2.1. Capitalism qua Success Capitalism, as the dominant American ideology, is wholly and completely illiterate, which is to say that it does not
have the capacity or wherewithal to comprehend anything that is measured qualitatively. The
only method it has for
comparing one individual to another, one ideology to another, one organization to another,
one government to another and even one philosophy to another is by forcibly reducing
everything to quantifiable units of capital in short, to money. And success as such, is the
rendered outcome from said quantifiable assessment and is henceforth the only metric for
success in capitalism. Moreover, it could be further argued although I am only going to grant a cursory consideration to this point
that the normative ethical system in act under capitalism is a product-of the aforementioned dichotomous formulation. The avid and
perhaps compulsive positivist qua rationalist would persist that quantitative assessment allows an objective comparison that is not
susceptible to biased and subjective projections. However, as educational psychologist Donald Campbell notes in his theory that is known as
Campbells law, this intuitive position is falsely reasoned, as the
more any quantitive social indicator is used for
social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it
will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor (Goldstein 209). In spite
of the kernel of insight this theory provides, the philosophy of American education is not
prescriptive in articulating a desired concept of the ends of education (or the good in
Platonic terms) and any organization that does not prescribe its ends will be subjugated to, as
John Dewey states, the mercy of accident and caprice (Dewey 95). However, Deweys
assessment, albeit reasonably discursive, is abhorrently reduced to dismiss the elusive and
omnipotence of the dominant ideology, which will apply its ends to any and all systems that
do not articulate their own. In other words, if you do not formally declare the ends of the
education system, capitalism will supply one for you to create success, as rendered in
quantifiable units of capital. This process is not only applied to education systems in process,
but is also applied to how an agents education is utilized after graduation everything is
commodified, or assigned a numeric value based on whats worth in the marketplace
(Knopp 15) and this process of commodification becomes the means upon which human
value is determined. In other words, as Henry Giroux succinctly stated, losing ones individuality is now tantamount to losing ones
ability to consume (Giroux 6). Capitalism only values people by their ability to produce capital and their ability to consume with their capital
make money and spend money. 2.2. Capitalism qua Freedom Education is not the only system or concept that has failed to explicitly denote its
own ends and has henceforth received the ethos of the capitalist ideology projected on it. The metaphysical quality of freedom is also guilty of
the same assumption/problem. Freedom, as being the tacit core quality of the American experiment, is a very difficult term to define, measure
and apply and notwithstanding the implicit virtue in championing freedom, eo ipso, what does it actually mean? The deep philosophical
question that roots within this question to which Rousseau articulated in great style and depth is, simply put: is freedom something
granted or is it something asserted? And secondly, what free activity is implied by the word freedom? Capitalism
assumes that
the free market is a perfect scientific system and that assumption creates a closed loop
(Klein 51) that allows the aforementioned philosophical question about freedom to collapse
in on itself. In other words, capitalism perceives a) government in of itself to be an unnatural institution and its only role is to promote
freedom as a natural attribute as reasoned by the [] enlightenment (Peters 172) this would be an act of granting freedom and b)
allowing individuals qua free agents to champion their own freely willed desire this would be an act of asserting freedom. In sum, the role of
government is to grant the freedom for people to asserttheir freedom. And
without a prescriptive notion of the ends
of freedom it will reduce itself as does education to assuming quantifiable units of
capital are the metric to determine the value of one actualized freedom to another . If,
freedom par excellence, is the objective of a freely determined democracy as the prescriptive
and championed ends to which our entire civilization rests upon as the quintessential ethos
upon which we define the degree to which an agent is an American qua patriot, and if this
freedom is measured by ones freely willed capacity to generate/spend capital, then it could
be further reduced and argued that the degree to which you are free is equal to the degree to
which you can generate money. And, further, the degree to which you can generate capital is the degree to which your
patriotism can be measured. This formula side-steps the paradoxical problem of freedom, by making the closed loop of freedom by utilizing the
ends as a justification to the means that hence bring forth the ends. Converting all agents of America into what Foucault refers to as homo
economicus a model of the human whos behavior can be fully reducible to economic analysis (Peters 171) who can justify the unbridled
and measurable ends of capital accumulation by assuming a de facto correlation to the incommensurable metaphysical ends of freedom.
Hence, capital success (capital accumulation) as justified as being intrinsically correlated to freedom is an ends in itself. 2.3. Capitalism qua
the Aims of Education If
freedom is the core quality that our democracy and the world over
promotes and if freedom is measured in ones capacity to accumulate capital, then it could be
argued that this is the reason American education is reduced to the aforementioned formula
of success. And, moreover, this would imply that capitalism uses education as a mere means
to an ends to create conditions that maximize capital accumulation and that education,
eo ipso, has only instrumental value in the United States. That is to say, education is an
instrument used for the promotion of capitalism qua freedom and freedom qua capitalism is
a tautology. Since American education does not denote a normative (and transcendental)
teleology to which John Dewey persists as a necessary condition for the enablement of a
free democracy then it could be only reasoned that the descriptive teleology of the
American education system is a product of capitalism insofar as it is used instrumentally for
the replication of the freely willed projected ends of the capitalist ideology.
5/14/17
 Corporatism K Link
Education reform is corporatist which is bad for society- we need to re-mobilise
against this right now otherwise the subject dies
Wexler 94 Phillip Wexler, Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, Educational corporatism and its counterposes Adelaide, South Australia: NCVER,
1994, http://hdl.voced.edu.au/10707/36336, VM
**corporatism \= capitalism: corporatism is concerned with increasing businessization of
society, capitalism ks are critiques of the free market system
Introduction I want to describe three moments in education. My interest is at once correctively empirical, but also socially critical, and finally,
historically transcendental and utopian. First,
there is a powerful movement to transform the social,
cultural and psychological organisation of educational institutions. Despite the ostensibly
Marxist attention to education, with a few exceptions, there has been remarkably little
analytical description of the social movement in education that I referred to almost a decade
ago, as a corporatist reorganisation. A great deal has happened since then, and our earlier
emphasis on privatisation that is combined with moral attacks on the 'secular humanism' of
school culture captured only the most salient, but I think not the most enduring aspects of
the continuing social reorganisation of education. It is rather the progressive, liberal platform of educational reform
and restructuring which represents a partnership of the state, business corporations, and significant groups of educational professionals that is
effecting change in the infrastructure and, ultimately, the very meaning of education. Second, during the moment of a new
corporatist structural reorganisation and redefinition of education, there is an everyday,
socially differentiated struggle for identity, in conditions of institutional emptying and lack,
among those who are increasingly referred to as the 'workers of the school.' The everyday
social existence of youths in schools is a concrete instance of the decentering, lack and
absence that is usually presented in a textual register in postmodern discourse about 'the
subject'. Socially oriented postmodernism that reaches beyond textualism speaks in very
general terms about macro-social trends like implosion, rather than describe the specific
meaning of either post-structuralism as a theory, or postmodernism as a form of life in the
institutions within which 'the subject' acts, disappears or is decentered. Articulations of
identity in a post-modern world presume the triumph of consumption as the lead social
activity. Instead, we have studied everyday school life in different social strata, and have tried to describe not a textual, but an institutional
post-modernism in which there are socially differentiated lacks. These absences are experienced by youths, who struggle with and against
them, in their efforts to establish distinguishable identities-'to become somebody'. Third,
the long-term effect of the social
reorganisation and institutional emptying may, I think, realise post-modern predictions about
the end of grand narratives, collapse of the referentials and death of the subject, or critical
theory projections about closing the universe of discourse and the reduction of autonomous
spheres of social life to one dimension. More likely, the restructuring will combine
microflexibility of classroom production and macro-integration of social regulation and
interlocking networks of control, for discipline and legitimation . Moral conservatism that now
appears still relevant in educational censorship and seems a likely candidate for the
resocialisation required by a new, flexible, performance-oriented schooling, may be
appropriate for ideologies of nostalgia, but is less useable for 'jet-age' education. The need
for re-moralisation reopens questions of meaning, against the current of new corporatist,
performance-driven, techni-flattening and institutional emptying and desocialisation. This
contradiction between techni-performance, cultural destruction and the need for culture is
the transformative site in education.
5/15/17
 Zizek Pedagogy of Impossible Capitalism Alternative
The alternative is for pedagogues to develop a pedagogy of the impossible
when teaching in critical spaces by withdrawing from the position of ego-ideal
because it leaves open the possibility for students to encounter the Real.

Ruptures in the social constructions of students are inevitable, but assimilating

them leaves subjectivity under the threat of dissonance. Refusing to posit an
objective Truth to which students can be corrected means rejecting any attempt
to immediately smooth over these disruptions and removes the grip of capital
from education.
McMillan 15 - (Chris McMillan, Ph.D, Instructor, London Center, EDUCATIONAL THEORY
Volume 65 Number 5, 2015, "Pedagogy Of The Impossible: iek In The Classroom", DOA: 5-14-
2017) //Snowball
Both constructivist and social constructionist pedagogy holds that the interpreting student learns
most effectively when he or she is able to make connections between classroom discourse and his
or her existing frameworks of understanding. The iekian conception of subjectivity thus far
presented makes a similar point in stronger terms: the affective desire of the learner is to assimilate
new information within the fantasmatic narratives through which we perceive. Here unknown
or potentially disruptive knowledge is pacified by way of expanded understanding of selfhood
and the externally constructed world. As noted thus far, however, such knowledge even if highlighting
marginalized undercurrents in society does not necessarily transform the frameworks through
which the learner perceives the world. For iek, radical transformation occurs when ideological
fantasy is unable to contain the emergence of what Lacan called the Real: the un-nameable
against which symbolization fails,44 or the moment of the subject within subjectivity. As a point of
impossibility within subjectivity, the (absent) presence of the Real is always experienced as a moment
of disruption and trauma that resists easy symbolization.45 We feel most anxious (it hits a nerve) when
discourse approaches the Real axis of our construction, the moment at which the narratives we use to
understand the world fail. We feel this effect when we see or hear ourselves in a recording or video that
clashes with our ideal-ego (I dont sound like that do I?!), which then comes under threat
from this dissonance. For many, such an experience is almost literally impossible: we just cannot stand
listening to ourselves for more than a few seconds. A similar experience occurs when a political
narrative is exposed to that which has no established position in the discourse, yet insists
upon its presence. To take a vulgar example, when John Edwards, a candidate in the 2008 Democratic Party
presidential primary in the United States, was exposed as having cheated on his cancer-stricken wife
and having produced a child along the way, there was no space for this discourse within the public
narrative of John Edwards and this narrative collapsed.46 A iekian pedagogy seeks to
confront those impossible positions within the learners subjective construction of social
reality that are experienced as impossible because they cannot be assimilated into the
smooth fantasmatic flow of subjectivity. Vitally, it is not that an element of discourse cannot objectively
fit into a nonsubjective reality47 (say, that capitalism is incompatible with ecological
sustainability48), but rather that, in the learners own subjective construction of the society through the
ego-ideal, there is an irresolvable conflict between a newly encountered element of discourse
and the already existing fantasmatic narrative. It is here that the pedagogical value of the
iekian conception of subjectivity can be seen in relation to the structure/agency dichotomy
previously identified between constructivism and social constructionism. While, in a constructionist vein, discursive adjustments do occur at the
level of meaning, the learner appears absent from this process. Conversely, against
the constructivist image of a learner
who is able to actively engage with discourse, iek argues that the agency of change in
subjectivity lies in its point of failure: the subject. The subject qua void ensures that discursive
identification is never complete and that the learner experiences anxiety on account of this failure. In
response, new, more complete identifications are sought (in the case of classroom pedagogy,
more secure answers from the ego-ideal) and the flow of discourse modulates to make
traumatic knowledge more palatable. Furthermore, while the subject propels modifications in identification, a greater
transformative potential exists through which progressive learning shifts to subjective
realignment. The lack in subjectivity and discourse ensures that it is always threatened by what
it cannot accommodate. Whereas the regular flow of subjectivity and of learning is for adjustments to
occur in discursive position in response to this threat,49 the potential always exists for subjectivity to
be ruptured. This dislocation potentially occurs when discourse encounters a
contradictory/impossible point (in regard to our fantasmatic construction of reality) that cannot
be resolved within the confines of our fantasmatic narratives. Put otherwise, it is when these narratives
that mediate our sense of reality can no longer effectively explain the dislocation caused by
confronting an impossibility that a subjective paradigm shift that redefines the very
contours of what is possible can potentially occur.50 The art of a pedagogy of the
impossible is to prevent the foreclosure of this rupture. As such, critical pedagogical practice
should seek to facilitate an encounter between the narrative fantasy that holds the trauma of
the subject at bay and the subjective impossibility that threatens it, an encounter with the
Real that Glyn Daly identifies as the politics of the impossible.51 As Peter Taubman states, one never knows in
advance when one will be confronted with the Real or be seized by an event nonetheless, he continues, one
can only remain open or present to such a possibility.52 Remaining open to this
confrontation requires withdrawing the pacifying defenses constructed by the learner in
order to evoke rupture when it is neither desired nor enjoyed. When the Real is evoked for a
learner within the classroom, the learner often seeks to find reassurance in the Other to smooth over
this dislocation. The teacher, in holding the place of the ego-ideal/Other, should avoid providing such
reassurance. It is in these circumstances, where a rupture occurs that is unable to be immediately
sutured, that a pedagogy of the impossible comes into being. Such a pedagogical procedure
requires the withdrawal of the master/teacher from the position of the ego-ideal (the idea of
the Other to whom students narrate their fantasies) in order to create a space in which
students not only feel that their own fantasmatic narrative is threatened, but also that there
is no respite in the Other that does not exist.53 That is, in the learners subjective construction
of reality, much like in the analytic process, the dislocated student narrates to the master/teacher in an act of
transference whereby it is the teacher who holds the answer to the questions posed in class and it is the
students responsibility to find and repeat these answers. The teachers withdrawal from this
position of the Big Other that holds the place of objective Truth is a key step in moving toward
a more transformative pedagogy, as learners can no longer rely on the support of this suturing
position but are forced to confront the moments of impossibility in their own subjective
constructions of the world. This charge does not necessitate some kind of group therapy in the classroom, but it
does require engaging learners such that they come to confront the contradictions and
symptoms of their subjective constructions of the social. Facilitating this confrontation through
our pedagogical practices involves a rejection of any attempt to suture fractures in subjectivity:
to reject students (and our own) desire for definitive answers to the questions we ask. The difficulty of
writing iekian conclusions is wonderfully exemplified in a story told by Simon Critchley: when asked about
the political implications of his work, iek replied, I have a hat, but I do not have a rabbit. 54 Likewise, this article
has no magic programmatic formula for a more radical critical pedagogy. Instead, iek has
persistently argued that the role of the philosopher is to redefine the questions we ask rather
than to provide the right answers. And so it is with a iekian pedagogy. That is, iekian pedagogy does not
provide any kind of a system for radically inclined teachers, but it does suggest the potential for
a reoriented critical pedagogical practice in insisting that transformative learning is most
likely to occur when learners are facilitated toward asking disruptive questions of their
subjective constructions of reality rather than searching for definitive answers that would
suture these insecurities. This focus upon disruption and traumatic knowledge provides an
effective response to the lacuna identified in critical pedagogy between constructivist and social constructionist
practices. Where the latter emphasizes the structural operation of discursive subject positions, constructivist approaches, as
embodied by Kincheloes critical constructivism, have advocated for the agency of the learner who is able to adopt a
critical consciousness toward discourse and the self. Where, without an embodied agent, social constructionism
appears unable to explain the potential for discursive shifts to occur beyond ideological
struggle, constructivism posits a positive agent able to position itself within discourse . Yet,
given the apparent autonomy of the learner to adopt these positions, constructivist approaches are
inadequately placed to explain the robustness of identification, of knowledge, and of the self.
A iekian conception of subjectivity is able to respond to this inability to account for both
the restrictions on and opportunities for radical pedagogical change. It does so by explaining
the apparent stability of knowledge through the Lacanian notion of embodied discourse, by
positing the negativity of the subject as the agent of transformation, and by offering a
pedagogy of the impossible that evokes the moments of impossibility within discourse
embodied by the subject qua the Real. In this approach a radically transformative pedagogy
facilitates exploration of the affective dimensions of these narratives and engages with those
moments of impossibility and anxiety that exist within the knowers perception. This is where the
specific iekian contribution to pedagogy lies. Just as iek has insisted upon the influence of the level of enjoyment in ideological critique,55
arguing for political practices to engage with the Real impossibilities within ideological
fantasy that open up space for dislocatory transformation, the application of a similar
understanding of subjectivity and transformation reveals new avenues for critical pedagogical
practice: a pedagogy of the impossible. This pedagogy of the impossible, one that seeks to redefine the very
contours of what is possible,56 is not a pedagogy for all seasons. Providing students with the
intellectual resources to understand why our climate is changing or how many people are
unemployed does not necessitate any particular engagement with the Real. Moreover, a
pedagogical act or event does not need to be monumental, but it does need to reactivate
what is sedimented in subjectivity to allow space for dislocation and the transformation of
critical pedagogy. In this regard, any pedagogy that seeks to shift beyond current conditions of
possibility would benefit from taking into account ieks understanding of subjectivity and the
Real. Specifically, through recognizing the robustness of identification, critical pedagogues are
better positioned to engage in more disruptive practices that reveal the inconsistencies both
in our narrative fantasies and in the Other. Of course, these pedagogical practices do not occur in a
political vacuum. The focus of much of ieks work, and my own,57 has been on the application of
these ideas to political economy and to ideological fantasy in late capitalism. In this realm we see that the
influence of capital has such a grip on contemporary subjectivity that not only is higher
education typically understood in the context of employability, thus subverting its critical impulse, but
critical thinking has become the basis for employability in a knowledge economy plagued
by an excess of knowledge. Under these conditions, even the most ambitious critical pedagogy (which
would most likely be subject to the desires of managerial accountability and student
evaluations) faces an arduous task. As such, it is easy to read a pedagogy of the impossible
literally. Nonetheless, if such a pedagogy facilitates a new generation of subjects to reject the
rabbits we are being presented with as our only options, then it opens new spaces for hope.
5/16/17
 Consult Teachers CP [needs text]
Counterplan: The United States federal government should engage in prior and
embedded consultation with United States elementary and secondary
education teachers in the implementation of the plan to [plan].

The counterplan prevents the Affirmative from backfiring and elevates the
status of the teaching profession. Its not normal means.
Honda and Milgrom-Elcott 16 - (Rep. Mike Honda represents California's 17th District.
Talia Milgrom-Elcott is the co-founder and executive director of 100Kin10, a coalition of
government, public, and private sector groups formed in response to Obamas 2011 call to train
100,000 STEM teachers in ten years, 12-9-2016, "Bringing teachers into the policymaking
process", http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/education/309667-bringing-teachers-into-
the-policymaking-process, DOA: 5-15-2017) //Snowball
But even as legislators, from the local to federal level, understand the importance of education policy, they often fail to
seek counsel from perhaps the most important experts: teachers. As a result, vital pieces of
legislation like 2015s Every Student Succeeds Act are drawn up and implemented across the country with limited direct
input from those who know Americas classrooms best. This is not good politics. Teachersand
the parents of the children in their classroomsare voters who dont want to be ignored. This does not yield
good policy. As we saw with the No Child Left Behind law in 2001, when we fail to consult teachers, the result is
legislation that does not work. We should not make big picture decisions about education
policy without consulting the end users who have the most expertise in how those choices
play out in our nations schools. These laws directly impact the daily lives of tens of millions
of American school children, parents and teachers; we need to hear directly from teachers on
what they need and what changes they think will have maximum impact . Our failure to consult
teachers on policy also speaks to the broader issue of how we as a society undervalue and
underappreciate teachers. This is especially true when we compare the U.S. with other
countries such as Finland where becoming a teacher is a professional career track on par with being a doctor or a
lawyerand one that commands societal respect. Fortunately, there is a simple fix. There is a legion of
teachers in America, and their knowledge, skills and expertise are waiting to be tapped by
any lawmaker or other stakeholder willing to reach out and listen. They could be our teacher
advisors. We need to engage them from the federal level to the local level, where so much education
policy happens and where knowledge of local needs is particularly key. There are numerous ways to do this, many of which are
happening right now across America. We dont need to invent new approaches; we just need to expand
the models that are already working. For example, teachers can act as full-time teacher advisors to
policy-makers for a set period of time. This already occurs with the Albert Einstein Distinguished
Educator Fellowship, where science, technology, engineering and math teachers spend 11 months in federal agencies or
congressional offices, adding their voices to education policy discussions. Or it could be summer internships like those in the
state of Delaware, where teachers spend six weeks working full-time in the states Department of Education. Or lawmakers could
consult teacher advisory groups, such as the Teachers Advisory Council in Kentucky. Made up of about 40 teachers from across
the state, the Council provides a direct line of communication from the classroom to the state commissioner of education. All these
examples are invaluable, but we need more of them to ensure that this engagement becomes
the rule, not the exception. An essential component of any of these initiatives is that the teachers
involved are working in the classroom, so that their current teaching experience finds its way
straight into policy debates and decisions. Their firsthand experiencemore so than theories and
abstractionscan be our guide. Engaging with teachers in this way helps everyone. Teachers bring
their knowledge into policy circles and then take that experience back to the classroomultimately
bettering both places. Creating space in the policymaking process for teachers voices also
elevates the status and prestige of the profession, as the public sees practitioners and politicians engaging in dialogue
for the betterment of all. These essential conversations provide an opportunity for teachers to take
leadership on and feel ownership over policies they will help implement in classrooms. And this
collaborative, inclusive approach will yield smarter decisions about Americas classrooms. If policymakers
want buy in from the educators and stakeholders who will eventually be the ones implementing new policy we need
to ensure that real life experts have a seat at the table as we hash out new education
legislation. Including teachers in the development of policy not only benefits the quality of
the policy itself it also bolsters the success of its implementation. Too often, Americas
politicians only hear from educators who are responding to policies handed down to them.
Thats reactive; if we wait for that moment, it might be too late. By having teachers as trusted
advisors from the start and proactively embedding them in the process of developing policy,
both local and federal lawmakers can make sure that Americas kids get the quality teaching they
deserve and need. Whether it happens in Congress, a state capitol, or a local city government, politicians from both sides of the aisle
can agree on the need to listen to our teachers. Education policy will be at its best when we heed the ideas
and input of our teacher advisors.

Respect for the teaching profession is key to international educational

competition.
Lynch 12 - (Matthew Lynch, Ed.D., Author of The Call to Teach, 7-18-2012, "Lack of Respect for
Teaching to Blame for Mediocre US Education Results",
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-lynch-edd/american-students-
conside_b_1682100.html, DOA: 5-15-2017) //Snowball
Based on research provided by Dr. Steven Paine, a nationally renowned American educator, the OECD has offered a
number of simple and practical lessons to the United States. According to Paine, money is not the answer to boosting our
countrys international educational status, nor will it bring about a greater classroom experience. In studying the
worlds highest achievers Finland, Singapore and Ontario, Canada Paine suggests our lack of respect for
teachers is the nations number one enemy of education. The major difference between
those systems and the one in the U.S. had to do with how teachers are valued , trained and
compensated, he noted. Paine stated in his report to the OECD, In Finland, it is a tremendous honor to be a
teacher, and teachers are afforded a status comparable to what doctors, lawyers and other highly regarded professionals enjoy in the U.S.
The report also suggested the teaching profession in Singapore is competitive and highly selective, [a
country] that works hard to build its own sense of professional conduct and meet high
standards for skills development. The study of Ontario revealed similar findings. Paine insists, The U.S. must
restore the teaching profession to the level of respect and dignity it enjoyed only a few decades
ago. This will not be easy, particularly in the current economic environment with states and localities strapped for funds. But improving the
regard with which teachers are held is not principally about how much they are paid. Paine continued, OECD countries that have
been most successful in making teaching an attractive profession have often done so by
offering teachers real career prospects and more responsibility as professionals encouraging
them to become leaders of educational reform. This requires teacher education that helps
teachers to become innovators and researchers in education, not just deliverers of the
curriculum. The report concluded that the U.S. has the resources and talent to compete more
effectively and raise its level of educational achievement. This is contingent upon our
willingness and ability to demonstrate with action that it truly values education, display an
understanding of the vital importance of having an educated workforce that can compete
globally, and develop the political will to devote the necessary resources for educational
reform.

Competing educationally is key to leading economically.

Cooper, Hersh, and OLeary 12 - (Donna Cooper is a Senior Fellow with the Economic
Policy team and Adam Hersh is an Economist at the Center for American Progress. Ann OLeary
is director of the Children and Families program at The Center for the Next Generation, 8-21-
2012, "The Competition that Really Matters",
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2012/08/21/11983/the-
competition-that-really-matters/, DOA: 5-15-2017) //Snowball
The U.S. economy is weakening relative to our global competitors. Recent economic growth is 40 percent
below any other growth period since World War II as other economies around the globe draw in more investment, both
foreign and domestic. In contrast, despite still being the worlds leading recipient of direct foreign
investment, business investment overall in the United States between 2001 and 2007 was the
slowest in U.S. history. Meanwhile, competition is on the rise. From 1980 to 2011 China increased its
share of world economic output from 2 percent to 14 percent. And India more than doubled its
output during that period, from 2.5 percent of global production to 5.7 percent. The U.S. share of the world
economy fell to 19 percent from 25 percent. While increasing global competition is inevitable,
lackluster U.S. performance need not be. Indeed, rising growth and incomes in other countries
present potential new opportunities and markets for American workers and companies. But if the
United States means to continue to lead the world and to share our prosperity with it, U.S.
policymakers must deploy an American strategy that is responsive to modern economic
challengesa strategy that makes it possible for every American family to ensure that children entering adulthood are prepared to find a
successful place in the global economy. What should the strategy be? Economists of all stripes point to a robust pipeline of
skilled workers as the essential ingredient of a strong and growing economy. Indeed, the two
countries most rapidly gaining on the United States in terms of economic competitivenessChina and Indiahave
ambitious national strategies of investing and promoting improved educational outcomes for
children to strengthen their positions as contenders in the global economy .

Only U.S. economic leadership solves global issues and conflict.

Haass 13 - (Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, APR 30, 2013,
"The World Without America", https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/repairing-the-
roots-of-american-power-by-richard-n--haass, DOA: 5-15-2017) //Snowball
NEW YORK Let me posit a radical idea: The most critical threat facing the United States now and for the foreseeable future is not a rising
China, a reckless North Korea, a nuclear Iran, modern terrorism, or climate change. Although all of these constitute potential or actual threats,
the biggest challenges facing the US are its burgeoning debt, crumbling infrastructure, second-rate primary and
secondary schools, outdated immigration system, and slow economic growth in short, the domestic
foundations of American power. Readers in other countries may be tempted to react to this judgment with a dose of
schadenfreude, finding more than a little satisfaction in Americas difficulties. Such a response should not be surprising. The US and
those representing it have been guilty of hubris (the US may often be the indispensable nation, but it would be better
if others pointed this out), and examples of inconsistency between Americas practices and its
principles understandably provoke charges of hypocrisy. When America does not adhere to the principles that it
preaches to others, it breeds resentment. But, like most temptations, the urge to gloat at Americas imperfections and
struggles ought to be resisted. People around the globe should be careful what they wish for. Americas
failure to deal with its internal challenges would come at a steep price. Indeed, the rest of the
worlds stake in American success is nearly as large as that of the US itself. Part of the reason is
economic. The US economy still accounts for about one-quarter of global output. If US growth
accelerates, Americas capacity to consume other countries goods and services will increase, thereby
boosting growth around the world. At a time when Europe is drifting and Asia is slowing, only the US (or, more broadly,
North America) has the potential to drive global economic recovery. The US remains a unique
source of innovation. Most of the worlds citizens communicate with mobile devices based on technology developed in Silicon
Valley; likewise, the Internet was made in America. More recently, new technologies developed in the US greatly
increase the ability to extract oil and natural gas from underground formations. This technology is now making its
way around the globe, allowing other societies to increase their energy production and decrease both
their reliance on costly imports and their carbon emissions. The US is also an invaluable source of
ideas. Its world-class universities educate a significant percentage of future world leaders. More fundamentally, the US has long
been a leading example of what market economies and democratic politics can accomplish .
People and governments around the world are far more likely to become more open if the American model is perceived to be succeeding.
Finally, the world faces many serious challenges, ranging from the need to halt the spread of weapons of mass
destruction, fight climate change, and maintain a functioning world economic order that promotes
trade and investment to regulating practices in cyberspace, improving global health, and preventing armed
conflicts. These problems will not simply go away or sort themselves out. While Adam Smiths invisible
hand may ensure the success of free markets, it is powerless in the world of geopolitics. Order requires the
visible hand of leadership to formulate and realize global responses to global challenges. Dont
get me wrong: None of this is meant to suggest that the US can deal effectively with the worlds
problems on its own. Unilateralism rarely works. It is not just that the US lacks the means; the very nature of contemporary global
problems suggests that only collective responses stand a good chance of succeeding. But multilateralism is much easier to
advocate than to design and implement. Right now there is only one candidate for this role:
the US. No other country has the necessary combination of capability and outlook. This brings me back to the argument that the US
must put its house in order economically, physically, socially, and politically if it is to have the resources
needed to promote order in the world. Everyone should hope that it does: The alternative to a world led
by the US is not a world led by China, Europe, Russia, Japan, India, or any other country, but rather a world that is not led at
all. Such a world would almost certainly be characterized by chronic crisis and conflict. That
would be bad not just for Americans, but for the vast majority of the planets inhabitants .
5/17/17
 Adv CP U.S. Hegemony
Counterplan: The United States federal government should shift to a strategy of
offshore balancing in international politics.

Global engagement drains U.S. resources. Offshore balancing safeguards U.S.

primacy by shedding the global police force role and dispersing responsibility
to allies without sacrificing core American interests.
Mearsheimer and Walt 16 - (John J. Mearsheimer is R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished
Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Stephen M. Walt is Robert
and Rene Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, July/August
2016, "The Case for Offshore Balancing",
http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/Offshore%20Balancing.pdf, DOA: 5-17-2017)
//Snowball
Americans distaste for the prevailing grand strategy should come as no surprise, given its abysmal record
over the past quarter century. In Asia, India, Pakistan, and North Korea are expanding their nuclear arsenals,
and China is challenging the status quo in regional waters. In Europe, Russia has annexed Crimea, and
U.S. relations with Moscow have sunk to new lows since the Cold War. U.S. forces are still fighting in
Afghanistan and Iraq, with no victory in sight. Despite losing most of its original leaders, al Qaeda has metastasized
across the region. The Arab world has fallen into turmoilin good part due to the United States decisions to effect regime
change in Iraq and Libya and its modest efforts to do the same in Syriaand the Islamic State, or isis, has emerged out of the
chaos. Repeated U.S. attempts to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace have failed, leaving a two-
state solution further away than ever. Meanwhile, democracy has been in retreat worldwide, and
the United States use of torture, targeted killings, and other morally dubious practices has
tarnished its image as a defender of human rights and international law. The United States does not bear
sole responsibility for all these costly debacles, but it has had a hand in most of them. The setbacks are
the natural consequence of the misguided grand strategy of liberal hegemony that Democrats and
Republicans have pursued for years. This approach holds that the United States must use its power
not only to solve global problems but also to promote a world order based on international institutions,
representative governments, open markets, and respect for human rights. As the
indispensable nation, the logic goes, the United States has the right, responsibility, and wisdom to manage
local politics almost everywhere. At its core, liberal hegemony is a revisionist grand strategy: instead of calling on the United States
to merely uphold the balance of power in key regions, it commits American might to promoting democracy everywhere and defending human
rights whenever they are threatened. There is a better way. By pursuing a strategy of offshore balancing,
Washington would forgo ambitious efforts to remake other societies and concentrate on
what really matters: preserving U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere and countering
potential hegemons in Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf. Instead of policing the
world, the United States would encourage other countries to take the lead in checking rising
powers, intervening itself only when necessary. This does not mean abandoning the United States position as
the worlds sole superpower or retreating to Fortress America. Rather, by husbanding U.S. strength,
offshore balancing would preserve U.S. primacy far into the future and safeguard liberty at
home.
5/18/17
 Adv CP U.S. Heg/Military/Security
Counterplan: The United States federal government should increase funding to
the U.S. Navy in order to establish a fleet of 350 ships.

It solves U.S. hegemony, security, and military presence globally.

