Privatization CP - Northwestern 2017

Notes
This file has a few parts:

1. Privatization Good Sections have Aff and Neg arguments for
private companies owning and doing things generally. These
cards do not directly indict or defend the specific mechanisms of
the counterplans, however this does not mean that these cards
cant be used to support your counterplan of choice.
a. **The majority of the aff arguments you want to read are
going to be in the Aff Privatization General header.
2. There are two counterplans, each formatted the same. The cards
in these sections are specific to the method of that counterplan
text. This also holds true for the aff answers section
3. The objectivism DA can be read against nearly any aff and works
as a net benefit to both counterplans. The aff answers directly
indict the thesis and scenario of the DA.
Cut and compiled by: Robbie A, Chris R, Sean L, and Sam P.
Neg Privatization General
Solvency General
1nc Privatization Solves
Privatization improves every aspect of education -- 5 reasons.
Schoenberg and Park 6 Senator Jeffrey M. Schoenberg, Representative Terry R. Parke,
2006, Government Privatization History, Examples, and Issues,
http://cgfa.ilga.gov/Upload/2006Gov_Privatization_Rprt.pdf
***3 reasons -- cost reduction, quality of service and expertise, timeliness and flexibility
There are numerous reasons why governments turn to privatization. Cost reduction is one
motivation for privatization. The desire to transfer risk from the public sector to the private sector can lead to privatization. Another
rationale for privatization could be as a new source of revenue. A higher level of service can also be a reason. An absence of expertise
within the governmental unit is another. The timeframe with which a project needs to be completed could also factor in the decision
for privatization. A final potential reason for privatization is the flexibility provided by the private sector. Cost Reduction
Governments often outsource operations due to the potential cost savings. Private sector service providers are often able to deliver
the same services as the public sector but at a lower price. There are many reasons for this. Private contractors are not
constrained by the restrictions of the civil service system and public employee collective
bargaining agreements. Private contractors also have greater flexibility in personnel
assignments and compensation packages. This leads to many private sectors offering
salaries that can be increased via efficient operations, while public managers
rarely have such bonus plans. Risk Transfer Governments often desire to transfer the
risks of certain projects to the private sector. By contracting out for certain services, the public
sector is exchanging the risks associated with those services for a monetary sum. In these transactions,
the private sector obtains the monetary rewards for doing these services, but also takes on the
risk that these services will cost more or take longer to provide than estimated when agreeing to
do them. The private sector could also face capital finance risks if they have agreed to finance a project also. By agreeing to these
kinds of deals, governments are better able to budget as future expenses are less variable. A chart showing the distribution of risk in
different service delivery systems can be seen in Table 1. <table omitted> Source of Revenue The sale or lease of
public assets can be used as a new revenue source. The sale/lease of toll roads, toll
bridges, loan portfolios, buildings, and lotteries can be sources of large up front
fees or extended fees depending upon the purchase or lease agreement. This new revenue
can be used to pay down debt, fund new projects, or meet budgetary needs. This type of revenue generation is often used in lieu of
taking on debt or raising taxes. Quality of Service The quality of service provided can also be a reason
for privatizing a service or asset. Private sector groups may be able to provide a higher level of
service for a similar cost. Governments may be looking for a higher level of service but cannot
provide it by themselves. The private sector may be able to meet the level of service desired
without raising cost. Expertise Contractors may be able to have expertise that governmental
units do not wish to or cannot afford to provide in-house. These kinds of services are often
needed so rarely that it does not make financial sense to maintain staff with these skills.
Examples of outside expertise that is often contracted for are architecture and engineering for
the construction of buildings. Timeliness The timeliness with which a project needs to be
completed can also lead to privatization. In some situations, the government may have the skills
to complete a project but they may not be able to complete it within the desired timeframe due
to a lack of resources or time. Private groups can supplement the governments efforts and allow
a project to maintain a time schedule that would otherwise not be met. Flexibility Often, due to
collective bargaining agreements, the public sector is unable to hire and release employees as
easily as private contractors can. As such, private contractors are more able to cope with the
seasonal demands of some projects which can call for a large amount of labor during parts of the
year but less at other times. This can allow the public sector to complete projects without the
hassle or cost of hiring and firing employees.
2nc Privatization Solves
Avoids government bureaucracy, increases efficiency and guarantees
constant improvement through competition.
Edward 16 Chris Edwards, Chris Edwards is editor of www.DownsizingGovernment.org at
the Cato Institute, June 28 2016, Options for Federal Privatization and Reform Lessons from
Abroad, https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa794_1.pdf
Most academic studies on privatization ex-amine quantitative factors, such as efficiency and output. But
privatization also creates qualitative improvements, such as greater transparency
and improved customer service. The following sec-tions describe a dozen advantages of privatization. 1.
Promotes Efficiency and Innovation Private businesses in competitive markets have
strong incentives to increase efficiencyto produce more and better products at lower costs.
Businesses seek profits, which are a measure of net value creation. If a business performs poorly, it will lose
money and have to change course, or ultimately face bankruptcy or a takeover. By
contrast, government entities are usually not penalized for excess costs, misjudging pub-lic needs, or other failures. They can deliver
bad results year after year and still receive funding. Government workers are rarely fired, and there is no
imperative for managers to generate net value. The superiority of private enterprise is not just a
static efficiency advantage. Instead, businesses in competitive markets must pursue
continuous improvements. They learn by doing and adjust to changes in society, a process
called adaptive efficiency.78 By contrast, governments get ossified by bureaucracy and are
slow to adapt. Businesses routinely abandon low-value activities, but "the moment
government undertakes anything, it becomes entrenched and permanent," noted management expert
Peter Drucker." As an example, the demand for mail has plunged and the U.S. Postal Service CUSPS) is losing billions of dollars a
year, but Congress has blocked obvious reforms, such as ending Saturday delivery. Private businesses
make such adjustments all the time as demand for their products fluctuates. Government
organizations undermine growth by keeping resources employed in lowvalue
activities, even as tastes and technologies change. That is why Drucker said, "The strongest argument
for private enterprise is not the function of profit. The strongest argument is the function of
loss."80 Losses encourage private businesses to drop less-valuable activities and
move resources to more promising ones. In the loth century, many economists supported
government ownership because they thought that expert planners could efficiently organize
production. But they ignored the dynamic role of businesses in continuously
improving products and production techniques. In a Journal of Economic Perspectives article, Andrei
Shleifer said that many economists did not fore-see the "grotesque failure" of government own-rship,
and they did not appreciate the private-sector role in generating innovation.8'
Improves capital investment -- infrastructure proves.
Edward 16 Chris Edwards, Chris Edwards is editor of www.DownsizingGovernment.org at
the Cato Institute, June 28 2016, Options for Federal Privatization and Reform Lessons from
Abroad, https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa794_1.pdf
3. Improves Capital Investment In the private sector , businesses have incentives to
maintain their facilities in good repair and to invest to meet rising demands. To fund expansions,
they reinvest their profits and raise financing on debt and equity markets. By contrast,
government organizations often consume their funding on bureaucratic bloat and have little left
over for repairs and upgrades. Government infrastructure is often old, congested, and
poorly maintained. Capital investment falls short and tends to be misallocated. This was a
common experience with British industries before they were privatized, and access to private
funding to increase capital investment was an important factor in the Thatcher government's
privatization drive.' The same problems of run-down public infrastructure are apparent in the United States today. The
National Park Service has many poorly maintained facilities and billions of do-lars of deferred maintenance. Urban subway and light
rail systems across the nation have tens of billions of dollars of maintenance back-logs. Politicians enjoy launching new parks and
rail systems, but they put little effort into maintaining what the government already owns. Federal agencies cannot count on
Congress for funding. Consider the air traffic control system, which is run by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The system
needs billions of dollars in investment to meet rising passenger demands, but the FAA has not se-cured stable long-term funding
from Congress. Furthermore, the FAA mismanages its capital investment projects, which often experience delays and cost overruns.
Amtrak's investment budget is also mismanaged. Because of politics, the company invests in rural routes that have
few passengers instead of higher-demand routes in the Northeast. In his book on Amtrak, rail expert Joseph Vranich argued,
"Congressional requirements that Am-trak spend money on capital improvements to lightly used
routes are outrageous.... Through-out Amtrak's history, it has devoted too much of its budget to where it is not needed, and
not enough to where it is."' Privatization solves these sorts of problems. Privatized businesses use
customer revenues and capital markets to finance upgrades. They do not have to lobby
Congress to receive needed funding. And they have strong incentives to invest where the
actual demand is, free from political pressures that plague government-owned businesses.