Slattery 17 - (Brian Slattery is a policy analyst in national security at The Heritage Foundation,
3-3-2017, "Trump Makes Strong Case for Rebuilding the Navy",
http://dailysignal.com/2017/03/03/in-aircraft-carrier-speech-trump-makes-strong-case-for-
rebuilding-the-navy/, DOA: 5-18-2017) //Snowball
Trump has called for a 350-ship Navy as one pillar of rebuilding the military. This closely matches the
recommendations of both The Heritage Foundations Index of U.S. Military Strength (346 ships) and the
Navys recent update to its own fleet requirements (355 ships). All three represent a more realistic
assessment of the threats and challenges the Navy faces and the resources it will need to meet
them. Unfortunately, due to chronic underfunding of the Navys shipbuilding and maintenance accounts,
the fleet currently stands at 275 shipsa fifth less than what the president has called for. This
underinvestment has resulted in a Navy that is stretched dangerously thin. Though the fleet has
declined from over 400 ships in the early 1990s (a result from the Reagan buildup), maritime threats around the
world have arguably grown over that time. Thus, the Navy finds itself in greater demand with fewer
ships. This in turn has caused two issues for the Navy. First, the fleet simply cannot be where it needs to be
everywhere in the world. This was starkly evident over Christmas of last year when the Navy was
unable to deploy a carrier to the Middle East for a month due to an unforeseen maintenance issue. This
might not have as gravely affected carrier deployments if the fleet had 12 carriers as recommended by Trump and the Navy, but today there
are only 10. The Navy simply cannot sustain its high rate of operations without increasing the size
of its fleet to account for such mishaps. Budget cuts have also strained the Navys ships and
crews as they try to do more with less. Extending deployments beyond the normal six months has
become a common occurrence, which puts unnecessary stress on the fleet in a number of ways. First,
ships are sailing for longer stretches than expected, essentially adding mileage to the hulls more rapidly.
Second, because they are out to sea longer, they consequently have less time to receive needed
depot maintenance and repair work. Finally, sailors that already work in a high-demand environment
are now being asked to stay out to sea and away from their families longer than expected.
The Navy therefore finds itself both less able to provide global presence and overworked
because its fleet has shrunken so far below what is required. Trump expanded on his remarks to
Congress Tuesday about reinvesting in the military, saying, By eliminating the sequester and the
uncertainty it creates, we will make it easier for the Navy to plan for the future and thus to control
costs and get the best deals for the taxpayers. For all the services and the Navy in particular, this is a key point. Without
predictable, robust budgeting, programs like aircraft carriers suffer delays and cost overruns
that could have been prevented. Furthermore, with projects on a scale as massive as
shipbuilding, stable long-term funding enables shipbuilders and their supplier companies to
plan years ahead, make use of economies of scale, and otherwise reduce overall costs. A
combination of defense cuts and Congress failure to pass normal budgets has made such
efficient practices more difficult. The Navy has a long way to go before reaching its needed
fleet size. Yet with concerted effort and persistence, the president and Congress can in the
coming years begin to rebuild the fleet and the other armed services. As the military
continues to operate at a high rate to protect Americas security and interests around the
globe, our elected leadership owes it to those service members to provide them the tools
they need to succeed.
5/19/17
 U.S. Hegemony Good
United States unipolar hegemony is responsible for great power peace,
democracy, development, and economic growth. No turns were benevolent
and dont generate balancing.
Fettweis 17 - (Christopher Fettweis is an Associate Professor for the Department of Political
Science at Tulane University, 08 May 2017, "Unipolarity, Hegemony, and the New Peace", DOA:
5-19-2017) //Snowball
The basic logic behind the hegemonic-stability argument is straightforward: the anarchic
international system will be unstable unless one power is able to create and enforce rules.
While the theory is centuries old, the modern version was first articulated to describe the Bretton Woods
international economic order and the stabilizing force played by the dollar .47 In security studies,
hegemonic dominance is thought to ease security dilemma pressures by decreasing
unpredictability in the system. The hegemon essentially provides three services: establishment of
the rules of global order, enforcement of those rules, and reassurance for other members.48
The logic of the theory may be uncontroversial, but the suggestion that the United States plays such a roleand that it brings stability to the
systemis not. The hegemonic-stability explanation for the New Peace comes in two distinct versions
that differ concerning the role played by US hard power. To some liberal internationalists, the
current order is based on the institutions, rule-based regimes, and law promoted by the United States,
which create a positive-sum system that provides incentives for other states to cooperate.49
Rational, self-interested actors soon realize that the advantages of cooperating with the established order far
outweigh those of remaining outside it. This liberal version of hegemonic-stability theory posits
an order with no obvious enemies, one that is not dependent on continued US hard-power dominance.
It is also nearly self-sustaining. If and when the relative military capability of the United States declines, according
to one of this versions primary proponents, the underlying foundations of the liberal international order
will survive and thrive. 50 Diplomatic and economic engagement, rather than military power,
are the primary tools of US hegemony. Others are more skeptical of institutions potential to shape behavior, and believe
instead that stability is dependent upon the active application of the hegemons military power.51 The second version of the
hegemonic-stability explanation is based upon a different view of human nature than is the liberal, one less
sanguine about the potential for voluntary cooperation. Actors respond to concrete incentives,
according to this outlook, and will ignore rules or law if transgressions are not punished. The would-be
hegemon must enforce stability, therefore, not merely establish it. Policing metaphors are
common in this literature, with the United States playing the role of sheriff or globocop charged
with keeping the peace.52 Take away the police, or damage their credibility, and instability
would soon return. The present world order, according to Robert Kagan, is as fragile as it is unique,
and would collapse without sustained US efforts.53 In many instances, add Lawrence Kaplan and William Kristol,
all that stands between civility and genocide, order and mayhem, is American power. 54 Though
this argument is commonly associated with neoconservatism55and will be referred to as the neoconservative explanation from here
on init is also accepted by a number of scholars and observers generally considered outside of
that ideological approach.56 The two versions are united on this point: it is not unipolarity in
general that accounts for the New Peace, but American unipolarity in particular. US
hegemony is essentially benevolent, according to both liberals and neoconservatives. The United
States has constructed an order that takes the interests of other states into account, which
decreases revisionist impulses. At the very least, it is nonthreatening, and does not generate the
kind of balancing behavior that might be expected to bring it to an end.57 In the liberal version, the order
constructed by the United States is beneficial to all its members, who have a stake in its maintenance.
Adherents of the more muscular version, whether neoconservative or not, assume that the default position
of smaller states in a unipolar system is to bandwagon with the center.58 No one seems to suggest that there is an
irenic structural logic of unipolarity independent of US behavior. The question is therefore not so much about the
connection between unipolarity and the New Peace as much as it is whether US behavior , in one
form or another, has brought it about. Hegemonic stability is in some ways more theoretically elegant
than the other possible explanations for the New Peace. For one thing, it does not suffer from
questions regarding its causal direction. While it may be reasonable to suggest that peace produced the expansion of
democracy and/or economic development rather than the other way around, peace did not produce unipolarity. In fact, if
the United States is indeed supplying the global public good of security, it might be able to take
credit for a number of these positive trends. Not just peace but democracy, economic
stability, and development all might be beneficial side effects of unipolarity.59 A world
without U.S. primacy, argued Samuel P. Huntington, would be a world with more violence and
disorder and less democracy and economic growth. 60 There is a great deal at stake here, for both scholarship and
practice. If hegemony is responsible for the New Peace, then its peaceful trends are unlikely to
last much beyond the unipolar moment. The other proposed explanations described above are
essentially irreversible: nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented, and no defense against their use
is ever going to be completely foolproof; the pace of globalization and economic
interdependence shows no sign of slowing; democracy seems to be firmly embedded in the
cultural fabric of many of the places it currently exists, and may well be in the process of
spreading to the few places where it does not. The UN, while oft criticized, shows no signs of
disappearing. And finally, history contains precious few examples of the return of institutions
deemed by society to be outmoded, barbaric, and/or futile.61 In other words, liberal normative evolution is
typically unidirectional. Few would argue, for instance, that either slavery or dueling is likely to
reappear in this century; illiberal normative recidivism is exceptionally rare.62 If the neoconservatives are correct and US hard
power is primarily responsible for the New Peace, however, then it cannot be expected to last long
after US hegemonic decline, or adjustment in its grand strategy toward retrenchment. If liberal internationalists are right and the
New Peace is largely a product of the world order that the United States has forged, then it may have a bit more staying power beyond
unipolarity, but not necessarily much. Determining
the relationship between hegemony and the New
Peace has importance that goes beyond the academy. Whether or not decline is on the
immediate horizon, unipolarity is unlikely to last forever. If the New Peace is essentially an
American creation, that post-unipolar future is likely to be quite a bit more violent than the
present.
 U.S. Hegemony Bad
American hegemony was and is an illusion and has caused nothing but violence
& carnage for 75 years and risks nuclear war and extinction
Dower 17 John Dower, professor emeritus of history at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, An American Century of Carnage, essay adapted from chapter one of his book
The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War Two, Medium Corporation,
April 7, 2017, https://medium.com/defiant/an-american-century-of-carnage-b930fd03f2b, VM
The American Century catchphrase is hyperbole, the slogan never more than a myth, a fantasy, a delusion. Military victory in
any traditional sense was largely a chimera after World War II. The
so-called Pax Americana itself was riddled
with conflict and oppression and egregious betrayals of the professed catechism of American
values. At the same time, postwar U.S. hegemony obviously never extended to more than a
portion of the globe. Much that took place in the world, including disorder and mayhem, was
beyond Americas control. Yet, not unreasonably, Luces catchphrase persists. The twenty-first-century world may be
chaotic, with violence erupting from innumerable sources and causes, but the United States does remain the planets sole
superpower. The myth of exceptionalism still holds most Americans in its thrall. U.S. hegemony, however frayed at the edges,
continues to be taken for granted in ruling circles, and not only in Washington. And Pentagon planners still emphatically define
their mission as full-spectrum dominance globally. Washingtons commitment to modernizing its nuclear arsenal rather than
focusing on achieving the thoroughgoing abolition of nuclear weapons has proven unshakable. So has the countrys almost
religious devotion to leading the way in developing and deploying ever more smart and sophisticated conventional weapons
of mass destruction. Welcome to Henry Lucesand Americasviolent century, even if thus far its lasted only 75 years. The
question is just what to make of it these days. We live in times of bewildering violence. In 2013, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff told a Senate committee that the world is more dangerous than it has ever been. Statisticians, however, tell a
different story. That war and lethal conflict have declined steadily, significantly, even precipitously since World War II. Much
mainstream scholarship now endorses the declinists. In his influential 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why
Violence Has Declined, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker adopted the labels the Long Peace for the four-plus decades of the
Cold War from 1945 to 1991, and the New Peace for the post-Cold War years to the present. In that book, as well as in post-
publication articles, postings, and interviews, he has taken the doomsayers to task. The statistics suggest, he declares, that
today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our speciess existence. Clearly, the number and deadliness of global
conflicts have indeed declined since World War II. This so-called postwar peace was, and still is, however, saturated in blood
and wracked with suffering. It is reasonable to argue that total war-related fatalities during the Cold War decades were lower
than in the six years of World War II from 1939 to 1945 and certainly far less than the toll for the 20th centurys two world wars
combined. It is also undeniable that overall death tolls have declined further since then. The
five most devastating
intrastate or interstate conflicts of the postwar decadesin China, Korea, Vietnam,
Afghanistan and between Iran and Iraqtook place during the Cold War. So did a majority of
the most deadly politicides, or political mass killings, and genocidesin the Soviet Union,
China, Yugoslavia, North Korea, North Vietnam, Sudan, Nigeria, Indonesia,
Pakistan/Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique and Cambodia, among other countries.
The end of the Cold War certainly did not signal the end of such atrocitiesas witness Rwanda, the Congo and the implosion of
Syria. As with major wars, however, the trajectory has been downward. Unsurprisingly, the declinist argument celebrates the
Cold War as less violent than the global conflicts that preceded it, and the decades that followed as statistically less violent than
the Cold War. But what motivates the sanitizing of these years, now amounting to three-quarters of a century, with the label
peace? The answer lies largely in a fixation on major powers. The great Cold War antagonists, the United States and the
Soviet Union, bristling with their nuclear arsenals, never came to blows. Indeed, wars between major powers or developed
states have become, in Pinkers words, all but obsolete. There has been no World War III, nor is there likely to be. Such
upbeat quantification invites complacent forms of self-congratulation. In the United States, where we-won-the-Cold-War
sentiment still runs strong, the relative decline in global violence after 1945 is commonly attributed to the wisdom, virtue, and
firepower of U.S. peacekeeping. In hawkish circles, nuclear deterrencethe Cold Wars mutually-
assured-destruction doctrine that was described early on as a delicate balance of terroris
still canonized as an enlightened policy that prevented catastrophic global conflict. What
doesnt get counted Branding the long postwar era as an epoch of relative peace is
disingenuous, and not just because it deflects attention from the significant death and agony
that actually did occur and still does. It also obscures the degree to which the United States bears responsibility
for contributing to, rather than impeding, militarization and mayhem after 1945. Ceaseless U.S.-led
transformations of the instruments of mass destructionand the provocative global impact
of this technological obsessionare by and large ignored. Continuities in American-style
warfighting such as heavy reliance on airpower and other forms of brute force are
downplayed. So is U.S. support for repressive foreign regimes, as well as the destabilizing
impact of many of the nations overt and covert overseas interventions. The more subtle and
insidious dimension of postwar U.S. militarizationnamely, the violence done to civil society
by funneling resources into a gargantuan, intrusive, and ever-expanding national security
stategoes largely unaddressed in arguments fixated on numerical declines in violence since
World War II. Beyond this, trying to quantify war, conflict, and devastation poses daunting methodological challenges.
Data advanced in support of the decline-of-violence argument is dense and often compelling, and derives from a range of
respectable sources. Still, it must be kept in mind that the precise quantification of death and violence is almost always
impossible. When a source offers fairly exact estimates of something like war-related excess deaths, you usually are dealing
with investigators deficient in humility and imagination. Take, for example, World War II, about which countless tens of
thousands of studies have been written. Estimates of total war-related deaths from that global conflict range from roughly 50
million to more than 80 million. One explanation for such variation is the sheer chaos of armed violence. Another is what the
counters choose to count and how they count it. Battle deaths of uniformed combatants are easiest to determine, especially on
the winning side. Military bureaucrats can be relied upon to keep careful records of their own killed-in-actionbut not, of
course, of the enemy they kill. War-related civilian fatalities are even more difficult to assess, althoughas in World War II
they commonly are far greater than deaths in combat. Does the data source go beyond so-called battle-related collateral
damage to include deaths caused by war-related famine and disease? Does it take into account deaths that may have occurred
long after the conflict itself was over, as from radiation poisoning after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or from the U.S. use of Agent
Orange in the Vietnam War? The difficulty of assessing the toll of civil, tribal, ethnic and religious conflicts with any exactitude is
obvious. Concentrating on fatalities and their averred downward trajectory also draws attention away from broader
humanitarian catastrophes. In
mid-2015, for instance, the Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees reported that the number of individuals forcibly displaced
worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence or human rights
violations had surpassed 60 million and was the highest level recorded since World War II
and its immediate aftermath. Roughly two-thirds of these men, women, and children were
displaced inside their own countries. The remainder were refugees, and over half of these
refugees were children. Here, then, is a trend line intimately connected to global violence
that is not heading downward. In 1996, the United Nations estimate was that there were
37.3 million forcibly displaced individuals on the planet. Twenty years later, as 2015 ended,
this had risen to 65.3 milliona 75-percent increase over the last two post-Cold War decades
that the declinist literature refers to as the new peace. Other disasters inflicted on civilians are less
visible than uprooted populations. Harsh conflict-related economic sanctions, which often cripple hygiene and health-care
systems and may precipitate a sharp spike in infant mortality, usually do not find a place in itemizations of military violence.
U.S.-led U.N. sanctions imposed against Iraq for 13 years beginning in 1990 in conjunction with the first Gulf War are a stark
example of this. An account published in The New York Times Magazine in July 2003 accepted the fact that at least several
hundred thousand children who could reasonably have been expected to live died before their fifth birthday. And after all-out
wars, who counts the maimed, or the orphans and widows, or those the Japanese in the wake of World War II referred to as the
elderly orphanedparents bereft of their children? Figures and tables, moreover, can only hint at the psychological and
social violence suffered by combatants and noncombatants alike. It has been suggested, for instance, that one in six people in
areas afflicted by war may suffer from mental disorderas opposed to one in 10 in normal times. Even where American
military personnel are concerned, trauma did not become a serious focus of concern until 1980, seven years after the U.S.
retreat from Vietnam, when post-traumatic stress disorder was officially recognized as a mental-health issue. In
2008, a
massive sampling study of 1.64 million U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq between
October 2001 and October 2007 estimated that approximately 300,000 individuals currently
suffer from PTSD or major depression and that 320,000 individuals experienced a probable
TBI [traumatic brain injury] during deployment. As these wars dragged on, the numbers
naturally increased. To extend the ramifications of such data to wider circles of family and
communityor, indeed, to populations traumatized by violence worldwidedefies
statistical enumeration. Terror counts and terror fears Largely unmeasurable, too, is violence in a
different register: the damage that war, conflict, militarization, and plain existential fear
inflict upon civil society and democratic practice. This is true everywhere but has been
especially conspicuous in the United States since Washington launched its global war on
terror in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Here, numbers are perversely
provocative, for the lives claimed in 21st-century terrorist incidents can be interpreted as
confirming the decline-in-violence argument. From 2000 through 2014, according to the
widely cited Global Terrorism Index, more than 61,000 incidents of terrorism claiming over
140,000 lives have been recorded. Including 9/11, countries in the West experienced less than five percent of
these incidents and three percent of the deaths. The Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, another
minutely documented tabulation based on combing global media reports in many languages,
puts the number of suicide bombings from 2000 through 2015 at 4,787 attacks in more than
40 countries, resulting in 47,274 deaths. These atrocities are incontestably horrendous and alarming. Grim as
they are, however, the numbers themselves are comparatively low when set against earlier conflicts. For specialists in World
War II, the 140,000 lives estimate carries an almost eerie resonance, since this is the rough figure usually accepted for the
death toll from a single act of terror bombing, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The tally is also low compared to
contemporary deaths from other causes. Globally, for example, more than 400,000 people are murdered annually. In the
United States, the danger of being killed by falling objects or lightning is at least as great as the threat from Islamist militants.
This leaves us with a perplexing question: If the overall incidence of violence, including twenty-first-century terrorism, is
relatively low compared to earlier global threats and conflicts, why has the United States responded by becoming an
increasingly militarized, secretive, unaccountable and intrusive national security state? Is it really possible that a patchwork of
non-state adversaries that do not possess massive firepower or follow traditional rules of engagement has, as the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared in 2013, made the world more threatening than ever? For those who do not believe this to be
the case, possible explanations for the accelerating militarization of the United States come from many directions. Paranoia
may be part of the American DNAor, indeed, hardwired into the human species. Or perhaps the anticommunist hysteria of
the Cold War simply metastasized into a post-9/11 pathological fear of terrorism. Machiavellian fear-mongering certainly enters
the picture, led by conservative and neoconservative civilian and military officials of the national security state, along with
opportunistic politicians and war profiteers of the usual sort. Cultural critics predictably point an accusing finger as well at the
mass medias addiction to sensationalism and catastrophe, now intensified by the proliferation of digital social media. To all this
must be added the peculiar psychological burden of being a superpower and, from the 1990s on, the planets sole
superpowera situation in which credibility is measured mainly in terms of massive cutting-edge military might. It might be
argued that this mindset helped contain Communism during the Cold War and provides a sense of security to U.S. allies.
What it has not done is ensure victory in actual war, although not for want of trying. With some exceptionsGrenada,
Panama, the brief 1991 Gulf War and the Balkansthe U.S. military has not tasted victory since World War II. Korea, Vietnam,
and recent and current conflicts in the Greater Middle East being boldface examples of this failure. This, however, has had no
impact on the hubris attached to superpower status. Brute force remains the ultimate measure of credibility. The traditional
American way of war has tended to emphasize the three Dsdefeat, destroy, devastate. Since 1996, the Pentagons
proclaimed mission is to maintain full-spectrum dominance in every domainland, sea, air, space and informationand, in
practice, in every accessible part of the world. The Air Force Global Strike Command, activated in 2009 and responsible for
managing two-thirds of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, typically publicizes its readiness for global strike any target, any time. In
2015, the Department of Defense acknowledged maintaining 4,855 physical sitesmeaning bases ranging in size from huge
contained communities to tiny installationsof which 587 were located overseas in 42 foreign countries. An unofficial
investigation that includes small and sometimes impermanent facilities puts the number at around 800 in 80 countries. Over
the course of 2015, to cite yet another example of the overwhelming nature of Americas global presence, elite U.S. Special
Operations Forces were deployed to around 150 countries, and Washington provided assistance in arming and training security
forces in an even larger number of nations. Americas overseas bases reflect, in part, an enduring inheritance from World War II
and the Korean War. The majority of these sites are located in Germany (181), Japan (122), and South Korea (83) and were
retained after their original mission of containing communism disappeared with the end of the Cold War. Deployment of
Special Operations Forces is also a Cold War legacyexemplified most famously by the Armys Green Berets in Vietnam
that expanded after the demise of the Soviet Union. Dispatching covert missions to three-quarters of the worlds nations,
however, is largely a product of the war on terror. Many of these present-day undertakings require maintaining overseas lily
pad facilities that are small, temporary and unpublicized. And many, moreover, are integrated with covert CIA black
operations. Combating terror involves practicing terrorincluding, since 2002, an expanding
campaign of targeted assassinations by unmanned drones. For the moment, this latest mode
of killing remains dominated by the CIA and the U.S. military, with the United Kingdom and
Israel following some distance behind. Counting nukes The delicate balance of terror that
characterized nuclear strategy during the Cold War has not disappeared. Rather, it has been
reconfigured. The U.S. and Soviet arsenals that reached a peak of insanity in the 1980s have been reduced by about two-
thirdsa praiseworthy accomplishment but one that still leaves the world with around 15,400 nuclear weapons as
of January 2016, 93 percent of them in U.S. and Russian hands. Close to 2,000 of the latter on each side
are still actively deployed on missiles or at bases with operational forces. This downsizing, in other words, has
not removed the wherewithal to destroy the Earth as we know it many times over. Such
destruction could come about indirectly as well as directly, with even a relatively modest
nuclear exchange between, say, India and Pakistan triggering a cataclysmic climate shifta
nuclear winterthat could result in massive global starvation and death. Nor does the fact
that seven additional nations now possess nuclear weaponsand more than 40 others are
deemed nuclear weapons capablemean that deterrence has been enhanced. The
future use of nuclear weapons, whether by deliberate decision or by accident, remains an
ominous possibility. That threat is intensified by the possibility that non-state terrorists may
somehow obtain and use nuclear devices. What is striking at this moment in history is that paranoia couched as
strategic realism continues to guide U.S. nuclear policy and, following Americas lead, that of the other nuclear powers. As
announced by Pres. Barack Obamas administration in 2014, the potential for nuclear
violence is to be modernized. In concrete terms, this translates as a 30-year project that will
cost the United States an estimated $1 trillion not including the usual future cost overruns for
producing such weapons, perfect a new arsenal of smart and smaller nuclear weapons and
extensively refurbish the existing delivery triad of long-range manned bombers, nuclear-
armed submarines and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying nuclear
warheads. Nuclear modernization, of course, is but a small portion of the full spectrum of
American mighta military machine so massive that it inspired Obama to speak with
unusual emphasis in his State of the Union address in January 2016. The United States of
America is the most powerful nation on Earth, he declared. Period. Period. Its not even
close. Its not even close. Its not even close. We spend more on our military than the next
eight nations combined. Official budgetary expenditures and projections provide a snapshot
of this enormous military machine, but here again numbers can be misleading. Thus, the
base budget for defense announced in early 2016 for fiscal year 2017 amounts to roughly
$600 billion, but this falls far short of what the actual outlay will be. When all other
discretionary military- and defense-related costs are taken into accountnuclear
maintenance and modernization, the war budget that pays for so-called overseas
contingency operations like military engagements in the Greater Middle East, black budgets
that fund intelligence operations by agencies including the CIA and the National Security
Agency, appropriations for secret high-tech military activities, veterans affairs costs
including disability payments, military aid to other countries, huge interest costs on the
military-related part of the national debt and so onthe actual total annual expenditure is
close to $1 trillion. Such stratospheric numbers defy easy comprehension, but one does not
need training in statistics to bring them closer to home. Simple arithmetic suffices. The
projected bill for just the 30-year nuclear modernization agenda comes to over $90 million a
day, or almost $4 million an hour. The $1-trillion price tag for maintaining the nations status
as the most powerful nation on Earth for a single year amounts to roughly $2.74 billion a
day, over $114 million an hour. Creating a capacity for violence greater than the world has
ever seen is costlyand remunerative. So an era of a new peace? Think again. Were only
three quarters of the way through Americas violent century and theres more to come.
5/20/17
 Mental Health Aff
1 in 5 public school students suffers from mental health problems and schools dont
have a way to deal with this
Meg Anderson and Kavitha Cardoza, NPR, Mental Health In Schools: A Hidden Crisis
Affecting Millions Of Students, August 31, 2016,
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/08/31/464727159/mental-health-in-schools-a-hidden-crisis-
affecting-millions-of-students, VM
You might call it a silent epidemic. Up
to one in five kids living in the U.S. shows signs or symptoms of a
mental health disorder in a given year. So in a school classroom of 25 students, five of them may be struggling with the
same issues many adults deal with: depression, anxiety, substance abuse. And yet most children
nearly 80 percent who need mental health services won't get them. Whether treated or
not, the children do go to school. And the problems they face can tie into major problems
found in schools: chronic absence, low achievement, disruptive behavior and dropping out.
Experts say schools could play a role in identifying students with problems and helping them succeed. Yet it's a role many schools are not
prepared for. Educators
face the simple fact that, often because of a lack of resources, there just
aren't enough people to tackle the job. And the ones who are working on it are often
drowning in huge caseloads. Kids in need can fall through the cracks.

The impact of mental health issues in children are really bad and numerous
Perou et al 13 Ruth Perou, PhD, Rebecca H. Bitsko, PhD, Stephen J. Blumberg, PhD, Patricia Pastor, PhD,
Reem M. Ghandour, DrPH, Joseph C. Gfroerer, Sarra L. Hedden, PhD, Alex E. Crosby, MD, Susanna N. Visser,
MS, Laura A. Schieve, PhD, Sharyn E. Parks, PhD, Jeffrey E. Hall, PhD, Debra Brody, MPH, Catherine M. Simile,
PhD, William W. Thompson, PhD, Jon Baio, EdS, Shelli Avenevoli, PhD, Michael D. Kogan, PhD, Larke N.
Huang, PhD, Division of Human Development and Disability, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental
Disabilities, CDC, Atlanta, Georgia 2Division of Health Interview Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics,
CDC, Hyattsville, Maryland 3Office of Analysis and Epidemiology, National Center for Health Statistics, CDC,
Hyattsville, Maryland 4Office of Epidemiology and Research, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources
and Services Administration, Rockville, Maryland 5Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Rockville, Maryland 6Division of Violence Prevention, National
Center for Injury Prevention and Control, CDC, Atlanta, Georgia 7Division of Birth Defects and Developmental
Disabilities, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, CDC, Atlanta, Georgia 8Division of
Health Nutrition Examination Surveys, National Center for Health Statistics, CDC, Hyattsville, Maryland 9Division
of Population Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, CDC, Atlanta,
Georgia 10National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland 11Office of Policy, Planning and Innovation,
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Rockville, Maryland; Mental Health Surveillance
Among Children United States, 20052011; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); May 17, 2013;
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6202a1.htm, VM

Mental disorders among children are an important public health issue because of their
prevalence, early onset, and impact on the child, family, and community. A total of 13%20% of
children living in the United States experience a mental disorder in a given year (6,810). Suicide, which can result from the
interaction of mental disorders and other factors, was the second leading cause of death
among children aged 1217 years in 2010 (11). In the United States, the cost (including health
care, use of services such as special education and juvenile justice, and decreased
productivity) of mental disorders among persons aged <24 years in the United States was
estimated at $247 billion annually (6,12,13). In 2006, mental disorders were among the most costly conditions to treat in
children (14). Two recent studies have reported substantial increases in use of services for mental disorders among children. One study included
insurance claims from approximately 20% of the privately insured U.S. population aged <65 years with private insurance and weighted the data
to reflect a national estimate. This
study reported a 24% increase in inpatient mental health and
substance abuse admissions among children during 20072010, as well as increases in use and cost of these
services and psychotropic medications for teenagers specifically over the same period (15). A second nationally representative study, which used
data on principal diagnoses for hospital stays in the United States from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, reported that in 2010,
mood disorders were among the most common principal diagnoses for all hospital stays
among children in the United States, and the rate of hospital stays among children for
mood disorders increased 80% during 19972010, from 10 to 17 stays per 10,000
population (16). For some children, mental disorders might result in serious difficulties at
home, with peer relationships, and in school (1719). These disorders also can be associated
with substance use, criminal behavior, and other risk-taking behaviors (2022). Persons with
mental disorders frequently have more than one type of disorder, with an estimated 40% of children with one mental disorder having at least one
other mental disorder (2326). Children with mental disorders also more often have other chronic health conditions (e.g., asthma, diabetes, and
epilepsy) than children without mental disorders (6,2630). Finally,
mental disorders in children are associated
with an increased risk for mental disorders in adulthood (6), which are associated with
decreased productivity, increased substance use and injury, and substantial costs to the
individual and society (31,32)

Plan: The United States federal government should substantially increase its
regulations on primary and secondary schools in the United States by mandating
increased mental health surveillance of students.

Plan solves by creating a better network of data which is critical to combatting

mental health issues in children
Perou et al 13 Ruth Perou, PhD, Rebecca H. Bitsko, PhD, Stephen J. Blumberg, PhD, Patricia Pastor, PhD,
Reem M. Ghandour, DrPH, Joseph C. Gfroerer, Sarra L. Hedden, PhD, Alex E. Crosby, MD, Susanna N. Visser,
MS, Laura A. Schieve, PhD, Sharyn E. Parks, PhD, Jeffrey E. Hall, PhD, Debra Brody, MPH, Catherine M. Simile,
PhD, William W. Thompson, PhD, Jon Baio, EdS, Shelli Avenevoli, PhD, Michael D. Kogan, PhD, Larke N.
Huang, PhD, Division of Human Development and Disability, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental
Disabilities, CDC, Atlanta, Georgia 2Division of Health Interview Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics,
CDC, Hyattsville, Maryland 3Office of Analysis and Epidemiology, National Center for Health Statistics, CDC,
Hyattsville, Maryland 4Office of Epidemiology and Research, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources
and Services Administration, Rockville, Maryland 5Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Rockville, Maryland 6Division of Violence Prevention, National
Center for Injury Prevention and Control, CDC, Atlanta, Georgia 7Division of Birth Defects and Developmental
Disabilities, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, CDC, Atlanta, Georgia 8Division of
Health Nutrition Examination Surveys, National Center for Health Statistics, CDC, Hyattsville, Maryland 9Division
of Population Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, CDC, Atlanta,
Georgia 10National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland 11Office of Policy, Planning and Innovation,
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Rockville, Maryland; Mental Health Surveillance
Among Children United States, 20052011; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); May 17, 2013;
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6202a1.htm, VM

Although numerous systems provide estimates of the prevalence of individual mental

disorders in children, additional information is needed regarding the overall prevalence
and impact of mental health issues on children. First, because many of the ongoing
surveillance systems discussed are based on ascertaining previously diagnosed cases, cases
that have not been previously identified (e.g., those in children without access to care) are
not represented in the available estimates. Second, similar to the findings of the report on
surveillance of mental illness among adults (31), limited data are available on many
conditions, particularly specific anxiety disorders and bipolar disorder. Third, and also
similar to the adult report (31), no dedicated surveillance system on mental health in
children exists. Available data do not allow for an overall estimate of the prevalence of all childhood mental disorders. Previous reports
of the overall prevalence of having any mental disorder have been limited by the disorders included within the surveillance system. The 2007
NSCH indicates that 11.3% of children aged 217 years had been diagnosed with an emotional, behavioral, or developmental condition (26).
Using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview to assess 14 disorders (and therefore identify previously undiagnosed cases), NCS-A
found that nearly 50% of adolescents aged 1318 years had ever had a mental disorder, including substance use disorders, with 28% meeting the
criteria for severe impairment (25). Differences in methods between these two systems, including conditions assessed, age of assessment, and
how the conditions were assessed, might be responsible for the substantial difference in overall estimates. Substantial but not insurmountable
challenges to surveillance of mental disorders in children exist. An
overall challenge is the establishment of
consistent surveillance case definitions that allow for comparability and reliability of
estimates among surveillance systems. Standard surveillance case definitions are needed to
reliably categorize and count mental disorders among surveillance systems. Criteria for
mental disorders are subjective, are based on a symptom count instead of a biologic
measure, might require assessment by different persons or in different settings, and might
change over the course of development. In addition, there has been little study on the
validation of case ascertainment methodology for surveillance of childhood mental
disorders (85). For example, although national telephone surveys are cost-effective, the validity of measuring mental disorders using the
telephone needs to be studied. Even when standardized diagnostic interviews are used, the findings might differ depending on whether or not the
child or parent is reporting the symptoms and might also differ with expert clinical judgment (137140). Different
strengths and
limitations are associated with surveillance efforts based on symptoms and those based on
previous diagnoses. Assessing symptoms requires more time and might limit sample size
but might identify previously undiagnosed cases. However, if a child is receiving adequate
treatment for a condition, symptoms might not be reported, and the case might be missed.
Relying on report of previous diagnoses takes little time and can be easily integrated into
ongoing surveys but does not catch undiagnosed cases and might include misdiagnosed
cases. To improve comprehensive surveillance of mental disorders among children,
validation of current methods (e.g., studies comparing parent report or screening
instruments with diagnostic interviews) is needed, including those that can be incorporated
into national surveys. In addition, targeted and longitudinal epidemiologic studies are
needed to complement national surveys to better describe mental disorders among
children, as well as their impact and course during development. For example, ADDM data address issues
regarding ASDs, whereas NCS-A provides national estimates for a large number of mental disorders based on a clinical interview. The Great
Smoky Mountains Study and the Project to Learn about ADHD in Youth (PLAY) monitored community samples of children longitudinally
(23,141). Longitudinal studies can provide data on incidence, emerging health risk behaviors
and comorbid conditions, and risk and protective factors to guide intervention strategies
for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. Targeted epidemiologic studies also can increase
understanding of mental disorders that are difficult to diagnose and are not being
monitored in existing surveillance systems, including childhood-onset schizophrenia (142);
however, they might not be generalizable to the U.S. population. Validation and complementary approaches to
better document the prevalence and impact of childhood mental disorders might best be
achieved by strengthening partnerships and strategic coordination of surveillance efforts.
One way this has been addressed is through the partnership between HRSA and CDC in the sponsorship and execution of NSCH and its
associated survey, the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs. In addition, SAMHSA, NIMH, and CDC are working
together to develop an indicator of serious emotional disturbance (143). CDC collaborated with several organizations including NIMH and the
Department of Veterans Affairs, state health departments, and clinicians over several years to develop uniform definitions and recommended data
elements for surveillance of self-directed violence (119). NIMH, HRSA, and CDC collaborated on the Survey of Pathways to Diagnosis and
Services, a follow-back survey with parents of children with ASD, intellectual disability, or developmental delay (or all of these) when first
interviewed for the 20092010 National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs. This survey examined the emergence of symptoms;
the history of diagnoses, treatments, and interventions used; and current behavioral, diagnostic, and functional status. Collaboration
among partnering agencies could improve surveillance efforts. Although this report
focused on selected mental disorders and indicators of mental health among children,
surveillance of mental health service use (144) and use of psychotropic medications also are
important for understanding the public health impact of mental disorders among children
(145149). In addition, more attention to the prevalence and treatment of mental disorders among preschool-age children is needed (146,149).
Surveillance is a critical first step in the public health approach to mental health among
children. Data collection and monitoring are important to identify need and target
resources at the national, state, and local levels. Surveillance data can help prioritize areas
for research on risk and protective factors and provide empirical evidence to develop
effective interventions that can prevent mental disorders and promote mental health as
recommended by a recent IOM report (6,37,150). As intervention and prevention strategies are implemented,
surveillance is needed to continually monitor progress in reducing the impact of mental
disorders and improving mental health.
5/21/17
 Test Scores Economy
The relationship between assessment rankings and the economy is correlation not
causation.
Strauss 17 - (Valerie Strauss, Reporter Washington, D.C., Washington Post, Apr. 27, 2017,
"Is there really a link between test scores and Americas economic future?",
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/04/27/is-there-really-a-link-
between-test-scores-and-americas-economic-future/?utm_term=.65d20a9225bd, DOA: 5-21-
2017) //Snowball
So when we ask: Does the mediocre rankings of U.S. pupils on international learning assessments
foreshadow future American economic decline? We answer: The evidence does not support these
claims, even when we use the same data and methods. As such, contemporary anxieties derive less from
evidence, more from the stubborn beat of global competition that has, unfortunately, come to
dominate American educational culture. Research findings such as these reveal more about
cultural predilections than reality itself. This becomes most clear when we viewed against the
larger historical backdrop sketched here. What might actually endanger prosperity then is hastily
implementing structural reforms based on truncated comparisons and flawed statistical
analyses. To be clear, the United States should keep trying to learn about educational policy and practice
elsewhere. But international comparisons should be understood as means of learning about ourselves,
not as a baton to bring domestic debates to an anxious crescendo. In doing so, we might discover that
nowhere are schools viewed as a means to economic superiority as strongly as in the United
States. By replacing our competitive mind-set with a learning one, perhaps we might break
from the cultural cadence of global expectations pacing postwar America education.
5/22/17
 Deregulate CP
The United States federal government should substantially reduce its regulation of
elementary and secondary education in the United States by allowing wide ranging
voucher programs, more charter schools and school privatization, and allow every
student in the U.S. to choose the school they attend.

That solves the aff- improves education greatly- studies prove

EdChoice, 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, no date, School Choice FAQs,
https://www.edchoice.org/school_choice_faqs/how-does-school-choice-affect-public-schools/,
VM
Positively. Sound research has demonstrated consistently that school choice policies improve
public school performance. Thirty empirical studies (including all methods) have examined
private school choices impact on academic outcomes in public schools. Within that body of
research, 29 studies find that choice improved the performance of nearby public schools. One
study finds no significant effects. To date, no empirical study has found that school choice harms
students in public schools. Four recent research studies support this conclusion: A 2016 study by Anna Egalite of North Carolina
State University looked at the impact of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) on Louisiana public schools. Egalite found, The competitive
threat of the LSP ranges from negligible to modestly positive in the public schools exposed to the threat of
competition, with effect sizes growing in magnitude as the competitive threat looms larger. A 2014 study by David Figlio and Cassandra
Hart of Northwestern University examined the competitive effects of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program on public schools. They learned
that more access and variety of private schools increased the competitive pressure on public schools in the wake of the policy announcement.
They state in their conclusion, The fact that we observed
generalized improvements in school performance
in response to the competitive threats of school vouchers, even in a state with rapid population growth, suggests
that voucher competition may have effects elsewhere. A 2011 peer-reviewed study by Jay Greene of the University of Arkansas and Marcus
Winters of the University of Colorado Colorado Springs looked at the impact of Floridas McKay special education voucher program on
and Winters found there was approximately a 12 percent reduction
Florida public schools. Greene
in the probability that a fourth- through sixth-grade student was diagnosed with a
learning disability in a public school with average levels of competition. They also found
that being in a public school surrounded by the average number of McKay-accepting
private schools was related to an increase in academic proficiency of about 0.01 standard
deviations in both math and reading. The positive but very mild competitive effect is consistent with what has been found
in previous research evaluating more conventional school choice policies. A 2009 study by Jay Greene and Ryan Marsh of the University of
Arkansas considered the systemic effects of expanding school choice in Milwaukee. Greene and Marsh found that public school students in
Milwaukee fare better academically when they have more free private options through the voucher program. They concluded, It appears that
Milwaukee public schools are more attentive to the academic needs of students when those students have more opportunities to leave those
schools. This finding is robust across several different specifications of the model. MYTH: Vouchers hurt public schools by taking only the best
students. Many people are concerned about the impact school vouchers will have on public schools. One concern is that voucher programs will
drain money from public schools. Another is that they may result in creaming, a situation in which the brightest students use vouchers while
the students who are hardest to teach stay in public schools. In addition to fears that vouchers will harm public schools, there is also a related
contention that vouchers will not have as much positive impact that has been claimed. Some have argued that vouchers cannot spur public
schools to reform because public schools are too weighed down by bureaucracy, unions, or other barriers to change. FACT: Vouchers
improve public schools by providing choice and competition. Although evidence showing
that vouchers improve public schools is counter-intuitive to many people, it is not hard to
explain. One reason vouchers improve public schools is that they enable parents to find the
right particular school for each childs unique educational needs. Children have different
needs and preferences, and everyones schooling experience can improve if children are
allowed greater freedom to find the right niche. Vouchers also provide positive incentives
for responsiveness and improvement that are lacking in the traditional public school
system. When public schools know that students have a choice and can leave using
vouchers, those schools have a much more powerful incentive to improve their
performance and keep those students from walking out the door. EVIDENCE: Data confirm
vouchers serve disadvantaged students well and improve outcomes. The available evidence
suggests that voucher programs do not cream-skim the best students. To the contrary,
the best analysis of this question found voucher applicants in three cities and a
representative sample of the eligible population to be virtually identical on a variety of
demographic and educational indicators.1 The acid test, however, is what actually happens to public school outcomes
when vouchers are implemented. A large body of high-quality empirical research has examined this question, using statistical methods to isolate
and measure the impact vouchers have on academic achievement in public schools (see accompanied chart). In
some cases the
student improvement gains under vouchers are only moderate. Thats not surprising, given
that many existing voucher programs are limited in the number and type of students
theyre allowed to serve and the amount of choice theyre allowed to offer. Narrowly
constricted programs produce narrowly constricted results. To produce revolutionary
results, we would need broad programseligibility for all students. Overwhelmingly,
studies have found that vouchers improve public schools. No empirical study has ever
found that vouchers harm public schools.
 Nuke Mistrust War
Nuclear mistrust causes mutual build-up - leaders act with immense pressure and
unreliable information treaties fail and its too big for deterrence logic
extinction.
Krepon and Thompson 13 - (Michael Krepon, director of the Stimson Centers programming
on nuclear and space issues and Julia Thompson, research associate at the Stimson Center, 2013,
"Deterrence Stability And Escalation Control In South Asia",
https://www.stimson.org/sites/default/files/file-
attachments/Deterrence_Stability_Dec_2013_web_1.pdf, DOA: 5-22-2017) //Snowball
These treaties
did not, despite their valuable contributions, provide for deterrence stability and escalation
control. One reason for failure was because mistrust was so great that treaties were accompanied
by hedging strategies that, in turn, required even greater efforts to stabilize the competition.
Deterrence stability eluded the United States and the Soviet Union because of their interactive strategic modernization programs.
Protagonist and antagonist alike viewed the ratcheting up of nuclear capabilities as a necessary
signal of resolve, and as effort to prevent being placed at a disadvantage in crises or a
breakdown of deterrence. These signals were received otherwise as the pursuit of advantage
and a rejection of sufficiency. The more force structure was diversified and filled out, the more
nuclear capabilities seemed suited for war-fighting rather than deterrence. Once stockpiles
grew to dizzying levels, possible devastation became too immense to fit within a construct of
deterrence stability. Similarly, once nuclear capabilities became greatly diversified and widely dispersed,
command and control became too complicated to ensure escalation control. Under these conditions,
the essence of deterrence stability and escalation control crystallized into the avoidance of
the first mushroom cloud. Beyond this, the fate of planetary health and humankind was left to
chance, or rather to the human frailties of leaders placed under unfathomable pressures,
operating on the basis of insufficient and unreliable information. Well before massive nuclear arsenals are
accumulated, deterrence stability and escalation control proceed unevenly, not in a straight line .
Deterrence stability and escalation control are weakest at the outset of a nuclear competition, where decisive
advantage might be perceived by preemptive attack and when safety and security measures as
well as command and control arrangements for nascent nuclear arsenals are being developed. Stability and escalation control improve
somewhat as nuclear competitors acquire tens of nuclear weapons, work out the modalities of mobile basing modes for medium- and
intermediate-range delivery systems, improve safety and security mechanisms, and develop more mature command and control arrangements.
Then, deterrence stability and escalation control deteriorate as competing arsenals grow to three digits and as
basing modes diversify further especially if shorter-range delivery vehicles are introduced. Pakistan and India are
approaching this juncture. Nuclear dangers are inherent in the Bomb; they grow as a nuclear
competition heats up. Even the demise of a competitor does not necessarily reduce, let alone
eliminate, nuclear dangers, as was evident when the Soviet Union imploded. Instead, nuclear dangers present
themselves in new ways, requiring creative responses in the form of cooperative threat reduction programs. Even the
terminology of cooperative threat reduction raises hackles in South Asia, as it suggests (to some ears)
denuclearization. Since no one will forcibly denuclearize the Subcontinent, improved deterrence
stability and escalation control will need to be found, if at all, by the competitors themselves, not by outsiders.
5/23/17
 Efficiency Focus Bad
A narrow-minded focus on educational efficiency and performance metrics trades
off with every other important priority.
Smarick 17 - (Andy Smarick is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 5-8-
2017, "Efficiency Can Cost Education", https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-
bank/articles/2017-05-08/dont-put-efficiency-in-schools-ahead-of-other-education-goals, DOA:
5-23-2017) //Snowball
There are very good reasons to resist (or at least be skeptical of) efforts to drive "efficiency" in public
education. One of the biggest reasons is that any attempt to maximize efficiency automatically elevates some might
say inflates the role of performance metrics. Once we decide which indicators are going to
define success and then set people off to find the swiftest and cheapest way to get those
outcomes, we can begin to distort complex enterprises. Other outcomes become expendable,
even if those outcomes are important. This phenomenon has been studied in lots of other fields. Yes, you can dramatically
increase the lumber production of a forest by planting a single type of tree and arranging them in tidy
lines. But that ultimately kills the forest. You can arrange a city's buildings, streets and homes to maximize commuting efficiency.
But that can diminish the city's livability. You can more efficiently house low-income people by razing old neighborhoods and replacing them
with public-housing skyscrapers. But that destroys social capital. In each of these cases, we have a three-step process: First, we allow
the success of a multifaceted endeavor or environment (e.g. a forest) to be defined narrowly (lumber
production); second, we develop sophisticated systems (scientific forestry) to efficiently accomplish our
now too-narrow goal; third, we later recognize that our efficiency-mindedness came at a
cost, namely other important things were neglected.
5/24/17
 More funding doesnt improve education
Spending is at an all-time high but more doesnt help student performance
Lips and Watkins 8 Dan Lips and Shanea Watkins, analysts at Heritage, Does Spending
More on Education Improve Academic Achievement? September 08, 2008, The Heritage
Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/education/report/does-spending-more-education-improve-
academic-achievement, VM
American spending on public K-12 education is at an all-time high and is still rising. Polls show
that many people believe that a lack of resources is a primary problem facing public schools. Yet spending on American K-12 public Education is
at an all-time high. Approximately $9,300 is spent per pupil. Real spending per student has increased by 23.5 percent over the past decade and by
49 percent over the past 20 years. Continuous
spending increases have not corresponded with equal
improvement in American educational performance. Long-term measures of American
students' academic achievement, such as long-term NAEP reading scale scores and high school graduation rates, show
that the performance of American students has not improved dramatically in recent
decades, despite substantial spending increases. The lack of a correlation between long-
term Education spending and performance does not suggest that resources are not a factor
in academic performance, but it does suggest that simply increasing spending is unlikely to
improve educational performance. Increasing federal funding on Education has not been
followed by similar gains in student achievement. Federal spending on elementary and
secondary Education has also increased significantly in recent decades. Since 1985, real
federal spending on K-12 education has increased by 138 percent. On a per-student basis, federal spending
on K-12 education has tripled since 1970. Yet, long-term measures of American students' academic achievement have not seen similar increases.
Long-term test scores among specific student populations, including ethnic minorities that have been a main focus of federal Education policy,
have improved some. However,
the achievement gaps among white, black, and Hispanic students
persist in test scores and graduation rates.
5/25/17
 Education Privatization Good
Privatization is net-beneficial for public education.
Robinson 17 - (Gerard Robinson, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 5-25-
2017, "The Positive Privatization Narrative", https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-
bank/articles/2017-05-25/dont-ignore-the-positives-of-privatization-in-american-education,
DOA: 5-26-2017) //Snowball
Fast forward to 2017: Public-private partnerships remain an important aspect of doing business in
America; private prisons are still part of our state and federal corrections landscape; 26 school voucher programs are operating in 15 states
and the District of Columbia; and 21 tax credit programs are operating in 17 states. The election of billionaire Donald Trump as
president, the confirmation of free-market supporter Betsy DeVos as secretary of education and the consolidation of
Republican majorities in Congress have reignited the negative stereotypes of privatization.
Indeed, since November, seemingly any discussion of education reform or policies that deviate from the
traditional, district-run public school model invariably run into charges of attempting to
"privatize public education." Public charter schools are lumped into the privatization category, too. But this
overgeneralized narrative obscures the true nature of some existing public-private
educational partnerships and assumes nefarious motives fuel someone's decision to enter this type of work. For
a host of reasons, school districts find it more feasible to manage some educational services in-
house and outsource others to for-profit companies. Take student transportation, for example. According to a
recent report from Bellwether, district-managed public school buses account for approximately two-
thirds of the 480,000 buses that transport 25 million students in urban and rural school
districts each year. Private companies such as First Student, Inc., which has a contract with 1,200 school districts and
employs 57,000 people to drive 6 million students to school each day, are among for-profit service providers that
compose the remaining one-third. Why do districts outsource transportation? According to the National School
Transportation Association, "School bus contracting benefits schools and school districts nationwide.
Outsourcing transportation redirects attention and financial resources back into the
schools that were overburdened by the expense and administrative commitment of
providing their own student transportation." And it is not just transportation: Districts outsource
educational services to big-name corporations like Apple, Microsoft and McGraw-Hill, as well as small
businesses that offer specialized student services or technology support to local public
schools. Though anti-privatization advocates often claim that private-sector outsourcing hurts those in the public system, in many cases, it is
just the opposite. The private sector is benefiting school districts and other public employees in
another area, too: pension investment. According to an American Investment Council report regarding the investments of over 155
public pension funds in various equity markets, funds invested in private equity produce a median 10-year
annualized return rate nearly 4 percent higher than those invested in public equity. For
example, the Teacher Retirement System of Texas invested $16.41 billion in private equity, and came away with a 15.4 percent increase in their
annualized 10-year return. The New York State Teachers' Retirement System invested $8.26 billion in private equity, and garnered a 13.2 percent
increase in their return. The point is that these
teachers, and countless more, will be able to retire with some
comfort based on the investment of their public pensions in the private equity market.
School districts depend on private-sector service providers to support their educational
duties. Examples of positive public-private partnership exist in American education, and
they should be marketed as lessons for how privatization is working to the benefit of many.
5/26/17
 Education Backlash Coming
There will be public backlash to revolt against the dominant education regime.
Tierney 13 - (John Tierney, contributing writer for The Atlantic and a former professor of
American government at Boston College, 4-25-2013, "The Coming Revolution in Public
Education", https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/the-coming-revolution-in-
public-education/275163/, DOA: 5-26-2017) //Snowball
It's always hard to tell for sure exactly when a revolution starts. Is it when a few discontented people gather in a room to
discuss how the ruling regime might be opposed? Is it when first shots are fired? When a critical mass forms and the opposition acquires
sufficient weight to have a chance of prevailing? I'm not an expert on revolutions, but even I can see that a
new one is taking shape
in American K-12 public education. The dominant regime for the past decade or more has been what is
sometimes called accountability-based reform or, by many of its critics, "corporate education reform." The
reforms consist of various initiatives aimed at (among other things): improving schools and educational
outcomes by using standardized tests to measure what students are learning; holding schools and teachers
accountable (through school closures and teachers' pay) when their students are "lagging" on those standardized
assessments; controlling classroom instruction and increasing the rigor of school curricula by pushing all states to
adopt the same challenging standards via a "Common Core;" and using market-like competitive pressures (through the
spread of charter schools and educational voucher programs) to provide public schools with incentives to improve.* Critics of the
contemporary reform regime argue that these initiatives, though seemingly sensible in their original framing, are
motivated by interests other than educational improvement and are causing genuine harm
to American students and public schools. Here are some of the criticisms: the reforms have self-interest
and profit motives, not educational improvement, as their basis; corporate interests are
reaping huge benefits from these reform initiatives and spending millions of dollars lobbying to keep
those benefits flowing; three big foundations (Gates, Broad, and Walton Family) are funding much of the
backing for the corporate reforms and are spending billions to market and sell reforms
that don't work; ancillary goals of these reforms are to bust teacher unions, disempower
educators, and reduce spending on public schools; standardized testing is enormously expensive in
terms both of public expenditures and the diversion of instruction time to test prep; over a third of charter schools deliver
"significantly worse" results for students than the traditional public schools from which
they were diverted; and, finally, that these reforms have produced few benefits and have
actually caused harm, especially to kids in disadvantaged areas and communities of color.
(On that last overall point, see this scathing new report from the Economic Policy Institute.)
5/27/17
 Standardized Tests Critical Thinking
Even if standardized tests cover important content, they restrict students from
critical, complex, and creative thinking.
Popham 17 - (George Popham, Huffington Post Contributor and Founder & Executive Director
at Bay State Learning Center, 5-4-2017, "Standardized Testing Misses The Mark When It Comes
To Students Cognitive Competency", http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/standardized-
testing-misses-the-mark-when-it-comes_us_590b8958e4b0f7118072428b, DOA: 5-28-2017)
//Snowball
This situation is absolutely corrosive to actual learning because the testing culture of the school system is
a self-reinforcing feedback loop that rewards oversimplification and punishes critical and
creative thought. This is especially true of the humanities, but it applies in science and mathematics as well. Yes, it is true that
there are many important facts that are not in dispute and should be taught as such, but it is precisely my
point that these are the easiest parts of any discipline to teach and test, which leaves out contextual
integration of the material and critical thinking skills. Test-based teaching, therefore, avoids
ambiguous and uncertain issues, which is exactly where the most important learning and
complex thinking is to be done. As with so many aspects of our common culture, we often emphasize trivia at
the expense of substance. The truth is, learning, insight, intellectual development are not
quantifiable. These traits can certainly be assessed, but they cannot be measured. The implicit
assumption behind comparing the average test scores of different children, schools, or countries is that
education can be a kind of competition, that we can apply statistics to it like we do in professional
sports. In reality, this is completely misguided, there are no creative or intellectual batting averages,
and by redesigning our educational system to produce data we actually abandon education
and replace it with a kind of international quiz show competition, which generates a great deal of sound
and fury but signifies absolutely nothing.
5/28/17
 AT: Standardized Tests Inequality
Standardized testing doesnt create inequality, it reveals it.
Almagor 14 - (Lelac Almagor teaches English at a charter school in Washington, D.C., Boston
Review, Sept. 2, 2014, "The Good in Standardized Testing", http://bostonreview.net/us/lelac-
almagor-finding-good-in-standardized-testing, DOA: 5-29-2017) //Snowball
Lately, when we talk about testing, we whisper with apocalyptic trepidation about the coming
shift to the Common Core and new national assessments that align to it. These exams are less repetitive and grueling than
the DC CAS, but so much harder. They require even young students to synthesize multiple sources, write
analytical essays, perform a research simulation, and solve multi-part problems that feel more
like logic puzzles. It is less practical to prep kids for this kind of test. They have to actually be preparedto be
confident reading and writing at or above grade levelbefore they can begin to tackle the
task itself. Compared with state tests such as the DC CAS, early versions of these Common Corealigned tests have often revealed bigger gaps
in achievement between disadvantaged kids and their peers. But the measurement is not the problem. Testing
doesnt produce the staggering gaps in performance between privileged and unprivileged
students; historical, generational, systemic inequality does. Testing only seeks to tell the truth about
those gaps, and the truth is that the complex tasks of the Common Core are a better representation of what our students need to and ought to
be able to do. Im all for measuring that as accurately as we can. In recent years our schools have in fact
made huge gains in helping our students tackle real complexity. Id love to take genuine pride in our scores,
knowing they reflect those strides toward rigor. If we could give these harder tests internally and get back
detailed resultsshare them only with parents, and use them only to improve our own planning
many more teachers would embrace them. Liberated from the testing tricks and stamina
lessons, we would embrace more honest feedback about where our students are and how
they still need to grow.
5/29/17
 Agency Matters
Emphasizing a specific agent of action drastically changes the outcome of education
policies.
Rigby et al. 16 - (Jessica Rigby, Assistant Professor at the University of Washington College of
Education, March 16, 2016, "Understanding How Structure and Agency Influence Education
Policy Implementation and Organizational Change",
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/685849, DOA: 5-30-2017) //Snowball
The relationship between structure and agency is a perennial sociological question. Scholars who draw on structural accounts usually explain
action as limited by economic, political, and social contexts, whereas those who draw on agentic accounts look for human motivation and
understanding to explain behavior (Giddens 1979). Education
policy implementation is a particularly fruitful topic
to explore the interaction between structure and agency given the manifold and complex
structures, multiple stakeholders, and ongoing need for improvement. Although the articles in this special
issue each define structure and agency in particular ways, brief field-level definitions of the terms they use are a useful foundation.
Structures are regular patterns that can both enable and constrain individual actions. Giddens
(1979) defines structure as rules and resources (64), or the ways in which we understand how things should be done, practices organized around
those understandings, and capabilities that support those understandings. Agency describes situated practices, or the
temporal capacity of individuals to take actions (Archer 1996; Meyer and Jepperson 2002). Scholars that focus on
structure attend to issues such as policies themselves (Mazmanian and Sabatier 1983), the influence of formal organizational structures
(McDonnell and Elmore 1987), and the allocation of resources. In contrast, scholars that attend to agency study individual actors such as teachers
(Achinstein and Ogawa 2006; Anagnostopoulos and Rutledge 2007) and students (Miron and Lauria 1998; Stefanou et al. 2004). Typically, a
focus on either structure or agency also results in an emphasis on one organizational level, such
as the macro, environmental level or the micro, classroom level. Although this type of research
highlights particular sites and processes of policy implementation, it often ignores other
potential conditions and interactions that may be instrumental in how policy plays out. In this special
issue, we integrate structure and agency to understand policy implementation in educational settings. The educational system has
become increasingly complex, with greater prominence and prevalence of nonsystem actors and
heavier federal influence (Fuller et al. 2007; Labaree 1997; Rowan 2002; Sun et al. 2013). As a result, educational
organizations encompass more actors and structures that shape the implementation of each
policy and the everyday work of teaching, learning, and leading. To explore this complicated policy environment, the authors explicitly
explore multiple levels of the environment, the boundaries between these levels, and the interaction between structure and agency. Further, in
accordance with the sociology literature (Cooney 2007; Giddens 1986; Sewell 1992), the articles use multiple conceptions of structure and
agency to represent the increasingly complex environments of schooling.
5/30/17
 Queer Theory Link
The education system is a microcosm of queer exclusion even if stories are told,
narratives are silenced.
Helmer 15 - (Kirsten Helmer, Presenting a Dissertation for Doctor of Education, May 2015,
"Reading Queerly In The High School Classroom: Exploring A Gay And Lesbian Literature
Course",
http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1369&amp;context=dissertations_2,
DOA: 5-30-2017) //Snowball
Despite the dramatic socio-political shifts in the United States during the first decade of the 21st century which
significantly increased the visibility and the legal rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, the
pervasive and seemingly impenetrable silence concerning LGBT topics in most schools continues to
persist (Blackburn & Buckley, 2005; DePalma & Atkinson, 2008, 2009a-c). Even though many scholars and educators
advocate for curriculum changes to make classrooms more inclusive of LGBT students and their concerns (e.g., Allan, 1999;
Blackburn & Buckley, 2005; Killoran & Pendleton Jimnez, 2007; Laskey & Beavis, 1996; Nieto & Bode, 2012), research shows that
most students still do not have access to LGBT-related resources in their schools (Whelan, 2006;
Kosciw, Greytak, Bartkiewicz, Boesen, & Palmer, 2012) and only a small percentage have ever been taught
positive representations about LGBT people, history, or events in their schools (Blackburn & Buckley,
2005; Kosciw et al., 2012). However, students are exposed to media representations and discussions of
LGBTQ issues outside of the schooling contexts all the time since these topics are front and center within the
current social and political context. In addition, schools as micro-social environments are sites where social
identities around gender and sexuality are developed, and normative notions of masculinity
and femininity are practiced and actively produced or contested (Tharinger, 2008). Particularly, high
schools are places where young people experience the meanings of various social locations
and non/dominant social positioning by class, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, gender, and race (Bertram,
Crowley, & Massey, 2009, p. 3). The silencing of the stories and experiences of LGBTQ people reinforces the
homophobia, heterosexism, heteronormativity, and cissexism that are already routinely and
performatively constituted in the everyday life of schools (Gorski, Davis, & Reiter, 2013). In order to
challenge and disrupt oppressive practices related to sexuality and gender, students should have
opportunities to engage with LGBTQI topics in meaningful ways as part of their official school
curriculum. Research has also shown that teachers tend to shy away from addressing controversial topics
in their classrooms with LGBT issues being among the most controversially discussed
contemporary topics (Conoley, 2008). There is a pervasive thinking that children cannot understand
complex social issues that adults are uncomfortable discussing and that these topics are inappropriate for
classrooms (Martino & Cumming-Potvin, 2011; Schall & Kauffmann, 2003). Many teachers cite parental surveillance
grounded in the cultural, religious and moral values of the parent community as reasons
for cautiousness and self-monitoring related to the use of LGBT-themed literary resources (Martino & Cumming-Potvin, 2011, p. 487).
Furthermore, research on teacher education has shown that many preservice teachers struggle
when thinking about making teaching inclusive of LGBTQ people and issues (Blackburn &
Buckley, 2005; Clark, 2010; Kissen, 2002; North, 2010). This cannot be a surprise, considering that teacher preparation
programs rarely include content related to sexualities and gender diversity in their curriculums
(Gorski et al., 2013; Jennings, 2014), and that the treatment of LGBTQ topics in multicultural education
textbooks (Jennings & Macgillivray, 2011), in educational foundations textbooks (Macgillivray & Jennings, 2008), or in multicultural texts
used in education classes (Young & Middleton, 2002) lacks breadth, depth and complexity. Few teachers,
therefore, can imagine or feel confident to design and implement a comprehensive curriculum around
LGBTQ topics (DePalma & Atkinson, 2009a, 2009b; Gorski et al., 2013). For teachers who want to engage in anti-
homophobia and counter-heteronormative work few resources or narratives exist to reference and this
work is often seen as subversive, risky and controversial within local school communities (Atkinson, DePalma,
& No Outsiders Project, 2010; DePalma & Atkinson, 2008, 2009a-c). Moreover, when teachers address LGBTQ topics in
classrooms or use LGBTQ-themed texts and literature, they frequently frame such teaching in problematic
terms which limits the possibilities for how students can engage with these topics and texts (Clark &
Blackburn, 2009). Oftentimes, school-based readings of LGBT-themed texts are shaped by homophobia and
heteronormativity (Epstein, 2000) because of the way teachers position their student readers and the
texts in the classroom (Clark & Blackburn, 2009). For example, many teachers presume their students to be
straight and often aggressively homophobic, frequently allowing their students to maintain a
homophobic position in [the] classroom (Clark & Blackburn, 2009, p. 27) while at the same time trying to
provoke empathy, understanding, and a sense of commonality across differences for LGBTQ people
instead of positioning their students as LGBTQ people or straight allies (p. 28). Moreover, the
LGBTQ-themed texts chosen for readings in classrooms frequently present limited, or even troubling,
representations of LGBTQ people, foregrounding their negative experiences (e.g., as they encounter
bullying or battle AIDS). In other cases, the readings of LGBTQ-themed texts emphasize homophobia by
embedding such readings within thematic units that focus on topics like fear or survival (see
Clark & Blackburn, 2009 for a more detailed discussion of classroom studies). In other words, when including LGBTQ-
themed texts and literature in the curriculum it not only matters what texts students read
but also how students are positioned for reading these texts and what reading practices are
employed.
5/31/17
 Memes K2 Heg
Memes are a crucial aspect of US military leadership They can be spread in order
to make civilians and enemies more aware and fond of the US They promote a
psychological aspect to war which gives us the advantage
Michael B. Prosser 06 [Academic Year 2005-2006, "MEMETICSA GROWTH INDUSTRY
IN US MILITARY OPERATIONS", http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a507172.pdf, Prosser
is a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Marine Corps]//NV
While meme acceptance remains elusive within the US military and largely the US
government, the time has come to at least test the conceptual framework argued in this
examination. Contemporary combat operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa
offer ripe conditions to employ memes, if only as a test bed. Reshaping tomorrows US
military must encourage an alternative approach to warfighting and shifting to a mindset
fully prepared to include all available national resources in order to gain advantage in the
contest for human minds. By obvious implication, future battlefield application of memes
will lean heavily on the intelligence community and other scientific disciplines, which are
not traditionally members of a battle staff. Cognitive scientists, cultural anthropologists,
behavior scientists, and game theory experts are the new professional meme wielding
gunfighters, who can be organized, trained and equipped for future battlefields. The US
military must acknowledge the nature of future battlefields are inherently nonlinear and
must adapt the force to achieve advantage within the contested territories of human minds.
At the same time, the US must recognize the growing need for emerging disciplines in
ideological warfare by weaponeering cultural information, transmission and
replicationin other words, using memes as weapons. While perhaps contentious, current
US military Information Operations, PsyOps and Strategic Communications structure are
inadequate to offer sophisticated combat methods to counter the nonlinear threats lurking
inside the minds of our enemies. Recent comments by the Secretary of Defense underline this
chasm, Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but for
the most part we, our country, our government, has not. the violent extremist[s] have
established media relations committeesand have proven to be highly successful at
manipulating opinion elites. They plan and design their headlinegrabbing attacks using
every means of communications to intimidate and break the collective will of free people.
15 The Meme Warfare Center offers a more complex and intellectually rich capability
absent in current IO, PsyOps and SC formations and is specifically designed to combat the
enemys sophistication as highlighted above. The emerging tools to win the metaphysical
fight are memes. Managing, employing and leveraging memetic power is key for the US to
shape and win on future battlefields.
 T-Regulation
Interpretation: Regulation does not include the authority to control specific aspects
of schools or mandate specific things be taught- anything else destroys limits
United States v. Lopez 95 514 U.S. 549 (1995), UNITED STATES v. LOPEZ, No. 93-
1260. United States Supreme Court. Argued November 8, 1994. Decided April 26, 1995,
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=18310045251039502778&q=United+States+v.+L
opez,+514+US+549+-+Supreme+Court+1995&hl=en&as_sdt=2006, VM
The Government argues that Congress has accumulated institutional expertise regarding the regulation of firearms through previous enactments.
Cf. Fullilove v.Klutznick, 448 U. S. 448, 503 (1980) (Powell, J., concurring). We agree, however, with the Fifth Circuit that importation of
previous findings to justify 922(q) is especially inappropriate here because the "prior federal enactments or Congressional findings [do not]
speak to the subject matter of section 922(q) or its relationship to interstate commerce. Indeed, section 922(q) plows thoroughly new ground and
represents a sharp break with the long-standing pattern of federal firearms legislation." 2 F. 3d, at 1366. The Government's essential contention,
in fine, is that we may determine here that 922(q) is valid because possession of a firearm in a local school zone does indeed substantially affect
interstate commerce. Brief for United States 17. The Government argues that possession of a firearm in a school zone may result in violent crime
and that violent crime can be expected to affect the functioning of the national economy in two ways. First, the costs of violent 564*564 crime are
substantial, and, through the mechanism of insurance, those costs are spread throughout the population. See United States v. Evans, 928 F. 2d
858, 862 (CA9 1991). Second, violent crime reduces the willingness of individuals to travel to areas within the country that are perceived to be
unsafe. Cf. Heart of Atlanta Motel, 379 U. S., at 253. The Government also argues that the presence of guns in schools poses a substantial threat
to the educational process by threatening the learning environment. A handicapped educational process, in turn, will result in a less productive
citizenry. That, in turn, would have an adverse effect on the Nation's economic well-being. As a result, the Government argues that Congress
could rationally have concluded that 922(q) substantially affects interstate commerce. We pause to consider the implications of the
Government's arguments. The
Government admits, under its "costs of crime" reasoning, that
Congress could regulate not only all violent crime, but all activities that might lead to
violent crime, regardless of how tenuously they relate to interstate commerce. See Tr. of
Oral Arg. 8-9. Similarly, under the Government's "national productivity" reasoning,
Congress could regulate any activity that it found was related to the economic productivity
of individual citizens: family law (including marriage, divorce, and child custody), for example. Under the theories that
the Government presents in support of 922(q), it is difficult to perceive any limitation on
federal power, even in areas such as criminal law enforcement or education where States
historically have been sovereign. Thus, if we were to accept the Government's arguments,
we are hard pressed to posit any activity by an individual that Congress is without power
to regulate. Although Justice Breyer argues that acceptance of the Government's rationales
would not authorize a general federal police power, he is unable to identify any activity that
the States may regulate but Congress may not. Justice Breyer posits that there might be
some limitations on Congress' 565*565 commerce power, such as family law or certain
aspects of education. Post, at 624. These suggested limitations, when viewed in light of the
dissent's expansive analysis, are devoid of substance. Justice Breyer focuses, for the most part, on the threat that
firearm possession in and near schools poses to the educational process and the potential economic consequences flowing from that threat. Post,
at 619-624. Specifically,
the dissent reasons that (1) gun-related violence is a serious problem;
(2) that problem, in turn, has an adverse effect on classroom learning; and (3) that adverse
effect on classroom learning, in turn, represents a substantial threat to trade and
commerce. Post, at 623. This analysis would be equally applicable, if not more so, to
subjects such as family law and direct regulation of education. For instance, if Congress
can, pursuant to its Commerce Clause power, regulate activities that adversely affect the
learning environment, then, a fortiori, it also can regulate the educational process directly.
Congress could determine that a school's curriculum has a "significant" effect on the
extent of classroom learning. As a result, Congress could mandate a federal curriculum for
local elementary and secondary schools because what is taught in local schools has a
significant "effect on classroom learning," cf. ibid., and that, in turn, has a substantial
effect on interstate commerce. Justice Breyer rejects our reading of precedent and argues
that "Congress . . . could rationally conclude that schools fall on the commercial side of the
line." Post,at 629. Again, Justice Breyer's rationale lacks any real limits because,
depending on the level of generality, any activity can be looked upon as commercial. Under
the dissent's rationale, Congress could just as easily look at child rearing as "fall[ing] on
the commercial side of the line" because it provides a "valuable servicenamely, to equip
[children] with the skills they need to survive in life and, more specifically, in the
workplace." Ibid. We do not doubt that Congress 566*566 has authority under the
Commerce Clause to regulate numerous commercial activities that substantially affect
interstate commerce and also affect the educational process. That authority, though broad,
does not include the authority to regulate each and every aspect of local schools.

Vote negative -
Limits: they make thousands of small mandates fair game for the aff which makes neg
prep impossible since we cant argue against every possible rule- only our interp forces
affs to get bigger which creates more clash and better debates
Legal precision: we have the most legally precise definition which is best for
education because its most in line with what governments can do which creates the
best simulations
6/1/17
 Consult Teacher Unions CP
Text: The United States federal government should enter into prior binding
consultation with the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education
Association, and all other relevant teacher unions over whether <<INSERT
PLAN>>.
The United States federal government will abide by the result of the consultation
and advocate for the proposal for the duration of the discussion.
Teacher Unions are important shapers of education policy in the country- working
with them is key to success in education
Rawls 12 Kristin Rawls, Freelance Writer, August 16, 2012, 6 Reasons Teacher Unions Are
Good For Kids, Alternet, http://www.alternet.org/6-reasons-teachers-unions-are-good-kids, VM
- Their anti-union studies are methodologically biased
- Lots of historical samples
- Study after study proves unions improve student performance
that teachers unions continue to play a vital role in the
Yet by a number of important measures, there is no doubt

health and wellbeing of our schools, the teachers who work in them and the children they
serve. Though the countrys two major teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), have taken
well deserved criticisms from the left for caving on charter schools and for uncritically supporting Democratic candidates who push for corporate education reform
just as Republicans do when it comes to helping build our childrens success, the fact is we need teachers unions today as much as we ever have. Here are six reasons
1. Teachers unions are the only major educational players
teachers unions continue to be good for Americas kids:

still focused on advancing school equity by leveling the playing field. For the most part, both Democratic and
Republican politicians have dispensed with the rhetoric about achieving true equality in education. Rarely do politicians propose policy measures motivated by
concerns about equity like school integration based on socioeconomic status or equitable school funding. These kinds of policies would help put schools on equal
footing, but todays politicians ignore them in favor of various, ineffectual corporate reforms like school choice and teacher accountability, as well as programs like
Teach for America, whose popularity in these corners remains unconnected to actual success. Increasingly, it seems evident that the adoption of these corporate
reforms will not merely fail to address the core inequality issues that plague our education system, but they may actually make them worse. Writing for Truthout, Paul
Thomas, associate professor of education at Furman University, explains that a recent New York study suggests that components of [this] no excuses education
reform are likely to increase the current problems with social and educational equity, instead of addressing them. The preface of this study also indicates that, at least
in New York City schools, corporate style reform has led to the growth of apartheidlike conditions. The growth of those conditions, in New
York City and beyond, has led teachers unions to stand as perhaps the last, strong advocates for equity

in education. The AFT affiliated Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), for example, has been particularly vocal in its pushback against market based reforms in
Chicago Public Schools (CPS). As its Web site explains, Students and their families recognize the apartheidlike system managed by [Chicago Public Schools]. It
denies resources to the neediest schools, uses discipline policies with a disproportionate harm on students of color, and enacts policies that increase the concentrations
of students in high poverty and racially segregated schools. CTU has also pushed hard for specific reforms that address inequality, including increasing the number of
school counselors, nurses, social workers, and psychologists [who] serve Chicagos population of low income students, as well as bolstering programs that serve
Alongside the advocacy of local union operations like the CTU,
bilingual students and students with special needs.

the two largest teachers unions, AFT and NEA, also stand as bold proponents of equity in
education. Though they have become increasingly friendly to charter schools in recent
years, both organizations oppose most corporate reform measures that lead to greater
inequality, including underregulated school choice, which tends to create racially and
economically segregated public schools. And in an era in which many in the public arena
claim that inequitable funding is not the reason for school failure, both organizations
continue to lead the charge in pressing for more equity in school funding. For example, a decades long
commitment to equity by the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAENEA) in collaboration with Civil Rights activists famously led to the establishment of a
high achieving, relatively equitable school system in Wake County, North Carolina. Though the system has been under attack by conservative school choice advocates
for the past two years, the NCAENEA has a taken a leadership role in organizing opposition throughout the state alongside the NCNAACP. Their efforts were
rewarded last year, when a new school board majority endorsed by the NCAE took office and then, in June 2012, promised to restore the so called diversity school
assignment plan, which desegregates schools on the basis of economic inequality to ensure well funded, high quality schools throughout the large school system. 2 .
Teachers unions fight to protect teachers First Amendment rights, allowing them to
advocate for children and schools without facing retaliation. Teachers unions have long
fought to prevent political repercussions against members who speak out or disagree with
their superiors. The AFT was at the forefront of fighting some school districts
requirements that teachers take an anticommunist loyalty oath in the 1930s, and again in
the 1950s. The NEA also protested these oaths in the 1950s. The unions early commitment
to academic and political freedom helped provide teachers in union dense areas with
freedoms to speak out that they might not have otherwise had. This was, and remains, a
very important protection for teachers trying to advocate for their classrooms and
individual students. Teacher Alicia Maud Wein of New York State United Teachers told AlterNet that speech protections have been indispensible for
her as she advocates on behalf of her students: "Without job protections, the balance is tipped so heavily in favor of administration (who must prioritize issues like the
budget, school reforms, and legislation) that teachers are silenced. I know in my 15 year career I have had to respond in writing, at meetings or by speaking publicly
on all of the above issues as a matter of course when advocating for my students and what's best for their learning. Frequently, I have been in the position of airing
those concerns to transient or inexperienced administrative staff with whom I had not yet developed a working relationship. I would have been far too wary to do so if
I thought it could mean a dismissal from my job without due process, and those students would not have benefited from my experience and support
Teachers living in fear of losing their jobs are not in a position to speak up for their kids,
fight for appropriate curricular decisions, special education accommodations, funding,
disciplinary actions, etc." This advocacy can take many forms, whether it involves advocating for individual students who need specific
accommodations or working at the structural level with schools and school districts. For example, NEA and AFT get involved when poor schools are missing an
adequate supply of books or other course materials. NEAs Priority Schools Campaign helps the organization build networks in poor school districts so that they can
proactively help teachers and administrators serve their students. NEAs grievance process allows the organization to follow up and ensure that kids have the books
and other supplies they need. AFTs similar procedures also provide teachers with helpful avenues through which they can speak out to make sure students have
enough materials. Just last month, AFT affiliates in Michigan and Ohio, organized book drives that provided tens of thousands of new books to the homes of poor
. Schools with
families with children. Without speech protections firmly in place, teachers would risk workplace retaliation for speaking out. 3

unionized teachers often produce higher achieving students. Citing a well regarded 2002
study from Arizona State University, former NEA head John Wilson told AlterNet that,
"[Research] on this topic indicates higher student achievement in unionized districts. That
should make perfect sense if unions are creating work places where teachers are better
paid with better working conditions [It] results in attracting and retaining great teachers
as well as having great learning conditions for students. Show me a school district that
invests in good education policy and funding developed in collaboration with the teachers,
and I will show you a high performing district." As researcher Robert M. Carini notes in
the studys preface, at the time the study was conducted only 17 prominent studies [had]
looked at the relationship between teacher unions and achievement. But he goes on to
point out that, "The 12 studies that reported favorable union effects [were] generally more
methodologically sound than those that found harmful effects. Studies that reported
favorable effects used more extensive statistical controls and were often conducted at the
student level. In contrast, studies reporting harmful effects were conducted at the state or
district level, which, due to aggregation, are more prone to error. According to the ASU
research, gains catalogued among students taught by unionized teachers were notable:
Several studies found math, economics and SAT scores in unionized schools improved
more than in nonunionized schools. Increases in state unionization led to increases in state
SAT, ACT, and NAEP scores and improved graduation rates. One analysis attributed
lower SAT and ACT scores in the South to weaker unionization there. The impact of
unionism on minority students was also of note, with minority students [showing] larger
high school math gains in unionized schools than those in nonunion schools. And among
male students, attending schools with unionized teachers appeared to lower their
probability of dropping out of high school. So all those popular myths about the deleterious effects of unions on learning? Probably
time to scrap em. 4. Teachers unions help teachers get better. The conservative spin generally

implies that teacher protections like tenure protect bad teachers and suggest that this
reduces the quality of education. But Wein disputes this claim, noting that unions provide
invaluable opportunities for professional development and teacher improvement. They
guard against bad teaching most effectively by giving teachers the tools they need to
succeed rather than punishing them: "Teachers must have opportunity to study, to learn,
to develop their craft, to read education research, and to collaborate. We need to model
ourselves as learners for our students, to know our profession well, and be supported as we
address new state mandates and reformTeaching is already a profession where more than 50 percent leave the profession before
the five year mark, which equals about 1,000 teachers per day. As inspiring and important as the work is, it can also be very fast paced and even overwhelming.
Students need and deserve well trained, experienced professionals in the classroom, and that doesn't happen without professional development, for which teacher
NEA sponsors a variety of both state specific and nationwide professional
unions fight tirelessly."

development programs. National programs range from support staff assistance to learning
how to be a mentor to training in collective action and bargaining. AFT promotes a holistic,
ongoing process of professional development. Its Web site states, Professional developmentshould enable teachers to offer
students the learning opportunities that will prepare [students] to meet world class standards in given content areas and to successfully assume adult responsibilities for
citizenship and work. Its Educational Research and Development Program (ER&D) was launched in 1981 to bring educators and researchers together to trade
. 5. Teachers unions protect student and teacher
information about how to become a better teacher through using research

safety in schools. Both the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) require good sanitation practices and cleanliness
in American public schools. But sometimes schools fail to meet minimal standards, and in
those cases it is often left to the unions to step up and advocate on behalf of teacher and
student safety. Norm Scott, a retired teacher and former building representative with the United Federation of Teachers of New York City told AlterNet
that the union has insisted that each school have a safety plan, and the union has to sign off on the plan. At my former school, the union found that the boiler room
had asbestos, and the union jumped in [to fix the problem]. We couldnt necessarily trust that our employer would do it independently. The union is called in for most
any heath issue. For example, he says it has asked for an investigation into high incidents of cancer among teachers in some New York schools Often the unions
NEA hosts training for custodial staff
safety advocacy takes the form of support for greener schools and better indoor air quality.

that teaches practices that can help improve school air quality. The goal of this training,
according to NEAs Web site, is to assist NEA state and local affiliates create local
association IAQ [Indoor Air Quality] action plans and to provide custodial staff with the
tools, tips and resources that will help them improve and maintain a quality indoor
environment. This makes schools safer for both students and teachers. AFT, meanwhile,
published its own guide to greener, more sustainable schools in 2008, citing research
showing that better environmental quality yields more productive human beings and
greater academic achievement for all students. Both organizations also support local and
state campaigns for healthier, greener schools. 6. Teachers unions oppose school vouchers.
Both NEA and AFT have always advocated against school vouchers that is, tax
entitlements diverted from public funds that assist parents with private school tuition,
including religious instruction. Vouchers divert money from public school systems already
strapped for resources, and both unions have campaigned tirelessly against voucher
programs cropping up throughout the United States. According to AFT, vouchers dont improve outcomes for kids who
receive them or drive improvements in nearby neighborhood schools. Not only this, the organization points out, but voucher programs rely on false advertising to
promote their mission: Although much of the pro voucher rhetoric uses the word choice, in practice it is the private schools that choose the kids, not the other way
In areas where voucher programs exist, private school operators decide whether they
around.

want taxpayers to subsidize their schools. They also decide how many, if any, voucher
students they will admit. NEA, meanwhile, notes that it oppose[s] alternatives that divert
attention, energy, and resources from efforts to reduce class size, enhance teacher quality,
and provide every student with books, computers, and safe and orderly schools and
vouchers are certainly one such alternative. Affiliates of both organizations have been important organizers against a far
reaching voucher program introduced this year in Louisiana. NEA affiliates in the state threatened to sue individual schools last month, alleging that vouchers are an
unconstitutional payment of public funds. AFT affiliates, meanwhile, requested a hearing at which critiques, comments and suggestions for improvements can be
made in regard to accountability standards for private and religious schools that will accept vouchers this fall. The organization says accountability measures for
these schools in Louisiana are more or less nonexistent, noting that there are very few checks in place to ensure that children receive a high quality private school
So, if the health and well being of students and teachers is what matters to you, avoid
education.

joining the popular chorus against teachers unions in the United States. Current and future
students will benefit from having them in classrooms for a long time to come.

Unions improve the economy

Walters and Mishel 3 Matthew Walters, former research assistant, and Lawrence Mishel,
president of Economic Policy Institute and Ph.D. Economics UW-Madison , August 26, 2003,
How unions help all workers, Economic Policy Institute,
http://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp143/, VM
Unions have a substantial impact on the compensation and work lives of both unionized and non-unionized workers. This report presents current
data on unions effect on wages, fringe benefits, total compensation, pay inequality, and workplace protections. Some of the conclusions are:
Unions raise wages of unionized workers by roughly 20% and raise compensation,
including both wages and benefits, by about 28%. Unions reduce wage inequality because
they raise wages more for low- and middle-wage workers than for higher-wage workers,
more for blue-collar than for white-collar workers, and more for workers who do not have
a college degree. Strong unions set a pay standard that nonunion employers follow. For
example, a high school graduate whose workplace is not unionized but whose industry is
25% unionized is paid 5% more than similar workers in less unionized industries. The
impact of unions on total nonunion wages is almost as large as the impact on total union
wages. The most sweeping advantage for unionized workers is in fringe benefits. Unionized workers are more likely than their nonunionized
counterparts to receive paid leave, are approximately 18% to 28% more likely to have employer-provided health insurance, and are 23% to 54%
more likely to be in employer-provided pension plans. Unionized workers receive more generous health benefits than nonunionized workers.
They also pay 18% lower health care deductibles and a smaller share of the costs for family coverage. In retirement, unionized workers are 24%
more likely to be covered by health insurance paid for by their employer. Unionized workers receive better pension plans. Not only are they more
likely to have a guaranteed benefit in retirement, their employers contribute 28% more toward pensions. Unionized workers receive 26% more
vacation time and 14% more total paid leave (vacations and holidays). Unions play a pivotal role both in securing legislated labor protections and
rights such as safety and health, overtime, and family/medical leave and in enforcing those rights on the job. Because unionized workers are more
informed, they are more likely to benefit from social insurance programs such as unemployment insurance and workers compensation.
Unions are thus an intermediary institution that provides a necessary complement to
legislated benefits and protections.