Natural displacement -- as the private sector gets more effective itll
replace the necessity for public education.
Savas 2000 E. S. Savas, E.S. Savas is the author of fifteen books and over 130 articles; his books have been published in 23
foreign editions. He is an internationally known pioneer in, and authority on, privatization.He served as First Deputy City
Administrator of New York, appointed by Mayor John V. Lindsay, and as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development, appointed by President Ronald Reagan. He also served as a councilman in his suburban town. He was a
professor of public management at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business and taught in Baruch's Department of
Management, where he also served for eight years as chairman. 2000, PRIVATIZATION AND PUBLIC-PRIVATE
PARTNERSHIPS,
http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/4617108/sem200601_md02_in.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y5
3UL3A&Expires=1499370215&Signature=%2BDN6ncPPC%2BybcUwXs3f3zzqxxQA%3D&response-content-
disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DPrivatization_and_public-private_partner.pdf
By Default. When the public considers government production of goods or services to be
inadequate, and the private sector recognizes and satisfies this unmet demand, this is
displacement by default. This, too, satisfies the definition of privatization, namely, relying
more on the private sector and less on the state to satisfy peoples needs. Gradually, the public
begins to look to the private sector for this activity, and, if the service grows over time
and the government-supplied goods or services continue to be neglected or the government role
shrinks in relative terms, the private sector will play a larger and larger role. Simply put,
customers desert or avoid the public service. A common example is the growth of private transportation
where the public deems government-provided bus service unsatisfactory or inadequate. Gypsy cabs, commuter vans, minibus
systems and other informal, quasilegal, or technically illegal transport services have emerged in numerous cities throughout the
world. We are also seeing displacement by default in public education in large American cities:
Even parents of limited means have been withdrawing their children from the public schools in
droves, enrolling them in proliferating private schools and schooling them at home.
2nc School Management
District management benefits- laundry list
Chubb 2001, SPRING 2001 John E. Chubb is the chief education officer of Edison Schools
and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. The Private Can Be Public;
Education Next: http://educationnext.org/the-private-can-be-public/
What can or will for-profit firms do differently from public schools? For one, private businesses can make more
effective use of scale than public schools. Most school districts are either too small or too largetoo
small to afford the kind of administrative supports they need, or too large for a public bureaucracy to remain easily governable and
accountable. A for-profit firm is more likely to build an effective organization that can serve
hundreds or even thousands of schools, giving them the supports they need while leaving more resources to be spent
at the school level. For another, the capital-raising ability of private businesses gives them the capability
to make the financial investments in research and development and comprehensive school
reform that public schools can only dream of. And finally, private businesses have more freedom than
public entities to structure their instructional practices and employee contracts in ways that
maximize their performance. Their relative freedom from the constraints of state rules and, sometimes, excessively
constraining collectively bargained contracts allows them to stay focused on their mission and to steer all their resources toward
accomplishing it.
Materials provisions by private companies-

During the 19992000 school year, public school districts spent some $35 billion on goods and services provided by private, for-
districts large and small
profit businessesabout 10 percent of the nations annual K12 education budget. In other words,
recognize that for-profit businesses can produce many educational goods and services more
efficiently or effectively than districts can themselves. It makes good sense for districts to
partner with the private sector. In fact, private businesses now provide not only the pencils, chalk, and
computers but also the core of the instructional program in many districts. Most school districts are too small, for
example, to develop and produce their own curricula; they buy complete instructional programs from textbook
publishers. Teacher training is often provided by the same vendors that publish the textbooks or by firms specializing in
various kinds of professional development. States contract with testing companies to develop and administer
customized state exams. Districts choose from commercially available standardized tests to measure students
against national norms. In short, private business already plays a major supporting role in the provision of public education.
Contract schools-better organization and they work

The question now is, Should we give private businesses an even larger role in public education? Companies such as Advantage
Schools, Edison Schools, National Heritage, and a dozen or so smaller firms are seeking to actively manage entire public schools
hiring and firing; supervision, evaluation, and compensation; professional development; curriculum, instruction, and assessment;
educational technology; plant managementeverything. These firms believe that, using
economies of scale as well as
other tools that are more readily available to the private sector, they
can build organizations that use time and
resources more efficiently and effectively than public school districts, leading to higher student
achievement at a similar cost. Raising student achievement, of course, is not the only task we assign to the public
schools. We also ask them to provide equal educational opportunity to all students and to socialize diverse young people into our
democratic culture. Whether private business can fulfill these many roles and still make a profit is a question on which the jury is still
out. The very early track record of school management companies was mixed, but recent experience has been more positive.
Perhaps 200 public schools are currently under private management, and all of these are schools
of choice. At the very least, private managers are offering schools that parents deem worthy of their choosing. And there is
preliminary evidence that parents are choosing wisely. Students in schools run by the largest management
company, Edison Schools, have, on average, posted meaningful achievement gains in every year
those schools have been open. Not all of the schools managed by private firms are doing well; at least a few have closed
after experiencing difficulties. It will be some time before the experience of schools under private management is sufficient to permit
definitive empirical analysis. Regardless, as a nation we seem to agree that our schools are not as good as they should be or need
to be. Moreover, many academics, policy makers, and even public educators have concluded that
some schools cannot or will not make the necessary changes on their own. They may be too paralyzed by politics,
bogged down by bureaucracy, or incapable of innovation to move achievement forward rapidly.
In this environment, experimentation is called for, particularly the kind that gives parents a wider range of educational
options from which to choose. These choices could be charter schools, which are an independent form of public school,
or contract schools, public schools that would be operated by private businesses. More radical advocates say private
schools should also be available as a choice, reimbursed at taxpayer expense via vouchers. Charters and contract
schools, as potentially powerful sources of market influence on a public education system that clearly needs it, deserve a serious
trial.
Net Benefits
Spending DA
Privatization can revitalize the economy
Edward 16 Chris Edwards, Chris Edwards is editor of www.DownsizingGovernment.org at the Cato Institute, June 28 2016,
Options for Federal Privatization and Reform Lessons from Abroad,
https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa794_1.pdf
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The American economy is sluggish, the government is running large
deficits, and the public is frustrated with the poor performance of federal bureaucracies. One
reform that can tackle all of these problems is privatizing federal businesses and
assets. This study discusses a dozen advantages of privatization and describes government activities that should be moved to the
private sector. A privatization revolution has swept the world since the 1980s. Following the United
Kingdoms lead, governments in more than 100 countries have transferred thousands of state-owned
businesses to the private sector. Railroads, airports, energy companies, postal services, and other businesses valued at
more than $3 trillion have been privatized. Governments of both the political right and left have unloaded state-owned businesses.
Despite the global success of privatization, reforms have largely bypassed our own federal
government. Indeed, many activities that have been transferred to the private sector abroad
remain in government hands in this country. That creates an opportunity for U.S.
policymakers to learn from foreign privatization and enact proven reforms here.
This study describes why the federal government should privatize the U.S. Postal Service, Amtrak, the Tennessee Valley Authority,
the air track control system, lands, buildings, and other businesses and assets. Such reforms would increase
efficiency, spur innovation, create greater transparency, and improve the environment.
Privatization would allow entrepreneurs to take on challenges at which federal bureaucracies are
failing. The United States is a land of huge talent and diversity. But to take full advantage of those assets,
we should divest the government of activities that individuals and businesses can
perform better by themselves.
Empirics prove that privatization makes education more effective.