<<Insert Economy Impact>>

 T Card for Non-school Education
Education isnt just school libraries, museums, parks, community centers, and
other sites of knowledge are public education.
McDonald 17 - (Kerry McDonald, education choice advocate in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 5-
30-2017, "Public Education Vs. Public Schooling",
https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/05/30/public-education-vs-public-
schooling/#48670f3a248a, DOA: 6-1-2017) //Snowball
The primary difference between public education and public schooling is that the former is
openly accessible and self-directed, while the latter is compulsory and coercive. Both are
community-based and taxpayer-funded; both can lead to an educated citizenry. But public
education--like public libraries, public museums, public parks, community centers, and so
oncan support the education efforts of individuals, families, and local organizations with
potentially better outcomes than the static system of mass schooling.
6/2/17
 Federal Action useless
Federal role in education is tiny- the power and change lies in state and local levels-
means acting through the federal government is meaningless outside emergencies
U.S. Department of Education, no date, The Federal Role in Education,
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html, VM
Education is primarily a State and local responsibility in the United States. It is States and
communities, as well as public and private organizations of all kinds, that establish schools and colleges, develop curricula, and determine
requirements for enrollment and graduation. The structure of education finance in America reflects this predominant State and local role.
Of
an estimated $1.15 trillion being spent nationwide on education at all levels for school year
2012-2013, a substantial majority will come from State, local, and private sources. This is
especially true at the elementary and secondary level, where about 92 percent of the funds
will come from non-Federal sources. That means the Federal contribution to elementary
and secondary education is about 8 percent, which includes funds not only from the
Department of Education (ED) but also from other Federal agencies, such as the
Department of Health and Human Services' Head Start program and the Department of
Agriculture's School Lunch program. Although ED's share of total education funding in the U.S. is relatively small, ED
works hard to get a big bang for its taxpayer-provided bucks by targeting its funds where they can do the most good. This targeting
reflects the historical development of the Federal role in education as a kind of "emergency
response system," a means of filling gaps in State and local support for education when
critical national needs arise.
 AT States CP (federal key)
Federal action first spurs better state government education policy
Brown et al 11 Cynthia G. Brown, Vice President for Education Policy at the Center for
American Progress, Frederick M. Hess, resident scholar and director of education policy studies
at American Enterprise Institute, Daniel K. Lautzenheiser, research assistant in education policy
at the American Enterprise Institute, and Isabel Owen, Policy Analyst for Education Policy at
American Progress, July 2011, Center for American Progress, American Enterprise Institute,
and the Broad Foundation for Education, State Education Agencies as Agents of Change What
It Will Take for the States to Step Up On Education Reform,
https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2011/07/pdf/sea.pdf, VM
- SEAs = state education agencies
Role of the federal government Provide political cover to states to drive improvement Whether
one embraces the direction
of its efforts or not, it is clear that the federal government has the ability to use funding,
statute, and rule-writing to promote changes within SEAs. Under the pressures brought by the No Child Left
Behind Act, for example, SEAs developed state standards and assessments (of varying quality), designed accountability systems, and established
data systems. Federal
incentive programs like Race to the Top and the Teacher Incentive Fund
offered substantial financial rewards to states that took steps toward turning around low
performing schools and overhauling data and teacher evaluation systems. These federal
programs catalyzed dramatic change and gave SEAs the ability to push an agenda that
many governors or legislatures would not have adopted on their own. The power of
political cover cannot be ignored, and the federal government should continue to impel
states to reform. At the same time, would-be reformers would do well to note that while the federal government can prod states to act, it
cant force them to do something that they dont want to do. This is less a problem for easily gauged activities such as states annually testing in
reading and math or reporting subgroup scores, and becomes an issue when the measures are more subjective, such as states strengthening charter
school authorizing or devising an effective strategy to turn around low-performing schools. Unless officials in a given state
are seeking an excuse to act, it is very possible for federal encouragement to spur
compliance rather than coherent reform. Grant flexibility around federal strictures State chiefs make clear that SEAs
would benefit from a fresh look at restrictions tied to federal funding and federal rule making. Existing rules and regulations
tied to federal funding came of age in an era when there was little or no data on school and
state performance, when education governance was almost entirely focused on inputs, and
when de jure racial segregation was an active concern. The result was federal policy that
very consciously sought to tightly regulate the use of federal funds, often with little concern
for how federal requirements might handicap state and district educators. Dating to the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act of 1965, federal and state bureaucrats have written rules and regulations that remain on the books, creating a vast
paper burden, forcing SEAs to spend enormous energy complying with federal rules, and hindering the ability of state chiefs seeking to move
from a compliance to a performance mindset in the accountability era. When the No Child Left Behind Act was adopted in 2001, the federal
government embraced the accountability half of the reinventing government equation, but failed to free newly accountable officials from
decades of micromanagement and accumulated rules. Needed is a concerted effort at the U.S. Department of Education, in the Office of
Management and Budget, and in the Congress to take a public look at what the federal government demands of states and to scour those books for
burdens and requirements that can be effectively loosened or dropped in the 21st century. Scrutinize how federal demands shape culture and
practice in SEAs Federal
activity has helped foster a bifurcated, stifling culture in SEAs.
Bifurcated, because agency officials working on federal reporting are often regarded as
something of a privileged group, with their own training and networks and the ability to
intimidate even high-ranking state officials by warning of potential federal displeasure with
this or that action. Stifling, because decades of accumulated rules have led to strata of
procedural, restrictive interpretations of federal guidelines. State officials are forced to
operate in accord with regulations developed by federal officials in the input-focused 1970s
and 1980s, rather than what might make sense today. One consequence is that federal
officials can insist that they have created flexibility for state officials, but risk-averse SEA
bureaucrats will continue to tell school districts and state officials that an action is
impermissiblebecause theyve worked at the agency for 15 years, and its been impermissible for that period. The flexibility promoted
by political appointees at the U.S. Department of Education is not forcefully penetrating the established routines of federal career civil servants or
the ranks of SEA veterans. Rethinking
not only what the federal government mandates and formally
requires, but also how it signals its openness to creative, performance-based problem
solving, is essential.
6/3/17
 Men Feminists
Sexism is a lived experience and so feminism is a lived advocacy men dont have
the right to it.
Alimi 17 - (Bisi Alimi, Nigerian gay rights activist, public speaker, blog writer and HIV/LGBT
advocate, Jan 7, 2017, "Men Cant Be Feminists The Development Set",
https://thedevelopmentset.com/male-feminism-is-fakery-be-a-femally-f109ef37e9a3, DOA: 6-3-
2017) //Snowball
This kind of unconscious bias and discrimination is just one example of the challenges women have to live through on a daily basis.
Hundreds of thousands of women have shared their stories of #EverydaySexism, of being assaulted,
dismissed, looked over, and talked down to by men. In a recent story, a woman recounted how her boss wished
male employees Happy New Year by shaking hands but demanded a kiss from her. She quit soon after. Gender-based violence is
a frequent form of discrimination, including by men in power. Across England and Wales, the most serious
corruption issue facing the (mainly male) police service is police officers sexually abusing female victims and suspects, including survivors of
domestic abuse. In the U.S., Donald Trump will become President this month despite bragging about grabbing
women by their private parts, a form of sexual assault that 23% of American women have experienced in public spaces. This kind of
abuse is also often accompanied by victim-blaming. On New Years Eve, men sexually assaulted
numerous women in Bangalore, India, and the (male) Home Minister for the area partially blamed women
for copying Westerners in their dressing. In Nigeria, in recent conversations about addressing domestic violence, a
leading (male) constitutional lawyer and rights activist blamed women for not reporting
incidents of violence they face. Some might argue that people should be allowed to call themselves
whatever they want, and that my stance is perhaps petty or minute. That if well-meaning men believe in
gender equality, they can call themselves feminists. That liberals shoot themselves in the foot with this kind of
nitpicking. That standing up for ones sister, aunt, mother, daughter, or significant other makes one a feminist. But to me, lived
experience is important, as are the labels we give ourselves. If you have not personally been
cat-called, victim-blamed, or made to feel uncomfortable at your job because of your
gender identity, then you have no legitimate right to call yourself a feminist.
 Funding key to Competiveness
Education funding is key to competitiveness Epstein 11
(Diana Epstein September 6th, 2011 Investing in education Powers US competitiveness
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/reports/2011/09/06/10376/investing-in-
education-powers-u-s-competitiveness/)
Education is the key to American competitiveness and a strong economy, and continued federal
investment in education is needed in order to support improvements in student achievement and
put our economy on the path to sustained growth. The United States suffers from persistent differences in achievement between groups of
students defined by race/ethnicity or family income, and our students also rank well behind those in economically

competitive countries on international tests. We must continue to invest in education in order to create a system that is more equitable and that
produces American students who are more competitive in the global marketplace for talent. Too few of our students are performing at the

levels needed to compete for the high-skill jobs that allow us to maintain global competitiveness.
Only 33 percent of fourth graders and 33 percent of eighth graders scored at or above proficient in reading on the 2009 NAEP exam; only 39 percent of fourth graders and 34 percent of eighth

Furthermore, achievement tests demonstrate that international

graders were at or above proficient in mathematics.

competitors are performing better than U.S. students, and in a globalized economy we cannot
afford to fall any further behind. Research shows that investment in education is essential for our
countrys short- and long-term economic growth. A recent report by McKinsey & Company estimates that bringing lower-performing states up
to the national average between 1983 and 1998 would have added $425 billion to $710 billion to our 2008 GDP. Closing the racial/ethnic and income achievement gaps between 1983 and 1998
would have also added to our GDP. The estimates are that closing the racial/ethnic gap would have added $310 billion to $525 billion by 2008 and closing the income achievement gap would

Continuing to tolerate these achievement gaps is tantamount to

have added between $400 billion and $670 billion to our 2008 GDP.

accepting a chronic, self-induced economic recession. Closing the international achievement gap
between 1983 and 1998 would have added
$1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion to our 2008 GDP. Another study found that increasing students
scores on the PISA test by 25 pointsone-fourth of a standard deviationbetween 2010 and
2030 would result in economic gains for OECD countries. U.S. students currently rank below the
students from many OECD countries on this test, but if the United States and other countries
improved by this amount, the payoff to the United States would be more than $40 trillion by
2090.
6/4/17
 World Solves Warming w/o Trump
The world will solve global warming with or without Trump.
Rabinowitz 17 - (Abby Rabinowitz, has written for New Republic, The New York Times, and
The Guardian, and teaches a class on sustainable development, 2-28-2017, "Can the World Beat
Climate Change Without the U.S.?", https://newrepublic.com/article/141000/can-world-beat-
climate-change-without-us, DOA: 6-5-2017) //Snowball
Here is the good news: Other countries, not led by climate deniers, are not poised to abandon their
greenhouse gascutting commitments. Last November, participants from all signatory nations for
Paris gathered in Marrakech, Morocco, to work on next steps. When the results from our 2016
presidential election rolled in, they kept working. There were thousands of people trying
to solve problems, said Christoph Gebald, founder of a Swiss carbon-capture start-up, reminding The New Republic that Trump is
just one person. The world keeps on turning. In the U.S., states like California, which is now
passing bills to lock in Obama-era federal and state environmental regulations, and city
mayors from both red and blue states affirmed their commitment to cut greenhouse gas
emissions. Business leaders were also on board. During the Marrakech convention, more
than 360 companies and investors, including DuPont, eBay, Nike, Unilever, and Starbucks, wrote an open letter
calling for the U.S. to remain in Paris (it now has almost 900 signatures). Why? Because investing in
renewable energies is good economics, and not merely because rising sea levels are expected
to literally swamp Wall Street. The global economy is set toward de-carbonization with
or without the Trump administration. Thats what Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who led the Paris Climate
Agreement, told CNNs Christiane Amanpour earlier this month. Its not set by ideology. It is set by economics,
and it is set by the advance of technology, Figueres said. She pointed out that, in the U.S., one out of
every 50 jobs is in solar energy, and argued that if the United States doesnt meet demands
for cheap renewable energy, China and India will. The data bears her out. In April, Bloomberg reported that
investments in wind and solar were beating fossil fuels two to one and that solar power in December was for the first time the cheapest source of
electricity on the market, selling for half the price of coal in energy auctions in India and Chile. Reassuringly, the
U.S. Congress
recently extended the federal tax credits that incentivize wind and solar to 2019 and 2021,
respectively. As these credits are popular in red states in the Great Plains, Congress may be
loath to repeal them.
6/5/17
 Debate Hyper-rational
The deliberative discussion of debate is hyper-rational and ignores the affective and
subconscious modes of students.
Backer 17 - (David I. Backer is an assistant professor in the College of Education and Social
Work at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, 2017, "The Critique of Deliberative
Discussion", Democracy & Education, vol 25, no. 1,
http://democracyeducationjournal.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1300&amp;context=home,
DOA: 6-5-2017) //Snowball
Deliberative discussions emphasis on giving reasons tends not to mention emotion, by which I mean
feelings, desires, drives, affects, and other interior modes/moods that are not conscious, rational, or
reasonable. People in discussion feel things as well as think things, and insofar as democracies
include flesh-and-blood people rather than minds one-dimensionally wired for giving reasons, it
behooves us to consider what those emotions are like during discussion: namely, what is happening for
participants unconsciously when they put forth reasons. Ruitenberg (2009) drew from Mouffes psychoanalytic
influences to critique deliberative democracy from this perspective. As psychoanalysts realized long ago, Ruitenberg wrote,
the suppression of fundamental desires and emotions will not make those desires and emotions
disappear, but only defer their manifestation (p. 3). From this insight, Mouffe worried that repressing desire and emotion
can lead to tribalism. When it comes to classroom discussion, though, this deferred manifestation can directly contradict
the supposed democratic character of the discussion, but in a different way than Mouffes worry about tribalism.
Theories of discussion like the deliberativedemocratic model that advocate the suppression of desires (see
Englund below) can overlook monarchical tendencies in group dynamics, no matter how much emphasis teachers place on
rational deliberation. To see exactly how this works, I would consult Freuds (1975) Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Freud
claimed throughout his oeuvre, and in this helpful book in particular, that people in groups are not merely conscious minds pursuing
rational interest. They also have an unconscious inner lives that inform their behavior. These unconscious lives
are driven by love, desire, and sexuality. Freud noted some trends in how psyches (conscious minds and unconscious inner lives) operate when
they get together in groups. One thing psyches do is fall in love, become attached, and project previous love-loss
experiences onto others in the world, particularly those with authority. When several psyches, like students, do this together
with the same person, like a teacher in a classroom, the psyches become partially hypnotized by the person in charge, which alters the
way they think and react. Student psyches can tend to treat the teacher like a parent figure, desiring the teacher or identifying with
them or rejecting them. The students then treat one another like siblings (see Britzman, 2003). Reason has very little to do with this
process and, if left unchecked, can quickly create a monarchical classroom politics where the teacher is a king-
father (Backer, forthcoming).

The rationality of discussion ignores personal subjectivity and assumes an equal

deliberative subject.
Backer 17 - (David I. Backer is an assistant professor in the College of Education and Social
Work at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, 2017, "The Critique of Deliberative
Discussion", Democracy & Education, vol 25, no. 1,
http://democracyeducationjournal.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1300&amp;context=home,
DOA: 6-5-2017) //Snowball
Samuelssons (2016) reflective requirement entails a willingness to listen to others reasons in discussion. But not
all students and
teachers will be willing to listen to one another equally: They may be sexist, racist, classist,
xenophobic, homophobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory against one anothers identities.
Deliberative democracy tends to downplay how racialized, classed, and gendered identities
prevent harmonious interaction, rarely mentioning that it may be difficult for a man to
listen to a woman putting forth reasons, or difficult for a White person to listen to a Black
person putting forth reasons, a trans person to a cis person, and vice versa. Solnit (2014) has
popularized the term mansplaining to refer to the way men speak in privileged ways, for instance, and conversation analysts have demonstrated
the many ways gender influences speech habits (Tannen, 1993). Often, advocates
of deliberative democracy like Englund
reduce these critiques to identity politics. But this is misleading. As Ruitenberg (2010) pointed out,
liberalism, in its emphasis on the individual, has underestimated the importance of
belonging to collectivities (p. 3). Focusing solely on the individual is a predictable move for liberal-deliberative theories. What
they call identity is also group membership, and people who participate in discussions
belong to collectivities whose habits, epistemologies, and histories can diverge
dramaticallyeven to the point where it is difficult to listen to people who belong to
different collectivities, particularly oppressor collectivities.
6/6/17
 History Masks American Violence
The educational insistence on a definitive narrative masks the horrors of Americas
past.
Conway 15 - (Michael Conway, writer based in Chicago, 3-16-2015, "The Problem With
History Classes", https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/03/the-problem-with-
history-classes/387823/, DOA: 6-6-2017) //Snowball
Although there may be an inclination to seek to establish order where there is chaos, that urge
must be resisted in teaching history. Public controversies over memory are hardly new.
Students must be prepared to confront divisiveness, not conditioned to shoehorn agreement
into situations where none is possible. Historiography is potentially freeing for the next generation of
students. When conflict is accepted rather than resisted, it becomes possible for different
conceptions of American history to co-exist. There is no longer a need to appoint a victor. More importantly, the
historiographical approach avoids pursuing truth for the sake of satisfying a national myth.
Fishers demand for a curriculum that covers "American exceptionalism," a term that often risks
masking the horrors of Americas past with its greatest triumphs, hints at this risk. The countrys
founding fathers crafted some of the finest expressions of personal liberty and representative
government the world has ever seen; many of them also held fellow humans in bondage. This paradox is only
a problem if the goal is to view the founding fathers as faultless, perfect individuals. If multiple histories are embraced, no one needs to fear that
one history will be lost. Lionization and demonization are best left to the heroes and villains of fairy tales. History
is not
indoctrination. It is a wrestling match. For too long, the emphasis has been on pinning the
opponent. It is time to shift the focus to the struggle itself. Conflict does not necessarily demand a resolution.
Disagreements among highly educated, well-informed people will continue. Why should
history ignore this reality? There is no better way to use the past to inform the present than
by accepting the impossibility of a definitive historyand by ensuring that current students are equipped to grapple
with the contested memories in their midst.
 History and Segregation
History is sugarcoated to disguise the oppressive grip of government
on African Americans

National Public Radio 15- (Richard Rothstein is a research associate of the Economic
Policy Institute and a Fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense
Fund. He lives in California, where is a Fellow of the Haas Institute at the University of
California-Berkeley.)

Rothstein, Richard. "Historian Says Don't 'Sanitize' How Our Government Created Ghettos." Interview by Terry Gross. National
Public Radio. Fresh Air, 14 May 2015. Web. 6 June 2017.

Fifty years after the repeal of Jim Crow, many African-Americans still live in segregated
ghettos in the country's metropolitan areas. Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy
Institute, has spent years studying the history of residential segregation in America.

"We have a myth today that the ghettos in metropolitan areas around the country are what
the Supreme Court calls 'de-facto' just the accident of the fact that people have not
enough income to move into middle class neighborhoods or because real estate agents steered black and
white families to different neighborhoods or because there was white flight," Rothstein tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

"It was not the unintended effect of benign policies," he says. "It was an explicit, racially
purposeful policy that was pursued at all levels of government, and that's the reason we have these
ghettos today and we are reaping the fruits of those policies."

On using the word "ghetto"

One of the ways in which we forget our history is by sanitizing our language and
pretending that these problems don't exist. We have always recognized that these were
"ghettos." A ghetto is, as I define it, a neighborhood which is homogeneous and from which
there are serious barriers to exit. That's the technical definition of a ghetto.

Robert Weaver, the first African-American member of the Cabinet appointed by President Johnson as his secretary of Housing
and Urban Development, described many of the policies that I've described today in a book he published in 1948 called The
Negro Ghetto.

The Kerner Commission referred to the ghetto.

This is a term that we no longer use because we're embarrassed to talk about it, and we
need to confront our history and stop sanitizing our language and talk openly about what
we've done as a nation and what we need to do to undo it. And we can't talk openly if we're
going to use euphemisms instead of being explicit about what the reality is.

On how the New Deal's Public Works Administration led to the creation of segregated ghettos
Its policy was that public housing could be used only to house people of the same race as the neighborhood in which it was
located, but, in fact, most of the public housing that was built in the early years was built in integrated neighborhoods, which they
razed and then built segregated public housing in those neighborhoods. So public housing created racial segregation where none
existed before. That was one of the chief policies.

On the Federal Housing Administration's overtly racist policies in the 1930s, '40s and '50s

The second policy, which was probably even more effective in segregating metropolitan areas, was the Federal Housing
Administration, which financed mass production builders of subdivisions starting in the '30s and then going on to the '40s and
'50s in which those mass production builders, places like Levittown [New York] for example, and Nassau County in New York
and in every metropolitan area in the country, the Federal Housing Administration gave builders like
Levitt concessionary loans through banks because they guaranteed loans at lower interest
rates for banks that the developers could use to build these subdivisions on the condition
that no homes in those subdivisions be sold to African-Americans.

On real estate agents' practice of "blockbusting"

In the ghettos, government policy municipal policy, for example denied adequate
services, garbage wasn't collected frequently. African-Americans were crowded into
neighborhoods in the ghetto because so much other housing was closed to them and as a
result, housing prices in ghettos were much higher than similar housing in white areas.
Rents were much higher than similar housing in white areas ... because you had a smaller
supply. It's the basic laws of supply and demand. ... So this created slum conditions.
6/7/17
 AT: Plan Popular - Rhetoric
Politicians love to make rhetorical commitments to education reform, but hate
having to follow through on them because other priorities are key to their re-
election.
Isackson 17 - (Peter Isackson is the chief visionary officer of SkillScaper and the creator of
innovative solutions for learning in the 21st century, 6-8-2017, "Red Margins in Public
Education Debate", https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/american-public-
schools-education-usa-latest-world-news-analysis-today-74102/, DOA: 6-7-2017) //Snowball
Few would disagree with this suggestion. But such a pious wish begs more questions than our thinkers and politicians have answers to and skirts
the real issues, which one would expect any venture capitalist to be immediately aware of. How much would this cost and who will pay for it?
And politicians, who will unanimously affirm their approval of the idea, will then add: But do we
really need to think about these issues now, when there are so many other priorities, such
as reducing taxes for the rich and protecting the population from Islamic terrorism? In recent
months, the one initiative concerning education that governments in the United States and the United Kingdom have taken action on is the
elimination of free school lunches. This presumably brings home the essential lesson dear to neoliberal economists that theres no such thing as
a free lunch. Although they are unlikely to admit it in public, politicians understand that long-
term processes such as educational reform and investment in infrastructure cannot compete with short-
term issues, such as homeland security or military operations abroad, especially when reducing
taxes is the key to getting re-elected. Theres never enough money to go around, so lets
deal with the issues that panic us today. Total spending for homeland security since
September 11, 2001, has been calculated at $635.9 billion, without taking into account the
trillions spent on wars ostensibly justified by the same political objective. US President Donald
Trump has now proposed to cut $9.2 billion from the already modest federal budget for
education in 2018, reducing it to $59 billion while boosting investment in charter schools and vouchers for private education, which
amounts to a transfer of both funds and responsibility to the private sector. On the subject of renewal and adapting to new conditions, the key
issues cited by Westly, The Atlantic reports that Trumps budget plan would remove $2.4 billion in grants for teacher training. One
could
reasonably conclude after studying these figures that nothing serious will be done in the
United States, at least in the next four years, to implement the measures all the experts and
visionaries have identified as a necessity for the economy and the future of the country. But Trump is hardly
innovating when he further marginalizes education. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed in 2001 that our
top priority was, is and always will be education, education, education. History tells us where he
ended up focusing his governments attention, and it wasnt on education. To the extent that Blairs
government did invest in education, it turned out to be a failure, replacing teaching with little more than exam indoctrination, a trend that both
George W. Bush and Barack Obama followed in the US, with their respective programs No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
6/8/17
 Neoliberalism Link School Choice
School choice is the marketization of public sector education and neoliberalizes the
system.
Blakely 17 - (Jason Blakely, assistant professor of political philosophy at Pepperdine
University, 4-17-2017, "How School Choice Turns Education Into a Commodity",
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/04/is-school-choice-really-a-form-of-
freedom/523089/, DOA: 6-8-2017) //Snowball //the middle part of the card that seems to
advocate for neoliberalism is quoting DeVos, not the article author
Making educational funding portable is part of a much wider political movement that began in
the 1970sknown to scholars as neoliberalismwhich views the creation of markets as necessary
for the existence of individual liberty. In the neoliberal view, if your public institutions and
spaces dont resemble markets, with a range of consumer options, then you arent really free. The
goal of neoliberalism is thereby to rollback the state, privatize public services, or (as in the case
of vouchers) engineer forms of consumer choice and market discipline in the public sector. DeVos is
a fervent believer in neoliberalizing educationspending millions of dollars on and devoting herself to political activism
for the spread of voucher-system schooling. In a speech on educational reform from 2015, DeVos expressed her long-held
view that the public-school system needs to be reengineered by the government to mimic a
market. The failure to do so, she warned, would be the stagnation of an education system run monopolistically by the government: We are
the beneficiaries of start-ups, ventures, and innovation in every other area of life, but we dont have that in education because its a closed system,
a closed industry, a closed market. Its a monopoly, a dead end. And the best and brightest innovators and risk-takers steer way clear of it. As
long as education remains a closed system, we will never see the education equivalents of Google, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal, Wikipedia, or
Uber. We wont see any real innovation that benefits more than a handful of students. Many Americans now find DeVoss
neoliberal way of thinking commonsensical. After all, people have the daily experience of being able to choose
competing consumer products on a market. Likewise, many Americans rightly admire entrepreneurial pluck. Shouldnt the
intelligence and creativity of Silicon Valleys markets be allowed to cascade down over
public education, washing the system clean of its encrusted bureaucracy? What much fewer
people realize is that the argument over school of choice is only the latest chapter in a
decades-long political struggle between two models of freedomone based on market
choice and the other based on democratic participation. Neoliberals like DeVos often assume that organizing public
spaces like a market must lead to beneficial outcomes. But in doing so, advocates of school of choice ignore the
political ramifications of the marketization of shared goods like the educational system.
6/9/17
 Cities K2 Warming Nation Fails
The worst impacts of climate change can only be prevented by individual cities, not
sweeping national reforms.
Barber 17 - (Benjamin Barber, Benjamin Barber was Distinguished Senior Fellow at Fordham
Law School's Urban Consortium, 6-5-2017, "Its Time for Cities to Take the Lead in the Struggle
Against Climate Change", https://www.thenation.com/article/us-abdicated-role-climate-struggle-
can-cities-take-place/, DOA: 6-9-2017) //Snowball //the author of this card does not endorse the
offensive language included in a quotation within the text
The science of human survival is political science. Survival depends on sustainability and resilience, and the means to
sustainability and resilience are political. It is for survival (security) that naturally free human beings enter into a
social contract and bind themselves to obey the sovereign governing bodies they establish.
Centuries ago, when the idea of a social contract was established in the West, the sovereign governing bodies able to
secure life and liberty were conceived as nation-states. But as the world has become more global and
interdependent, sovereign nations and their international networks have grown less effective, sometimes even
dysfunctional. Survivala sustainable worlddepends more and more on citizens acting locally in the
name of global goods, of which climate change and decarbonization are prime examples. Sustainability today entails
glocality, action that is simultaneously local and global. Municipal policies must be crafted with an eye on their impact
not over months or even years but over generations, as well as among communities and peoples across the interdependent planet. Of the
many threats to a sustainable world, none is more dramatic and perilous than human-
induced climate change and its consequences, which include global warming, sea-level rise, and extreme weather. The
collective impact of these consequences is putting civilization at riskindeed, perhaps putting
life on earth at risk. For even though as Lynn Margulis liked to say, Gaia is a tough bitch, whether the planet is tough enough to
deal with our species hubris is yet to be seen. I propose in this volume to address climate change by focusing on municipal approaches to
renewable energy and a non-carbon economy, to decarbonization in a metropolitan setting. Cities
can do decarbonization,
and when they act interdependently, they can do it on a scale relevant to global warming.
The agency and actions needed are urban and local rather than national. Cities are home to
more than half of the human population and more than three-quarters of the population of developed
nations. They generate 80 percent of global GDP as well as 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. They
also suffer the lions share of the economic damage from extreme weather events and sea-level rise. Along with agriculture, they consume much
of the planets water, and the metropolitan regions they define house the factories and plants that run on carbon energy
and account for a preponderance of carbon emissions. Private-sector automobiles and trucks
are massively polluting, and public transit systems, unless they are upgraded and electrified, make things
worse. The density and lack of green space in cities make them an environmental problem
from the get go. Yet density also gives them a smaller collective carbon footprint per capita than suburbs or rural regions. Cities are the
problem. But cities, as both the prime sources and prime victims of climate change, can
also be agents of remediation: politics at the municipal level may prove the equal of climate
change at the global level. We can take the solution into our own hands. Whether we will is the
question of the hour, and of the millennium.
6/10/17
 Global WARming
Climate change drives global war 12 reasons mitigation should be the highest
priority globally.
Chow 17 - (Lorraine Chow, reporter, citing Center for Climate and Security, 9 June 2017,
"Security Experts Identify 12 Likely Triggers of War as the Planet Warms",
https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-national-security-2438142951.html, DOA: 6-10-
2017) //Snowball
Climate change isn't just causing glaciers to melt, sea levels to rise and forests to set fire. It has becoming increasingly evident that Earth's
rising temperatures also threatens international security. In fact, an analysis released Friday by the
Center for Climate and Security has identified 12 "epicenters," or categories, where the world's rising
temperatures could trigger major global conflict. "Any one of the climate and security epicenters
can be disruptive," said Caitlin Werrell, co-president of the Center for Climate and Security and editor of the report, Epicenters of
Climate and Security: The New Geostrategic Landscape of the Anthropocene. "Taken together, however, these epicenters
can present a serious challenge to international security as we understand it." The categories include eroding
state sovereignty, low-lying nations going underwater, as well as the disruption in the global coffee trade that employs 125 million people
worldwide. Previous studies have identified how terrorist groups in certain regions are taking advantage of
increasingly scarce natural resources such as water and food as a "weapon of war." Additionally, a U.S.
military report from 2014 called climate change a "catalyst for conflict" and a "threat
multiplier." President Obama once said that "no challenge poses a great threat than climate
change, and it's an "immediate risk to our national security." Meanwhile, President Trump and many top officials in his
administration brush off or reject the science of climate change. Conservative media has also mocked the idea that
climate change is related to the growth of terrorism. And let's not forget Trump's middle finger to the world
when he dropped the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, which has been signed by every nation on Earth except war-
torn Syria and Nicaragua, which didn't think the accord was strong enough. The Center for Climate and Security report stresses why
mitigating climate change should be the highest priority for governments and institutions
around the world. "This report demonstrates the kind of cross-sectorial thinking needed to
anticipate and mitigate climate-related systemic risksrisks that will be disruptive at local, national, regional and
global levels," said Francesco Femia, co-president of the Center for Climate and Security and editor of the report. "Security risks thousands of
miles away can have an effect on us at home. Understanding that can help advance preventive rather than reactive solutions." These are
the 12 epicenters identified by the security experts in the report: 1. Eroding State Sovereignty: An inability to absorb
the stresses of a rapidly-changing climate may erode state sovereignty (Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell); 2. Disappearing
Nations: Many low-lying nations are in danger of being completely submerged by rising seas (Andrew Holland and Esther
Babson); 3. Conflict Over Melting Water Towers: Climate change can increase tensions and conflict
among the 4 billion people dependent on mountain water towers" (Troy Sternberg); 4. Conflict Over Fisheries: A
warming ocean is driving critical fish stocks into contested waters, contributing to conflict between states
(Michael Thomas); 5. Tensions in a Melting Arctic: Increased activity in a melting Arctic raises
new security and geopolitical risks (Katarzyna Zysk and David Titley); 6. Weaponized Water: As climate
change exacerbates water stress, non-state actors, including international terrorist organizations, are increasingly using
water as a weapon (Marcus King and Julia Burnell); 7. Disrupted Strategic Trade Routes: Climate
change will place strains on maritime straits that are critical for global trade and security (Adam H. Goldstein and
Constantine Samaras); 8. Compromised Coffee Trade: Climate change may also disrupt critical
global trading networks, like the coffee trade. which currently supports 125 million people worldwide (Shiloh Fetzek); 9.
More (and Worse) Pandemics: Climate change may increase the likelihood and range of
pandemics, which could threaten global security (Kaleem Hawa); 10. Flooded Coastal Megacities: Rapidly
expanding coastal megacities are threatened by climate impacts like sea level rise, which
can destabilize nations (Janani Vivekenanda and Neil Bhatiya); 11. Increased Displacement and
Migration: Climate change is becoming a more significant driver of migration and displacement
(Robert McLeman); 12. Enhanced Nuclear Risks: Climate change, nuclear security, and policies
that are not sensitive to both simultaneously, can increase regional and global security
threats (Christine Parthemore)
6/11/17
 Congress Fights Trump on Refugees
Bi-partisan pushback on Trumps refugee plan Democrats hate what hes doing
and Republicans hate how hes doing it.
Fandos 17 - (Nicholas Fandos, Reporter, 1-29-2017, "Growing Number of G.O.P. Lawmakers
Criticize Trumps Refugee Policy",
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/us/politics/republicans-congress-trump-refugees.html,
DOA: 6-11-2017) //Snowball
Democrats were nearly united in their condemnation of Mr. Trumps policy, with several of
them rushing to airports to speak out in defense of people who had been detained and even those representing states that
Mr. Trump won voicing dissent. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, called on Mr. Trump to
immediately reverse the action on Sunday, saying it made the country less humanitarian, less
safe, less American. It must be reversed immediately, and Democrats are going to introduce legislation to overturn it, Mr.
Schumer told reporters gathered for a news conference in New York. Republicans who spoke out were more measured,
directing their criticism at the planning for the policy and its carrying out, though their
disagreement with Mr. Trump was still clear. Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, wrote on the website Medium
that the president and his administration are right to be concerned about national security, but its unacceptable when even
legal permanent residents are being detained or turned away at airports and ports of entry.
6/12/17
 Vouchers Bad
In prioritizing competition, vouchers drain resources from schools and detract from
genuine educational equity.
Campbell and Brown 17 - (Neil Campbell is the Director of Innovation for the K-12
Education Policy team at the Center for American Progress. Catherine Brown is the Vice
President of Education Policy at the Center, 3-3-2017, "Vouchers Are Not a Viable Solution for
Vast Swaths of America",
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/news/2017/03/03/414853/vouchers-are-not-
a-viable-solution-for-vast-swaths-of-america/, DOA: 6-12-2017) //Snowball
The Trump-DeVos plan for privatizing the nations schools is not a workable solution in vast swaths of the
country. Under the best-case scenario, this one-size-fits-all reform will have no impact on these schools.
Under the worst-case scenario, it will direct funds away from public school systems, either
through a new formula that advantages states that establish voucher programs or by draining students and their accompanying per-pupil allocation
away from public schools. The
result will be overcrowded classrooms; even more poorly paid
teachers and school staff; and fewer resources for enrichment activities, school facilities,
and more. As secretary of education, DeVos is responsible for meeting the departments mission to
[s]trengthen the Federal commitment to assuring access to equal educational opportunity
for every individual. We hope Secretary DeVos recognizes that our nations public schools are far from
one-size-fits-alland that the solutions and reforms needed to improve them should not be
either.
6/13/17
 LGBT Rollback
Rollback- DeVos refuses to enforce the aff
Kreighbaum 6/12 Andrew Kreighbaum, Inside Higher Ed, June 12, 2017, Do DeVos
comments encourage anti-gay bias?,
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/12/comments-betsy-devos-about-unsettled-law-
raise-doubts-about-commitment-lgbt, VM
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos last month told lawmakers at a congressional hearing
that states and local communities were better equipped than the federal government to deal
with issues of regulation, drawing condemnations and negative headlines. In front of a
Senate subcommittee last week, she had noticeably changed her tune, telling senators repeatedly that any school receiving
federal funding is required to follow federal law. That assurance came with a pretty big caveat, however. Pressed by Democrats on
how she would protect the rights of LGBT students, DeVos said in areas where the law is
unsettled, which she said included issues of bias against gay people, her department
would not be issuing decrees. Those comments have fueled concerns among advocates for
those students that the department under DeVos will abandon its role in enforcing
protections for gay and transgender students under Title IX of the Education Amendments
of 1972. Meanwhile, her testimony was hailed by conservatives who accused the Obama
administration of overstepping its bounds in clarifying the rights of those students.
Advocates were disturbed by DeVoss statements partly because many view as increasingly
settled that federal anti-bias rules do apply in cases of sexual orientation and gender
identity. A growing number of high-level federal court cases have found those protections under federal law extend to LGBT individuals.
While exemptions exist for religious institutions, the trend overall has been clear, according to many legal experts. And advocates say
the department plays an essential role not just in enforcing those protections but in
clarifying the rules that colleges and universities operate under. Others say that even if the
law is unclear, that doesnt remove the obligation of the department to offer guidance and
enforce the law. The language of the Title IX statute is itself vague as to whom it extends protections to, stating only that institutions
shall not discriminate against someone on the basis of sex, said Jim Newberry, a lawyer who heads the higher education practice at Steptoe &
Johnson. Even with an accumulating number of federal court rulings, the absence of a Supreme Court decision mean some guidance from the
department is necessary. And as the enforcer of federal civil rights law, it must also spell out the rules of the road for the institutions it polices in
those areas.
 Discrimination UQ
LGBT discrimination high now in education system- DeVos
Kreighbaum 6/12 Andrew Kreighbaum, Inside Higher Ed, June 12, 2017, Do DeVos
comments encourage anti-gay bias?,
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/12/comments-betsy-devos-about-unsettled-law-
raise-doubts-about-commitment-lgbt, VM
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos last month told lawmakers at a congressional hearing
that states and local communities were better equipped than the federal government to deal
with issues of regulation, drawing condemnations and negative headlines. In front of a
Senate subcommittee last week, she had noticeably changed her tune, telling senators repeatedly that any school receiving
federal funding is required to follow federal law. That assurance came with a pretty big caveat, however. Pressed by Democrats on
how she would protect the rights of LGBT students, DeVos said in areas where the law is
unsettled, which she said included issues of bias against gay people, her department
would not be issuing decrees. Those comments have fueled concerns among advocates for
those students that the department under DeVos will abandon its role in enforcing
protections for gay and transgender students under Title IX of the Education Amendments
of 1972. Meanwhile, her testimony was hailed by conservatives who accused the Obama
administration of overstepping its bounds in clarifying the rights of those students.
Advocates were disturbed by DeVoss statements partly because many view as increasingly
settled that federal anti-bias rules do apply in cases of sexual orientation and gender
identity. A growing number of high-level federal court cases have found those protections under federal law extend to LGBT individuals.
While exemptions exist for religious institutions, the trend overall has been clear, according to many legal experts. And advocates say
the department plays an essential role not just in enforcing those protections but in
clarifying the rules that colleges and universities operate under. Others say that even if the
law is unclear, that doesnt remove the obligation of the department to offer guidance and
enforce the law. The language of the Title IX statute is itself vague as to whom it extends protections to, stating only that institutions
shall not discriminate against someone on the basis of sex, said Jim Newberry, a lawyer who heads the higher education practice at Steptoe &
Johnson. Even with an accumulating number of federal court rulings, the absence of a Supreme Court decision mean some guidance from the
department is necessary. And
as the enforcer of federal civil rights law, it must also spell out the
rules of the road for the institutions it polices in those areas.
6/14/17
 Shut Down DoE
Schools pay more to implement federal funding than they receive to spend its
time to shut down the DoE.
Knapp 17 - (Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd
Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism, 6-14-2017, "The federal education
budget: Teapot, meet tempest", http://www.heraldchronicle.com/the-federal-education-budget-
teapot-meet-tempest-editorial-by-thomas-l-knapp/, DOA: 6-14-2017) //Snowball
Keeping in mind that those numbers have likely gone up, not down, in the intervening years, and that state and local spending will probably
continue to increase, a
13% cut to the US Department of Education would in reality be at most a
reduction of only eight tenths of one percent in total US education spending. Calling that a
tempest in a teapot demeans tempests and teapots. This disturbance is more like dropping a
grain of salt in a shot glass. Secondly, theres a good case to be made that federal education spending cancels
out any positive effects of state and local spending rather than boosting them. As former New
Mexico governor and Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson notes, [t]he Department of Education grants
each state 11 cents out of every dollar it spends on education. Unfortunately, every dollar of this
money comes with 16 cents of strings attached. States that accept federal funding lose five
cents for every dollar spent on education to pay for federal mandates and regulations,
taking millions of dollars out of the classroom. And dont forget that that 11 cents started out as a 13 cent deduction
from your paycheck. Finally, although the federal government spends more than twice as much per
student on education today as it did when the department was created in 1980, student
performance remains, at best, stagnant. After 40 nearly years, its reasonable to conclude that the US
Department of Education is a failed experiment. Its budget should be cut by 100% turn
out the lights, send the bureaucrats home, sell the buildings and equipment not by a mere 13%.
6/15/17
 Education = Anti-Black-Male
American public education deprives Black male students of literacy, resulting in
racialized educational tyranny in a modern manifestation of slavery and dominance.
Arseneau 17 - (Guy Arseneau, Freelance Writer, AmsterdamNews, 6-15-2017, "Brains in
chains", http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2017/jun/15/brains-chains/, DOA: 6-16-2017)
//Snowball
On Jan. 1, 1863, Americas 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Ranked in the
same category as the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, this secular document, granting freedom to 3
million Black slaves, took on the aura of Holy Writ. Sadly, more than a century and a half after this text
wrapped itself in the mantle of law, the marginalized descendants of those original slaves are still waiting
for this iconic edict to sustain the weight of its own illusions. This disparity between hope and
possibility, played out against the opposing backdrop of a social structure defined by escalating street
violence, drugs and poverty creates and sustains a reality of despair on a daily basis. Nowhere is this
dichotomy more evident and underscored than in the field of American public education. According to figures
released by the Chicago-based nonprofit, The Black Star Project, only 10 percent of eighth grade Black boys in the
cities of Chicago and Detroit read at their respective classroom level. By comparison, 46 percent of
their white counterparts read at their grade level. The consistency of these findings continue to be
reflected in the lack of reading skills among Black males throughout the nation. In Milwaukee and
Cleveland, urban centers within Americas heartland, on average, only three Black boys out of 100 read at or
above their respective grade level. These gaps in literacy skills among Black males are obvious and
consistent on a national basis. Grade level reading ability for Black boys in New York City is 13 percent, Boston 10
percent, Los Angeles 9 percent and a low of 6 percent in Washington, D.C. Of particular note, and as
a sidebar irony, former President Barack Obama, the first Black man to occupy the White House, noted,
It is easier to obtain a gun in some Washington, D.C., neighborhoods than it is to get a book. In other areas of The
Black Star Project report, statistical data indicate that young Black males represent the largest ethnic/racial
group enrolled in Special Education academic programs. Among these middle and high school students,
many cannot read such basic words as peace and water. The social and economic
ramifications associated with these failures in education are evident to even the most casual observer.
According to a 2010 evaluation by the Schott Foundation for Public Education, in the Chicago public school system, only 30
percent of Black males graduate from high school. The rate for high school graduation for Black boys in New
York City shrinks to a mere 25 percent. The lack of basic literacy skills and academic ability,
coupled with an urban street culture defined by gang affiliation and crime, is clearly
discernible in terms of ever declining scholastic achievement. In Chicago, only three Black boys out of 100 who attend that citys
public educational system graduate from college. Phillip Jackson, the founder and executive director of The Black Star Foundation, recognizes
these downward trends as a national crisis when he notes that, In
San Francisco only one out of 100 Black males
qualify academically to attend a public university in California. These discouraging
observations and figures, compiled over a century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, represent a new
dimension in slavery that is bipartisan in nature. The most concrete example of this problem is evident in the enactment of
the No Child Left Behind legislation. National in scope but local in terms of impact, this bill was supported by Republican President
George W Bush, Sen. Ted Kennedy, John Boehner and Rep. George Miller. Boehner and Miller both served on the House Education Committee.
In short, this legislation callsupon each state to develop minimum standards in terms of academic achievement in
local schools. Although this goal may sound laudable, in reality, the application of this law creates a smoke and
mirrors illusion that supports a system of de facto slavery and discrimination. To ensure a
continuing flow of federal dollars into their respective education budgets, many states simply dumb down the reading tests to make sure that
every student earns a passing grade. In this way, it appears there is an overall improvement in academic scores. What is the outcome of this
practice, known among educators as teaching to the test? We now have a generation of young people getting high school diplomas that they
literally cannot read. Society relies on and continues to be defined by the ever-growing use of computers.
Technological advancements, coupled with a future generation that lacks basic literacy
skills, creates a deadly potential for social disintegration. What will happen when the culture reaches a point
whereby people can no longer read the directions on how to use computers? The social structure will then be divided
into those who know how to read and those who do not. Educational tyranny will replace
the outdated historical regimes that relied on military force and political maneuvering. As things now stand, we are on
the threshold of this dystopian universe that will lock members of the Black and Latino
communities into a tech-driven caste system. This type of marginalization will insure that only those in the
know will have a say in running the world. The abilities and achievements of Black
writers and intellectuals such as James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou serve as a reminder
of the vast contributions Black Americans have made to this nation and to the world at large. Their
respective legacies can and should be the cultural point of reference in measuring how
much can be achieved against a backdrop of state-sanctioned slavery and discrimination. The world
of tomorrow depends on the achievements of today. Simply put, we cannot afford to allow the potential of an individual
or an entire generation to be squandered because of a lack of basic literacy skills or for any other
reason. The complexity of todays world demands the best from each of us. We must heed the message or perish.
6/16/17
 Education Helps Hegemony
Elementary and secondary education is key to protecting U.S. hegemony even if
unipolarity fades, we can remain dominant in IR with an educational advantage.
National Intelligence Council 12 - (National Intelligence Council, December 2012, "Global
Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds", https://globaltrends2030.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/global-
trends-2030-november2012.pdf, DOA: 6-16-2017) //Snowball
The United States dominant role in international politics has derived from its preponderance
across the board in most dimensions of power, both hard and soft. The United States weight in
the global economy has steadily lessened since the 1960s, but it has been dropping more rapidly
since the early 2000s with the rise of Chinas place in the world economy. Nevertheless, the US remains
among the worlds most open, innovative, and flexible countries. Despite being home to less than five
percent of the worlds population, the US accounted for 28 percent of global patent applications in 2008 and
is home to nearly 40 percent of the worlds best universities. US demographic trends are favorable compared to
other advanced and some developing countries. US strength also derives from high immigrant inflows and the United States unusual ability to
integrate migrants. US industry will also benefit from increased domestic natural gas production, which will lower energy costs for many
manufacturing industries. Over time, the increased domestic energy production could reduce the US trade deficit because the US would be able to
reduce energy imports and may be able to export natural gas and oil. Increased domestic energy production could boost employment at home.
The multifaceted nature of US power suggests that even as its economic weight is overtaken
by Chinaperhaps as early as the 2020s based on several forecaststhe US most likely will remain the first among
equals alongside the other great powers in 2030 because of its preeminence across a range of power
dimensions and legacies of its leadership. Nevertheless, with the rapid rise of multiple other powers, the unipolar
moment is over and Pax Americanathe era of unrivalled American ascendancy in international politics that began in
1945is fast winding down. The graphic on page 103 shows a snapshot of the relative power and factors underlying leading
countries in 2030. A DIFFERENT SETUP GOING FORWARD The US faces stiff economic challengesnot as clearly
foreseen before the 2008 financial crisiswhich will require broad-based structural reform if it is to avoid
a rapid decline in its economic position. Health care is expensive and inefficient: public and private health spending is 50
percent higher per capita than that of the next highest OECD country. As the population ages, these costs are expected to rise rapidly.
Secondary education is weak, with 15 year-old American students ranking only 31st of 65
countries in mathematics and 22nd in science in a survey that includes many developing countries. The US
educational advantage relative to the rest of the world has been cut in half in the past 30 years.
Without large-scale improvements in primary and secondary education, future US
workerswhich have benefited from the worlds highest wageswill increasingly bring
only mediocre skills to the workplace.
6/17/17
 DeVos Cut Civil Rights Investigations
DeVos cut systematic investigations of civil rights violations in public schools.
McKay 17 - (Tom McKay is a staff writer at Mic, covering national politics, media, policing
and the war on drugs, 6-17-2017, "Betsy DeVos' education department moves to reduce civil
rights investigations in schools", https://mic.com/articles/180210/betsy-devos-education-
department-moves-to-reduce-civil-rights-investigations-in-schools, DOA: 6-18-2017) //Snowball
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will be downsizing the number of investigations it conducts into possible
civil rights violations throughout the public school system, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
According to an internal memo issued by acting DOE office of civil rights director Candice E.
Jackson, the Times wrote, investigators at the agency will no longer be required to "broaden their
inquiries to identify systemic issues and whole classes of victims." They have also been
instructed it is no longer mandatory to alert D.C. officials of "all highly sensitive
complaints" like allegations of racial discrimination or failure to properly investigate campus sexual assaults. As
the Times noted, DOE investigations soared after Barack Obama's administration put an emphasis
on systemic reviews and major reforms at school districts and colleges. Donald Trump's budget proposes
cutting more than 40 jobs at the DOE civil rights division, while department spokeswoman Liz Hill emphasized
the agency's new focus on efficiency in investigations in a statement. The decision to roll back investigations comes
not long after DeVos suspended Obama-era rules designed to make it easier for students to
discharge loans for deceptive or fraudulent for-profit colleges. Jackson also recently defended new
policies on the rights of trans students after one employee told the Huffington Post "officials should investigate issues of
discrimination just as they would have before the Obama-era rules were implemented."
6/18/18
 Capitalism K Education Technology Link
Promoting education technology invites private companies to shape the classroom
without a corresponding check on power.
Singer 17 - (Natasha Singer is a technology reporter covering digital learning as well as
consumer privacy, 6-6-2017, "The Silicon Valley Billionaires Remaking Americas Schools",
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/technology/tech-billionaires-education-zuckerberg-
facebook-hastings.html, DOA: 6-19-2017) //Snowball
In the space of just a few years, technology giants have begun remaking the very nature of
schooling on a vast scale, using some of the same techniques that have made their
companies linchpins of the American economy. Through their philanthropy, they are influencing the
subjects that schools teach, the classroom tools that teachers choose and fundamental approaches to
learning. The involvement by some of the wealthiest and most influential titans of the 21st
century amounts to a singular experiment in education, with millions of students serving as
de facto beta testers for their ideas. Some tech leaders believe that applying an engineering mind-
set can improve just about any system, and that their business acumen qualifies them to
rethink American education. They are experimenting collectively and individually in what kinds of
models can produce better results, said Emmett D. Carson, chief executive of Silicon Valley
Community Foundation, which manages donor funds for Mr. Hastings, Mr. Zuckerberg and others. Given the changes in
innovation that are underway with artificial intelligence and automation, we need to try everything we can to find which pathways work. But
the philanthropic efforts are taking hold so rapidly that there has been little public
scrutiny. Tech companies and their founders have been rolling out programs in Americas public
schools with relatively few checks and balances, The New York Times found in interviews with more than 100
company executives, government officials, school administrators, researchers, teachers, parents and students. They have the power
to change policy, but no corresponding check on that power, said Megan Tompkins-Stange, an assistant
professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. It does subvert the democratic process. Furthermore, there
is only limited research into whether the tech giants programs have actually improved
students educational results.
6/19/17
 10x Green-Tech K2 Warming
Green technology development would have to be accelerated by 10 times to solve
global warming.
Phys.org, citing study by postdoctoral associate Manoli, 17 - (Paris, 1-3-2017, "Tenfold jump
in green tech needed to meet global emissions targets", https://phys.org/news/2017-01-tenfold-
green-tech-global-emissions.html, DOA: 6-20-2017) //Snowball
"Based on our calculations, we won't meet the climate warming goals set by the Paris Agreement unless we
speed up the spread of clean technology by a full order of magnitude, or about ten times faster
than in the past," said Gabriele Manoli, a former postdoctoral associate at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment, who led the
study. "Radically new strategies to implement technological advances on a global scale and at
unprecedented rates are needed if current emissions goals are to be achieved," Manoli said. The
study used delayed differential equations to calculate the pace at which global per-capita
emissions of carbon dioxide have increased since the Second Industrial Revolutiona period of
rapid industrialization at the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th. The researchers then compared this pace to the
speed of new innovations in low-carbon-emitting technologies. Using these historical trends coupled with
projections of future global population growth, Manoli and his colleagues were able to estimate the likely pace of
future emissions increases and also determine the speed at which climate-friendly
technological innovation and implementation must occur to hold warming below the Paris Agreement's 2o C
target. "It's no longer enough to have emissions-reducing technologies," he said. "We must scale
them up and spread them globally at unprecedented speeds."
6/20/17
 Gun Violence + Child Victims
Gun violence is the third-leading cause of death for children.
Boyle 17 - (David Boyle, Journalist, 6-20-2017, "Guns kill almost 1,300 children in America
every year, study finds", http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-20/guns-kill-nearly-1300-
children-in-the-us-each-year/8635174, DOA: 6-20-2017) //Snowball //edited to fix typo in
brackets
Guns kill nearly 1300 children in the United States every year, making them the third-leading
cause of death for those under 18 years of age, a new study has found. The Centres of Disease Control and Prevention study
published in the journal Pediatrics examined trends in national US Government data from 2002 to 2014 and found on average 5790
children were treated for gunshot wounds each year between 2012 and 2014. Children from southern
states and the Midwest faced higher rates of firearm homicide than other parts of the country. Nationwide, data indicated that 4.2 per cent
of children in the US had witnessed a shooting in the past year. Boys accounted for 82 per
cent of all child firearm deaths while African American children were some 10 times more like[ly] to die
from gunshots than white and Asian American children. Approximately 19 children per day were killed by or
treated in an emergency department because of gunshot wounds. After 20 children and six adults were shot and killed in a
massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, then US president Barack Obama ramped up efforts to
tighten gun control. But his efforts to introduce measures such as universal background checks for gun buyers
and a ban on assault weapons failed to pass the US congress under persistent pressure from the National Riffle
Association. Since then the gun massacres have continued, including the worst in US history in June 2016
at a nightclub in Orlando that left 49 people dead, and the more recent shooting of a special education
teacher and her eight-year-old student in a classroom at an elementary school in California in April this year. The US
congress has met each new tragedy with a steadfast refusal to act on gun control while
President Donald Trump has made it clear he firmly supports the NRAs opposition to such measures.
6/21/17
 Student Data Privacy
Student data privacy is an emerging concern it gets leaked through company
turnovers and Big Data companies.
Kurshan 17 - (Barbara Kurshan, Forbes Contributor on edtech, OER, ecosystems and investing
in education, 6-22-2017, "The Elephant in the Room With EdTech Data Privacy",
https://www.forbes.com/sites/barbarakurshan/2017/06/22/the-elephant-in-the-room-with-edtech-
data-privacy/2/#2a6d93df26fd, DOA: 6-22-2017) //Snowball
While Big Data provides the
In an earlier piece, I wrote about student data privacy and the implications for edtech entrepreneurs.
opportunity for edtech entrepreneurs to create innovative technology solutions for educational issues, it
also has ushered in a wave of privacy issues. Concerns about privacy related to these technology solutions is
the elephant in the room. Each time an edtech company changes hands, it opens the
possibility of failing to maintain student data privacy safeguards. For example, lets consider the student data
management system PowerSchool to illustrate the difficulty in maintaining student privacy when there is leadership or ownership turnover. The
PowerSchool system tracks student data in a number of areas ranging from attendance to behavioral misconduct to performance on academic
assessments. The company has changed ownership three times in 16 years. It was first bought first by Apple, then Pearson, then Vista Equity
Partners. High ownership turnover rates are a common phenomenon among many ventures in the
edtech space. Each time a company changes hands, however, it opens the possibility for
weakened protections around its student data. Privacy concerns also stem from companies that occupy
a disproportionate share of the market. Google is one example. Google has gained mass market
share in classrooms in part because the companys size allows for the development of
quality products that can be offered to users for free. For example, Google Apps for Education [GAFE] is on pace
to hit 110M users by 2020. This growth should raise serious concerns for two primary reasons. First, school
administrators who place everything in a single GAFE account (or a comparable product such as Microsoft 365
for Education) make it possible for a single hacked administrator login to reveal a swath of
student data, including student work, teacher feedback, grades and class history. Second is the issue of mining
student data. Google makes about 90 percent of its money from selling ads and collects and
mines user data on an ongoing basis. In response to a lawsuit brought forward by the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
Google admitted that it mined data from G Suite for Education users who use core services
outside of G Suite for Education-- contrary to their user license agreements. This G Suite for Education user data
includes name, email address, telephone number, device information, and IP address. In response to
another lawsuit, Google admitted that it scanned student emails for advertising purposes. In fact, the
state of Mississippi recently sued Google for illegally harvesting student data, and asked the company to fully disclose its data tracking practices.
Google relies on data mining because the practice supports the companys non-paid business model for users by providing a way for the company
to make a profit. The issue of data mining as a component of an edtech companys business model extends to Facebook, which makes 98 percent
of its money from advertising, is also giving away a free education software product. The EU found that the company illegally changed its
position regarding data mining for Whatsapp users in order to better advertise to target customers.
6/22/17
 Funding Charter Drains Public
Funding charter schools drains public school funding.
Burris 17 - (Carol Burris, a former New York high school principal who is executive director of
the nonprofit Network for Public Education, Washington Post, Jun. 22, 2017, "Analysis",
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/06/22/problems-with-charter-
schools-that-you-wont-hear-betsy-devos-talk-about/?utm_term=.1ddd1113726c, DOA: 6-22-
2017) //Snowball
Each state funds charters differently. The best question to ask whenexamining the fiscal drain from public schools
to charters is what would public school districts save if charter students returned. When a district student attends a charter, there are
stranded costs money the district must still spend when a student leaves. Here is a simple example.
In New York, the amount lost is based on a formula that depends on per pupil spending. The
more generous the taxpayers are with their own students, the more the charter gets. The Rockville Centre School District lost four students to a
charter school in Hempstead. The district cost is $19,000 a student, plus transportation and other related costs. What would the
district save if the four students came back? Nearly every penny could go back to the
taxpayers. Pennsylvania, like New York and New Jersey, sets tuition rates based on district per pupil
spending. I asked Joe Roy, Pennsylvanias Superintendent of the Year, how much he could save if
all of his Bethlehem districts charter school students came back to the district. Roy told me
that the district budgeted $26 million (about 10 percent of its annual budget) this year to pay for tuition and associated costs to charter schools.
According to Roy, We estimate that if all of the students in charters returned, even with hiring the
additional needed staff, we would save $20 million. A report by MGT of America, an independent research firm,
revealed that the Los Angeles Unified School District has lost $591 million to charter school
growth in 2016. If costs associated with charter school expansion are not mitigated, the
district will eventually face financial insolvency.
6/23/17
 Urbanization Solves Warming
Urbanizations key to solve warming its a better political structure and causes
inter-city cooperation.
Cho 16 - (Renee Cho is a staff blogger for the Earth Institute, received Executive Education
Certificate in Conservation and Sustainability from the Earth Institute Center for Environmental
Sustainability, 11-10-2016, "Cities: the Vanguard Against Climate Change",
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2016/11/10/cities-the-vanguard-against-climate-change/, DOA: 6-
23-2017) //Snowball
The density of cities, however, also affords them myriad opportunities to lower their carbon
footprints. And while no two cities are identical in their infrastructure, governance, technical sophistication or needs, they can
collaborate and share knowledge, because most urban emissions arise from the same
sources: buildings that are not energy efficient, landfills that emit methane, street lighting that produces waste heat, traffic emissions and
wasteful water systems. Cities are able to coordinate the efforts of citizens, businesses, institutions
and government more easily than nations can. It is also less complicated for mayors to meet up and work together than it
is for heads of state. And in terms of passing climate change laws or policies, national governments
can get bogged down in politics, in lobbying, in different interests, as we all know, said Ali Ibrahim.
Cities are able to very quickly pass legislation or to have a policy in place within weeks and
months. Cities around the world are joining forces. The Global Covenant of Mayors for
Climate and Energy, formed in June from the merging of the Compact of Mayors and the EU Covenant of Mayors, now
comprises 7,100 cities from six continents. The largest coalition of cities fighting climate change, it is co-chaired by
former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and European Commission Vice President, Maros Sefcovic. The participating cities set
targets that will eventually be more ambitious than the pledges their countries made under
the Paris agreement. The initiative will centralize data on the cities climate actions, enable
them to compare their efforts, foster greater collaboration and increase funding for climate
actions.
 US Leadership Dying
US leadership is dying with no way to revive it- blame Trump
Wolf 5/30/17 Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, London. He
was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 for services to financial
journalism. , Donald Trump and the surrendering of US leadership, Financial Times, May 30,
2017, https://www.ft.com/content/f0b9fba6-4241-11e7-9d56-25f963e998b2?mhq5j=e1, VM
Donald Trump has been the American president for just over four months. It is still impossible to predict what his presidency will mean. But it is
already a transformative event: Mr Trump has revolutionised our ideas of what the US stands for. We
live in the world the US
made. Now it is unmaking it. We cannot ignore that grim reality. Mr Trumps domestic programme is in
accord with the agenda of the Republican party. Its aim is to cut taxes on the rich by lowering spending on the poor. The Congressional Budget
Offices analysis of the American Health Care Act, recently passed by the House of Representatives and the replacement of Barack Obamas
Affordable Care Act, is startling. Over the 2017-26 period, the act would reduce tax revenues by $992bn, paid for by a $1.1tn reduction in
expenditures on Medicaid and other subsidies. According to the CBO, the number of uninsured might have increased by 23m by 2026. Proposals
for tax reform and spending go in the same direction. Discretionary spending proposals for next year include a $52bn increase in defence
spending, paid for by big cuts in other areas. These include
a $13bn (16 per cent) cut to health and human
services; $12bn (29 per cent) to the budgets of the state department and the international
development agency; and $9bn (14 per cent) to education. The diplomatic capacity of the
US would be devastated. Hard power and lower taxes: these are the US priorities under Mr Trump. They are also traditionally
Republican. Waging what amounts to an economic war on ones supporters might seem perverse. But there is method in the madness. As the
programmes poor whites depend upon are slashed, those who voted for Mr Trump will become more desperate. This will make politics even
more polarised. That has been the all-too successful ploy of pluto-populism. So what is new at home? The answer is Mr Trumps personality. He
is in a permanent war with reality and so with the media and his intelligence services. The press and the bureaucracy have both held up well. So
has the legal system. But these are early days. The president is undisciplined and his administration chaotic. Under Mr Trump, a terrorist outrage
might produce a lurch into authoritarianism. Mr Trumps impact on the very idea of the west is already
significant. The western alliance is still the worlds biggest economic bloc and largest
repository of scientific and business knowledge. But it is disintegrating. As Angela Merkel, chancellor
of Germany, admitted, Europe can no longer rely on the US. It might have been unwise to say so, but she was surely right. Mr Trump
seems to prefer autocrats to todays western Europeans. He is warm towards Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdogan
and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, not to mention Russias Vladimir Putin. He appears to care not at all about
democracy or human rights. Neither does he seem committed to the mutual defence
principles of Nato. Mr Trumps alt- right supporters see not a divide between the
democracies and the despotisms; but rather between social progressives and globalists,
whom they despise, and social traditionalists and nationalists, whom they support. For
them, western Europeans are on the wrong side: they are enemies, not friends. Deep down,
Mr Trump might agree. He is surrounded by orthodox advisers, such as James Mattis, defence secretary. Yet the presidents heart
seems not to be in it. The west may not be dead. But as a set of countries with shared interests and
values, it is moribund. Now consider the west and, above all, the US in the world. The rise
of China has reduced its economic and political weight. A recent history of failed wars and
financial crises has savaged its leaders credibility. The choice of Mr Trump, a man so
signally lacking in the virtues, abilities, knowledge and experience to be expected of a
president, has further damaged the attractions of the democratic system. Now the west seems deeply
divided internally too. Across the world, people question the future role of the US. Would it not be wiser, they wonder, to move closer to China?
Mr Trump would not appear to mind if this did happen. He
voluntarily withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, aimed at being an alternative to Chinese leadership. Under him, the US seems
to be abandoning the notion of soft power. Indeed, the proposed budget tells us that the
administration sees the idea as largely empty: guns matter, diplomacy does not. The soft
power of democracy is not what it was. It has produced Mr Trump as leader of the worlds most important country. It is not
an advertisement. Yet much is at stake in the world. Three big challenges exist: prosperity, peace and protection of the commons. On the
first, Mr Trumps administration is still tempted by the idea of restricting imports or at
least by bilateralism. So far its protectionist bark seems worse than its bite. Nevertheless, globalisation is stalled.
Without US support it could well remain so. On peace, the question remains whether Mr Trumps instinct for conflict
can be contained. The biggest challenge is the relationship with China. Mr Trump seems to thinks he can do business
with Xi Jinping, Chinas president. Maybe he likes the autocracy. Perhaps the most depressing
consequence of Mr Trumps ascent to power emerged at the G7 meeting in Taormina, Sicily, at the weekend. The Paris climate
change agreement of December 2015 was not an answer to the challenge, but it was at least
a recognition that climate change is a real and pressing danger. Now may well be the last chance to head off
the worst of it. In agreement with many Republicans, Mr Trump refuses to recognise the threat.
He finds it impossible to admit that strong and concerted government action might be
required. So he rejects the very notion of environmental limits. An optimistic and self-confident US would
embrace the challenge of overcoming such limits. Alas, Mr Trump does not speak for that US. If the US withdrew from the Paris accord, the rest
of the world must consider sanctions. It is possible to look at the first four months of this presidency as a story of successful containment. It is
also possible to view Mr Trump as a normal Republican. Unfortunately,
regular Republicans have damaging
ideas and Mr Trump may not be contained. This still looks like the end of the US-led world
order.
6/24/17
 Not Enough Thinking
Rarely do schools require critical thinking.
Khadaroo 17 - (Stacy Khadaroo, Education Reporter, 6-23-2017, "There's an essential skill not
being taught enough in classrooms today", http://www.businessinsider.com/education-critical-
thinking-school-criticism-2017-6?amp, DOA: 6-25-2017) //Snowball
Most teachers never really ask students to think very deeply. Most of what is assigned and tested are
things we ask students to memorize, writes Karin Hess, president of Educational Research in Action in Underhill, Vt., and
an expert on assessment, in an email to the Monitor. As people fret about politicians unwilling to compromise or
business owners unable to find qualified workers, a common underlying problem is this dearth of critical
thinking skills, says William Gormley, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University and author of The Critical Advantage:
Developing Critical Thinking Skills in School. The purpose of schooling is undergoing a significant shift.
With growing agreement that students need more than basic recall and reasoning skills, efforts
are under way to infuse whats sometimes referred to as deeper learning mindsets and skills such
as critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and problem-solving. Anecdotes abound about class projects that get kids thinking on their
feet and working together. But
education researchers and business leaders say deeper learning is still
relatively rare in schools, and theyd like to see the pace accelerate.
6/25/17
 AT: Radical Solutions Bad
Reject their dismissal of radical solutions theyre key to solve extinction.
Jensen 17 - (Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin,
6/21/17, "How radicals are offering realistic solutions to our spiraling political problems",
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/06/21/radicals-offering-realistic-
solutions-spiraling-political-problems, DOA: 6-25-2017) //Snowball
My left politics also focus on the human species' intensifying assault on the larger living world
multiple, cascading ecological crises that we can't afford to ignore. Modern humans'
arrogance puts us all at risk. The nave assumptions of the high-energy and high-
technology industrial world especially the idea that we can solve all problems with more energy-intensive technology
must be abandoned as we struggle to understand how many people can live sustainably on the
planet. There's not a widely used term for going beyond liberal environmentalism's half
measures, but some people call it "ecospherism," the understanding that humans must find our place in the
ecosphere rather than try to dominate. Ecospherists reject the idea that humans really "own" the Earth
and fight to end the accompanying abuse and exploitation of land, water, air and other
creatures. Liberals and conservatives typically ignore ecological realities, but so does much of
the left. The overwhelming nature of the challenge scares many into silence, but problems
ignored are not problems solved. For example, research on renewable energy is important, but
no combination of so-called clean energy sources (and let's remember that wind turbines and solar panels are industrial
products, which can't be manufactured cleanly) can power the affluence of the First World. The solution is dramatically
lower levels of consumption in the developed world. Many people in the U.S. disagree with this kind of left/radical feminist analysis. Many
left political
people have told me that these views make me unfit to teach at a state university. I welcome serious challenges, but
positions are too often dismissed as crazy because that's the one thing both liberals and
conservatives agree on. The U.S. is a dramatically right-wing society when compared with other industrialized countries, illustrated
by Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign. He offered no foundational critique of U.S. systems, opting instead for a traditional social democratic
platform to make our institutions more humane. Yet in America, such policy proposals were seen by many as revolutionary and Sanders was
often dismissed as a wild-eyed radical. In a recent call to action, Sanders supported a single-payer plan for health care and stated "our current
economic model is a dismal failure," but he did not dare use the term capitalism or even hint at a deeper structural critique. His discussion of the
ecological crises stopped with a weak call for renewable energy, and there was no mention of racism, sexism or U.S. foreign policy. I realize
politicians shape rhetoric to win votes, but let's not pretend this is a left agenda. (For the record, I'm not a Democrat, but I'm also not purist in
electoral politics; I voted for Sanders in the Democratic primary and Hillary Clinton in the general election.) Sanders' success suggests more
people might support a candidate with an even deeper critique of illegitimate structures of authority. If in the short term the best we can hope for
is reform of existing systems, we can pursue those reforms with an eye on more radical long-term goals. It's
hard to imagine a
decent human future perhaps any human future at all if these radical ideas are not part of
the mix. "Radical" is often used as a political insult, suggesting people who focus on
violence and destruction. But the word simply means "going to the root," and at the root of
our contemporary crises of justice and sustainability are capitalism, imperialism, white
supremacy, patriarchy, and the human willingness to destroy the world in pursuit of
affluence. Leftists are told that we have to be realistic, and I agree. But how realistic is it to
expect solutions to human injustices and ecological crises to emerge from the systems that
have created the problems? If you want to be realistic, get radical.
 T - No Middle Schools
Elementary schools and secondary schools are distinct from middle school
US Department of Education 08 [February 2008, "Organization of U.S. Education", US
Department of Education,
https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ous/international/usnei/us/schoollevel.doc, this link will
download a word doc with the article contained]//NV
Public Schools. Primary and secondary public schools are governed by local school districts and their
boards. Policies and regulations tend to be uniform across all schools within a district, but can
vary among districts. Individual schools are administered within the confines of these general requirements, so autonomy is limited. States vary
as to the curricular freedom they give local schools, but most impose a basic statewide curricular framework which local schools may embellish
to a limited degree, and also issue a statewide list of approved textbooks for each grade level from which locals may select or, in some cases,
require the use of a single set of approved texts. Schools are organized into elementary (primary) schools, middle
schools, and high (secondary) schools. Primary or elementary education ranges from grade 1 to
grades 4-7, depending on state and school district policy. Middle schools serve pre-adolescent and young
adolescent students between grades 5 and 9, with most in the grade 6-8 range. Middle schools in the upper grade range
(7-9) are sometimes referred to as junior high schools. Secondary or high schools enroll students in the upper
grades, generally 9-12 with variations. In the United States these tend to be comprehensive schools enrolling students of widely different
interests and capabilities who follow different educational tracks within the same school.
6/26/17
 Trump/DeVos Destroy Title IX
Trump and DeVos are undermining the authority of Title IX.
Gibbs 17 - (Lindsay Gibbs, Sports Reporter, 6-23-2017, "The Trump administration is
systematically dismantling Title IX", https://thinkprogress.org/how-the-trump-administration-is-
systematically-attacking-title-ix-21bde2f73fc6, DOA: 6-26-2017) //Snowball
But as Title IX supporters celebrate how much the legislation has accomplished, particularly for women and girls in sports,
many who have been closely monitoring the actions of President Donald Trump and his Secretary of Education Betsy
DeVos are extremely concerned about its future. Theres a sense that Title IX and girls participating in sports
and gender equality is a done deal, when in fact the reality is its very fragile, Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an Olympic
champion, civil rights lawyer, and founder of Champion Women, told ThinkProgress. There is evidence from the past few months to suggest that Hogshead-Makars
Trumps budget proposal recommends a seven percent budget reduction
warning is not merely hyperbole.

for the Office for Civil Rights, which would force the department to slash approximately 27 jobs at a time when Title IX complaints are on the
rise. The ratio of Title IX cases per investigative staff members in the OCR was 41 to 1 in

fiscal year 2016, and that ratio will only become more lopsided if these cuts go into effect. Additionally,
DeVos has named Candice Jacksona woman who once insisted she faced discrimination
because she is whiteas the deputy assistant secretary of the Office for Civil Rights. And
DeVos has shown no signs that she will fight for members of any marginalized community.
If a law is only as good as its enforcement, then Title IX is in trouble. The authority of Title IX
seems to be trending in the wrong direction, and that could mean bad news for sexual
assault victims on college campuses, transgender (and other LGBTQ) students, and
equality in athletics.
6/27/17
 Urban Density K2 Economic Growth
Economic growth is a function of urban density clusters of individuals catalyze collective
productivity.
Florida, R. (2012, November 28). Cities With Denser Cores Do Better. Retrieved June 27, 2017, from https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/11/cities-denser-cores-do-better/3911/
//CynicClinic

urban thinkers and economists have argued that clusters of talented and ambitious people increase
Ever since Jane Jacobs,

one anothers productivity and the productivity of the broader community, spurring economic
growth. So, what about economic growth: Is it higher in metros where density is more concentrated? The short answer is yes. Economic growth and
development, according to several key measures, is higher in metros that are not just dense, but where density is
more concentrated. This is true for productivity, measured as economic output per person, as well
as both income and wages.
6/28/17
 AT: Debate = Democratic Engagement
Their appeal to democratic engagement is political hobbyism politics for leisure
and detracts from genuine democratic participation.
Hersh 17 - (Eitan D. Hersh, associate professor of political science at Tufts University, 6-29-
2017, "The Problem With Participatory Democracy Is the Participants",
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/opinion/sunday/the-problem-with-participatory-
democracy-is-the-participants.html, DOA: 7-1-2017) //Snowball
Americans who live in relative comfort are emotionally invested in politics, especially in the aftermath of the
election, but in a degraded form of politics that caters to the voyeurism of news junkies and the
short attention spans of slacktivists. They are engaging in a phenomenon I call political hobbyism. They
desperately want to do something, but not something that is boring, demanding or slow. Political
hobbyists want easy ways to register their feelings. Democrats in particular embrace tools like Resistbot that offer
instantly gratifying participation. Beyond the current political climate, Democrats, more than Republicans, believe
in mass participation as a core value and also believe it empowers their side. But cheap participation
reflects a troubling infirmity in how partisans of both parties engage in politics. In fact, it is
not because of gerrymandering, Citizens United, cable news or any of the other common
scapegoats that our system is broken, but because of us: ordinary people who are doing politics the
wrong way. For years, political scientists have studied how people vote, petition, donate, protest,
align with parties and take in the news, and have asked what motivates these actions. The typical answers
are civic duty and self-interest. But civic duty and self-interest do not capture the ways that
middle- and upper-class Americans are engaging in politics. Now it is the Facebooker who
argues with friends of friends he does not know; the news consumer who spends hours watching
cable; the repeat online petitioner who demands actions like impeaching the president; the
news sharer willing to spread misinformation and rumor because it feels good; the data junkie who frantically toggles
between horse races in suburban Georgia and horse races in Britain and France and horse races in sports (even literal horse races). What is
really motivating this behavior is hobbyism the regular use of free time to engage in politics
as a leisure activity. Political hobbyism is everywhere. There are several reasons for this. For one, technology allows
those interested in politics to gain specialized knowledge and engage in pleasing activities, such as reinforcing
their views with like-minded friends on Facebook. For another, our present era of relative security (nearly a half-century
without a conscripted military) has diminished the solemnity that accompanied political talk in the
past. Even in the serious moments since the 2016 election, political engagement for many people is characterized by forwarding the latest clip
that embarrasses the other side, like videos of John McCain asking incomprehensible questions or Elizabeth Warren destroying Betsy DeVos.
Then there are the well-intentioned policy innovations over the years that were meant to make politics
more open but in doing so exposed politics to hobbyists: participatory primaries, ballot
initiatives, open-data policies, even campaign contribution limits. The contribution rules that are now
in place favor the independent vanity projects of wealthy egomaniacs instead of allowing parties to raise
money and build durable local support. The result of all this is political engagement that takes the form of
partisan fandom, the seeking of cheap thrills, and amateurs trying their hand at a game. This can be seen in the billionaire
funding super PACs all the way down to the everyday armchair quarterback who professes that
the path to political victory is through ideological purity. (In the face of a diverse and moderate country, the
demand for ideological purity itself can be a symptom of hobbyism: If politics is a sport and the stakes are no higher, why not demand ideological
purity if it feels good?) Not all activism is political hobbyism. A
Black Lives Matter protest meant to call attention
to police misconduct and demand change on an issue with life-or-death consequences is not hobbyism. Neither is a
spontaneous airport protest over the presidents travel ban, which also had clear goals and urgent demands. What about
attendance at town hall meetings hosted by members of Congress? These events could be places for serious
discourse and reveal crucial citizen perspectives on matters of public policy, but they are more often hijacked by fair-
weather activists looking to see action. It is certainly peculiar that Democrats who are motivated by the health care debate
now couldnt be bothered to show up at town hall meetings back in 2009 (or to vote in 2010), and the Tea Party activists of 2009 cant be
bothered now, since it wouldnt be any fun for them. What, exactly, is wrong with political hobbyism? We
live in a democracy,
after all. Arent we supposed to participate? Political hobbyism might not be so bad if it
complemented mundane but important forms of participation. The problem is that hobbyism is
replacing other forms of participation, like local organizing, supporting party organizations,
neighbor-to-neighbor persuasion, even voting in midterm elections the most recent midterms had the
lowest level of voter participation in over 70 years. The Democratic Party, the party that embraces engagement,
is in atrophy in state legislatures across the country. Perhaps this is because state-level political
participation needs to be motivated by civic duty; it is not entertaining enough to pique the
interest of hobbyists. The party of Hollywood celebrities also struggles to energize its supporters to vote. Maybe it is because
when politics is something one does for fun rather than out of a profound moral obligation,
the citizen who does not find it fun has no reason to engage. The important parts of politics for the average
citizen simply may not be enjoyable. Political hobbyism is a problem not just for Democrats. The hobbyist now occupying the Oval Office is
evidence enough of the Republican version of this story. Donald Trumps election was possible because both
political parties mistakenly decided several decades ago to have binding primary elections
determine presidential nominations. Rather than having party leaders vet candidates for competency and sanity, as most democracies do, our
parties turned the nomination process into a reality show in which the closest things to
vetting are a clap-o-meter and a tracking poll. Nevertheless, the problem of hobbyism holds more severe
consequences for Democrats than for Republicans because of their commitment to mass engagement as a core value. An unqualified
embrace of engagement, without leaders channeling activists toward clear goals, yields the spinning of wheels of
hobbyism. Democrats should know that an unending string of activities intended for instant
gratification does not amount to much in political power. What they should ask is whether their emotions and
energy are contributing to a behind-the-scenes effort to build local support across the country or whether they are merely a hollow, self-gratifying
manifestation of the new political hobbyism.
6/29/17
 AT: Capitalism Exploitation
Social capitalism prevents exploitation companies are forced by consumers to
avoid abusive practices.
Ladd 17 - (Chris Ladd, Forbes Contributor / Republican precinct committeeman, 6-21-2017,
"Commerce Is Replacing Politics At The Center Of Our Democracy",
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/06/26/commerce-is-replacing-politics-at-the-center-
of-our-democracy/#f7c0c0a5f0e5, DOA: 7-1-2017) //Snowball
Commerce is beginning to challenge democracy as our highest means of expressing public values.
Through markets, we are slowly and unintentionally instituting a form of pure democracy, in which we
vote all day long, in dozens of transactions, that reward or punish actors for their values. As a
sclerotic outdated political system increasingly fails to meet public needs, commerce is
filling the void. Social capitalism is an economic order in which social forces influence markets to more responsibly
incorporate formerly external costs into the price of good and services. In capitalisms industrial era,
capital owners paid no price for polluting a river or destroying a forest. The only factors influencing
price were the cost of production and the demands of each individual purchaser. Workers and consumers lacked
the power to force capital owners to price-in external costs of socially-abusive or reprehensible
business practices. The nastiest, greediest players enjoyed a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
In that environment, people turned to government to mitigate the negative externalities of abusive
business practices like child labor, pollution, extortion and wealth concentration. Government
was the only force powerful enough to counter the influence of capital, but government has always been slow and cumbersome. Its efforts to curb
abusive practices carried with them bureaucratic burdens that often limited business effectiveness. Meanwhile that government itself was under
constant risk of capture by corporate interests, or over-reach that stifled economic growth. Three trends are interlacing to transform market
incentives: 1) a broad, global devolution of power away from traditional institutions in favor of individuals, 2) rapidly increasingly speed of
communication, and 3) the end of labor as we once knew it, creating a new market for talent blurring the labor/capital divide. In 1955, the
average lifespan of a company on the Fortune 500 list was 61 years. Today it is 18, and declining. Entire industries can be spawned, grow to
enormous size, and disappear in a decade or so. For an example, try to find a video rental store. This is not merely a business phenomenon.
Almost every participatory institution from PTAs to churches has seen steeply declining engagement and power in recent decades. Political
parties, unions, professional organizations almost any of the institutional forces that seemed unshakeable a generation ago have seen their
influence weaken. Power
is shifting toward the atomized individual. Faster communication has
made it easier for consumers to incorporate externalities like corporate social practices into
their purchases. It took years for dolphin-protection advocates to get labels attached to tuna that was more safely-harvested. It took a
few hours for protesters at Newark Airport to launch a social media wave that would bend Ubers growth curve, perhaps permanently. Thanks to
the smart phone and search engines, consumers now carry in their hands a data source that can tell them which products and services match their
values. A purchase is becoming a vote.
6/30/17
 Capitalism Privatization Solves Economy
Privatization boosts economic growth it gives incentives to compete and prevents
political favors.
Economist 17 - (Economist, Jun 17th 2017, "The perils of nationalisation",
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21723408-more-state-ownership-not-
right-answer-economic-ills-perils, DOA: 7-1-2017) //Snowball
But in the 1970s economists came to see state ownership as a costly fix to such problems. Owners of private firms benefit
directly when innovation reduces costs and boosts profits; bureaucrats usually lack such a clear
financial incentive to improve performance. Firms with the backing of the state are less vulnerable to competition; as they lumber on
they hoard resources that could be better used elsewhere. Inattention to cost-cutting is not always a flaw. Oliver Hart, co-winner of last
years Nobel prize for economics, pointed to private prisons as a case in which profit-focused
managers might accept a cost-efficient decline in the welfare of prisoners that society would
prefer not to have. Yet economists saw in the productivity slowdown of the 1970s evidence
that an overreaching state was throttling economic dynamism. Mr Corbyn first won election to parliament
when the Tory government of Margaret Thatcher, inspired by Milton Friedman, was busily selling off bits of state firms like British Leyland (the
nationalised carmaker), British Airways and what was then called British Petroleum. Other governments followed suit although public assets in
most countries remain large (see right-hand chart). State-owned
firms pose risks beyond that to dynamism.
Government-run companies may prioritise swollen payrolls over customer satisfaction. More worryingly,
state firms can become vehicles for corruption, used to dole out the largesse of the state to
favoured backers or to funnel social wealth into the pockets of the powerful. As state control over the
economy grows, political connections become a surer route to business success than
entrepreneurialism. Even botched privatisations can improve governance in corruption-plagued
emerging economies.
7/1/17
 2017 Capitalism Kills Democracy/Hegemony
Capitalism will collapse U.S. primacy and democracy in 2017.
Power 17 - (Michael Power, Strategist, Investec Asset Management, 6-13-2017, "Has Western-
style democracy become too expensive for capitalism?", https://www.ft.com/content/d0a5c460-
5044-11e7-a1f2-db19572361bb?mhq5j=e3, DOA: 7-1-2017) //Snowball
These fractures threaten the very fabric of democracy. The latter is predicated on the assumption that
a clear majority of citizens must think that the democratic system works for them if they are to
continue supporting it. In the US, with a majority of its citizens now predicting that their childrens generation will be worse off than their
own, the American dream and with it, American democracy, is surely faltering. As Western
democracy stumbles, the East makes progress. With faster GDP growth, it generates the worlds most
sizeable economic surpluses, even though save for Japan Asia has a far less sophisticated surplus
redistribution mechanism embedded in its various political systems. With a few notable exceptions,
Asian demographics are generally supportive while labour productivity growth is still
materially positive, driven by its rising service economy and its labour moving up the value-added ladder. The phrase Cometh the hour,
cometh the man is usually meant as a compliment. But this is not so when it is applied to Mr Trumps ascendancy to power in the US. Just
as the Wests democratic dream is faltering and the USs position as the worlds leading
economic power is a decade away from being eclipsed, the US has elected a president who
seems intent on withdrawing the US into its fortress and, by doing so, hastening both those
declines. Twenty-seventeen may well mark the year when the politics underlying the
primacy of democracy and the economics underlying the primacy of the US both took
decisive turns in new directions. It is distinctly possible that these developments will
disadvantage both the US and the West at large.
7/2/17
 Vouchers Key to Reform
Vouchers are key to education reform they solve educational quality, instill
democratic values, and decrease segregation.
U.S. News 17 - (U.S. News, 6-29-2017, "Vouchers Are Key to Education Reform",
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/letters/articles/2017-06-29/comprehensive-education-reform-
must-include-school-voucher-programs, DOA: 7-2-2017) //Snowball
But, by the time we agree on how to overhaul our public school system, it will be far too late for too
many kids. This is an inequity we can do something about now by allowing parents to choose
the school that is best for their child whether that is at traditional public schools, public charter schools, private schools or
virtual learning. Education is not an either-or proposition; we should do everything we can to improve our
public schools while, at the same time, offering families the freedom to choose a school that can provide the
best education in a safe, secure environment. And we shouldn't use test scores which are not a definitive indicator of future
success as an excuse not to let parents choose. We know from the body of school choice research that test scores
after only one year do not accurately predict whether children who receive scholarships vouchers will
ultimately succeed. There is irrefutable evidence that kids enrolled in voucher-based school
choice programs are achieving some of key predictors of future success, including greater
education attainment and stronger democratic values, such as tolerance, political activity and voluntarism. What's
more, taxpayers and public schools save money, and schools become less segregated as a result.
While we continue to pursue education reform, we can't condemn our children to bear the
brunt of the status quo, and decrease their chances of future success. We owe it to families to provide school
choice options, including vouchers, as part of a comprehensive solution.
7/3/17
 U.S. Hegemony Bad
U.S. hegemony is unsustainable and counterproductive.
Preble and Ruger 16 - (Christopher Preble is the vice president for defense and foreign policy
studies at the Cato Institute, and William Ruger is vice president for research and policy at the
Charles Koch Institute, 8-31-2016, "No More of the Same: The Problem with Primacy",
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/no-more-same-problem-primacy, DOA: 7-3-
2017) //Snowball
U.S. policymakers have invited this response. For decades, U.S.
foreign policy has followed a quixotic goal of primacy, or
global hegemony. It presumes that the United States is the indispensable nation, and that every
problem, in any part of the world, must be resolved by U.S. leadership or else will impact American
safety. But primacy has proved both difficult and costly. It is also frequently disconnected from
American security needs. An alternative approach to global affairs would concentrate on vital U.S.
national interests and maintain the tools necessary to defend them. It would also reject the need for global
hegemony. The idea that we can only be safe once the world is remade in our image is riddled
with logical fallacies. Moreover, an interests-driven foreign policy would take seriously the
consequences of our actions abroad and here at home on our soldiers, our fiscal health, and our
principles. Americas default foreign policy is unnecessarily costly and unnecessarily risky. Instead of asking,
whenever a distant crisis breaks, What is the United States going to do? we should ask, first, How does this affect vital U.S. national
interests? and, second, In light of recent developments, what can the United States do, while remaining prosperous and relatively safe, and what
must others do to protect themselves? This might seem like common sense, but it runs counter to the foreign policy thinking among
American elites. They argue that Americas dominant position in the international system is good not only
for America but also for the world. A large, expensive, and globally deployed military is designed to
smother potential peer competitors and stop prospective threats before they materialize. Primacy also
requires a globe-girdling array of allies and the active spread of liberal values. It even means
resisting, and where possible, undermining, rising dictators and hostile ideologies through frequent military interventions, as
primacists Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol have argued. They are comfortable going to war even when we
cannot prove that a narrowly construed vital interest of the United States is at stake. Primacists hold
that it would simply be too dangerous to allow allied countries to defend themselves or independently
assert their interests; therefore, the United States must do it for them. Though such a strategy encourages
free riding, primacists are more worried by the prospect that allies self-defense efforts might fail, necessitating more costly U.S.
intervention later and under less favorable circumstances. U.S. security guarantees, the primacists say, tamp down
the natural inclination of states to want to provide security for themselves, thus preventing allies from
engaging in arms build-ups that might unsettle their neighbors, perhaps even unleashing regional arms races. Unfortunately but
predictably given what theory and history teach us primacy has been neither easy to implement nor cheap to sustain.
When the U.S. military is called upon to fight wars across the globe, the human toll is
considerable. Since 9/11 and through 2014, nearly 7,000 U.S. troops have been killed, 52,000
have been wounded in action, and close to a million veterans have registered disability claims. The
fiscal burdens of primacy are severe as well. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost the United States
trillions of dollars, some of which we will be paying for many decades in the form of additional debt
servicing and veteran care. And primacy guarantees more fighting in the future and the bills that
come with it. Of course, we ought to have a strong defense. But, under primacy, the U.S. military is expected both to
stop threats from materializing and to stomp out any fires it fails to prevent. That expectation requires us to maintain the
worlds largest and most active military. Notwithstanding the false claims that the Budget Control Act is responsible for gutting national
defense, or the widespread belief that the U.S. military has been hollowed out and needs to be rebuilt, the
U.S. military is the
preeminent fighting force in the world. No state can match U.S. global power-projection capabilities. And U.S.
military spending remains near historic highs. In inflation-adjusted dollars, military spending both war and non-
war averaged $612 billion per year during President George W. Bushs two terms in office. Under President Barack Obama, it has averaged
The
$675 billion. The United States will have spent nearly $500 billion more on the military in the Obama years than during the Bush years.
United States spends at least as much on its military as the next eight countries worldwide and nearly
three times more than China and Russia combined. Although not all of that money is spent wisely, it still buys
incomparable capabilities. No sensible American should wish to trade places with any other country on earth. The U.S. military is second to none,
and our massive economy is a solid foundation for generating military power when it is needed.. In the current strategic environment, the
United States could easily spend less and still safeguard Americas vital interests. It could do so
through smarter spending, eliminating wasteful gold-plated programs such as the F-35, and
demanding greater burden-sharing from allies. At present, U.S. security guarantees to wealthy allies
cause them to underprovide for their own defense, meaning they have less capacity to help us deal with common
security challenges. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen warned that debts and deficits represent
threats to not just our fiscal health but our national security as well. Although military spending is not the
primary driver of the nations massive and unprecedented fiscal imbalance, primacys high costs undermine our
economic security. Such expenditures might still be justified if they were instrumental in keeping
Americans safe. But, in fact, primacy is based on a number of faulty premises, including: (a) that
the United States is subjected to more urgent and prevalent threats than ever before; (b) that U.S.
security guarantees reassure nervous allies and thus contribute to global peace and stability; and
(c) that a large and active U.S. military is essential to the health of the international economy.
Primacists hold that the United States cannot adopt a wait-and-see attitude with respect to distant trouble
spots. They believe that the security of all states are bound together and that threats to others are actually threats to the United States. Primacists
believe that instability and crises abroad will adversely affect American interests if they are allowed to fester. The alternative to Pax Americana-
the only alternative-is global disorder, writes the Wall Street Journals Bret Stephens, with emphasis. Because
any problem, in any
part of the world, could
eventually threaten U.S. security or U.S. interests, primacy aims to stop all
problems before they occur. This assumption is based on a very selective reading of world
history, grossly exaggerates the United States ability to control outcomes, and underplays its
costs. It also miscasts the nature of the threats that are facing us. Technology has not evaporated the seas, allowing
large land armies to march across the ocean floor. Meanwhile, potential challengers like China face more urgent problems that will diminish their
desire and ability to project power outside of their neighborhood. They can cause trouble in the South China Sea, but that does not mean they can
or will in the South Pacific or the Caribbean. Chinas economic troubles and rising popular unrest, for example, could constrain Chinese military
spending increases and focus Beijings attention at home. Causing problems abroad would threaten critical trading relations that are essential to
the health of the Chinese economy. Primacists argue that we cannot rely on oceans to halt nuclear
missiles that fly over them or cyberattacks in the virtual realm. And terrorists could infiltrate by land, sea, or air, or
they could be grown right here at home. But our own nuclear weapons provide a powerful
deterrent against state actors with return addresses, and a massive, forward-deployed military is not the best
tool for dealing with terrorists and hackers. The hard part is finding them and stopping them before they act. That is
a job for the intelligence and law enforcement communities, respectively. And small-footprint military units like special
operations forces can help as needed. There have always been dangers in the world, and there always will be. To the extent that we can
identify myriad threats that our ancestors could not fathom, primacy compounds the problem. By calling
on the United States to deal with so many threats, to so many people, in so many places, primacy ensures that
even distant problems become our own. Primacys other key problem is that, contrary to the claims
of its advocates, it inadvertently increases the risk of conflict. Allies are more willing to confront
powerful rivals because they are confident that the United States will rescue them if the confrontation turns
ugly, a classic case of moral hazard, or what MITs Barry Posen calls reckless driving. Restraining our impulse
to intervene militarily or diplomatically when our safety and vital national interests are not threatened
would reduce the likelihood that our friends and allies will engage in such reckless behavior in the first
place. Plus, a more restrained foreign policy would encourage others to assume the burden of
defending themselves. Such a move on the part of our allies could prove essential, given that primacy
has not stopped our rivals from challenging U.S. power. Russia and China, for example, have
resisted the U.S. governments efforts to expand its influence in Europe and Asia. Indeed, by
provoking security fears, primacy exacerbates the very sorts of problems that it claims to
prevent, including nuclear proliferation. U.S. efforts at regime change and talk of an axis of evil that needed to be
eliminated certainly provided additional incentives for states to develop nuclear weapons to deter U.S. actions (e.g., North Korea). Meanwhile,
efforts intended to smother security competition or hostile ideologies have destabilized vast
regions, undermined our counterterrorism efforts, and even harmed those we were ostensibly trying
to help. After U.S. forces deposed the tyrant Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraq descended into chaos and has never
recovered. The civil war in Syria, and the problem of the Islamic State in particular, is inextricable
from the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. The situation in Libya is not much better the United States helped
overthrow Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011, but violence still rages. The Islamic State, which originated in Iraq, has now established a presence in
Libya as well, provoking still more U.S. military action there. It is clear that those
interventions were counterproductive
and have failed to make America safer and more secure, yet primacists call for more of the
same. Lastly, primacists contend that U.S. military power is essential to the functioning of the global
economy. U.S. security commitments, explain leading primacists Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, help
maintain an open world economy and give Washington leverage in economic negotiations. The United States sets the rules of the
game and punishes those who disobey them. If the United States were less inclined to intervene in other peoples disputes, the primacists say,
the risk of war would grow, roiling skittish markets. But such claims exaggerate the role that U.S. ground forces
play in facilitating global trade, especially given the resiliency and flexibility of global
markets in the face of regional instability. Moreover, primacists ignore the extent to which past U.S.
military activism has actually undermined market stability and upset vital regions. Smart
alternatives to primacy feature a significant role for the U.S. Navy and Air Force in providing security in
the global commons while avoiding the downsides of onshore activism. In conclusion, Americas default
foreign policy is unnecessarily costly and unnecessarily risky. Its defenders misconstrue the extent to
which U.S. military power has contributed to a relatively peaceful international system, and
they overestimate our ability to sustain an active global military posture indefinitely. The
United States needs an alternative foreign policy, one that focuses on preserving Americas
strength and advancing its security, and that expects other countries to take primary responsibility for
protecting their security and preserving their interests. Americas leaders should restrain their
impulse to use the U.S. military when our vital interests are not directly threatened while
avoiding being drawn into distant conflicts that sap our strength and undermine our safety
and values.
7/4/17
 Leftist Politics dead- new approach key
Status quo leftist or radical politics are ineffective- might as well be dead- new
approach is needed
Harris 16 John Harris, journalist for The Guardian, Does the Left have a future?, September
6, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/06/does-the-left-have-a-future, VM
If the lefts predicament comes down to a single fault, it is this. It is very good at
demanding change, but pretty hopeless at understanding it. Supposedly radical elements too
often regard deep technological shifts as the work of greedy capitalists and rightwing
politicians, and demand that they are rolled back. Meanwhile, the self-styled moderates tend to
advocate large-scale surrender, instead of recognising that technological and economic changes can
create new openings for left ideas. A growing estrangement from the lefts traditional supporters makes
these problems worse, and one side tends to cancel out the other. The result: as people
experience dramatic change in their everyday lives, they form the impression that half of politics has precious
little to say to them. In a political reality as complex as ours, there are inevitable problems for the political right as well. It is a long
time since the Conservative party has spoken the visceral, populist language that was the hallmark of Margaret Thatcher. As with Blair in 2005,
the Tories were recently elected to power with the support of less than a quarter of the electorate. Similarly, in Germany, Angela Merkels
Christian Democrats once vied with the Social Democrats for the support of a majority of the population, but they are now down to around 30%.
But modern challenges for the centre-right will always be less difficult than they are for the left. The former, after all, seeks to safeguard and
advance modern capitalism rather than substantially change it. Even in the absence of a broad social base, the right is sustained by big business
and the conservative press, which give it huge political advantages. The
left has responded to its crisis by looking
endlessly inward but occasionally, there are flashes of hope. There is a rising recognition, among both former followers of Blair and
alumni of the traditional left, that Labours old majoritarian dreams are probably finished and that it should finally embrace proportional
representation and build new alliances and coalitions. This change would probably trigger a split between the partys estranged left and right, and
thereby bring Britain into line with the rest of Europe, where the lefts crisis is highlighted by a tussle between traditional social democrats and
new radicals. In Britain and plenty of other places, there is growing interest in the idea of a universal basic income, built on an understanding of
accelerating economic changes, and their far-reaching consequences for the lefts almost religious attachment to the glories of paid employment.
It is early days for such a leap. But proposing that the state should meet some or all of peoples basic living costs would be an implicit
acknowledgement that work alone cannot possibly deliver the collective security that the left has always seen as its basic mission, and that space
has to be created for the other elements of peoples lives. Whether
the left can come to terms with the new
politics of national identity and belonging and thereby rein in its nastier aspects is a much
more difficult question but if it doesnt, its activists may very well gaze at their parties
old core supporters across an impossible divide. Perhaps the most generous verdict is that here and across the
world, the left radicals and liberals alike is stuck in an interregnum. You could compare it to the
predicament of the 1980s, but it is even more reminiscent of the 1930s, when the aftershocks of an economic crash saw the left pushed aside by
the politics of hatred and division. In 1931, the great Labour thinker RH Tawney wrote a short text titled The Choice Before the Labour Party,
casting a cold eye over its predicament in terms that ring as true now as they must have done then. Labour, he wrote, does not achieve what it
could, because it does not know what it wants. It frets out of office and fumbles in it, because it lacks the assurance either to wait or to strike.
Being without clear convictions as to its own meaning and purpose, it is deprived of the dynamic which only convictions supply. If it neither acts
with decision nor inspires others so to act, the principal reason is that it is itself undecided. No party can exist forever. Political
traditions can decline, and then take on new forms; some simply become extinct. All that can be
said with certainty is that if the left is to finally leave the 20th century, the process will have to start
with the ideas and convictions that answer the challenges of a modernity it is only just starting to wake
up to, let alone understand.