Cracken and Herbig 10 P.A. Herbig and L.William Cracken, Herbig is a writer for the
International Marketing Review, Cracken is the writer of Reflections on War and Peacetime,
October 2010, An American Manifesto
In the beginning of this countrys history, schools were private and attendance strictly voluntary. Schools were mostly
privately financed by fees paid by the parents. Although neither compulsory nor free, it
was practically universal. In the 1840s, a campaign developed to replace the private system by public systems,
schools in which parents and others paid the cost indirectly by taxes rather than directly by fees; this campaign was led not by
parents but predominantly by teachers and government officials. Then, as now, self-interest was the motivation,
the teaches expected to enjoy greater certainty of employment, greater assurance that their
salaries would be paid, and a greater degree of control if government rather than parents were
their paymaster; the benefits to the children of the changes, if any, were secondary ( history does repeat
itself with the same motives existing). One immediate result of government takeover was to
reduce the quality and diversity of schooling. Our common schools in the nineteenth
century, even in backwoods environments, were capable of producing not only Lincoln but a
well-educated, literate population fully capable of following the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Now
schools turn out millions of functionally illiterate graduates deprived of any
cultural heritage. An cursory review of a typical high school examination given at the typical public high school at the turn
of the century would provide a considerable challenge to any college graduate, let alone todays high school students. The first
compulsory attendance law was enacted by Massachusetts in 1852 and it was only in 1918 that
all states had adopted it. Government control was primarily on the local level well into the twentieth century; neighborhood
schools controlled by a local school board was the rule. Close monitoring of the school administrators by parents was a partial
substitute for competition and direct control, assuring that any widely shared desires of parents were implemented. After the
depression, the public began to have unbridled faith in the virtues of government, especially of central government, due to what
appeared to be the successes of government in overpowering the depression. Thereafter, power shifted rapidly from the local
community to larger entities as consolidation occurred. The fundamental reason for deterioration of
schooling is increasing bureaucratization and centralization of public schools. In the
five years from 1971 to 1976, total professional
staff increased 8 percent, cost per pupil 58 percent (adjusted
for inflation 11 percent), thus
inputs were clearly up. The number of students, though, were down 4
percent, number of schools down 4 percent, quality of students down even more
drastically. In that period of time the number of school districts decreased by 17 percent,
leading to greater centralization. The number of school districts have decreased from 130,000 before World War II
when the population was less than 150 million to less than 16,000 with a population of over 250 million. The number of high schools
have remained nearly static even with the tripling of high school students. While enrollment was essentially flat, the number of
professional staff went up 15 percent, teachers 14 percent but administration by 44 percent. Economies of scale which should have
resulted from such consolidations and centralizations have not. In fact, the situation has worsened. Administration has become top
heavy. The Board of Education of New York employs thousands of administrators to run their school system. In the public school
system, fourty-seven percent of the personnel are nonteaching staff. In Chicago where a half million attend public school, there are
3500 public school administrators; with half as many students, the Catholic school system have only 35 administrators, one-fiftieth
proportionally. Of the approximately 21,000 private schools, few have more than 1,000 students. In education, small is beautiful,
more personalized, exactly the reverse of the centralization trend seen in public schools. The focus of private schools is to optimize
not maximize. They recognize that in education little economies of scale exist. The optimal school size is smaller not larger. These
schools tend to be small and autonomous, not part of a chain. Before the 1930s, the federal government played little role in
schooling. Parents monitored schools closely and greatly influenced the school administrations decisions. In 1920, local
communities provided 83 percent of all revenues; by 1980 local communities provided only 43 percent with the states and fed the
rest. Principals and non-teaching staff multiplied fivefold from 1960 to 1980. In 1930, classroom teachers accounted for 96 percent
of the total staff; by 1980 teachers accounted for only 86 percent with a fifteen times multiplier effect for other staff brought on
board during that same timeframe. Extra spending has not been used to educate our children but used in favor of social adaptability,
social awareness, and social responsibility. Schools have slowly assumed a greater social service burden; they have become social
service institutions first and schools second. This needs to be reversed. Schools have expanded their
function beyond the tradition one of schooling into one of helping to mend the social problems
of society, an admirable goal but one which should not be pursued at the expense of lowering the
quality education of our youth, educating being, of course, the primary mission of schools. Both
control and financing of schooling have been transferred from local communities to larger districts and to state and federal
governments. Professional educators increasingly decide what should be taught, how, by whom, and
to whom. Monopoly and uniformity have replaced competition and diversity. Control by
producers has replaced control by consumers. As in any economic decision, those who spend
other peoples money on items for others will not have as vested an interest in outcomes as those
that spend their own money for themselves. This is what has occurred as a result of the centralization and consolidations of the last
thirty years. The right to attend private school is enshrined in law via the Pierce vs. Society of Sisters, an Oregon case from the
1920s, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state could not force children to satisfy the compulsory attendance law in
public school only. Title 1 from LBJs 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act allowed funding for the poor to the schools of
their choice and was very successful for the short duration it existed. This was struck down in Aguilar v. Felton (1985) which said
poor youngsters could not receive Title I services from parochial schools. A revised Chapter (or Title) I voucher scheme from
Congress would be a good start, a start everyone agrees upon but which Congress has failed to act upon. Federal government should
provide funding for Head Start and Chapter I for every eligible child throughout the country. A real choice system can
only be effective if it leads to significant diversity among schools and backed by the capacity of
parents, students, and teachers to make real decisions. Ronald Reagans advocated during his 1980 presidential
campaign four changes for education. These included: reduction of federal controls over education.
Elimination of requirements for bilingual education. Block grants with control to
be vested in the state or local communities. Tuition tax credits or vouches to help
parents gain some control over their childrens education
Neg Scholarship Tax Credits CP
1nc Scholarship Tax Credits
The United States Federal Government should:
Authorize a tax credit for individual and corporate contributions to
organizations that provide educational scholarships to eligible
students so they can attend qualifying public or private schools of
their parents choice
Scholarship Tax Credits are the best mechanism for providing

families with the freedom to leave failing school systems
Peter Murphy 3/9, 2017, Peter Murphy is vice president for policy at the Invest in Education
Foundation Special Report Trumps Pursuit of 50-State Scholarship Tax Credit Deserves
Applause https://spectator.org/trump-500-state-scholarship-tax-credit-education-273926-2/
As Denisha Merriweather sat with First Lady Melania Trump during the Presidents joint session to Congress on Tuesday night, she
became a symbol of real progress for millions of American youth who still lack choice in education. President Trumps decision to
highlight the success of programs that offer tax credits to spur charitable donations to K-12 scholarship programs is welcome news
for millions of parents and children. He addressed the issue again in Florida at a local Catholic school on Friday. The idea being
considered by the White House is simple yet powerful. It would fulfill President Trumps campaign promise for a national school-
choice initiative. Democrats and Republicans should be applauding. There can be little debate that millions of
children are trapped in failing schools. The tax credit would dramatically increase charitable
scholarship dollars to make private options including religious schools and non-sectarian private academies
more accessible to low and middle-class families. In Washington these days, even a good idea can bring out its
critics. A federal scholarship tax credit would deliver meaningful school choice to children in all 50 states. From a limited
government standpoint, using a tax credit this way is the ideal mechanism to encourage increased private
charitable funds that would immediately improve the educational quality and opportunity for
tens of thousands more children nationwide. Its been said often that education is the civil rights
struggle of our time as reiterated by the president in his speech to Congress. Yet many states ironically, many of them
Democrat-controlled states refuse to expand educational options for children, including those in high-need communities. The
intransigence of these blue and purple states is not unlike those who resisted the civil rights struggles of two generations ago.
President Trump has the ability to liberate children in these states from bad schools a move his predecessor was too timid to
embrace. Trump also needs to ensure that existing religious scholarship organizations could participate in this new scholarship tax
credit. Democratic Party stalwarts who benefited from private or parochial school education include former House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and even NYC teacher union boss Michael Mulgrew. Many on the Left are denying that
same option to countless kids in failing public schools. Students deserve options and parents deserve greater
choice. The President is on the right track. Now is the time for action.
[Insert Aff-Specific Solvency Card]
Solvency General
ESAs
ESAs- mechanism
Chad A. Miller, 2017, is the director of education policy at the American Action Forum. His
past includes work with the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools as the Senior Director
for Federal Advocacy, The House Committee on Education and the Workforce as a Professional
Staff Member, and the Education Leaders Council where he held several positions including
Policy Analyst, Director of Federal Programs, and Director of Operations.
Options for a New Federal Education Tax Credit https://www.americanactionforum.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/04/School-Choice-Tax-Credit-Format-Final.pdf
Education Savings Accounts Education savings account (ESA) programs create personal accounts for
the purpose of depositing taxpayer funded education dollars. Parents can then access the ESA to pay for
school tuition and fees, textbooks, tutoring and special therapies and other approved expenses, so that their
child's education is truly customizable. ESA participants are able to choose the best individualized education
options for their children through multiple providers. Currently, five states have authorized the use of ESAs, though only Arizona
and Florida have funded the programs. Federal policymakers could utilize any of these five models to design a federal program,
however, to do so through the tax code would require a slightly different funding mechanism. While the Arizona and Florida
programs receive direct appropriations, a federally designed ESA program could instead rely on individual
or corporate donations to fund the savings accounts, and in return would offer a tax credit . Like
the limits set forth in the Educational Opportunities Act, contributions to a federal ESA program could be
limited to $4,500 for individuals and up to $100,000 for corporations. As previously stated, the
advantage of adopting an ESA program is customization. Unlike scholarship programs which generally provide
funding for tuition and fees, ESAs can cover private school tuition and fees, online learning programs,
private tutoring, community college costs , higher education expenses and other approved
customized learning services and materials. ESAs could even allow students to use their funds to pay for a
combination of public school courses and private services. This is truly an individualized approach to education.