Only a new politics acting of hope, rather than for hope can solve
Wrangel 17 Claes Tngh Wrangel, PhD Candidate in Peace and Development Research at the
School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, His current research interrogates the
biopolitical use of hope as articulated in US security discourse. The Post-Trump Desire for
Hope, Society and Space, http://societyandspace.org/2017/06/13/the-post-trump-desire-for-
hope/, June 13, 2017, VM
talk of hope
In a time defined by the continual rise of right wing populism in general, and by the election of Donald Trump in particular,
seems to be re-emerging at the center of political debates in both US and global politics. This seems to be
particularly true within parts of the American academic left, whose growing disillusionment seems to have fostered a desire for hope. Aside from
Rebecca Solnits columns in The Guardian on the imperative to hope in dark times, an increasing number of scholars have argued for the
necessity of hope to mobilize resistance against Trump. For instance, Corey Robin recently argued in Jacobin that fighting Trump requires
believing in the possibility that we can change our circumstances, and in The Nation, Ronald Aronson pleaded to the left to resist what he
perceives as a growing hope fatigue: hope matters to us because the left is its natural home, one the left should not lose (2017). However, as
Ben Anderson has argued on this site, there are risks entailed in the current desire for hope. For Anderson, there is something too comforting
about this story of hope kept alive. The risk is that it installs a sense that Trumpand the general right wing populism he representsis but a
passing moment, and that the normal order of liberal politics is soon to return. According to Anderson, a forward-looking hope may thus come
to naturalize the status quo: by attempting to name what is possible it [the desire for hope] risks presuming the stability and legibility of the
There is no genuine
present. To his unease I wish to add three points that I feel every desire towards hope should bear in mind.
hope Underpinning the contemporary desire for hope, as well as the historical fascination for hope as a mode of
transformative political agency within critical political theory (what Susan McManus has referred to as the hope project [2011]), is a
tendency to define what a genuine hope as a prerogative of the left and of the future is. Hence, the
contemporary obsession to describe the hope articulated by Trump as not really hope, but as an anti-hope, whose real
affective logic is one of despair and anger, of fear, and decline. In contrast to Trumps hope, real hope is
progressive and pluralistic. It is a matter of trust, of being open both to an unknown future and to others who we not yet know. According to
Solnit, hope is an experience of the worlds interconnectedness and indivisibility. For Robin, hope is grounded on a belief in contingency, on
a recognition that the present realities of war and division are not rooted in dark and deep truths about human nature, but are possible to
overcome. However, hope arguably does not have a uniform genuine meaning or direction. On
the contrary, as Terry Eagletons expos of its conceptual history makes abundantly clear (2015), the concept of hope seems to be essentially
contested. Hope is not one emotion. According to Eagleton, there is in fact no characteristic feeling, symptom, sensation or behaviour pattern
associated with hope (2015: 55). In other words, hope should not be read by default as the opposite of neither fear, despair, nor anger, but as
being ambiguously related to such concepts. As noted by McManus, there is fear and uncertainty attached to every hope. Quoting Ernst Bloch,
she holds hope to be a precarious experience without guarantees: else it would not be hope (1986a: 340). This ambiguity is evident throughout
hopes conceptual history, at times causing great debate as to hopes political potential. The first historical reference to hope that has survived to
our daysHesiods narration of the legend of Pandora (1983)is a clear example both of this ambiguity and of the political contestation
surrounding the definition of hope. According to the legend, hope both belongs to, and is separated from, the category of human suffering.
Embodied in the goddess Elpis, hope is included in the box of miseries that Pandora is ordered by Zeus to unleash onto mankind as punishment
for stealing from the Gods. However, in her final act Pandora closes the lid, keeping hope alone from being released. Hopes
ambiguous position has puzzled interpreters. Some have taken the fact that hope is caught by the lid [of Pandoras
box] to symbolize that hope always desires to be realized but never is (Verdenius, 1985: 68). According to Nietzsche, Hesiods poem is evidence
that hope is in truth the worst of all evils, because it protracts the torment of men (1996: 45). Another common interpretation has sought to
maintain the purity of hope that Hesiods poem seems to problematize, arguing that Elpis should not be interpreted as hope, but as expectation.
But as argued by Willem Jacob Verdenius, such interpretations reduce neither the ambiguity of Hesiods poem nor of hope (1985: 69). It is this
ambiguity that every attempt to define hope, such as those offered by the hope project, is reductive of. Definitions that, because of this
ambiguity, appear not to describe, but to be performative of, hope.
Importantly, the object such acts are
performative of is not only the affect of hope, but also the affective subject of hope. Which brings
me to my second point: There is not one hopeful subject Central to the hope project is a definition of hope as formative of a revolutionary and
becoming subject, capable of transcending particular identities. While hope is held as an activist affect, it is ultimately defined to be without an
antagonistic Other. According to Negri and Hardt, hope ultimately resides in camaraderie, the possibility of the creation of a fraternal society of
equals (quoted in Brown et. al., 2002: 200). Aronson holds hope to be an experience of coming together (2017), constitutive of a we
committed to expanding and deepening democracy. For Solnit, the mobilization of resistance against Trump is evidence of another America
rising and taking action, one that is beautiful, empathic and solidaristic. According to such definitions, hope is both there and not there.
Hope is both intrinsic to lifean inextinguishable and uncontainable human force of creativity that
forever transcends totalitarian attempts of sovereign power, as defined by Anthony Burke (2011: 108)and formative of a
particular transcendent form of life, as per Solnits, Aronsons, and Negri and Hardts claims rehearsed above. According to
Richard Rorty, hope is the task of politics: to foster a subject capable of setting aside religious and ethnic identities in favour of an image of
themselves as part of a great human adventure (Ibid.: 238-9). Yet
despite how attractive such descriptions
undoubtedly are, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find an articulation of hope that does
not remain particular, that does not invoke the very limits they claim to transcend. This is
arguably especially true for a universal hope presented as without subject. As argued by Julian Reid, every definition of lifeevery claim to
establish the fact of life, however progressive they may seemis part of an imperative discourse on life (Reid, 2011: 772). The fact of hope
included. As Reid reminds us, not only are such facts necessarily particular, they are also contingent, dependent on a set of historical and
political conditions. Contrary to Aronsons proclamation, commitment to hope is not a prerogative of the left, nor of progressive politics. Hope is
rather omnipresent in the political vocabulary of the West. According to Anderson, all political campaigns, including Trumps, express and offer
more or less specific hopes, albeit in a range of different tones. The object of such campaigns are not only to project a vision of the future, but to
invoke a subject of hope it claims to represent, to establish the limits of human belonging, by identifying which lives are on the side of hope and
consequently of life, and who is perceived to obstruct its path. Contemporary examples of this language include not only Barack Obamas
empathic promise to recognize the inherent hopefulness of the global poor of human life to transform the world from the bottom up, but also
the notion of a striving hope that Trump holds to be the life force of the nation state, as detailed in his inaugural address: a nation is only living
as long as it is striving. Contrary
to the leftist subject of hopeheld to be revolutionary and
transcendentalthe subject of this hope is arguably a neoliberal form of life, whose
cosmopolitan values may vary, but at its core remains the same: individual,
entrepreneurial and strugglingcapable of succeeding despite great odds. As I have argued
elsewhere (Tngh Wrangel, 2017), the hope this individual is called to embody is not directed towards the future. Its task is not to transform the
world, but to change ones individual place in the present world. Which brings me to my third and final point: Hope is not the future
While hope undoubtedly is related to the future, the hope project often perceives this relation to be uniform, defining hope as a radical break in
which the future enters the present. Blochs conceptualization of the ontology of the not-yet (1986b: 87) is perhaps the most well-known
example of this category of thought. According to Bloch, hope is an actualization of the future in the present, an unsettling experience beyond the
steady pace of predictable linear time. Reid holds a similar view, finding in Gaston Bachelards conceptualization of the imagination what Bloch
would describe as hope: not only the promise of a world beyond [], but the actual existence of the beyond in the psychic life of the subject. It
is the enactment of the beyond now (2011: 161, emphasis added). It is arguably from this perspective that Rorty is able to argue that hope, not
the future, should be the true object of politics. According to Rorty, what ultimately matters to politics is not
whether particular hopes are realized, but whether politics realizes hope; the production of
a critical imaginative power (Ibid.: 87) that would increase the scope of human freedom (Ibid.: 129). According to this
logic, it is not only that hope and the future becomes one and the same. It is rather that hope substitutes itself for the
future, replacing the desire to actualize the future with a desire to experience the future as
possibility. According to Ghassan Hage, this logic of substitution, in which hope takes the
place of the future, is exemplary of our present capitalist society: Instead of living an ethic
of joy, we live an ethic of hope, and that becomes an ethic of deferring joy (2002: 151). As Hage
notes, there is a suffering entailed in this form of hope, one that keeps the working class
docile. It is neither agential nor subversive, but is better described as a kind of waiting, as
observed by Brian Massumi: a deferral of the present to the future [rather than] a way of
bringing the future into the present (2015: 32). This neoliberal hope is not false; it is not opposite to genuine hope. On
the contrary, it represents the paradigmatic form through which hope is defined today. If we do not acknowledge this, we
risk being unable to see that hope is complicit with the fear, despair, and antagonisms of
our present society. We also risk alienating those whose hopes the left should ignite and represent, portraying them as devoid of
something that is arguably central to their populist mobilization. Indeed, while right wing populism seemingly competes in portraying the future
in negative termswarning of the end of Western civilizationit is not without hope. If anything, the populist promise is immersed in what is
presented as a radical hope: a dream that the political center can be disrupted, that the future is not pre-defined by natural laws of globalization,
that relations of power and domination can be restored to its proper form. Is this not hope? Is this not to believe in the human capacity to
initiate change? To
disrupt this nostalgic, racist, and reactionary hope, it is arguably not enough
to commit to hope. No particular politics follows from such commitments. As argued by Hage: we
need to look at what kind of hope a society encourages rather than simply whether it gives
people hope or not (2002: 152). Hope alone is no answer. Indeed, given hopes ambiguous relation to despair, fear, and
suffering, it seems crazy to desire hope. At risk with the desire for hope is not only our capacity to imagine a world beyond human vulnerability,
hope is a tough-minded and inspired disposition to act, as
but also our capacity to bring the future forth. If
argued by Aronson, then this disposition arguably requires that it acts towards the realization of
something other than itself. If this disposition is to be released does it not demand that we
replace the desire for hope with a desire towards a different and better future? That we act
not for hope, but of hoperecognizing that while hope may be a great means, it is a lousy
end. As stated by Reid, the imaginary must find its matter, its reality (2011: 161).
7/5/17
 U.S. Hegemony Unsustainable
U.S. hegemony is unsustainable counterbalancing, overstretch, and expenditure.
Abeyrathne and Hettiarachchi 16 - (Upul Abeyrathne, Professor of Political Science,
University of Peradeniya, and Nishantha Hettiarachchi, African Journal of Political Science and
International Relations, July 2016, "The US attempt of supremacy in the twenty first century:
Russian and Chinese response ", http://academicjournals.org/journal/AJPSIR/article-full-text-
pdf/127471959978, DOA: 7-5-2017) //Snowball
There was evidence that the pro-US realist schools assumption of unipolar situation was wrong and
permanence of US supremacy was unsustainable in the context of emerging powers, and that the balanceof-power
realists were correct in predicting that unipolarity would stimulate the emergence of new great powers
that would act as counterweight to American hegemony (Layne, 2011:151). Some balance-of-power realist
forecast that unipolarity would give way quickly to multi-polarity after the Soviet Unions fall proved to be wrong (Ibid). However, the key
insight was correct: the over-concentration of power in US hands after the Cold War would spur
the emergence of an international system in which American hegemony would be counter-
balanced (Layne, 1993, 2006a). Further, the United States was saddled with the responsibility for
maintaining stability in Europe, East Asia and the Persian Gulf-commitment that were the legacy of cold
war (Layne, 2011:153-155). At the end of the Cold War, the United States had taken on additional responsibilities in
the Central Asia and Eastern Europe (Ibid). These critical situations required the United States to maintain
large, capable and expensive military forces. However, strategic experts increasingly had realized that Americas
force structure had been insufficient to meet all the United States far-flung security
commitments (Layne, 2006b:7-41). It was evident in Russia-Georgia war in August 2008. Many U.S. leaders, including Republican
presidential nominee John McCain wanted the United States to come to Georgias aid (Layne, 2011:153). However, the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the United States simply did not have the forces needed to defend Georgia. Similarly, there
was good evidence that the United States wanted to use the military option to stop the nuclear
programme of Iran and North Korea. But, it prevented military option because the bulk of the U.S. military
was committed to the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. All these evidences had substantiated the
fact that the American military was too small to meet the demands of these two wars, much less any other obligations the
United States may had. All these facts revealed the incapacity of single super power to regulate the
number of violent conflicts in the scattered places around the world. Recently, in the context of
financial and economic crisis, many economists had been raising concerns about the economic
costs of Americas hegemonic military posture (Ibid). For example, economists had estimated that the direct
and indirect costs of the Iraq war would exceed US Dollar 3 trillion (Stiglitz and Bilmes, 2008). No similar
estimate has been made for the Afghanistan conflict. In recent years, the weakening of the US economy and budget
deficits were going to make for US. It was increasingly difficult to sustain the level of military
commitments that U.S. hegemony required. Thus, the military expenditure became unbearable
and number of conflict made single superpowers inability in assuring order in world political affairs. The emerging World Powers, particularly,
China and Russia had sought to build new alliance in international political, military and economic
spheres to counter and counterbalance US and its allies. The new developments in international
political economy and military operations had marked the end unipolar world system that US aspired to have.
7/6/17
 Trump Marks End of Hegemony
Hegemony is declining under Trump its only a question of whether the coming
multipolar order will be peaceful.
Marchetti 17 - (Raffaele Marchetti is senior assistant professor (national qualification as
associate professor) in International Relations at the Department of Political Science and the
School of Government of LUISS and Peter Geoghegan, 2-14-2017, "End of the American
hegemonic cycle", https://www.opendemocracy.net/raffaele-marchetti/end-of-american-
hegemonic-cycle, DOA: 7-6-2017) //Snowball
Trumps election marks the end of the long phase of American world hegemony. Despite the electoral slogan
Make America Great Again and the great expectations this may have generated, his presidency will presumably be
characterized by an overall retrenchment. Many different interpretations have been provided on the reasons of Trumps
success ranging from populist framing to FBI support. Contrary to the mainstream debate, I see a more fundamental reason
underpinning his victory: the changed costs/benefits balance in the US role in the world . The theory of
hegemonic stability holds that at some point the hegemon will start to decline due to the
increased costs of the management of the system which outbalance the benefits the
hegemon gains out of it. The costs of the management of the system have in fact been accumulating in
the last 4 presidencies. During the Bush administrations, security costs due to the military operations in
Afghanistan and Iraq have, among other damage, impacted negatively on the US government. Equally, during
the Obama presidencies costs due to economic stimuli have increased the overall debt of the country. As
predicted by hegemonic theory, we finally come to a point in which the costs became too heavy
for the citizens, or rather their perception of this becomes more evident, so that they start to protest and demand a
change. This was intercepted by Trump much more than by Clinton, with Trump stepping back to
decrease the costs of international projection. So-called imperial overstretch, formed much
earlier, led Trumps electorate to seek less international costs (and possibly, but less likely, more domestic
benefits). Hence, the promised withdrawal from a number of Free Trade Agreements, the
discussion of the terms of NATO participation, cancellation of the environmental deals etc.
From this perspective Trumps election has to do with a much longer trend of international order
rather than the specific time-lapse of the electoral campaign, a trend of dis-engagement that had already begun
during the Obama administration and will now be more clearly visible with Trump. The system in which
we have been living in the last 70 years was created in large part by the US leadership. The UN system,
Bretton Woods Institutions, NATO, and WTO are all institutional arrangements that have been strongly
promoted by the post WWII hegemon and that have been preserved in life thanks to continuous
support by the USA. Now all of this is put into question by the resistance of the newly elected
president to engage in and with these multilateral organizations. Trump will most likely have a
more unpredictable, possibly turbulent behaviour vis a vis all of these institutions and this will
lead to their transformation and perhaps for some, to their marginalization. Other significant
elements in this jigsaw puzzle have to do with the phenomenon of globalization. It is because of global
transformation in production chains, the relocation of multinational corporation abroad coupled with the
possibility of (re-)importing goods, and the subsequent loss of jobs that a component of the middle class has been badly
affected by unemployment. But it is also thanks to globalization that China is rising fast and
challenging the US leadership in economic, but also increasingly in political and military terms. It is
clear by now that the policy choice for globalization taken by the US leadership in the 80s (republican)
and 90s (democratic) was beneficial only at the beginning, but later turned out to be
detrimental to the power position of the USA in the world economy. It is widely recognised that India and especially China
are the real winners in the game of globalization, hence closing the gap with the west. Russia is an
additional element in this calculation. This new would-be multipolar system, deprived of the overall
western master plan, is left to pure bargaining, pure transactionalism played with ad hoc games, which is very
much in line with Trumps overall attitude to socio-economic engagement. And yet, this might have a
de-polarizing effect, a de-escalating consequence in terms of the current world tensions that have
grown in the last few years. Here I am thinking especially of the west-Russia split. Without a hegemonic power pushing
for a specific world order, a more balanced system might emerge. We might end up with a
Trump presidency that has polarizing effects domestically and depolarizing effects
internationally. The line of march is clear: either new competition based on multipolar rivalry
which might possibly escalate into conflicts, or the opening of new channels for dialogue, might lead to a
foundational phase in which innovative rules of the international games are written by
western and non-western powers together. It will be up to Trump and the other leaders to
steer the way and to take a decision on which way to go.
 BizCon not Key to Growth
BizCon isnt key to growth its too vague to explain the economy and only
meaningful when combined with concrete factors
Irwin 7/4
(Neil Irwin is a senior economics correspondent for The New York Times and holds an MBA
from Columbia University, where he was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economics and Business
Journalism. Confidence Boomed After the Election. The Economy Hasnt. The Upshot, 4 July
2017)PA
After Donald J. Trump won the presidential election, Americans optimism about the economic future
soared. But midway through the year, that optimism has not translated into concrete economic gains. This seeming
contradiction exposes a reality about the role of psychology in economics or more specifically, how psychology is connected only

loosely to actual growth. It will take more than feelings to fix the sluggishness that has been evident in the
United States and other major economies for years. Confidence isnt some magic elixir for the economy:
Businesses will hire and invest only when they see concrete evidence of demand for their
products, and consumers intensify their spending only when their incomes justify it. The sharp rise in
economic optimism after the election came through no matter how the question was asked or who answered, whether the survey was intended to capture consumer
confidence or consumer comfort or consumer sentiment. It was true in surveys of small-business owners and of C.E.O.s of some of the biggest companies in the
world. And the rise during the winter months in these surveys has mostly been sustained in the months since. But the economy is plodding along
at the same modest rate it has for the last eight years nonetheless at least when you look at hard data around
economic activity instead of soft data like surveys, as analysts put it. President Trump said on Twitter on Sunday that the stock market was at an all-time high and
in overall
that unemployment was at its lowest level in years, both of which are true (he added that wages would start going up, which is certainly possible). But

measures of economic activity, the expansion looks much as it has for years, with steady growth
of around 2 percent. The Trump economy so far looks an awful lot like the Obama economy. For
all of business executives apparent enthusiasm, the nation is adding jobs more slowly in 2017
than it did in 2016, and investment spending by businesses is growing modestly; new orders for capital goods
are up only 0.7 percent so far in 2017. Consumers spending was 2.7 percent higher in the first four months this year than in the same period of 2016, adjusted for
inflation which is slower than the 3.2 percent year-over-year gain at the end of 2016. And while the stock market has been surging and the Federal Reserve has
long-term Treasury bond yields remain very low, suggesting that traders do
raised short-term interest rates,

not buy the idea that growth is poised to accelerate. A falling dollar suggests currency markets
see improving prospects in Europe and elsewhere. There is no sign a recession is brewing, but
neither is there evidence for the kind of boom you might expect if you believe that confidence is
a crucial driver of economic growth. This is less surprising when you look at the historical record of confidence surveys. When
financial commentators talk about the economy, they often use the elusive concept of confidence
as part of their narrative. Its hard to describe what is happening in the global economy, with
billions of people producing trillions of dollars of goods and services. Using a vague
psychological concept is a tidy way of describing why things happen when the underlying
drivers are uncertain. To say that the economy is slowing down because people are less confident sounds a lot better than the economy is slowing
down for a whole bunch of complex reasons that Im not really sure about. Confidence has a kind of mystical explanatory

power thanks to its vagueness. But confidence isnt really some psychological pixie dust that
determines the economic future. Rather, it often reflects underlying fundamentals whether
consumers see job opportunities readily available, for example, and whether businesses are
seeing strong advance orders. Confidence generally goes up when we see strong income growth
or big gains in household wealth, said Karen Dynan, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics whose former work for the Treasury
Department and Federal Reserve included forecasting consumer spending. Youll typically see higher consumption spending
after that happens. But its caused by the rise in income and wealth, not the rise in confidence.
Sometimes these surveys can pick up on shifts in those fundamentals before they are evident in more concrete data points. But that doesnt mean that they do a
fantastic job on their own of predicting the economic future. Since 1999, there has been a fairly strong correlation between the Conference Boards consumer
confidence index and the growth in personal consumption expenditures over the ensuing six months, just as you might expect. (And if the past relationship holds,
spending levels will accelerate.) But that chart looks about the same if you instead look at the relationship between growth over the preceding six months and the next
six months. In fact, that correlation was stronger than confidence. In other words, if you had just predicted that the immediate future would be similar to the recent
past, you would have done a better job projecting consumer spending during the last couple of decades than if you had relied only on a confidence survey. Confidence
surveys can make economic forecasts more accurate, according to some analysis but only in certain circumstances, and if used correctly. For example, Michelle L.
Barnes and Giovanni P. Olivei of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found that forecasts were more accurate when they built in data from the Reuters/University of
Michigan survey (now the Bloomberg/Michigan survey) that is also used to calculate consumer sentiment. And Stphane Des and Pedro Soares Brinca of the
European Central Bank found that confidence surveys can provide information about the future that economic fundamentals do not at economic turning points, and
may be a factor in how crises spread between countries. Those results suggest that why confidence shifts matters a great deal. At certain moments, ordinary consumers
and businesses may instantly pick up on shifting economic fundamentals that would take time to show up in the official economic data. For example, from July
through November of 2007, consumer sentiment and confidence numbers plummeted, even as measures of consumer spending and employment were relatively
steady. Credit was tightening and the housing crisis was worsening, but consumers seemed to pick up that the economy was on the verge of a recession (which began
measures of
in December 2007) before it was at all clear from official data. For every example like that, though, you can also find the reverse. Those same