Educational Opportunities Act
Educational Opportunities Act- mechanism
Another example lawmakers could look towards for program design is the Educational Opportunities Act (S.148)
(H.R.895). As summarized by the Congressional Research Service, this legislation, first introduced in 2013 by Senator Marco Rubio
and Representative Todd Rokita but never passed in either chamber, would create a federal tax credit of up to
$4,500 for individuals and up to $100,000 for corporations that make donations to SGOs. Those
organizations would award the funds to low income families, who could use the money to attend private schools, including those
run by religious groups. It also imposes a penalty on SGOs that fail to distribute at least 90% of their
total receipts for elementary and secondary school expenses in a taxable year.iii There are currently 20
tax credit for scholarship programs enacted in 19 states (Pennsylvania has 2 separate programs).
Scholarship tax credits
Scholarship tax credits- mechanism
The first, and by far most popular option, could be the creation of a tax credit for scholarship programs . The
second could be a tax credit funded education savings account. For both options, there are existing state programs
that federal policymakers could emulate as well as legislation that has been introduced in this and previous Congresses. Tax Credit
for Scholarships Tax credits for scholarship programs allow individual or corporate taxpayers to receive
full or partial tax credits when they donate to scholarship granting nonprofit organizations (SGOs). SGOs
provide scholarships for private school choice, or may award grants to cover per pupil expenditures to exercise
public school choice and/or transportation assistance to students choosing alternative public schools. Florida
provides an example of a similarly structured tax credit program at the state level. That program provides state tax credits to
encourage private, voluntary contributions from corporate donors to SGOs that award scholarships to eligible children of low
income families. A student is eligible for a scholarship from a SGO, if the student qualifies for free or
reduced price school lunch provided by the National School Lunch Program or is on the direct certification
list; or if the student is currently, or recently has been, in foster care. For the 2015 16 school year, scholarships
totaling $419 million were awarded to 79 thousand students enrolled in 1,602 participating
schools. Since 2011 12, the programs initial year, the amount of scholarships awarded has increased 185 percent. The
number of participating students has increased 95 percent, and the growth of participating schools has
increased 32 percent.ii INSIGHT AmericanActionForum.org
Tax credits solves - empirics
Murphy 17 Peter Murphy, Washington Times, April 12, 2017, The GOPs best choice for
education reform, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/12/education-reform-
can-be-accomplished-by-gop/
When discussing education reform, President Trump often refers to the problems plaguing large urban school districts that
shortchange their mostly low-income African-American and Latino students. Enacting a federal scholarship tax
credit would increase the financial capacity of scholarship-granting organizations
and encourage new ones to spring up. This would bring tangible and immediate
educational benefits to thousands of children in need in every state, not just those in
troubled urban districts. The kinds of families who would potentially benefit from K-12 scholarship programs met recently
at a parent forum at the Immaculate Conception School, a Catholic school in the South Bronx where the poverty rate is more than
double the national average. Parents like Leslie Lombardo talked about the positive impact of scholarships and the larger need:
With more scholarships, students can attend these schools and have a stronger
education, leading people out of poverty. Another parent, Jessica Santiago, a senior court clerk, added
that her childs Catholic school in the Bronx is a family environment, and I just wouldnt feel safe sending him anywhere else. Trey
Cobb, a teacher at Mt. Carmel Holy Rosary School in East Harlem, said, I see kids go from the [housing] projects to
[public] school everyday and I know they would be way better off with us, but a lot of them cant
get there because they dont have the funds. Republicans (and Democrats, for that matter) need to listen
to these parents. There are countless more such scholarship moms (and dads) whose
children would benefit from a federal tax credit scholarship program. Education Secretary
Betsy DeVos expressed earlier this month in her speech to the Brookings Institution that We must shift the paradigm to
think about education funding as investments made in individual children, not institutions or
buildings. Shes right. A scholarship tax credit would do just that. Its a move that would
signal congressional Republicans understand that better, quality education and lifting people
out of poverty go hand in hand. Indeed, education policy from the federal level needs to finally be
about empowering real people in the near term not sometime in the distant future
laden with still more federal mandates and dollars trickling down to bureaucracies and school
districts. How Republicans proceed on educational opportunity either will help thousands of families like the Santiagos, or again
result in vapid, unmet promises. Its up to them.
Vouchers
A voucher system improves education and reduces costs.
What then, can be done? How are we to get out of the quagmire of existence that we find ourselves in now? The modern
school should look less like a factory and more like a high tech company with lean structures , flat
organizations, and decision making pushed to the lowest possible level. This modern
structure would have fewer middle managers (administrators) and no controllers but collaborators.
Schools would be free to implement new teaching strategies and learning methods. Schools
would be encouraged to specialize, to become centers of competence. Principals and teachers
together with the community would run the schools with complete academic and administrative autonomy. Schools would
determine their own specialties, set their own curriculums. By giving parents control over their childrens schooling. Parents
generally have both greater interest in their childrens schooling and more intimate knowledge
of their needs and capacities than anyone else. The social reformers,. those paternalistic gooddoers, often take for
granted that parents, all too often wrongly, especially those poor with little education, have little interest in their childrens
education and no competence to choose for them. Government could require a minimum level of
school financed by giving parents vouchers redeemable for a specified maximum sum per
child per year if spent on approved educational services. Parents would then be free to spend
this sum and any additional sum they themselves provided on purchasing educational services
from an approved institution of their choice. The role of the government would be limited
to insuring that the schools meet certain minimum academic standards, minimum
common content in their programs. An example of the success of this type of choice program is the GI bill
conducted after the Second World War. Each veteran was given a maximum sum per year that could be spent at any institution of
his choice, provided it met certain minimum standards. The voucher plan has the same principles as the GI bills that provided for
educational benefits to military veterans. The veteran got a voucher good only for educational expense and
was completely free to choose the school at which he uses it, provided that it satisfies certain
standards. Parents could be permitted to use the vouchers not only a private schools but at any
other public schools anywhere, in any other district, at any school that is willing to accept their
child. This would give every parent a greater opportunity to choose and at the same
time require public schools to finance themselves by charging tuition. The public
schools would then have to compete not only with the private schools but with each other. The
amount of the voucher would be less than the current cost per public school. In a true choice
system, the state would fund individual children rather than individual schools or districts.
Money would reach the particular school only when the student elects to enroll there. If the child
goes elsewhere, the school would lose its income and would be force to change its offerings to meet the needs and interests of the
community it proposes to serve. Individual schools would compete with each other for faculty
and students. States would fund children with comparable needs equally, without regard to
tax base or neighborhood. Transportation expenses, though, would be limited to that of the
nearest school. Children with special learning needs would get more funding to
accommodate the special needs. Choice is predicated on two pillars of the
American system: equal opportunity and open-market competition. Complacency will be
killed off and improvements and change will occur. Choice in public education will help parents
play a stronger role in our schools, spring innovative programs, bring about community
involvement in their childrens learning. This voucher system offers the fundamental
principles of choice to the education system: it allow parents at least one alternative to
their immediate neighborhood school and reward schools that attract the most students.
Schools would be forced to compete for students and forced to improve their service offerings or
they would fail. Parents and students who must choose would then become educational
consumer activists, more demanding and motivated. Bad schools would either close down
(to be sold to another entity who would take over the building to create their own version of a school) or dismiss their
staffs and reorganize. Choice is the best lever that exists for transforming schools and
enhancing educational opportunity. For bad schools, the first year a school fails to attract enough
students, a school would have to devise its own self improvement plan. The second year the
zone superintendent would intervene. By the third year of poor enrollment, the zone superintendent or citizens council could fire the
principal and staff, reduce school size, or close the school down. This becomes a continuous public referendum on public schooling.
If the public school is doing its job, it needs not fear competition. If it is not doing its job, then
why should anyone object to its destruction.
Solvency Specific Affs
Curriculum Affs
School choice grants students access to curricular freedom- this
guarantees deeper involvement in STEM fields and innovative
teaching methods
Inez Feltscher, 2016, Inez has five years of experience in education reform and school choice.