confidence fell precipitously in September 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. That
disaster ultimately had no major impact on the overall economy. When confidence rises or falls
suddenly, the move will predict a shift in economic performance only if something happens to
the fundamentals to justify it. The early warning that confidence surveys offered on the 2008 recession was useful, but the downturn
happened not because consumer confidence fell, but because the underlying forces around
housing and credit that it reflected were so damaging. The post-Katrina drop wasnt matched by
any major deterioration in economic fundamentals, so it was a mere historical blip.
7/7/17
 Perception of Potential Public Support
The more the public believes everyone has potential, the more likely they are to
support public education.
Jacobs 17 - (Tom Jacobs is the senior staff writer of Pacific Standard, 7-7-17, "The Belief That
Drives Support for Public Education", https://psmag.com/education/the-belief-that-drives-
support-for-public-education, DOA: 7-7-2017) //Snowball
"THE MORE PEOPLE BELIEVED THAT NEARLY EVERYONE HAS HIGH
POTENTIAL, THE MORE THEY VIEWED EDUCATION AS A FUNDAMENTAL
HUMAN RIGHT." Not surprisingly, liberals were more likely than conservatives to consider education a right, but beliefs on
the universality of intellectual potential shaped their feelings about the subject above and
beyond their political orientation. A second study replicated those results, and additionally found "the more people
viewed education as a right, the more they opposed reducing the public's investment in
education." This remained true even after factoring in "a number of beliefs and motivations related to
people's tendency to legitimize inequality and to support the existing system." This is important
news for policymakers who hope to increase support for public educationand for the children who
would benefit from high-quality public schools. Campaigns to convince citizens to support school-related
bond measures may be more effective if they convincingly convey the concept that all kids have
great potential.
7/11/17
 Midterms DA Link (HSS Bathroom Aff)
The aff gets used by the GOP to win the election- they have no qualms about fear-
mongering against trans people in order to get re-elected since its worked for them
in the past
Baume 3/1/17 Matt Baume, contributor, Since 2003, Matt Baume has worked as a writer,
photographer, and video maker, contributing to news outlets that include The Stranger, Vice,
Out, NBC Bay Area, PRI's Marketplace, The Bay Area Reporter, The Advocate and SF Weekly
with a film degree from Emerson College, The Real Reason Republicans Keep Pushing
Transgender Bathroom Bans , Huffington Post, March 1, 2017,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-real-reason-republicans-keep-pushing-
transgender_us_58b70c69e4b015675cf65b10, VM
Bathroom bills have been popping up in state after state you know, the laws that say transgender people cant
use a bathroom unless it matches their birth certificate. In other words, you cant pee unless you show your toilet papers. Why are we suddenly
seeing so many of these? The politicians pushing them claim that they just want to protect people. And you know what? Theyre right
stopping trans people from using the bathroom will protect people. But not the people they
say. Lawmakers claim that their bills will stop predators, and protect children. Theyre
devoting a lot of thought to seats but not toilet seats, legislative seats. These
discriminatory bills dont protect citizens, they protect politicians. Heres how: In 2016, there
were around fifty bills introduced in various states that discriminated against trans people
not just in bathrooms, but in housing, education, employment, and more. And when you look at who introduced those bills, a funny pattern
starts to appear. For example, HB 4474 in Illinois, introduced by Tom Morrison. He was up for re-election last year, and won. Or HB 1624,
introduced by Steve Cookson in Missouri. He was up for re-election, and won. Colleen Garry won her re-election in Massachusetts last year after
introducing HB1320. So did Bob McDermott, with HB 2181 in Hawaii. I looked at 197 legislators who wrote, introduced,
or co-sponsored trans discrimination bills in 2016. Of them, three quarters were running
for re-election that year. And of the politicians running for re-election who introduced
discriminatory bills, 96% kept their seat. Lets be clear: this country does not have a problem with trans people
committing crimes in bathrooms. But what we do have is a lot of politicians in search of some way to
pander to their base. If this was a decade ago, theyd come up with a wedge issue like, oh I dont know, same-sex marriage. Thats
what they did in 2004, and it worked great Republicans put marriage equality on the ballot in 11 states,
and more in state legislatures. And how did they justify those laws? By claiming that banning gay marriage would protect
children. Sound familiar? Theyre doing exactly the same thing with bathrooms that they did with marriage. In 2004, the GOP wove
a fantasy about gay marriage being a threat to children, that same-sex couples are dangerous. They cant
get away with that anymore. So now those same political forces have turned to the next
group they can tell a scary story about: trans people who just want to pee. And lets be clear: Trans
people have been using facilities consistent with their gender identity for decades, and there are no documented cases of
any trans person using an inclusive bathroom policy to harass, or attack, or commit any
kind of crime in this country. Banning trans people doesnt make bathrooms safer. In fact,
if anyones in danger, its trans people themselves. A Williams Institute study showed that
70% have been been harassed or attacked when trying to use a bathroom. So if politicians
really cared about safety, theyd make bathrooms more inclusive, not less. These bans exist
to benefit one group, and one group alone: politicians overwhelmingly Republican
who are worried about losing their seats and dont mind pandering to unfounded fears.
That worked great with gay marriage in 2004. It worked again with bathrooms in 2016. If
only those laws could protect citizens as well as they protect the politicians passing them.
7/12/17
 States CP Solvency deficit- no funds
States cant solve- cant pay for the CP since theyre facing revenue declines and
huge spending cuts including to education in the status quo
Frazee 17 Gretchen Frazee, staff writer, PBS Newshour, February 22, 2017, Nearly half of
states are facing budget shortfalls. Heres why that matters.,
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/nearly-half-of-states-are-facing-a-budget-shortfall-heres-
why-that-matters/, VM
States arent starting out in a good place, and things could possibly get much, much worse very quickly, said Richard Auxier, a researcher at
the Urban Institute, an economic policy research group. Nearly half of all states are projected to have budget
shortfalls for the fiscal year 2018, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers, a nonpartisan research
organization. Alaska, Connecticut, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Oregon all face deficits of around $1 billion. And proposed cuts to
federal spending is making budget planning even more difficult. In the short term, states
are proposing massive cuts to some of their programs. Connecticut, which must address a $1.3 billion deficit, is
taking a two-pronged approach. Democratic Gov. Daniel Malloys proposed budget includes about $200 million in new taxes, and would cut
back on state employee labor costs and shift teacher pension costs to cities and towns. Missouri
Gov. Eric Greitens, facing a
$460 million budget shortfall, proposed cutting $146 million from the states current budget. About $82 million
of that would come from higher education. Greitens proposed $27.6 billion budget did not include any tax hikes. At a press
conference outlining his plan earlier this month, Greitens, a Republican, said he was confident the states education officials could tighten their
belts, just like the rest of us, help us focus on excellence, and get back to the basics. But some fiscal watchdogs said balancing the budget would
require broader changes. This isnt simply a matter of were running short this year, said Traci Gleason, a spokeswoman with the Missouri
Budget Project. We have made a series of policy decisions over the past several decades that have starved our state of the services that can grow
our economy and create good quality jobs. Confronting tough choices Many states are still grappling with federal
spending cuts put in place during the recession, which put a major strain on state and local
budgets. As the country emerged from the downturn, many governors cut taxes in hopes of
boosting economic growth. But in many cases the projected growth never materialized, Auxier
said. States also made steep cuts of their own during the recession and kept them in place
afterward, leaving little padding in their budgets. Technology has also exacerbated the
problem. Historically, states have relied on tax revenue from goods purchased within state lines.
But online shopping has upended that model, causing a portion of states tax revenue to
evaporate. States also made steep cuts of their own during the recession and kept them in place afterward, leaving little padding in their
budgets. And as the countrys population ages, older consumers have also started spending
less money on tangible goods, like homes and cars, and more on services such as health care that bring in less tax revenue.
The federal government and states like Missouri havent updated their tax codes to reflect changing
consumer behavior, Gleason said. When it comes to federal spending, Trump has not released his budget proposal yet. But he has
promised large cuts to reduce tremendous waste. Congressional Republicans are outlining their own budget
proposals that could drastically change how Congress allocates federal funds. Defense spending, Medicare, Social Security and interest on
the national debt make up more than 80 percent of the federal budget. Given that reality, the first thing on the chopping block
are [usually] the funds that trickle down to state and local governments, Auxier said. Many of
the plans being floated by Republicans would give states more control over how they spend
the federal dollars, but would provide less funding overall, forcing states that want to
make up the gap to look elsewhere for funding.
 States CPs with tax planks link to Politics
Tax plank links to politics
AEI 13 American Enterprise Institute (AEI),Gas Tax Increases Unpopular, May 7, 2013,
http://www.aei.org/multimedia/gas-tax-increases-unpopular/, VM
Gallup has been polling people how they would vote on a series of issues, and their latest question asks about a gas tax
increase of up to 20 cents a gallon to be used to improve roads and bridges and for more mass transportation in the respondents states.
Twenty-nine percent of respondents were in favor, with 66 percent opposed. Majorities of
Democrats, Republicans, and Independents were opposed. In a Gallup poll earlier this year, people were asked
whether a series of things were hurting, helping, or having no effect on their finances. The top response in terms of hurting, cited by 79 percent of
those polled, was fuel and gas prices. Source: The Gallup Organization, April 2013.
7/13/17
 Neolib K Alt
The alternative is to adopt the war mentality and rethink solidarity- only this
overcomes the shortcomings of horizontalist approaches that have failed the left for
the last 2 decades
Fisher 13 Mark Fisher, Programme Leader of the MA in Aural and Visual Cultures at
Goldsmiths, University of London and a lecturer at the University of East London, July 18, 2013,
How to kill a zombie: strategizing the end of neoliberalism, OpenDemocracy/University of
York Center for Modern Studies Editorial Partnership, https://www.opendemocracy.net/mark-
fisher/how-to-kill-zombie-strategizing-end-of-neoliberalism, VM
Only the horizontalist left believes the rhetoric about the obsolescence of the state. The danger of
the neo-anarchist critique is that it essentializes the state, parliamentary democracy and mainstream
media but none of these things is forever fixed. They are mutable terrains to be struggled over, and the shape they
now assume is itself the effect of previous struggles. It seems, as times, as if the horizontalists want to occupy
everything except parliament and the mainstream media. But why not occupy the state and the media too? Neo-
anarchism isnt so much of a challenge to capitalist realism as it is one of its effects. Anarchist fatalism according to which it is
easier to imagine the end of capitalism than a left-wing Labour Party is the complement of the capitalist realist
insistence that there is no alternative to capitalism. None of this is to say that occupying mainstream media or
politics will be enough in themselves. If New Labour taught us anything, it was that holding office is by no means the same thing as winning
hegemony. Yet without a parliamentary strategy of some kind, movements will keep foundering and collapsing. The task is to make the links
between the extra-parliamentary energies of the movements and the pragmatism of those within existing institutions. Retrain
ourselves
to adopt a war mentality If you want to consider the most telling drawback of horizontalism, though, think about how it looks from
the perspective of the enemy. Capital must be delighted by the popularity of horizontalist discourses
in the anti-capitalist movement. Would you rather face a carefully co-ordinated enemy, or
one that takes decisions via nine-hour assemblies? Which isnt to say that we should fall back into the consoling
fantasy that any kind of return to old school Leninism is either possible or desirable. The fact that we have been left with a
choice between Leninism and anarchism is a measure of current leftist impotence. Its
crucial to leave behind this sterile binary. The struggle against authoritarianism neednt entail neo-anarchism, just as
effective organization doesnt necessarily require a Leninist party. What is required, however, is taking seriously the fact that we are up against
an enemy that has no doubt at all that it is in a class war, and which devotes many of its enormous resources training its people to fight it.
Theres a reason that MBA students read The Art of War and if we are to make progress
we have to rediscover the desire to win and the confidence that we can. We must learn to
overcome certain habits of anti-Stalinist thinking. The danger is not any more, nor has it
been for some time, excessive dogmatic fervor on our side. Instead, the post-68 left has
tended to overvalue the negative capability of remaining in doubt, scepticism and
uncertainties - this may be an aesthetic virtue, but it is a political vice. The self-doubt that
has been endemic on the left since the 60s is little in evidence on the right one reason that
the right has been so successful in imposing its programme. Many on the left now quail at
the thought of formulating a programme, still less imposing one. But we have to give up
on the belief that people will spontaneously turn to the left, or that neoliberalism will
collapse without our actively dismantling it. Rethink solidarity The old solidarity that neoliberalism decomposed has
gone, never to return. But this does not mean that we are consigned to atomized individualism. Our challenge now is to
reinvent solidarity. Alex Williams has come up with the suggestive formulation post-Fordist
plasticity to describe what this new solidarity might look like. As Catherine Malabou has shown, plasticity is not the same as elasticity.
Elasticity is equivalent to the flexibility which neoliberalism demands of us, in which we assume a form imposed from outside. But plasticity is
something else: it implies both adaptability and resilience, a capacity for modification which also
retains a memory of previous encounters. Rethinking solidarity in these terms may help us to give up some tired
assumptions. This kind of solidarity doesn't necessarily entail overarching unity or centralized
control. But moving beyond unity neednt lead us into the flatness of horizontalism, either. Instead of the rigidity of unity
the aspiration for which, ironically, has contributed to the lefts notorious sectarianism - what we need is the co-ordination of
diverse groups, resources and desires. The right have been better postmodernists than us,
building successful coalitions out of heterogeneous interest groups without the need for an
overall unity. We must learn from them, to start to build a similar patchwork on our side.
This is more a logistical problem than a philosophical one. In addition to the plasticity of
organizational form, we need also to pay attention to the plasticity of desire. Freud said that
the libidinal drives are extraordinarily plastic. If desire is not a fixed biological essence,
then there is no natural desire for capitalism. Desire is always composed. Advertisers,
branders and PR consultants have always known this, and the struggle against
neoliberalism will require that we construct an alternative model of desire that can
compete with the one pushed by capitals libidinal technicians. Whats certain is that we are now in
an ideological wasteland in which neoliberalism is dominant only by default. The terrain is
up for grabs, and Friedmans remark should be our inspiration: it is now our task to develop alternatives to
existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes
the politically inevitable.
7/15/17
 STEM is Racist
STEM education is profoundly racist and reflects an ingrained intelligence
hierarchy in teachers and professors
Kendi 10 Dr. Ibram X. Kendi (formerly Dr. Ibram H. Rogers), Professor of History and
International Relations and the Founding Director of the Anti-Racist Research and Policy Center
at American University ,STEM Careers and 21st Century Academic Racism, March 26, 2010,
Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, http://diverseeducation.com/article/31237/, VM
AALANAs = African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans
This week, I came across a study that found that a significant number of women and AALANAs (African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Native
Americans) were discouraged from pursuing their STEM careers. In
Facts of Science Education XIV, the
research firm Campos surveyed 1,226 women and AALANA members of the American
Chemical Societyparticularly chemists and chemical engineers and found that 40
percent of them had been discouraged by individuals during the course of their successful
pursuit of a STEM career. Latino women and Black men had the highest levels of
discouragement half in the sample for both groups. And who were the worst offenders? Their college
professors! Almost half of those pointed to their college professors as the chief source their
discouragement, and 60 percent reported they experienced dissuasion in college. African-
American women were dissuaded the most by their professors an alarming 65 percent.
To me, this is a glaring manifestation of collegiate sexism and racism in the 21st century. I
am not conceiving of the discriminatory aspect of these isms. I am talking about its evil
twin the conception of the natural racial and gender hierarchy. One of the elements of this hierarchy
concerns intellect. There was a time when it was believed by too many men and too many Whites that women and AALANAs were only
intellectually capable of service and supposedly low-skilled work. This idea and others have retreated from the public sphere and even many
minds, as their capability has become obvious. Women
and AALANAs may have forced their way up the
ladder, but the hierarchy of intellect still remains. At the top of the gender and racial
hierarchy has tended to be those people in STEM areas. The smartest people, the idea goes
as many people think, are those in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Those
areas reside on the Broadway of intelligence. They exist in the penthouse suite of the hierarchy. In other words, most people, I would assume
possibly wrongly, consider those in STEM careers to be the smartest. A
large segment of racist and sexist America
also consider, I would assume with more assurance, that White men are the most intelligent
demographic group. When you put the two ideas together, you have White men being most
appropriately suited to STEM careers. We should, the line of thought goes, encourage
White men to pursue STEM and discourage everyone else, specifically African-American
women who are pushed to the basement of the hierarchy. In effect, the powerful campaign
of efforts to encourage women and AALANA to enter STEM careers is continuously hitting
a wall of sexism and racism in higher education. We can not see the wall, but like sexism
and racism more generally in the 21st century, the victims surely do feel it. Often times
when these students are discouraged, the professors that give them advice are genuinely
concerned about the students well-being. But they do not recognize their concern may
stem from their ingrained hierarchy of intellectually capability. Also, I think some women and AALANA
faculty in the social sciences may discourage students from STEM not necessarily because of this hierarchy and more because of their
encouragement to pursue their own disciplines. But even though I love producing African-American historians, snatching students away from
STEM continues the cycle of under-representation and the consequent sexist and racist hierarchy. I am starting to realize that in a larger sense, a
college professor should rarely (to never) discourage students away from something they want to pursue. I think it is better to question rather than
all out dissuade and allow the students to dissuade themselves because of the thoughtful questions professors provide. In STEM or any field,
faculty should be those sources of support to women and AALANA students. A professor should be a tour guide, not a director.
 Fem K link
Education reform is sexist- trying to close gender and racial achievement gaps isnt
enough
Perry 16 Dr. Andre Perry, dean of urban education at Davenport University, Ph.D. in education
policy and leadership from the University of Maryland-College Park, How education reform
exacerbates sexism, The Hechinger Report, Covering Innovation and Inequality in Education,
August 1, 2016, http://hechingerreport.org/how-education-reform-exacerbates-sexism/, VM
Tucked away from the hoopla and ruckus of the Democratic National Convention at a quaint restaurant a few miles away, approximately 200
people gathered at Rights4Girls at the DNC to rally around issues ostensibly washed out in the convention hall. Instead of red, white and blue
streamers, the room was festooned with art and info-graphics, which described the state of girls and women in the United States. A picture
inspired by a 12-year-old girl who was trafficked for sex in California was put up for auction. A poster read, Girls are the fastest growing
segment of the juvenile justice system. This story also appeared in The Root One of the priorities that we would add to a platform for
marginalized young women and girls is to dismantle the sexual abuse to prison pipeline thats criminalizing our girls, in particular our girls of
color, for being victims of sexual abuse, said Yasmin Vava, executive director of Rights4Girls. The event did more than simply highlight
injustices suffered by school-aged girls, it launched a new campaign that illustrates how school
reform often ends up making
those injustices worse. Our society is so weighted by the gravity of sexism that our laws,
solutions and reforms contribute to the victimization of those we are supposed to
protect. During the event, Vava and honored guests spoke to the criminalization of victims of child sex trafficking in the United States.
Speakers made clear there should be no difference between abusing a child and paying to abuse a child through prostitution. In many states
trafficked children arent always protected by statutory rape laws. There is no such thing as a child prostitute; its rape. If
education
reform isnt specifically trying to replace systems of patriarchy and white supremacy, what
exactly are we doing? When we fail to recognize there is no difference between these two acts, were actually protecting abusers.
We are shielding the men who abuse these children and who essentially pay to rape these children, Vava added. The topic of child
sex trafficking, and sexism in general is not one that education reformers pay much
attention to, but they must start if were really going to uplift communities of color. Are
governance changes through charter schools protecting girls and women? Are curricula
teaching boys not to shame women? Are discipline practices further victimizing
marginalized students, including young women who have suffered abuse? Rigidly focusing
on gap closing misses underlying causes and immediate threats of sexism, sexual abuse
and poverty that that many young girls of color face, and how that those factors impact
their education and future prospects. Rights4Girls awarded three champions working to end sex trafficking and gender-
based violence. U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, CEO of the 2016 DNC Committee Leah Daughtry and Wake Forest University professor
Melissa Harris-Perry received crystal plaques of appreciation, but their collective work on youth sex trafficking provides example of a local,
national and educational strategy to end state-sanctioned sexism, which injures and kills girls and women in multiple ways. Judge Lori Dumas,
activist Michael Skolnik and Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney also spoke about their commitments to end sex trafficking. Related: Why more
black male teachers should be feminists Research
shows that black and Latina girls who are suspended
are more likely to drop out of school and face the juvenile justice system. The Rights4Girls website
reports 66 percent of incarcerated girls are girls of color despite them making up only 22 percent of the general youth population. Seventy-three
percent of girls in the juvenile justice system report past histories of physical and sexual abuse and 40 percent are LBGTQ youth. So lets put
ourselves in the shoes of young black and Latino men and women who face the effects of systemic racism, and are made to feel like their lives are
disposable. Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton Changing
laws and policies around prostitution and
expulsion is only one step toward changing the systems of oppression that really generated
the disparities, just as helping students of color score higher on standardized tests isnt
sufficient to overturn the systems of oppression that keep them from reaching their
potential. In an era in which disruption and deconstruction of school districts are seen as
victories, we seldom see replacements to the former arrangements that take on patriarchy
and white supremacy. The speakers at Rights4Girls reinforced the notion that dismantling systems of patriarchy requires changing
laws like those around prostitution, but it also demands the promotion of healthy forms of masculinity. Likewise,
ending harsh
disciplinary school practices, inequitable funding structures, and racist curricula demand
we replace them with positive models. Protecting girls also requires unlearning how we
insidiously shame and abuse girls and women, including in schools, and it requires an
education reform strategy that is fundamentally different from what is offered currently. If
education reform isnt specifically trying to replace systems of patriarchy and white supremacy, what exactly are we doing? At the culminating
speech of the DNC, the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said, So lets put ourselves in the shoes of young black and Latino men and women
who face the effects of systemic racism, and are made to feel like their lives are disposable. Rights4Girls explicit efforts to replace patriarchy
should be copied in education. Its
become clear that gap closing isnt a substantive goal. From New
Orleans to Newark, weve learned there are too many nefarious ways to close an
achievement gap. Weve removed worker protections and fired majority women teachers,
in the name of closing gaps. We expel girls and boys of color, writing them off as
unavoidable casualties in the battle to close the gap. And weve funded and empowered
white, paternalistic organizations to implement these approaches. Addressing the root
causes of racism, and, just as important, sexism requires upending something far more
fundamental than school autonomy and test-based accountability. Its time we stopped thinking that
moving furniture in the same chauvinistic living room is the same as extracting its sexist foundation. Rights4Girls example teaches me that
education reform can be more a tool of patriarchy and racism than a solution. We have to do more than put ourselves in the shoes of young black
and Latino men and women. We must hold ourselves accountable to ending patriarchy and systemic racism.
7/16/17
 Skepticism K
Vote neg on presumption: senses alone cannot account for knowledge and reason is
incapable of providing justification for any belief- this means we can never truly
know anything, meaning you never conclude the aff is true or solves
Truncellito 7 David A. Truncellito, B.A Mathematics and Philosophy Yale (1992), M.A.
Analytic Philosophy University of Arizona (1997), Ph.D Analytic Philosophy (1999) University
of Arizona, Internet Encyclopedia of Philsophy (IEP), June 2007, Epistemology,
http://www.iep.utm.edu/epistemo/#SH4b, VM
d. Humean Skepticism According to the indistinguishability skeptic, my senses can tell me how things appear, but not how they actually are. We
need to use reason to construct an argument that leads us from beliefs about how things appear to (justified) beliefs about how they are. But
even if we are able to trust our perceptions, so that we know that they are accurate, David Hume
argues that the specter of skepticism remains. Note that we only perceive a very small part of the
universe at any given moment, although we think that we have knowledge of the world beyond that which we are currently
perceiving. It follows, then, that the senses alone cannot account for this knowledge, and that
reason must supplement the senses in some way in order to account for any such
knowledge. However, Hume argues, reason is incapable of providing justification for any belief
about the external world beyond the scope of our current sense perceptions. Let us consider two such
possible arguments and Hume's critique of them. i. Numerical vs. Qualitative Identity We typically believe that the external world is, for the most
part, stable. For instance, I believe that my car is parked where I left it this morning, even though I am not currently looking at it. If I were to go
peek out the window right now and see my car, I might form the belief that my car has been in the same space all day. What is the basis for this
belief? If
asked to make my reasoning explicit, I might proceed as follows: I have had two
sense-experiences of my car: one this morning and one just now. The two sense-experiences were (more or
less) identical. Therefore, it is likely that the objects that caused them are identical. Therefore, a single object my car has been in that parking
space all day. Similar reasoning would undergird all of our beliefs about the persistence of the external world and all of the objects we perceive.
But are these beliefs justified? Hume thinks not, since the above argument (and all arguments like it) contains an equivocation. In particular, the
first occurrence of "identical" refers to qualitative identity. The
two sense-experiences are not one and the same,
but are distinct; when we say that they are identical we mean that one is similar to the
other in all of its qualities or properties. But the second occurrence of "identical" refers to
numerical identity. When we say that the objects that caused the two sense-experiences are
identical, we mean that there is one object, rather than two, that is responsible for both of
them. This equivocation, Hume argues, renders the argument fallacious; accordingly, we need
another argument to support our belief that objects persist even when we are not observing
them. ii. Hume's Skepticism about Induction Suppose that a satisfactory argument could be found in
support of our beliefs in the persistence of physical objects. This would provide us with
knowledge that the objects that we have observed have persisted even when we were not
observing them. But in addition to believing that these objects have persisted up until now,
we believe that they will persist in the future; we also believe that objects we have never
observed similarly have persisted and will persist. In other words, we expect the future to be roughly like the past,
and the parts of the universe that we have not observed to be roughly like the parts that we have observed. For example, I believe that my car will
persist into the future. What is the basis for this belief? If asked to make my reasoning explicit, I might proceed as follows: My car has always
persisted in the past. Nature is roughly uniform across time and space (and thus the future will be roughly like the past). Therefore, my car will
persist in the future. Similar reasoning would undergird all of our beliefs about the future and about the unobserved. Are such beliefs justified?
Again, Hume thinks not, since the above argument, and all arguments like it, contain an
unsupported premise, namely the second premise, which might be called the Principle of
the Uniformity of Nature (PUN). Why should we believe this principle to be true? Hume insists that we
provide some reason in support of this belief. Because the above argument is an inductive
rather than a deductive argument, the problem of showing that it is a good argument is
typically referred to as the "problem of induction." We might think that there is a simple
and straightforward solution to the problem of induction, and that we can indeed provide
support for our belief that PUN is true. Such an argument would proceed as follows: PUN
has always been true in the past. Nature is roughly uniform across time and space (and
thus the future will be roughly like the past). Therefore, PUN will be true in the future.
This argument, however, is circular; its second premise is PUN itself! Accordingly, we need
another argument to support our belief that PUN is true, and thus to justify our inductive
arguments about the future and the unobserved.
7/17/17
 Vouchers Segregation
Contemporary voucher programs exacerbate socio-economic and racial segregation.
Kearns 17 - (Devon Kearns is the Associate Director of Media Relations at American Progress,
7-13-2017, "RELEASE: CAP Releases Issue Brief on the Racist Origins of Private School
Vouchers", https://www.americanprogress.org/press/release/2017/07/13/435702/release-cap-
releases-issue-brief-racist-origins-private-school-vouchers/, DOA: 7-17-2017) //Snowball
Washington, D.C. (ENEWSPF)July 14, 2017. On the heels of proposals from Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos,
and President Donald Trump to create the first nationwide federal voucher program while
slashing funds for public schools and loosening civil rights protections, a new issue brief from
the Center for American Progress explores the historical link between private school vouchers and
segregationist policies in the United States. The impacts of voucher programs put in place to
avoid desegregation still reverberate in the U.S. education system today. The issue brief centers on the
extreme measures taken by Prince Edward County, Virginia, who shut down their public schools for five
years rather than desegregate the public schools after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court
decisions. County officials provided tuition grantsa private school voucher systemfor white
students to attend Prince Edward Academy, a segregation academy that served as a model for
other communities in the South. Vouchers supporting these types of schools were eventually ruled
unconstitutional but had a lasting impact on public education in communities that operated dual
public and privateschool systems where research has shown taxpayers are less inclined to fund the
public system. Fast forward to 2017: President Trump and Education Secretary DeVos have championed a plan to
provide federal funding for private school voucher systems nationwide, which would funnel
millions of taxpayer dollars out of public schools and into unaccountable private schoolsa
school reform policy that they say would provide better options for low-income students. Their budget proposal would slash the
Education Departments budget by more than 13 percentor $9 billionwhile providing $1.25 billion for school
choice, including $250 million for private school vouchers. But there is little evidence that Secretary DeVos is
considering this policys history and including protections for vulnerable students in a
potential new federal program. In fact, at a congressional hearing in May, Secretary DeVos declined to say
whether she would protect students against discriminatory policies in private schools that
receive federal funding through vouchers. Policymakers need to acknowledge the historical
context of private school vouchers and protect against potential discriminatory
consequences from these programs. Modern-day voucher programs are nondiscriminatory on
their face but can still exacerbate racial and socio-economic segregation. We should instead be
focusing on adequately and equitably funding public education, protecting the rights of
vulnerable students, and reducing racial and socio-economic segregation, said Carmel Martin,
executive vice president of policy at the Center for American Progress. When considering voucher policy, we must
confront its history, said Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA 3), the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Choice devoid of controls for diversity and civil rights protections for vulnerable students
tends to further segregate and negatively impact our most vulnerable students. And in its
staunch advocacy in support of vouchers and cuts to public education funding, this
Administration has not only failed to confront that history, but also failed to answer
important questions about its commitment to protect and promote the civil rights of all
students.
7/18/17
 Schools have been Corporatized
Public schools have been systematically corporatized, creating massive inequalities,
cruel optimism, and academic dishonesty
Mills 12 Nicolaus Mills, professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College. His most
recent book is Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and Americas Coming of Age as a
Superpower. Fall 2012, Dissent Magazine, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-
corporatization-of-higher-education, VM
The most visible sign of the corporatization of higher education lies in the commitment that
colleges and universities have made to winning the ratings war perpetuated by the kinds of
ranking U.S. News and World Report now offers in its annual Best Colleges guide. Since its relatively modest debut in
1983, the Best Colleges guide has grown in influence. For any number of small colleges,
getting traction from the Best Colleges guide may be a dream, but for a wide range of
middle-tier and upper-tier colleges and universities, winning a good Best Colleges
ranking is considered so essential to success that it shapes internal policies. Robert Morse, who heads
the team that makes up the college and university rankings for U.S. News, says the Best Colleges guide never sought to shape higher education
policy, but that claim no longer matters. Colleges and universities continue to do whatever they can to
boost their U.S. News ranking, especially when it comes to whom they admit. It is now a standard practice
for many schools to solicit applications from students who have done well on their SAT
tests, even though they know there is no room for most of these students. Admissions officers dont
mind this waste of their time. The more students a college or university gets to reject, the higher it is
ranked on the all-important U.S. News selectivity scale. Having a student body with impressive SAT scores is
great; having a student body with impressive SATs and rejecting more applicants than a rival is better still. The closer a college or
university comes to Harvards nationwide low of taking just 5.9 percent of its applicants,
the happier parents are. Instead of backfiring, the make-it-as-hard-as-possible-to-get-in
strategy has pushed more and more high school students to go to extremes to win the
attention of admissions officers. Recent cheating scandals at New York Citys elite
Stuyvesant High School and the Great Neck high schools on Long Islands Gold Coast
show how desperate even gifted high school students are these days. Everyone is telling them they
need to find an edge. Middle-class families as well as the rich are as a result spending thousands of
dollars to hire private college advisers, SAT tutors, and sports coaches for their college-age
sons and daughters. The students who succeed in getting into our highest-ranked colleges
and universities are thus far wealthier than the population as a whole. At elite schools, 74
percent of the student body come from the top quarter of the socioeconomic scale, while
just 3 percent come from the bottom quarter. What follows from this skewed demographic pattern is a second layer of
college spending. In the eyes of college administrators, students, especially those who are not on
scholarship, have become customers who need to feel satisfied with the campus experience
bought for them at prices that now top $50,000 per year at many elite schools.
 Schools are Militarized
Public schools are symbolic of the military-prison complex of America- they are
completely securitized and militarized, which causes lots of bad impacts- only local
resistance can solve and creates a great coalitional starting point against oppressions
Saltman 7 Kenneth J. Saltman is an assistant professor in Social and Cultural Foundations in
Education at DePaul University. He is the author of Collateral Damage: Corporatizing Public
SchoolsA Threat to Democracy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001) and Capitalizing on Disaster:
Taking and Breaking Schools (Paradigm Publishers, 2007). Education as Enforcement:
Militarization and Corporatization of Schools, Educating for Equity | Vol. 14 No. 2 | Fall 2007,
http://www.reimaginerpe.org/node/1177, VM
Public schools in the United States have increasingly come to resemble the military and
prison systems with their hiring of military generals as school administrators and heavy
investment in security apparatusmetal detectors, high-tech dog tag IDs, chainlink fences,
and real-time Internet-based or hidden mobile surveillance camerasplus, their school
uniforms, security consultants, surprise searches, and the presence of police on campuses.1
But it would be a mistake to understand the preoccupation with security as merely a mass media-driven hysteria in the wake of Virginia Tech and
other high-profile shootings, and myopic to ignore the history of public school militarization prior to September 11. Militarized
education in the United States needs to be understood in relation to the enforcement of
global corporate imperatives as they expand markets through the real and symbolic
violence of war. Militarism and the promotion of violence as virtue pervade foreign and
domestic policy, popular culture, educational discourse, and language. A high level of
comfort with rising militarism in all areas of life, particularly schooling, set the stage for
the radically militarized reactions to September 11including the institutionalization of
permanent war, the suspension of civil liberties, and an active hostility from the state and
mass media towards any attempt to address the underlying causes for the unprecedented
attack on the United States. I believe that militarized schooling in America encompasses
two broad trendsmilitary education and what may be called education as
enforcement. Junior Reserve Officer Training CorpsTwo Agendas Military education refers to explicit efforts
to expand and legitimate military training in public schools and is exemplified by the
Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC), the Troops to Teachers program (which
places retired soldiers in schools), the trend towards hiring military generals as school
superintendents or CEOs, the school uniform movement, the Lockheed Martin
corporations public school in Georgia, and the armys development of the biggest online
education program in the world as a recruiting tool. A large number of private military schools, such as the
notorious Virginia Military Institute (VMI), service the public military academies and the military itself and are considered ideals that public
school militarization should strive towards. Like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, military
education turns hierarchical
organization, competition, group cohesion, and weaponry into fun and games. The focus on
adventure activities has made these programs extremely successful at recruitment and nearly half (47 percent) of the 200,000 students in the
1,420 JROTC army programs nationwide enter military service. In
addition to promoting recruitment, military
education plays a central role in fostering a social focus on discipline exemplified by the
rise of militarized policing, increased powers for search and seizure, the laws against public
gathering, zero tolerance policies, and the transformation of welfare into punishing
workfare programs. This militarization of civil society has been further intensified since September 11, as conservatives and liberals
alike have seized upon the terrorist threat to justify the passage of the USA Patriot Act. The
education as enforcement
trend understands militarized public schooling to be part of the militarization of civil
society, which in turn has to be understood as being part of the broader social, cultural,
and economic movements for state-backed corporate globalization seeking to erode
democratic power while expanding and enforcing corporate power at local, national, and
global levels. Neoliberalisms Role In Education Corporate globalization, which should be viewed as a
doctrine rather than as an inevitable phenomenon, is driven by the philosophy of
neoliberalism whose economic and political doctrine insists upon the virtues of
privatization and liberalization of trade, while concomitantly placing its faith in the
discipline of the market for the resolution of all social and individual problems. Within the United
States, neoliberal policies have been characterized by supporters as free market policies that encourage private enterprise and consumer choice,
reward personal responsibility and entrepreneurial initiative, and undermine the dead hand of the incompetent, bureaucratic, and parasitic
government that can never do good even if well intended, which it rarely is.2 Within
the neoliberal view, the public
sphereschools, parks, social security, and healthcare includedshould either be
privatized or put into service for the private sphere, as in the case of federal subsidies for
corporate agriculture, entertainment, and defense. Ronald Reagan entered office with plans to dismantle the United
States Department of Education and implement market-based voucher schemes. Both initiatives failed largely because of the teachers unions and
the fact that public opinion was yet to be influenced by corporate-financed public relations campaigns that make neoliberal ideals appear
commonsensical.3 However, during his second term as president, Reagan successfully appropriated the racial, equity-based, magnet school
voucher model developed by liberals to declare that the market model (rather than authoritative federal action against racism) was responsible for
the high quality of these schools.4 The
real triumph of the market-based rhetoric was to shift discussion
away from political concerns about the role of public education in preparing citizens for
democratic participation and to redefine public schooling as a good or service, like toilet
paper or soap, which students and parents consume. Educating to Enforce Globalization Despite a history of racial
and class oppressionowing in no small part to the fact that public schooling has been tied to local property wealth and hence, unequally
distributed as a resourceand the material and ideological constraints often faced by teachers and administrators ,
public schooling
has always been a forum for democratic deliberation where communities could convene to
struggle over values or envision a future far broader than the one imagined by
multinational corporations. Hence, in speaking of militarized public schooling in the United States, it is not enough to identify
the extent to which certain schools (particularly urban, non-white schools) increasingly resemble prisons or serve as prime recruitment grounds
for the military. Instead,
militarized public schooling needs to be understood in terms of the
enforcement of globalization through implementation of all the policies and reforms that
are guided by neoliberal ideals. Globalization gets enforced through: (a) privatization
schemes, such as vouchers, charters, performance contracting, and commercialization; (b)
standards and accountability schemes that seek to enforce a uniform curriculum with
emphasis on testing and quantifiable performance; and (c) assessment, accreditation (in
higher education), and curricula that celebrate market values and the culture of those in
power, rather than human and democratic values. The curricula are designed to avoid
critical questions about the relationship between the production of knowledge and power,
authority, politics, history, and ethics. Some multinational corporations, such as Disney
with their Celebration School, and BP Amoco with their middle-level science curriculum,
have appropriated progressive pedagogical methods that strive to promote a vision of a
world best served under a benevolent corporate management. Education as a National Security Issue The
Hart-Rudman commission in 2000 called for education to be classified as an issue of
national security, hence requiring increased federal funding for school security at the cost
of community policing, and the continuation of the Troops to Teachers program. This kind
of thinking is characteristic of the antifederalist aspect of neoliberalisma politics of
containment rather than investmentand efficacious in keeping large segments of the
population uneducated or undereducated, and encouraging the flow of funds to the defense
and high-tech sectors and away from populations deemed to be of little use to capital. Most
importantly, those employed in low-skill, low-paying service sector jobs, would likely complain or even organize if they were encouraged to
question and think too much. Education and literacy are tied to political participation. Participation might mean educated elites demanding social
investment in public projects, or at least projects that might benefit most people. That is the real reason why the federal government wants
soldiers rather than unemployed Ph.Ds in the classrooms. Additionally, corporate globalization initiatives, such as the Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA), seek to allow corporate competition in the public sector at an unprecedented level. In
theory, public schools
would have to compete with for-profit schooling initiatives from any corporation in the
world. But by redefining public schooling as a national security issue, it can be exempt from
the purview that agreements, such as the FTAA, impose on nations. Consistent with the
trend, education as national security defines the public interest through reforms that
inhibit teaching as a critical and intellectual endeavor that aims to make a participatory
citizenry capable of building the public sphere. Transforming the War Economy In his book, After Capitalism,
Seymour Melman argues that a central task of the future is the transformation of a war economy into a civilian onenot only for former Soviet
states but also for the United States. Considering
the ways that the global financial system maintains
poverty and the military system produces war, a key task for educators is to imagine
education as a means of mobilizing citizens to understand these systems and steer them
toward a goal of global democracy and justice. Militarized schooling can be resisted at the
local level. Kevin Ramirez, for example, started and runs the Military Out of our Schools
campaign that seeks to eject JROTC programs from public schools. Ramirez points out to
parents, teachers, administrators, and newspaper reporters that school violence is an
extension of social violence, which is taught through programs like the JROTC. I have argued that
militarized education in the United States needs to be understood in relation to the
enforcement of corporate economic imperatives and a rising trend towards law and
order that pervades popular culture, educational discourse, foreign policy, and language.
Therefore, the movement against militarism in education must go beyond the schools and
challenge the many ways that militarism as a cultural logic enforces the expansion of
corporate power and decimates public power. Such a movement must include the practice
of critical pedagogy and ideally, also link with other movements against oppression, such as
the antiglobalization, feminist, labor, environmental, and antiracism movements. Together, we
can form the basis for imagining and implementing a just future.
7/19/17
 Trump Wrecks Hegemony
Trump guarantees global destruction and the end of hegemony.
McCoy 17 - (Alfred W. McCoy is the Harrington professor of history at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, 7-19-2017, "The Demolition of U.S. Global Power. The Accelerated
Collapse of American Global Hegemony", http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-demolition-of-u-s-
global-power-the-accelerated-collapse-of-american-global-hegemony/5600078, DOA: 7-19-
2017) //Snowball
The superhighway to disaster is already being paved. From Donald Trumps first days in office,
news of the damage to Americas international stature has come hard and fast. As if guided by some malign
design, the new president seemed to identify the key pillars that have supported U.S. global
power for the past 70 years and set out to topple each of them in turn. By degrading NATO, alienating
Asian allies, cancelling trade treaties, and slashing critical scientific research, the Trump White
House is already in the process of demolishing the delicately balanced architecture that has sustained
Washingtons world leadership since the end of World War II. However unwittingly, Trump is ensuring
the accelerated collapse of American global hegemony. Stunned by his succession of foreign policy blunders,
commentators left and right, domestic and foreign have raised their voices in a veritable chorus of
criticism. A Los Angeles Times editorial typically called him so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so
full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that he threatened to weaken this
countrys moral standing in the world and imperil the planet through his appalling
policy choices. Hes a sucker whos shrinking U.S. influence in [Asia] and helping make China
great again, wrote New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman after surveying the damage to the countrys
Asian alliances from the presidents decision to tear up the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade deal in his first week
in office. The international press has been no less harsh. Reeling from Trumps denunciation of South Koreas
free-trade agreement as horrible and his bizarre claim that the country had once been a part
of China, Seouls leading newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, expressed the shock, betrayal, and anger
many South Koreans have felt. Assessing his first 100 days in office, Britains venerable Observer
commented: Trumps crudely intimidatory, violent, know-nothing approach to sensitive
international issues has encircled the globe from Moscow to the Middle East to Beijing,
plunging foes and allies alike into a dark vortex of expanding strategic instability. For an
American president to virtually walk out of his grand inaugural celebrations into such a hailstorm of criticism is beyond extraordinary. Having
more or less exhausted their lexicon of condemnatory rhetoric, the usual crew
of commentators is now struggling to
understand how an American president could be quite so willfully self-destructive.
7-20-17
 50 states Carbon Tax Funding Plank
Text: The 50 state governments should institute a carbon tax of $20 per ton of CO2
emitted, indexed for inflation annually.
Solves funding issues: its less volatile than other revenue sources and it raises
revenue equivalent to 1% of their state GDP on average- allows funding for school
and social welfare to be less volatile
Bauman et al 16 ADELE C. MORRIS, The Brookings Institution, YORAM BAUMAN,
Carbon Washington, DAVID BOOKBINDER, Niskanen Center, STATE-LEVEL CARBON
TAXES: OPTIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR POLICYMAKERS, Brookings Institution,
July 28, 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/State-level-carbon-taxes-
Options-and-opportunities-for-policymakers.pdf, VM
The states that have begun pricing carbon through cap-and-trade programs have so far used allowance auction revenue primarily for
environmental goals. For example, Californias aforementioned AB 32 and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) for power sector
emissions in nine northeastern states both earmark allowance auction revenue for environment-related purposes.11 A study of the cumulative
$1.4 billion in RGGI auction proceeds from 2008 to 2013 reports that the large majority of the revenue went to energy efficiency programs,
energy bill assistance, and other GHG abatement activities.12 However, some RGGI states have shown interest in using the revenue for non-
environmental purposes. For example, in 2010, New York used half of its revenue and New Jersey used all of its RGGI funds (prior to departing
from the program the following year) to balance their budgets. A
state-level carbon tax, particularly if set above
the price signals operating in existing cap-and trade programs and applied economy-wide,
could raise enough revenue in many states to play a substantial fiscal role.13 How much revenue?
Table 1 below shows the 2013 energy-related CO2 emissions by state in tons as reported by the U.S. Department of Energys Energy Information
Administration (EIA). 14 The table provides an illustrative estimate of the potential revenue in each state, both in millions of dollars and as a
share of state GDP in 2013, by multiplying each states fossil fuel CO2 emissions inventory by a hypothetical tax of $20 per
ton of CO2. 15 Of course, the actual revenue in any state would depend on details of the tax base, the tax rate, how emissions respond to
the price signal, and the policy and macroeconomic shifts that could lower revenues from other tax instruments. But this estimate at least
indicates the order of magnitude of revenues available should policymakers wish to consider a carbon tax option.

[table omitted]
Table 1 shows that some jurisdictions, such as the District of Columbia and Vermont, would raise relatively little
revenue from a carbon tax. That is generally because they either have no power plants within
their borders or because they already have low-carbon electricity sectors, for example by relying
mainly on hydropower. Other states, such as Wyoming and West Virginia, could raise over two percent of their
state GDP from a $20 per ton tax on fossil energy-related CO2 emissions.17 Two percent of
GDP is significant for a state tax; nationally, on average states collect only about five
percent of GDP from their own revenue instruments, including sales, property, income,
and business taxes (not counting transfers from the federal government).18 Forecasting revenue from the carbon
fee involves multiplying the scheduled tax rates by a forecast of emissions subject to the tax.
Revenues will depend on fluctuating demand for fossil energy, for example owing to weather and economic conditions, along with the
responsiveness of fossil energy demand to the carbon price. These factors will vary significantly by state, depending on the existing energy mix,
emissions patterns, and economic activity. Despite
the uncertainties in forecasting carbon tax revenues,
states may find that carbon fees are less volatile than other state revenue sources.19 For
example, one major challenge that California faces is the pro-cyclical nature of its revenue
stream; revenues fall just as economic activity falls and demands on social safety net
programs rise. A recent study concluded that there are several factors behind California's
relatively high degree of revenue volatility, notably the extraordinary boom and bust in
stock market-related revenues from stock options and capital gains.20 Replacing or
supplementing volatile sources of revenue (such as taxes on capital gains and corporate
income) with a carbon tax would help stabilize state finances and avoid a boom-and-bust
cycle of funding for programs like schools and social welfare programs. We return to the issue of
revenue use in Section 4 below. The revenues from a carbon tax are subject to a (desirable) erosion of
the tax base, particularly over the long run as capital in long-lived power plants and other
industrial facilities turns over. States with relatively high coal use in their electricity sectors are likely to experience more
emissions abatement than states in which relatively more emissions reductions need to come from transportation. If states adopt tax
rates that rise in real terms, the rising rate can more than counteract the decline in the tax
base. In that case, it could take decades before states need worry about declining carbon
tax revenues.
 Jeff Sessions DA to 50 states marijuana plank

Legal weed plank causes Jeff Sessions to crack down and turn the feds lose on the
states- restarts the war on drugs
Chilkoti 7/15 Avantika Chilkoti, staff writer, New York Times, July 15, 2017, States Keep
Saying Yes to Marijuana Use. Now Comes the Federal No.,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/15/us/politics/marijuana-laws-state-federal.html, VM
In a national vote widely viewed as a victory for conservatives, last years elections also yielded a win for liberals in eight states that legalized
marijuana for medical or recreational use. But the growing industry is facing a federal crackdown under
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has compared cannabis to heroin. A task force Mr. Sessions
appointed to, in part, review links between violent crimes and marijuana is scheduled to release its findings by the end of the month. But he
has already asked Senate leaders to roll back rules that block the Justice Department from
bypassing state laws to enforce a federal ban on medical marijuana. That has pitted the attorney general
against members of Congress across the political spectrum from Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, to Senator Cory Booker,
Democrat of New Jersey who are determined to defend states rights and provide some certainty for the multibillion-dollar pot industry. Our
attorney general is giving everyone whiplash by trying to take us back to the 1960s, said Representative Jared Huffman, Democrat of California,
whose district includes the so-called Emerald Triangle that produces much of Americas marijuana. Prosecutorial discretion is everything given
the current conflict between the federal law and the law of many states, he said in an interview last month. In February, Sean Spicer, the White
House press secretary, said the
Trump administration would look into enforcing federal law against
recreational marijuana businesses. Some states are considering tougher stands: In Massachusetts, for example, the
Legislature is trying to rewrite a law to legalize recreational marijuana that voters passed in November. Around one-fifth of Americans now live
in states where marijuana is legal for adult use, according to the Brookings Institution, and an estimated 200 million live in places where
medicinal marijuana is legal. Cannabis retailing has moved from street corners to state-of-the-art dispensaries and stores, with California
entrepreneurs producing rose gold vaporizers and businesses in Colorado selling infused drinks. Mr. Sessions is backed by a minority of
Americans who view cannabis as a gateway drug that drives social problems, like the recent rise in opioid addiction. We love Jeff Sessionss
position on marijuana because he is thinking about it clearly, said Scott Chipman, Southern California chairman for Citizens Against Legalizing
Marijuana. He dismissed the idea of recreational drug use. Recreational is a bike ride, a swim, going to the beach, he said. Using a drug to
put your brain in an altered state is not recreation. That is self-destructive behavior and escapism. Marijuana
merchants are
protected by a provision in the federal budget that prohibits the Justice Department from
spending money to block state laws that allow medicinal cannabis. Under the Obama
administration, the Justice Department did not interfere with state laws that legalize
marijuana and instead focused on prosecuting drug cartels and the transport of pot across
state lines. In March, a group of senators that included Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Lisa Murkowski, Republican of
Alaska, asked Mr. Sessions to stick with existing policies. Some lawmakers also want to allow banks to work with the marijuana industry and to
allow tax deductions for business expenses. Lawmakers who support legalizing marijuana contend that it leads to greater regulation, curbs the
black market and stops money laundering. They point to studies showing that the
war on drugs, which began under President Richard
M. Nixon, had disastrous impacts on national incarceration rates and racial divides . In a statement,
Mr. Booker said the Trump administrations crackdown against marijuana will not make our
communities safer or reduce the use of illegal drugs.