From her start as an intern at the Heritage Foundation to her work with National School Choice
Week and Center for Education Reform, She is a recent graduate of the University of Virginia
School of Law and completed her undergraduate degree in Philosophy at University of
California, San Diego. THE 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION SAVINGS ACCOUNTS: PEER
REVIEWS, BRANDING AND CONSUMER REPORTS AS PARENT TOOLS By Inez Feltscher,
May 2016; https://www.alec.org/app/uploads/2016/05/2016-05-18-ALEC-State-Factor-The-
21st-Century-Education-Savings-Accounts.pdf
So what might a true ESA market in education look like? Parents will be assembling customized education plans
for their childrenJohnny might take math with the award-winning teacher at the local charter school, be taught
English literature at home, and purchase access to a professional biology lab to do dissections. He might excel in
history, taking college-level classes online with the help of a professional tutor twice a week. For his dyslexia, he might
take one-on-one reading therapy on weekends, assuring that his difficulties are addressed in an individualized
way impossible in the public school classroom. He will not be assessed by how many hours he spends in the
classroom, but by how well he has mastered each skill and learned each concept. His learning will take place as quickly
or slowly as he needs to go, and being behind in one subject will not jeopardize his advancement in another. His
graduation will be competency-based, not merely a marker of showing up and sitting through years of classroom seats.
In order to find the best providers for each of Johnnys strengths and weaknesses as a student, his parents will use the local Yelp
Expert counsel will also be helpful in helping parents understand what is marketable in the business world or what makes a good
university application. style review website to vet his tutors before hiring them. They will select his curriculum and lessons based on
the brand that best reflects their familys values and aspirations for Johnnys future. And when they have difficulty finding the
perfect match for him among the options they can find locally, they will consult with an education market expert who will advise
them on how to find what theyre looking for, and how their assembled education will stack up against college or career
requirements. ESAs have the potential to unlock a true 21st century market in education, real
educational choice rather than merely school choice, which is still rooted in the 19th century institution of the
school. A comparison between two markets is illustrative. On the one hand, there is the traditional, top-down
model in high school textbooks, where government boards in California and Texas determine the options that
are used by more than 50 million public school children in the United States,27 even while technological entrepreneurs
like Copia,28 which makes it possible for teachers to select the best portions from multiple textbooks, chapter by chapter, have to
battle through an army of regulations and bureaus before being allowed to sell their
revolutionary product to school districts. In contrast, An ESA marketplace would open up the world of
customization to the majority of parents who do not have the time, skills, or inclination to school at home. Instead, it would allow
them to contract with an army of providers, all competing to create the best possible individualized
education for each child, as determined by those who know him besthis parents. CONCLUSION ESA programs shift
responsibility for a childs education back to parents, but a growing market in education programs, technology
and instructors means that parents are not required to actually be their childrens full-time teachers. Because of this, ESA
programs have the potential to revolutionize the entire education system in a way that home schooling
does not, because many more parents will be able to participate in directly overseeing their childrens educationusing peer reviews,
branding and professional consulting to help them find the options and providers that are best for their childwithout it becoming
too time-consuming an endeavor for the average family. In order for this 21st century vision of education to be realized,
programs must be large enough, broad enough and unencumbered enough to spark the interest
of education innovators to come compete for parents dollars. Instead of being mediated by school districts, state boards
and legislatures, education providers will be able to go straight to those whose opinions matter mostparents.
Student Productivity
School choice guarantees local competition and is directly causal of
student productivity gains
NBER, ND. The National Bureau of Economic Research, The NBER is a private, non-profit, non-
partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings
among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals. Schools choice raises student
achievement http://www.nber.org/digest/aug02/w8873.html In
School Choice and School Productivity (Or, Could School Choice be a Tide That Lifts All Boats?)(NBER Working Paper No. 8873)
author Caroline Hoxby calculates that average school productivity -- that is, student achievement per dollar spent -- was about 65
percent higher in 1970-1 than in 1998-9. If U.S. schools were only able to return to their 1970-1 level of productivity, the average U.S.
student would be "scoring at an advanced level where fewer than ten percent of students now score," she writes. The dramatic
decline in the productivity of American schools frustrates school reforms and imperils the
traditional source of U.S. comparative advantage: skilled labor that supports advanced
industries. In this paper, Hoxby asks why school productivity is so low and whether increased school choice (the
ability to choose between public schools within an area, or between public and private schools) might raise it. The question is an
important one because many debates on school choice focus on students who might be "winners" and "losers." But, if school
choice raises the productivity of schools, it will "lift all boats": that is, improve schools for all students. Recent
productivity losses of American schools are so large that regaining a mere fraction (as little as a quarter) of recently
lost productivity would "lift all boats." Hoxby examines the effect of choice on school productivity by looking at three
recent reforms that have introduced choice into areas that previously had little: vouchers in Milwaukee, charter
schools in Michigan, and charter schools in Arizona. She looks at the productivity of public schools that faced increased competition
as a result of these reforms, not just at the productivity of the voucher or charter schools themselves. For instance, she compares the
productivity of Milwaukee's public schools before and after the voucher program provided competition. As a control group for these
schools, she uses urban public schools in Wisconsin that are located outside Milwaukee (and are thus immune from voucher
competition) but that serve students similar to those of Milwaukee. She finds that Milwaukee's public schools raised their
productivity quickly and dramatically in response to competition and that the Milwaukee
schools that faced the most competition raised their productivity the most. Productivity rose
because the schools achieved more while spending the same amount (as opposed to holding achievement
steady while reducing spending). In fact, in the Milwaukee schools facing substantial competition, achievement
rose by as much as 4.7 national percentile points faster per year than in control schools. Such gains are
virtually unprecedented for an American school reform. Hoxby also reviews evidence on the effects of competition among
traditional public school districts, noting that metropolitan areas with maximum school choice between
school districts have "eighth grade reading scores that are 3.8 percentile points higher, tenth grade
math scores that are 3.1 national percentile points higher, and twelfth grade reading scores that
are 5.8 national percentile points higher." The productivity gains are more impressive that these
achievement scores indicate because per pupil spending is also 7.6 percent lower in such metropolitan areas.
Finally, Hoxby reviews evidence that indicates that private school competition raises public school
productivity through achievement gains (at a steady level of per-pupil spending). For instance: "A public school
in a metropolitan area with moderately high [relative level of] private school choice has eighth grade reading scores that
are 2.7 national percentile points higher, eighth grade math scores that are 2.5 national percentile points
higher, twelfth grade reading scores that are 3.4 national percentile points higher, and twelfth grade math
scores that are 3.7 national percentile points higher." Hoxby concludes with some simple calculations that demonstrate that
the productivity gains from school choice could easily swamp any other effects of choice. For
instance, let's say that a Milwaukee student started with the best available peers in that city and (as a result of choice) ended up with
the worst available peers. Let's also say that peers had an extraordinarily strong effect so that the student's achievement fell one-for-
one with that of his peer group, as it deteriorated. Even in this extraordinarily pessimistic scenario, the effect
of choice on Milwaukee productivity is so great that the student would be better off after only
four years under the voucher reform.
Innovation/Competitiveness
Tax Credits are key to a market-focus on education that stimulates
growth, efficiency, and innovation.
Andrew Coulson, 2015, Andrew Coulson directs the Cato Institutes Center for Educational
Freedom and is author of Market Education: The Unknown History. Improving Educational
Options for Georgia Children; http://educationnext.org/improving-educational-options-
georgia-children/
By focusing on studies of these within-country differences in education systems, I discovered a clear pattern: it is the freest
and most market-like systems that best serve families. These systems treat both educators and
parents with respect. Educators are free to use the curricula and methods they deem best, and
parents are free to choose among them according to their own values and the needs of their children. Another
ingredient of the best-performing systems is that parents directly pay at least a fraction of the cost of their own
childrens education. When they do so, schools are more responsive to their demands and they also operate
more efficientlydelivering higher student performance per dollar spent. In India, for example, government-
funded schools (whether public or private) tend to teach in the local language despite widespread parental preference for instruction
to be given in English. By contrast, parent-funded schools teach in English across the curriculum, to meet parent demand. While
there are other school choice policies in the U.S. besides education tax credits, a careful statistical analysis shows that tax credits
impose less red tape on educators than other programs. This is crucially important given that parental
choice becomes meaningless if all schools are regulated into conformity by the state. Heavy-handed
regulation also restrains the cycle of innovation we have enjoyed in the truly free enterprise sectors of our economy. The
improvements weve seen in everything from television sets to grocery stores have not been driven by state or federal
mandates. They have been the result of entrepreneurs freely competing with one another to discover new
and better ways of meeting our needs. Educators have too long been shut out of this free enterprise sector,
straight-jacketed by reams of regulation, and unrewarded or even punished for successful innovation. Raising the cap
on Georgias scholarship tax credit program is thus an ideal way to bring freedom and excellence to K-12 education. Of course if
Georgia fails to do so, its citizens and businesses will still have the option of relocating to Florida.
States are experimenting with voucher systems now -- it solves

through competition.
One such voucher concept being tested is in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin school system. The plan
provides $2,500 vouchers to 1,000 low income inner city primary grade school children. Despite
Wisconsin spending nearly $6,000 per year per child, a 90 percent failure rate exists in the public schools (only 10 percent enter
high school able to read or write). This plan allows these vouchers to be spent for private schools. The plan is
oversubscribed and working well. Vouchers are not uncommon for public schools; Arizona
educators use taxpayer money to send special-ed students to more than 50 private schools in the
state but do not allow parents of other students to do the same. The United States is the only
major developed country in which there is no competition within the school
system. The French and the Italians have dual school systems: a public one and a Catholic one,
both paid for by the state. Germany has the Gymnasium, the college preparatory school for the
elite. In Japan, schools are graded by the performance of their students on the university
entrance exams. The teachers of high-ranking schools are recognized, promoted and paid accordingly. America, by
contrast, offers no performance standards, and little competition either within the
system or from outside. Competition breeds accountability. Monopoly breeds
complacency and arrogance. Schools should be held accountable for their students
performance. Schools providing a high quality education would flourish, as would a
similarly run business, while schools failing to meet the needs of their students would not be
able to compete and in effect would go out of business.
Democracy/Tolerance
Educational freedom increases democratic values and political
tolerance in children and parents- empirical studies prove.
Greg Forster, 2013 Greg Forster, Ph.D. is a Friedman fellow with EdChoice. He conducts research and writes on school
choice policy. Forster has conducted empirical studies on the impact of school choice programs in Milwaukee, Ohio, Florida and
Texas, as well as national empirical studies comparing public and private schools in terms of working conditions for teachers, ethnic
segregation and teacher and staff misconduct. He also has conducted empirical studies of other education topics, including charter
schools, accountability testing, graduation rates, student demographics and special education. A Win-Win Solution The Empirical
Evidence on School Choice; Third edition April 2013. EdChoice; https://www.edchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2013-4-
A-Win-Win-Solution-WEB.pdf
One of the first empirical studies of school choices impact on civic values and practices was
conducted T A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on School Choice | Third Edition 24 edchoice.org by Wolf, Peterson,
and Martin West. They studied students who applied for vouchers in a privately funded voucher program in
Washington, D.C. in the late 1990s (not to be confused with the federally funded program created in D.C. in 2004). Applicants were
offered vouchers based on a lottery, allowing the researchers to use a random-assignment method. They found that voucher
students were more likely to say they would definitely permit their least-liked group to
perform civic actions like give a speech in their community or run for president.49 Another early study,
by Peterson and David Campbell, examined the results of a nationwide privately funded voucher program in the
early 1990s. This study measured levels of both tolerance and civic knowledge and was able to employ a random-assignment
method. It found no visible difference in either tolerance or civic knowledge between the voucher
and non-voucher student groups.50 Campbell conducted a separate analysis of data from this nationwide program. He
found that students offered a voucher scored higher than their non-voucher counterparts on political
tolerance but the same in civic knowledge. His original analysis was unable to use a random-assignment method.51 However, he
was later able to refine his method to confirm the finding using random assignment.52 Howell and Peterson analyzed random-
assignment data from a privately funded voucher program in Washington, D.C. They found no visible effect on tolerance for the
rights of others between the voucher and non-voucher student groups.53 Two recent studies by David Fleming examine data from
the School Choice Demonstration Project in Milwaukee. These are not random-assignment data, as was noted previously in regard
to the academic findings of the School Choice Demonstration Project. This should be borne in mind when interpreting the findings.
Nonetheless, in the field of civic values and practices where fewer random-assignment studies are available and new ones do not
seem likely to be forthcoming, other evidence is worth considering. Fleming examined the impact of school choice on the civic
involvement of families, rather than just students. School choice does not just impact students; it also changes the role
of the family in the life of society because it puts parents in charge of education. Fleming found that in
families using Milwaukee vouchers, as compared with a matched sample of public school families, parents were more likely
to be actively involved in their childrens schools, parent-teacher organizations (PTOs), and
other education groups.54 He also found parents were more likely to see a connection between
education and the civic institutions of society, to say that their children were learning how
government works, and to be involved themselves in civic activities
Inequality
Privatization solves inequality through competition
Those who oppose public school choice fear that low income students, whose parents may be less able to
make informed choices or less committed to quality education, will be left behind in failing, shrinking, inner-city
schools as better students flee. This is precisely what happens under the old system. Those with financial
resources flee to the suburbs or to private schools or move residence to another district. Choice does exist now-for those able to
afford it. Competition can revive the system; failing schools have no choice but to improve;
failing management is replaced, students in inferior schools are rescued. Choice will be
extended to all, regardless of income level. Choice is being offered, and successfully, in many schools
through the magnet school concept.
Opponents indicate that diversity would suffer as a result of vouchers due to white flight. On the contrary, it would prosper.
Violence in schools would decrease because children would flee from schools unable to keep
order. Discipline is not a problem in private schools since it is internally imposed
rather than externally as in the public system. Busing would be ended. Schools would
tend to specialize and attract a more wide audience. A vast market of new schools would
open up. Many would be established for nonprofit and some for profit entities. Schools which
satisfy their customers would survive. The voucher plan would not resegregate but it would moderate racial
conflict and promote a society in which blacks and white cooperate in joint objectives-
-the education of their children.
The perceived self-interest of the educational bureaucracy is the key obstacle to the introduction
of market competition in schooling, adamantly opposing every attempt to study, explore, or
experiment with voucher plans. This must be done without rigid standards for
approval which would sabotage the entire voucher affair. This must also be done in
such fashion so government can not dictate interests to non public schools as a condition of
receiving public moneys (in fact it is not public moneys it is the individuals moneys which is rightfully his and the only
difference is that instead of being directly given to the school, a middleman called government collects and distributes the funds
according to the governments wishes, not the desires of the payee). Vouchers would go to parents, not to schools.
Under the GI bill, veterans went to many different types of colleges, Catholic, Christian, secular, without causing any religion-state
controversies. So shall these vouchers. One educator after the war thought the GI bill would spell
doom for society and the system of higher education; on the contrary, it was one of the most
spectacular successes ever in American society, resulting in an entire generation of well-
educated workers through whose efforts America prospered and led the world for the next fifty
years. If a voucher system were implemented for elementary and secondary schools, the results
will more than likely be similar in their effects and impacts on society--overall largely positive.
The private sector has interest in combating poverty and inequality
WEF 14, April 2014, a Swiss nonprofit foundation committed to improving the state of the world by
engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and
industry agendas, Creating New Models Innovative Public-Private Partnerships for Inclusive
Development in Latin America
The private sector

In the case of the private sector, businesses have become more interested in pushing for greater
involvement in solving social problems both in industrialized and (increasingly) in emerging countries,
thereby going beyond traditional corporate social responsibility to touch on issues such as poverty,
inequality, fair trade or the environment, which are progressively becoming part of their corporate
values. More importantly, the business case through which the private sector seeks to position itself
among more vulnerable sectors of society by providing them with goods and services and to address
issues of environmental sustainability is quickly gaining acceptance as a new source of value creation.
More recently, some business sectors have therefore stressed the importance of rethinking their
business models by taking such issues into consideration, reaching towards more vulnerable sectors of
society and the bottom of the pyramid11 (BOP), which had been traditionally underserved, thus
turning social and global development issues into business opportunities. As Prahalad (2011) and Yunus
(2013) have stated, developing innovative approaches to reach the BOP and reshaping business models
towards sustainable social impacts can be facilitated by building and generating ecosystems which
include large corporations, SMEs, microentrepreneurs, NGOs and the public sector as collaborators.
Segregation
Multiple empirical studies with decades of data find that school
choice programs significantly break down racial segregation.
Eight empirical studies have examined segregation levels in public schools and choice-
participating private schools without falling afoul of the methodological problems described previously. One study, the only study able
to use individual student data to examine causal effects, finds no net effect. The remaining seven studies, using descriptive data,
find that school choice moves students from more segregated public schools into less segregated
private schools. Greene, Jonathan Mills, and Stuart Buck conducted the one study using causal analysis as part of the School Choice
Demonstration Project. They were able to track individual students from school to school, with racial data on all the students and schools. They found
that schools racial composition differed substantially from the racial composition of the greater
Milwaukee metro area in both Milwaukee public schools and voucher-participating private
schools, so both can be considered segregated. However, neither system is particularly better; statistical tests found no significant differences
between segregation levels in public and voucher-participating schools. Moreover, they found that students switching schools in Milwaukee was having
no net effect on segregation levels in Milwaukee schools; this was true for students switching from public to private schools using vouchers, and it was
also true of other forms of school-switching.38 It is important to note that the School Choice Demonstration Project could look only at the current
impact of the Milwaukee voucher program. However, that program was created in 1990 and could have had a sizeable impact on segregation in its first
decade or more, leading to a relatively stable status quo where segregation has equalized and the program has no further ongoing effect.