Crackdown is racist and takes billions out of the economy

Ludwig 17 Mike Ludwig, staff reporter, Truthout, Why Jeff Sessions Is Threatening to Crack
Down on Marijuana, March 22, 2017, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39943-why-jeff-
sessions-is-threatening-to-crack-down-on-marijuana, VM
It's no surprise that thelegal cannabis industry, which is projected to bring in more than $21
billion in revenue by 2021, has been anxious since President Trump nominated Sessions to
be attorney general. Marijuana is still illegal under federal law, although the federal
government has generally refrained from enforcing those laws in the 29 states that have
legalized marijuana in some form. The cannabis industry's anxiety shot through the roof a couple weeks ago when White
House Press Secretary Sean Spicer suggested that there could be "greater enforcement" under the
Trump administration. A Congressional budget rider currently blocks federal interference with state medical programs, so New
Mexico's move to treat opiate disorders with cannabis is probably safe for now, but Spicer's comments suggested that the
Justice Department may crack down on recreational marijuana in the eight states where
it's legal. He also suggested that marijuana could contribute to the "opiate addiction crisis," a statement that flies in the face of the latest
science, as critics quickly pointed out. Sessions allayed some of these fears last week, telling reporters that the Justice Department does not have
the resources to do local police work on marijuana. He also said the so-called "Cole memo" that clarified the Obama administration's priorities on
marijuana enforcement in 2013 is "valid." The memo directs federal law enforcement away from marijuana businesses that comply with state
laws and to focus instead on "criminal gangs," distribution to minors, violence and growing operations on federal land. Sessions did say he has
"some different ideas" in addition to the memo but has not elaborated. Justin Strekal, the policy director at the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), agreed that the Cole memo leaves plenty of room for federal interference and enforcement at the state
level. He pointed to Gov. Butch Otter of Idaho, a prohibition state bordered by states with legal weed. Otter, a Republican, recently called on
Plus,
President Trump to crack down on marijuana and correct the "utter lack of consistency displayed by the Obama administration."
there's nothing stopping the Justice Department from scrapping the Cole memo altogether
and sending threatening letters to state attorneys general, which could freeze the legal
market in place. "Even under the guidelines of the Cole Memo, there is sufficient enough
leeway for the Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions to broadly interpret its intent and
chill the nascent medical and adult use marijuana markets," Strekal told Truthout. "While there is no
enforceable mechanism for the Justice Department to re-criminalize state-by-state policy, their ability to stymie the progress made and use fear-
mongering to discourage future victories is real." So what would a marijuana crackdown look like under Sessions?
The short answer from marijuana advocates is that we just dont know yet. Although Sessions has a dismal track record when it comes to criminal
legal reforms and racial justice, his Justice Department has not signaled that it will stray too far from policies put forth by the Obama
administration, at least when it comes to legalized weed. Under Obama, the feds generally left legitimate businesses in legal states alone, but
continued an aggressive campaign to disrupt the black market. "The question is not whether or not an attorney general likes marijuana its a
question of what his policy will be with regard to enforcing federal law in states that have adopted laws regulating marijuana," said Mason Tvert,
a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project. He added that sensational headlines declaring an oncoming crackdown could have a
chilling effect on legal businesses and states considering reforms. However, advocates aren't only concerned
about legal marijuana businesses; they're concerned about all the people who are criminalized because of
prohibition. More than 600,000 people were arrested for marijuana violations in 2015,
more than any other illicit drug. Marijuana use is roughly the same among Black and
white people, but Black people are nearly four times as likely to be arrested, according to
the American Civil Liberties Union. Even in states where marijuana is legal for adults,
Black and brown youth under the legal age are being arrested at higher rates than their
white counterparts. Moreover, the Trump administration could leverage marijuana
prohibition in its push to expand the police state and target undocumented immigrants.
The administration has already initiated a brutal immigration crackdown, and Strekal said
that Latino communities could become targets for marijuana enforcement and racist police
tactics such as "stop and frisk" as part of broader efforts to increase deportations of
undocumented immigrants. Latinos made up an alarming 77 percent of those sentenced for
federal marijuana offenses last year, mostly for trafficking, and 56 percent of those
sentenced were non-citizens, according toNORML. Under Trump's recent executive
orders, any undocumented person charged with or even suspected of committing a crime is
a priority for deportation. Kaltenbach pointed to other orders that Trump has issued, including one calling on federal authorities to
dismantle international cartels and put a stop to drug and human trafficking. Sessions has vowed to do just that, and he indicated that low-level
drug distributers could be targeted in the process. Sessions'
calls to ramp up criminal enforcement of drug
laws comes as local police forces are becoming increasingly militarized and engaging in
violent drug raids. "How does he define sellers and trafficking? There are a lot of subsistence dealers in our country that may fall into
that category, and they may have addiction issues themselves or are just trying to support their families," Kaltenback said. "I am very concerned
about that group of people, and how they will be folded into his policies." Strekal said that 71 percent of voters now support a state's right to
legalize, so the Trump administration is not expected to raid law-abiding marijuana dispensaries in Colorado or Washington at the risk of
provoking public backlash. But there
are plenty of ways the Justice Department can use federal and
state laws criminalizing marijuana to target individuals and neighborhoods, especially
communities of color, which have long suffered the most casualties in the war on drugs. As
long as marijuana prohibition is on the books, Strekal said, it provides a vehicle to treat
certain people as "second-class citizens." "A 25-year-old can [legally] buy a joint in Colorado, but that does nothing for the
25-year-old caught with a joint in Georgia and the felony charge that comes with it," Strekal said.
7/21/17
 Abandon Politics
We should abandon politics- its really bad and unvirtuous
Powell and Burrus 12 Aaron Ross Powell is Director and Editor of Libertarianism.org, a
project of the Cato Institute. Libertarianism.org presents introductory material as well as new
scholarship related to libertarian philosophy, theory, and history. He is also co-host of
Libertarianism.orgs popular podcast, Free Thoughts. His writing has appeared in Liberty and
The Cato Journal. He earned a JD from the University of Denver. Trevor Burrus is a research
fellow at the Cato Institutes Center for Constitutional Studies. His research interests include
constitutional law, civil and criminal law, legal and political philosophy, and legal history. His
work has appeared in the Vermont Law Review, the Syracuse Law Review, and the Jurist, as
well as the Washington Times, Huffington Post, and the Daily Caller. He holds a BA in
Philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a JD from the University of Denver
Sturm College of Law. Politics Makes Us Worse, September 14, 2012, libertarianism.org,
https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/politics-makes-us-worse, VM
Even if we try to ignore it, politics influences much of our world. For those who do pay attention, politics
invariably leads in newspapers and on TV news and gets discussed, or shouted about, everywhere people gather. Politics can weigh
heavily in forging friendships, choosing enemies, and coloring who we respect. Its not
difficult to understand why politics plays such a central role in our lives: political decision-
making increasingly determines so much of what we do and how were permitted to do it.
We vote on what our children will learn in school and how they will be taught. We vote on what people are allowed to drink, smoke, and eat. We
vote on which people are allowed to marry those they love. In such crucial life decisions, as well as countless others, we have given politics a
substantial impact on the direction of our lives. No wonder its so important to so many people. But do we really want to live in a world where
politics is so important to our lives that we cannot help but be politically involved? Many, both on the left and the right, answer yes. A politically
engaged citizenry will not only make more decisions democratically but also be better people for it. From communitarians to neoconservatives,
theres a sense that civic virtue is virtueor at least that individually we cannot be fully virtuous without exercising a robust political
participation. Politics, when sufficiently unconstrained by crude individualism and sufficiently embraced by an actively democratic polity, makes
us better people. Yet the increasing scope of politics and political decisionmaking in America and
other Western nations has precisely the opposite effect. Its bad for our policies and, just as
important, its bad for our souls. The solution is simple: when questions arise about
whether the scope of politics should be broadened, we must realistically look at the effects
that politics itself has on the quality of those decisions and on our own virtue. Politics takes
a continuum of possibilities and turns it into a small group of discrete outcomes, often just
two. Either this guy gets elected, or that guy does. Either a given policy becomes law or it doesnt. As a result,
political choices matter greatly to those most affected. An electoral loss is the loss of a possibility. These black and white
choices mean politics will often manufacture problems that previously didnt exist, such as
the problem of whether weas a community, as a nationwill teach children creation
or evolution. Oddly, many believe that political decisionmaking is an egalitarian way of allowing all voices to be heard. Nearly everyone
can vote, after all, and because no one has more than one vote, the outcome seems fair. But outcomes in politics are hardly ever fair. Once
decisions are given over to the political process, the only citizens who can affect the
outcome are those with sufficient political power. The most disenfranchised minorities become those whose opinions
are too rare to register on the political radar. In an election with thousands of voters, a politician is wise to ignore the grievances of 100 people
whose rights are trampled given how unlikely those 100 are to determine the outcome. The black-and-white aspect of
politics also encourages people to think in black-and-white terms. Not only do political parties emerge, but
their supporters become akin to sports fans, feuding families, or students at rival high schools. Nuances of differences in
opinions are traded for stark dichotomies that are largely fabrications. Thus, we get the no regulation,
hate the environment, hate poor people party and the socialist, nanny-state, hate the rich partyand the discussions rarely go deeper than this.
Politics like this is no better than arguments between rival sports fans, and often worse
because politics is more morally charged. Most Americans find themselves committed to either the red team
(Republicans) or the blue (Democrats) and those on the other team are not merely rivals, but represent much that is evil in the world. Politics
often forces its participants into pointless internecine conflict, as they struggle with the
other guy not over legitimate differences in policy opinion but in an apocalyptic battle
between virtue and vice. How can this be? Republicans and Democrats hold opinions fully within the realm of acceptable political
discourse, with each sides positions having the support of roughly half our fellow citizens. If we can see around partisanships Manichean
blinders, both sides have views about government and human nature that are at least understandable to normal people of normal disposition
understandable, that is, in the sense of I can appreciate how someone would think that. But, when you add politics to the mix, simple and
modest differences of opinion become instead the difference between those who want to
save America and those who seek to destroy it. This behavior, while appalling, shouldnt surprise us. Psychologists
have shown for decades how people will gravitate to group mentalities that can make them downright hostile. Theyve shown how strong group
identification creates systematic errors in thinking. Your teammates are held to less exacting standards of competence, while those on the other
team are often presumed to be mendacious and acting from ignoble motives. This is yet another way in which politics makes us worse: it cripples
our thinking critically about the choices before us. Whats troubling about politics from a moral perspective is not that it encourages group
Rather, its the
mentalities, for a great many other activities encourage similar group thinking without raising significant moral concerns.
way politics interacts with group mentalities, creating negative feedback leading directly to
viciousness. Politics, all too often, makes us hate each other. Politics encourages us to
behave toward each other in ways that, were they to occur in a different context, would
repel us. No truly virtuous person ought to behave as politics so often makes us act. While
we may be able to slightly alter how political decisions are made, we cannot change the
essential nature of politics. We cannot conform it to the utopian vision of good policies and
virtuous citizens. The problem is not bugs in the system but the nature of political decision-
making itself. The only way to better both our world and ourselvesto promote good
policies and virtueis to abandon, to the greatest extent possible, politics itself.
7/22/17
 Being Vs Becoming
There was only ever one debate to be had, that of being versus becoming. This card
is extremely complicated and if you even try to answer it you will lose.
Bataille 1985. (Georges. "The labyrinth." trans. Allan Stoekl, Visions of Excess, ed. Allan
Stoekl (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1985) 5 (1985). The Labyrinth (1930))/Ammir-Christ
**This evidence is gender-modified pronouns are replaced in brackets -
Negativity, in other words, the integrity of determination - Hegel
I. THE INSUFFICIENCY OF BEINGS
[Humans] act in order to be. This must not be understood in the negative sense of
conservation (conserving in order not to be thrown out of existence by death), but in the
positive sense of a tragic and incessant combat for a satisfaction that is almost beyond
reach. From incoherent agitation to crushing sleep, from chatter to turning inward, from
overwhelming love to hardening hate, existence sometimes weakens and sometimes
accomplishes "being". And not only do states have a variable intensity, but different beings
"are" unequally. A dog that runs and barks seems "to be" more than a mute and clinging
sponge, the sponge more than the water in which it lives, an influential [human] more than
a vacant passerby.
In the first movement, where the force that the master has at [their] disposal puts the slave at
[their] mercy, the master deprives the slave of a part of [their] being. Much later, in return, the
"existence" of the master is impoverished to such an extent that it distances itself from the
material elements of life. The slave enriches [their] being to the extent that [they] enslaves these
elements by the work to which [their] impotence condemns him.
The contradictory movements of degradation and growth attain, in the diffuse development
of human existence, a bewildering complexity. The fundamental separation of [humans]
into masters and slaves is only the crossed threshold, the entry into the world of specialized
functions where personal "existence" empties itself of its contents; a [human] is no longer
anything but a part of being, and [their] life, engaged in the game of creation and destruction
that goes beyond it, appears as a degraded particle lacking reality. The very fact of assuming
that knowledge is a function throws the philosopher back into the world of petty
inconsistencies and dissections of lifeless organs. Isolated as much from action as from the
dreams that turn action away and echo it in the strange depths of animated life, [they] led
astray the very being that [they] chose as the object of [their] uneasy comprehension.
"Being" increases in the tumultuous agitation of a life that knows no limits; it wastes away
and disappears if [they] who is at the same "being" and knowledge mutilates himself by
reducing himself to knowledge. This deficiency can grow even greater if the object of
knowledge is no longer being in general but a narrow domain, such as an organ, a
mathematical question, a juridical form. Action and dreams do not escape this poverty (each
time they are confused with the totality of being), and, in the multicolored immensity of
human lives, a limitless insufficiency is revealed; life, finding its endpoint in the happiness of
a bugle blower or the snickering of a village chair-renter, is no longer the fulfillment of itself,
but is its own ludicrous degradation - its fall is comparable to that of a king onto the floor.
At the basis of human life there exists a principle of insufficiency. In isolation, each [human]
sees the majority of others as incapable or unworthy of "being". There is found, in all free and
slanderous conversation, as an animating theme, the awareness of the vanity and the emptiness
of our fellowmen; an apparent stagnant conversation betrays the blind and impotent flight of all
life toward an indefinable summit.
The sufficiency of each being is endlessly contested by every other. Even the look that
expresses love and admiration comes to me as a doubt concerning my reality. A burst of laughter
or the expression of repugnance greets each gesture, each sentence or each oversight through
which my profound insufficiency is betrayed - just as sobs would be the response to my sudden
death, to a total and irremediable omission.
This uneasiness on the part of everyone grows and reverberates, since at each detour, with
a kind of nausea, [humans] discover their solitude in empty night. The universal night in
which everything finds itself - and soon loses itself - would appear to be the existence for
nothing, without influence, equivalent to the absence of being, were it not for human nature that
emerges within it to give a dramatic importance to being and life. But this absurd night manages
to empty itself of "being" and meaning each time a [human] discovers within it human destiny,
itself locked in turn in a comic impasse, like a hideous and discordant trumpet blast. That which,
in me, demands that there be "being" in the world, "being" and not just the manifest
insufficiency of human or nonhuman nature, necessarily projects (at one time or another and
in reply to human chatter) divine sufficiency across space, like the reflection of an
impotence, of a servilely accepted malady of being.
II. THE COMPOSITE CHARACTER OF BEINGS AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF FIXING
EXISTENCE IN ANY GIVEN Ipse
Being in the world is so uncertain that I can project it where I want - outside of me. It is a
clumsy man, still incapable of eluding the intrigues of nature, who locks being in the me.
Being in fact is found NOWHERE and it was an easy game for a sickly malice to discover it
to be divine, at the summit of a pyramid formed by the multitude of beings, which has at its
base the immensity of the simplest matter.
Being could be confined to the electron if ipseity were precisely not lacking in this simple
element. The atom itself has a complexity that is too elementary to be determined ipsely.
The number of particles that make up a being intervene in a sufficiently heavy and clear
way in the constitution of its ipseity; if a knife has its handle and blade indefinitely replaced, it
loses even the shadow of its ipseity; it is not the same for a machine which, after six or five
years, loses each of the numerous elements that constituted it when new. But the ipseity that is
finally apprehended with difficulty in the machine is still only shadowlike.
Starting from an extreme complexity, being imposes on reflection more than the
precariousness of a fugitive appearance, but this complexity - displaced little by little
becomes in turn the labyrinth where what had suddenly come forward strangely loses its
way.
A sponge is reduced by pounding to a dust of cells; this living dust is formed by a multitude
of isolated beings, and is lost in the new sponge that it reconstitutes. A siphonophore
fragment is by itself an autonomous being, yet the whole siphonophore, to which this fragment
belongs, is itself hardly different from a being possessing unity. Only with linear animals
(worms, insects, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals) do the living individual forms definitively
lose the faculty of constituting aggregates bound together in a single body. But while
societies of nonlinear animals do not exist, superior animals form aggregates without ever
giving rise to corporeal links; [humans] as well as beavers or ants form societies of individuals
whose bodies are autonomous. But in regard to being, is this autonomy the final appearance, or is
it simply error?
In men, all existence is tied in particular to language, whose terms determine its modes of
appearance within each person. Each person can only represent [their] total existence, if only
in [their] own eyes, through the medium of words. Words spring forth in [their] head, laden
with a host of human or superhuman lives in relation to which [they] privately exists. Being
depends on the mediation of words, which cannot merely present it arbitrarily as
"autonomous being," but which must present it profoundly as "being in relation". One
need only follow, for a short time, the traces of the repeated circuits of words to discover, in a
disconcerting vision, the labyrinthine structure of the human being. What is commonly
called knowing - when a [human] knows [their] neighbour - is never anything but existence
composed for an instant (in the sense that all existence composes itself - thus the atom
composes its unity from variable electrons), which once made of these two beings a whole
every bit as real as its parts. A limited number of exchanged phrases, no matter how
conventional, sufficed to create the banal interpenetration of two existing juxtaposed regions.
The fact that after this short exchange the [human] is aware of knowing [their] neighbour
is opposed to a meeting without recognition in the street, as well as to the ignorance of the
multitude of beings that one never meets, in the same way that life is opposed to death. The
knowledge of human beings thus appears as a mode of biological connection, unstable but
just as real as the connections between cells in tissue. The exchange between two human
particles in fact possesses the faculty of surviving momentary separation.
A [human] is only a particle inserted in unstable and entangled wholes. These wholes are
composed in personal life in the form of multiple possibilities, starting with a knowledge
that is crossed like a threshold - and the existence of the particle can in no way be isolated
from this composition, which agitates it in the midst of a whirlwind of ephemerids. This
extreme instability of connections alone permits one to introduce, as a puerile but convenient
illusion, a representation of isolated existence turning in on itself.
In the most general way, every isolable element of the universe always appears as a particle
that can enter into composition with a whole that transcends it. Being is only found as a
whole composed of particles whose relative autonomy is maintained. These two principles
dominate the uncertain presence of an ipse being across a distance that never ceases to put
everything in question. Emerging in universal play as unforeseeable chance, with extreme
dread imperatively becoming the demand for universality, carried away to vertigo by the
movement that composes it, the ipse being that presents itself as a universal is only a
challenge to the diffuse immensity that escapes its precarious violence, the tragic negation
of all that is not its own bewildered phantom's chance. But, as a man, this being falls into the
meanders of the knowledge of [their] fellowmen, which absorbs [their] substance in order to
reduce it to a component of what goes beyond the virulent madness of [their] autonomy in the
total night of the world.
Abdication and inevitable fatigue - due to the fact that "being" is, par excellence, that which,
desired to the point of dread, cannot be endured - plunge human beings into a foggy
labyrinth formed by the multitude of "acquaintances" with which signs of life and phrases
can be exchanged. But when [they] escapes the dread of "being" through this flight - a
"being" that is autonomous and isolated in night - a [human] is thrown back into insufficiency,
at least if [they] cannot find outside of himself the blinding flash that [they] had been unable to
endure within himself, without whose intensity [their] life is but an impoverishment, of which
[they] feels obscurely ashamed.
III. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LABYRINTH
Emerging out of an inconeivable void into the play of beings, as a lost satellite of two phantoms
(one with a bristly beard, the other softer, her head decorated with a bun), it is in the father and
mother who transcend [them] that the miniscule human being first encountered the illusion of
sufficiency. In the complexity and entanglement of wholes, to which the human particle belongs,
this satellite-like mode of existence never entirely disappears. A particular being not only acts
as an element of a shapeless and structureless whole (a part of the world of unimportant
"acquaintances" and chatter), but also as a peripheral element orbiting around a nucleus where
being hardens. What the lost child had found in the self-assured existence of the all-powerful
beings who took care of [them] is now sought by the abadoned [human] wherever knots and
concentrations are formed throughout a vast incoherence. Each particular being delegates to
the group of those situated at the centre of the multitudes the task of realizing the inherent
totality of "being". [they] is content to be a part of a total existence, which even in the simplest
cases retains a diffuse character. Thus relatively stable wholes are produced, whose centre is a
city, in its early form a corolla that encloses a double pistil of sovereign and god. In the case
where many cities abdicate their central function in favour of a single city, an empire forms
around a capital where sovereignity and the gods are concentrated; the gravitation around a
centre then degrades the existence of peripheral cities, where the organs that constituted the
totality of being wilt. By degrees, a more and more complex movement of group composition
raises to the point of universality the human race, but it seems that universality, at the
summit, causes all existence to explode and decomposes it with violence. The universal god
destroys rather than supports the human aggregates that raise [their] ghost. [they] himself is
only dead, whether a mythical delirium set [them] up to be adored as a cadaver covered with
wounds, or whether through [their] very universality [they] becomes, more than any other,
incapable of stopping the loss of being with the cracked partitions of ipseity.
IV. THE MODALITIES OF COMPOSITION AND DECOMPOSITION OF BEING
The city that little by little empties itself of life, in favour of a more brilliant and attractive
city, is the expressive image of the play of existence engaged in composition. Because of the
composing attraction, composition empties elements of the greatest part of their being, and
this benefits the centre - in other words, it benefits composite being. There is the added fact
that, in a given domain, if the attraction of a certain centre is stronger than that of a neighbouring
centre, the second centre then goes into decline. The action of powerful poles of attraction
across the human world thus reduces, depending on their force of resistance, a multitude of
personal beings to the state of empty shadows, especially when the pole of attraction on which
they depend itself declines, due to the action of another more powerful pole. Thus if one
imagines the effects of an influential current of attraction on a more or less arbitrarily isolated
form of activity, a style of clothing created in a certain city devalues the clothes worn up to that
time and, consequently, it devalues those who wear them within the limits of the influence of this
city. This devaluation is stronger if, in a neighbouring country, the fashions of a more brilliant
city have already outclassed those of the first city. The objective character of these relations is
registered in reality when the contempt and laughter manifested in a given centre are not
compensated for by anything elsewhere, and when they exert an effective fascination. The effort
made on the periphery to "keep up with fashion" demonstrates the inability of the
peripheral particles to exist by themselves.
Laughter intervenes in these value determinations of being as the expression of the circuit of
movements of attraction across a human field. It manifests itself each time a change in level
suddenly occurs: it characterizes all vacant lives as ridiculous. A kind of incandescent joy - the
explosive and sudden revelation of the presence of being - is liberated each time a striking
appearance is contrasted with its absence, with the human void. Laughter casts a glance, charged
with the mortal violence of being, into the void of being, into the void of life.
But laughter is not only the composition of those it assembles into a unique convulsion; it most
often decomposes without consequence, and sometimes with a virulence that is so pernicious that
it even puts in question composition itself, and the wholes across which it functions. Laughter
attains not only the peripheral regions of existence, and its object is not only the existence of
fools and children (of those who remain vacant); through a necessary reversal, it is sent back
from the child to its father and from the periphery to the centre, each time the father or the centre
in turn reveals an insufficiency comparable to that of the particles that orbit around it. Such a
central insufficiency can be ritually revealed (in saturnalia or in a festival of the ass as well
as in the puerile grimaces of the father amusing [their] child). It can be revealed by the very
action of children or the "poor" each time exhaustion withers and weakens authority,
allowing its precarious character to be seen. In both cases, a dominant necessity manifests
itself, and the profound nature of being is disclosed. Being can complete itself and attain the
menacing grandeur of imperative totality; this accomplishment only serves to project it
with a greater violence into the vacant night. The relative insufficiency of peripheral
existences is absolute insufficiency in total existence. Above knowable existences, laughter
traverses the human pyramid like a network of endless waves that renew themselves in all
directions. This reverberation convulsion chokes, from one end to the other, the innumerable
being of [human] - opened at the summit by the agony of God in a black night.
V. THE MONSTER IN THE NIGHT OF THE LABYRINTH
Being attains the blinding flash in tragic annihilation. Laughter only assumes its fullest
impact on being at the moment when, in the fall that it unleashes, a representation of death
is cynically recognised. It is not only the composition of elements that constitutes the
incandescence of being, but its decomposition in its mortal form. The difference in levels that
provokes common laughter - which opposes the lack of an absurd life to the plenitude of
successful being - can be replaced by that which opposes the summit of imperative elevation
to the dark abyss that obliterates all existence. Laughter is thus assumed by the totality of being.
Renouncing the avaricious malice of the scapegoat, being itself, to the extent that it is the sum
of existences at the limits of the night, is spasmodically shaken by the idea of the ground giving
way beneath its feet. It is in universality (where, due to solitude, the possibility of facing death
through war appears) that the necessity of engaging in a struggle, no longer with an equal
group but with nothingness, becomes clear. THE UNIVERSAL resembles a bull, sometimes
absorbed in the nonchalance of animality and abandoned to the secret paleness of death, and
sometimes hurled by the rage of ruin into the void ceaselessly opened before it by a skeletal
torero. But the void it meets is also the nudity it espouses TO THE EXTENT THAT IT IS A
MONSTER lightly assuming many crimes, and it is no longer, like the bull, the plaything of
nothingness, because nothingness itself is its plaything; it only throws itself into nothingness in
order to tear it apart and to illuminate the night for an instant, with an immense laugh - a laugh it
never would have attained if this nothingness had not totally opened beneath its feet.<b>Georges
Bataille</b>
7-24-17
 Neolib K Link
Competitiveness is another link to neolib
Davies 14 William Davies is a Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he
is leading the development of a new PPE Degree. How competitiveness became one of the
great unquestioned virtues of contemporary culture, May 19th 2014, London School of
Economics, British Politics and Policy, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-cult-of-
competitiveness/, VM
The years since the banking meltdown of 2008 have witnessed a dawning awareness, that our model of capitalism is not simply
producing widening inequality, but is apparently governed by the interests of a tiny minority
of the population. The post-crisis period has spawned its own sociological category the 1% and recently delivered its first work of
grand economic theory, in Thomas Pikettys Capital in the Twenty-first Century, a book dedicated to understanding why inequality keeps on
growing. What seems to be provoking the most outrage right now is not inequality as such, which has, after all, been rising in the UK (give or
take Tony Blairs second term) since 1979, but the sense that the economic game is now being rigged. If we can put our outrage to one side for a
second, this poses a couple of questions, for those interested in the sociology of legitimation. Firstly, how did mounting inequality succeed in
proving culturally and politically attractive for as long as it did? And secondly, how and why has that model of justification now broken down? In
some ways, the concept of inequality is unhelpful here. There has rarely been a political or business leader who has stood up and publicly said,
society needs more inequality. And yet, most of the policies and regulations which have driven inequality since the 1970s have been publicly
known. Although it is tempting to look back and feel duped by the pre-2008 era, it was relatively clear what was going on, and how it was being
justified. But ratherthan speak in terms of generating more inequality, policy-makers have
always favoured another term, which effectively comes to the same thing: competitiveness.
My new book, The Limits of Neoliberalism: Sovereignty, Authority & The Logic of Competition, is an attempt to understand the ways in
which political authority has been reconfigured in terms of the promotion of
competitiveness. Competitiveness is an interesting concept, and an interesting principle on
which to base social and economic institutions. When we view situations as competitions,
we are assuming that participants have some vaguely equal opportunity at the outset. But
we are also assuming that they are striving for maximum inequality at the conclusion. To
demand competitiveness is to demand that people prove themselves relative to one other. It
struck me, when I began my Sociology PhD on which the book is based, that competitiveness had become one of the great unquestioned virtues
of contemporary culture, especially in the UK. We celebrate London because it is a competitive world city; we worship sportsmen for having
won; we turn on our televisions and watch contestants competitively cooking against each other. In
TV shows such as the
Dragons Den or sporting contests such as the Premier League, the division between
competitive entertainment and capitalism dissolves altogether. Why would it be remotely
surprising, to discover that a society in which competitiveness was a supreme moral and
cultural virtue, should also be one which generates increasing levels of inequality? Unless one
wants to descend into biological reductionism, the question then has to be posed: how did this state of affairs come about? To answer this, we
need to turn firstly to the roots of neoliberal thinking in the 1930s. For Friedrich Hayek in London, the ordoliberals in Freiburg and Henry Simons
in Chicago, competition wasnt just one feature of a market amongst many. It was the fundamental reason why markets were politically desirable,
because it conserved the uncertainty of the future. What
united all forms of totalitarianism and planning,
according to Hayek, was that they refused to tolerate competition. And hence a neoliberal
state would be defined first and foremost as one which used its sovereign powers to defend
competitive processes, using anti-trust law and other instruments. One way of
understanding neoliberalism, as Foucault has best highlighted, is as the extension of
competitive principles into all walks of life, with the force of the state behind them.
Sovereign power does not recede, and nor is it replaced by governance; it is reconfigured
in such a way that society becomes a form of game, which produces winners and losers. My
aim in The Limits of Neoliberalism is to understand some of the ways in which this comes about. In particular, I examine how the Chicago
School Law and Economics tradition achieved an overhaul (and drastic shrinkage) in the role of market regulation. And I look at how Michael
Porters theory of national competitiveness led to a new form of policy orientation, as the search for competitive advantage. Both of these
processes have their intellectual roots in the post-War period, but achieved significant political influence from the late 1970s onwards. They are,
if you like, major components of neoliberalism. By studying these intellectual traditions, it becomes possible
to see how an entire moral and philosophical worldview has developed, which assumes that
inequalities are both a fair and an exciting outcome of a capitalist process which is overseen
by political authorities. In that respect, the state is a constant accomplice of rising
inequality, although corporations, their managers and shareholders, were the obvious
beneficiaries. Drawing on the work of Luc Boltanski, I suggest that we need to understand how competition,
competitiveness and, ultimately, inequality are rendered justifiable and acceptable
otherwise their sustained presence in public and private life appears simply inexplicable. And
yet, this approach also helps us to understand what exactly has broken down over recent years, which I would argue is the following: At a
key moment in the history of neoliberal thought, its advocates shifted from defending
markets as competitive arenas amongst many, to viewing society-as-a-whole as one big
competitive arena. Under the latter model, there is no distinction between arenas of politics, economics and society. To convert money
into political power, or into legal muscle, or into media influence, or into educational advantage, is justifiable, within this more brutal, capitalist
model of neoliberalism. The problem that we now know as the 1% is, as has been argued of America recently, a problem of oligarchy.
Underlying it is the problem that there are no longer any external, separate or higher
principles to appeal to, through which oligarchs might be challenged. Legitimate powers need other
powers through which their legitimacy can be tested; this is the basic principle on which the separation of executive, legislature and judiciary is
based. The same thing holds true with respect to economic power, but this is what has been lost. Regulators, accountants, tax
collectors, lawyers, public institutions, have been drawn into the economic contest, and
become available to buy. To use the sort of sporting metaphor much-loved by business leaders; its as if the top football team has
bought not only the best coaches, physios and facilities, but also bought the referee and the journalists as well. The bodies
responsible for judging economic competition have lost all authority, which leaves the
dream of meritocracy or a level playing field (crucial ideals within the neoliberal
imaginary) in tatters. Politically speaking, this is as much a failure of legitimation as it is a problem of spiralling material inequality.
The result is a condition that I term contingent neoliberalism, contingent in the sense that it no longer operates with any spirit of fairness or
inclusiveness. The priority is simply to prop it up at all costs. If people are irrational, then nudge them. If banks dont lend money, then inflate
their balance sheets through artificial means. If a currency is no longer taken seriously, political leaders must repeatedly guarantee it as a
sovereign priority. If people protest, buy a water canon. This is a system whose own conditions are constantly falling apart, and which
governments must do constant repair work on. The outrage with the 1% (and, more accurately, with the 0.1%), the sense that even the rich are
scarcely benefiting, is to be welcomed. It is also overdue. For
several years, we have operated with a cultural
and moral worldview which finds value only in winners. Our cities must be world-
leading to matter. Universities must be excellent, or else they dwindle. This is a
philosophy which condemns the majority of spaces, people and organizations to the status
of losers. It also seems entirely unable to live up to its own meritocratic ideal any longer.
The discovery that, if you cut a winner enough slack, eventually theyll try to close down
the game once and for all, should throw our obsession with competitiveness into question.
And then we can consider how else to find value in things, other than their being better
than something else.
7/25/17
 Genealogy
Genealogical critique is a method of calling into question dogmatic truths through
an understanding of history that does not view existing structures as having been
natural or inevitable its useful for deconstructing educational assumptions.
Usher and Phelan 14 - (Robin Usher was Professor of Research Education and Director of
Research Training at RMIT University, Anne M. Phelan is a professor in the Department of
Curriculum and Pedagogy, 2014, "Educational theory and the practice of critique", DOA: 4-27-
2017) //Snowball //modified for gendered language
The advantage of genealogy as a method of critique is that it produces strategic knowledge,
so that we can ask the question: do we want to govern, or want to be governed, like that? It has a strategic
usefulness in providing historical analyses into the mechanisms of power, forms of rationality and
discourse that dominate the present field of education. The political usefulness of a genealogical
analysis derives from its capacity to disrupt or discomfort and destabilise the fixedness, inevitability
and necessity of these contemporary ways of thinking and acting by showing their fragility
and contingency. When Foucault deployed the term genealogy he had in mind Nietzsches
genealogy of morals where history is characterised as both complex and mundane. One of the
points of a genealogical analysis is to show that theories are the contingent turns of history
rather than the outcome of rationally inevitable trends. History is a matter of complex
processes which can only be understood in their specificity and their potential to have been
otherwise. Genealogy is however, not simply a method but a particular way of conceptualising
and approaching the practice of critique. Through the concept of genealogy, the practice of critique is re-defined as
the movement by which the subject gives himself [their self] the right to question truth
on its effects of power and question power on its discourses of truth. (Foucault 1997: 47)
Genealogies are thus characterised by an attitude of scepticism with respect to what is held most
revered, questioning all scientific and humanitarian motives for reform as well as notions of progress (Oksala 2007) and unitary origins. As
such, genealogy uses history to show that many of the things we take for granted or conceive
as natural or true have a history, a genealogy or lineage, and therefore are artefacts of previous
events, discourses, rationalities and practices (Dean 1998). One of the features of genealogy
which makes it into the opposite of critical theorys critique of ideology is the central concern
with analysing the intrinsic and historically specific links between knowledge and power. This
transforms the task of critique ...from that of the practice of a legislating subject passing
judgement on a deficient reality to an analysis of the assumptions on which taken-for-
granted practice rests (Dean 1994: 119). The concept of power-knowledge functions to make
visible and intelligible how the knowledges (theories) of the human sciences make possible and
play a role in the practices (relations of power) used in the regulation, including the education, of
people. The object is to study the different and historically specific relations between forms by
which subjects are known and technologies of power (the acting upon of subjects), so that it is possible
to understand how technologies of power constitute a field of truth and the types of
subjectivities formed and re-formed on the basis of these knowledge-power relations. This makes it
possible to analyse how we have come to govern both ourselves and others through the truths
produced about what we are, and then how these practices of governing change with changes in what is
accepted as truth and vice versa. Genealogy is thus a form of critique carried out within a
framework that pays attention to the positive, productive effects of modern forms of power
and contends that their effectiveness rests on the installation of a discourse or regime of
truth (Gordon 1980).
7/26/17
 School Violence Down
Statistically, school violence is declining.
KWQC 17 (KWQC News, "Report: School violence, bullying down in US public schools",
KWQC, 7-27-2017, http://www.kwqc.com/content/news/Report-School-violence-bullying-
down-in-US-public-schools-437048903.html, DOA: 7-27-2017) //Snowball
WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of violent attacks in American public schools has gone down in
recent years and bullying has also become less frequent. The findings were published Thursday in
a report by the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics. The rate of violent incidents and bullying
was higher in middle schools than in high schools or elementary schools. The report says the rate of violent incidents in
middle schools dropped from 40 incidents per 1,000 students in the 2009-2010 school year to 27 incidents
in 2015-2016. Bullying in middle schools went down from 39 percent to 22 percent. The survey was based on a
random sample of some 3,500 schools. It did not provide an explanation for the trends.
7/27/17
 Non-Teacher Staff Surge
Theres been a massive surge in hiring educational staff that has hindered
effectiveness we need fewer, not more.
Scafidi 17 (Benjamin, professor at the Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University,
"Stop the School Staffing Surge", US News &amp; World Report, 7-3-2017,
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2017-07-03/the-public-school-
staffing-surge-hasnt-benefited-teachers-or-students, DOA: 7-27-2017) //Snowball
Yet, for decades, we have consistently failed to spend public school money in a way that rewards teachers and benefits students. In studying
publicly available data on school staffing levels from 1950 to 2015, I found that American
public schools have added
personnel at a rate almost four times that of student enrollment growth. On the surface, that staffing
surge might sound good, but in reality, these additional hires were disproportionately non-teachers.
While the number of teachers increased almost two and a half times as fast as the increase in students resulting in significantly smaller class
sizes the
number of non-teachers or "all other staff" increased more than seven times the increase
in students. From the 1950s until 1992, the staffing surge was much larger than in later years. Over those earlier decades, public schools
saw racial integration and more developed special education programs. While the pre-1992 staffing surge was extremely large, perhaps it was
necessary. But the
modern staffing surge that began in 1992 has been expensive for taxpayers and has
posed a tremendous opportunity cost on teachers and parents. Between 1992 and 2014, when inflation-
adjusted per-student spending increased by 27 percent, inflation-adjusted average salaries for public school teachers actually fell by 2 percent. In
other words, taxpayers
allocated more money to public school students, but teachers effectively
saw money taken out of their pockets. Instead of increasing teacher salaries over and above
the cost of living, the American public education system dramatically expanded the
number of non-teachers it hired a 45 percent increase in the post-1992 period, or more than double the increase in student
population. Had the increase in non-teacher staff simply matched the 19 percent increase in student enrollment since 1992, American public
schools could have saved at least $35 billion per year, or $805 billion between 1992 and 2014. What could public schools have
done with that money? Start by giving every teacher a permanent $11,100 pay raise. Other
potential uses include giving more than 4 million students $8,000 education savings accounts that could be used to
pay for tuition at private schools and other educational services like tutoring or even saved for college. Simply put, dollars used to
pay for a surge in non-teachers precluded raises for teachers or school choice opportunities
for students the two constituencies with the most to gain from better educational opportunities and smarter spending.