When
the U.S. Department of Education began tracking private school racial composition in 1994,
Milwaukee private schools were 75 percent white; by 2008, they were 35 percent white.39 This
seismic shift was the result of the voucher program. One thing the voucher program facilitated was the creation of new private
schools that are predominantly minority, so it is possible that segregation levels were always equal between public and private schools, and the voucher
program simply shifted some of the heavily minority segregated schools to the private sector. Still, the
large shakeup in both sectors
suggests it is at least as likely that old barriers may have been broken down. In the absence of historical data
on the race of individual voucher participants, that is as much as can be said. Two of the descriptive studies of the Milwaukee voucher program were
conducted by Howard Fuller and George Mitchell. In the first study, they compared Milwaukee public elementary schools to Catholic elementary
schools participating in the voucher program. They found that 58 percent of public elementary students and 38 percent of Catholic elementary students
attended schools that were racially homogeneous (more than 90 percent white or 90 percent minority).40 In the second study, Fuller and Mitchell
compared Milwaukee public schools to all private schools participating in
the voucher program. They found that in public
schools 54 percent of elementary students and 37 percent of secondary students attended
racially homogeneous schools. Students attending private schools in the voucher program were less
likely to be in racially homogeneous schools; Fuller and Mitchells data tables indicate that, overall, 50 percent of elementary
students and 16 percent of secondary students in voucher-participating private schools were in racially homogeneous schools.41 In a third Milwaukee
study, Fuller and Deborah Greiveldinger compared racial enrollments in Milwaukee public schools with those of private schools participating 21 The
Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice edchoice.org in Milwaukees voucher program. They found that in Milwaukee public schools 58 percent of
elementary students and 44 percent of secondary students were in racially homogeneous schools. Voucher
students attending
private schools were less likely to be in racially homogeneous schools; the data tables indicate 50 percent of
elementary students and 29 percent of secondary students were in racially homogeneous schools.42 Forster conducted a fourth Milwaukee study. He
calculated a segregation index measuring the difference between the racial composition of each school and the
racial composition of the school-age population in its metropolitan area (as defined by the federal Office of Management and Budget). He then used
linear regression to compare segregation levels in public schools and voucher-participating private
schools within the city of Milwaukee, applying statistical controls for school level (elementary or secondary) to ensure appropriate comparisons.
Forsters regression analysis found that voucher-participating private schools were 13 points less
segregated than Milwaukee public schools on the segregation index. This would be equal to the difference
between a school that was 60 percent white and a school that was 73 percent white, if both were in a city that was 50 percent white.43 Greene examined
the Cleveland, Ohio voucher program. Examining elementary and middle schools, he found that 19 percent of voucher recipients attended private
schools that fell within 10 percentage points of the racial composition of the metropolitan area, compared
with 5 percent of Cleveland public school students. He also found that 61 percent of public school students
attended racially homogeneous schools (over 90 percent white or 90 percent minority), compared with half of
voucher recipients.44 Forster conducted a second study of the Cleveland program, applying the same segregation index as in his Milwaukee
study. He compared segregation levels in public schools and voucher-participating private schools within the city of Cleveland, comparing both with the
racial composition of school-age children in the greater metro area.
School choice desegregates public schools and integrates private
schools- newest study proves.
Hayley Glatter, 2/15 2017, a former editorial fellow at The Atlantic. The School-Voucher
Paradox, The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/02/the-voucher-
paradox/516747/
School choice aids and abets segregationor so goes the logic of many of the policys loudest critics. But a study recently published in Education and
Urban Society provides evidence to the contrary: A
voucher program actually reduced racial stratification in the
public schools that families decided to leave. The focus of the study, titled The Impact of Targeted School Vouchers on Racial
Stratification in Louisiana Schools, is the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP), which provides state money for students to attend private schools.
Researchers found that as
families participated in the program, the student bodies of the public schools they
opted out of began to more closely reflect the racial makeup of the schools surrounding community. In
other words, the public schools became more integrated. The findings stand apart from previous
research conducted by groups like the National Education Policy Center that found many school-choice programs result in
an unsettling degree of segregation. Patrick Wolf, one of the co-authors of the study and an education professor at the University
of Arkansas, attributed the new findings to Louisianas demographic makeup and emphasized that the rollout and examination of school-choice
programs should be heavily context dependent. About a third of Louisianas population is African American. Unlike some voucher programs, LSP is
double targeted, Wolf said; in order to be eligible for the funds, a students family must make less than 250 percent above the federal poverty level
approximately $61,500 for a family of fourand be enrolled in a public school receiving a letter grade of C or below according to state standards.
Essentially, a
student must come from both a low-income background and be enrolled in a school
that is underperforming in order to participate in the program. But despite the fact that, by some estimates,
380,000 children were eligible for the vouchers, just 6,900 students actually took advantage of them for the 2016-17 school year, a number that, despite
its relatively paltry size, Wolf said isnt shockingly low. Parents have an If it aint broke, dont fix it perspective on their childs education, Wolf said.
What you see in terms of initial participants in private school-choice programs are parents who
are desperate to get their kid out of an educational situation. But whether those initial participants got to reap the
benefits the study outlines isnt yet clear. Yes, the study indicates that the vast majority (82 percent) of LSP transfers have
reduced racial stratification in the voucher students former public schools. The operative word in that
analysis, though, is former. The families that used the voucher option to attend a private school facilitated integration in a public school their child
would no longer attend. And, in fact, the
study found that the students who used vouchers in Louisiana
reduced racial stratification in the private schools they selected just 45 percent of the time: More
often, Wolf said, they actually increase the segregation in the private school they push the student demographics of the private school further away
from the ideal standards from the community. Eighty percent of the 1,741 students in the studys sample are black,
and Wolf explained that in many cases, families were opting out of public schools that were overwhelmingly African American to begin with. These
students departures, because of the skewed demographics that exist as a result of decades of de facto and de jure segregation laws, left
the public schools less racially stratified as a result. And, Wolf said, many of the private schools that
students enrolled in may have been less racially segregated to begin with, but the student bodies were becoming more and more
African American. Ultimately, despite the ostensibly negative outcomes for families that decided to participate in LSP, Wolf referred
to the studys finding as a win-win for children in both public and private schools. The public-
school students get a more integrated environment in their public schools, and the private-
school kids get to go to a school of choice. Whether that choice is a positive outcome in and of itself remains to be seen.
Solvency 2nc Answers
A2 Hurts Schools
Wrong -- Milwaukee and DC projects proves.
Rotherham 11 Andrew J. Rotherham, Andrew J. Rotherham, who writes the blog Eduwonk,
is a co-founder and partner at Bellwether Education, a nonprofit working to improve
educational outcomes for low-income students. School of Thought, his education column for
TIME.com, appears every Thursday. Feb. 17, 2011, The 5 Biggest Myths About School
Vouchers, http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2049761,00.html
It seems obvious that taking money from the public schools and sending it to private schools
would leave public schools with less money. But in the through the looking glass world of school
finance, things rarely are what they seem. In Milwaukee for instance, Robert Costrell of the
School Choice Demonstration Project analyzed the financial outcomes of the voucher
program and found that it is saving money in Wisconsin. And, in Washington, D.C.
there was an infusion of federal funds into the city's public schools in exchange for the passage
of the voucher program.
A2 Federal Mandates Bad
Overarching funding policy should remain in the hands of the federal
government- the impact to local funding regulation is taxpayer flight
and exorbitantly high taxes.
Hoover 12 Hoover Institution Koret Task Force on K12 Education, Choice and Federalism:
Defining the Federal Role in Education (February 2012), Hoover Institution, Stanford
University http://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/choice-and-federalism.pdf
Fiscal federalism holds that the federal system provides policy makers the opportunity to allocate responsibilities among
levels of government in ways that promote efficiency and equity. In essence, policy makers should allocate decisions to the
unit of government closest to the consumers of the service, unless there are externalities spilloversthat prevent the local unit
from making such decisions. In most matters, schools should make better decisions than districts, just as
school districts should make better decisions about educational services than states, and states
better than the federal government because those services are consumed locally. There are, however, a
number of externalities in education. That is to say, education doesnt just affect the student. For example, the increased
education of individuals spills over to the benefit of those around them and the rest of society. Because school
districts vary so widely in the tax base from which revenues for schools can be generated, higher levels of government are
better positioned to address the funding issues surrounding such externalities than are local
school districts, much less individual schools. Otherwise, either poorer districts will spend less for
education, with the possibility of lower school performance, or they will raise their tax rates to
disproportionate levels, causing mobile tax payers to flee. Both taxpayer flight5 and inferior education
outcomes are externalities in public education that states and the federal government are best positioned
to address. Of course, funding levels are only one determinant of educational outcomes, with adequate levels being necessary but
far from sufficient to assure that the negative externalities associated with the undereducation of individuals are minimized and the
public good associated with effective education is magnified. There is a national interestincluding a powerful
economic interestin a well-educated population. From the perspective of fiscal federalism, the design challenge
for the federal role in education in general and the reauthorization of the ESEA in particular is to identify the major negative
externalities facing local providers of educational services, determine which can be best addressed by state government, and assign
the remainder to Washington. We carry out that exercise in this report, and it yields a very different picture of federal involvement
than is seen at present or that will be seen in the future if Washington continues down its present path. For example, in our model,
Title I of the ESEA, which concerns education of the disadvantaged, becomes strictly a mechanism for cash transfers to support the
schooling of high-need students rather than 181 pages of legislative prescriptions and thousands of pages of associated regulations
covering requirements for everything from parental involvement to school libraries.
A2 Federal Funding Key
Federal funding in school choice initiatives turns the case, results in
spending trade-offs, and is unpopular in the senate.
Benjamin Wermund 06/23/2017 10:00 AM EDT Benjamin Wermund is an education
reporter for POLITICO Pro, covering federal policy and national education issues. Ben covered
higher education at the Houston Chronicle and K-12 education at the Austin American-
Statesman. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, where he worked as a reporter,
editor and managing editor for The Daily Texan and spent a brief stint covering West Texas for
the Big Bend Sentinel. An alternate route for school choice, Politico;
http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-education/2017/06/23/an-alternate-route-for-
school-choice-221006
AN ALTERNATE ROUTE FOR SCHOOL CHOICE: The Heritage Foundation, which has been influential with the Trump
administration, is advocating a path that it says would fulfill President Donald Trumps school choice expansion campaign promise
without expanding the federal footprint in education. While the administration is reportedly weighing the creation of a federal tax
credit scholarship effort, the conservative think tank is pushing a different idea that it says would boost education options for
hundreds of thousands of students: It proposes to take existing pots of federal money that help fund schools
serving military children, Native American children and D.C. students and make them available
to these families to pay for private school tuition. A big part of Heritages push would be funded through
the $1.3 billion federal Impact Aid program, which provides a financial boost to districts that
lack a large tax base because of a military base, national park or Native American reservation
within their boundaries. Heritage wants to use that money to create education savings accounts that
military families could tap into to fund private school tuition, affecting roughly 700,000 students. It also
wants to make the District of Columbia schools an all-choice system, which would affect another 75,000 students, and create
education savings accounts for 49,000 children who attend Bureau of Indian Education schools. These changes would benefit nearly
a million students while maintaining the integrity of federalism necessary for preserving the unity of the school choice movement,
Heritage and the other groups said in the letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The idea is controversial. The Senate has
been reluctant to embrace the use of public funds for vouchers. Many groups that advocate for the
affected schools and students, meanwhile, have their own relationships on Capitol Hill, and are pushing back. The plan
by Heritage is definitely a concern, said Eileen Huck, deputy director of government relations with the National
Military Family Association. She said even with such a shift, there wouldnt be enough funds available to fully
fund private school tuition for all military families. You would be taking money away from
public schools that really need these resources, where a majority of our military children are
educated, and creating education savings accounts that would really leave a lot of military
families holding the bag, Huck said. Kimberly Hefling has the full story.
A2 Parents Suck
Parents are childrens best advocates- they balance safety with
curriculum and make informed decisions about where to send their
kids.
Inez Feltscher, 2016, Inez has five years of experience in education reform and school choice.
From her start as an intern at the Heritage Foundation to her work with National School Choice
Week and Center for Education Reform, She is a recent graduate of the University of Virginia
School of Law and completed her undergraduate degree in Philosophy at University of
California, San Diego. THE 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION SAVINGS ACCOUNTS: PEER
REVIEWS, BRANDING AND CONSUMER REPORTS AS PARENT TOOLS By Inez Feltscher,
May 2016; https://www.alec.org/app/uploads/2016/05/2016-05-18-ALEC-State-Factor-The-
21st-Century-Education-Savings-Accounts.pdf
An education system that allows parents, not politicians and bureaucrats, to resolve the tensions between different
visions of the purpose of education is key for Americas diverse republic. In order to find education providers that match with
their vision and childrens learning style, parents may rely on trusted brands. Opponents may worry, though, that parents may be
duped by slick branding and advertisements. Fortunately , there is good evidence that this is not the case, and that parents do
recognize when an educational experience is out of sync with the presented brand, and furthermore,
parents step up to do something about it when they recognize such disparities . A study by University of
Arkansas researcher Patrick Wolf found that in the case of Catholic schools, parents not only had specific expectations based on the
Catholic school brand, but in cases where the education delivered was out of step with what was advertised through the brand, there is evidence that
some parents reacted to this disappointment with higher attrition rates from the program .25 The
study data suggest that parents balanced academic performance, school safety and other qualities in their decision to
continue or to leave the school, so it makes sense that there was not a perfect match between those disappointed in a particular brand promise and
those choosing to leave entirely. Contrary to opponents assertions, these parents
were not the most affluent and well-
connected; the parents in the study were those with children enrolled in the voucher program in Washington D.C.,
which are mostly targeted to specific disadvantaged or low-income populations and where the participants have an
average income of less than $22,000 a year. Once parents are empowered to direct the dollars the state already spends on educating
their child, the evidence shows they do not act as passive stewards, easily fooled by slick exercises in marketing. Rather, they use
branding the same way most consumers use it: as a way of sorting through the many options available. When the branding or advertising conflicts with
what parents assumed the educational quality to be, they take steps to rectify that deficit and become
their childrens best
advocates. The evidence, both from studies of school choice programs and from observing the home schooling world, shows that
parents will be informed consumers, using peer reviews, branding and expert consulting to sort through the
market for the best-fit option
A2 Alt Cause Productivity
No alt causes- school conduct is the root cause
NBER, ND. The National Bureau of Economic Research, The NBER is a private, non-profit, non-
partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings
among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals. Schools choice raises student
achievement http://www.nber.org/digest/aug02/w8873.html
Using scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) as the measure of output (achievement) and real per-
pupil spending on elementary and secondary education as the input, she examines the school productivity collapse. Hoxby
considers whether changing family backgrounds can explain the collapse in schools' productivity.
She finds that they cannot: while minority students now constitute a larger fraction of the U.S.
student population and they tend to score worse on the NAEP, this phenomenon is overwhelmed by the fact
that current students have parents who are better educated and have higher family incomes. She
also considers whether schools have faced rising costs because wages for females in professional jobs that are
alternatives to teaching have been rising. She finds that, even if schools had had to give teachers the same
wage increases as the most elite female professionals (medical doctors, lawyers) in order to keep teaching quality
constant, the decline in school productivity would still be about 55 percent since 1970-1. In other words,
Hoxby concludes, "School conduct, and not student characteristics or female career opportunities, is the main source
of the decline in school productivity."
A2 Businesses Say No
Businesses want to fund schools, its in their best interest- better
teacher salaries and innovative project. Avoids political barriers.
Budig and Heaps, 2016 Charleston Gazette-Mail January 29, 2016, Friday Private sector sees
value in school investment BYLINE: Gene Budig and Alan Heaps SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg.
P4A. Source: lexis-nexis academic.
Corporations of today see economic strength continuing in the United States if creativity and performance are recognized and rewarded, and
executives are willing to shovel more private dollars to the schools if they produce needed and timely
reformation. Able teachers are high on their list of concerns. Not so much so with elected state and national
representatives. Despite repeated pleas from leaders in business and industry to pay appreciably more attention to the
needs of teachers and innovative programs in elementary and secondary schools, the political circles are seemingly
more interested in lesser topics. Like getting elected. The latter group does not seem to understand that in an increasingly
competitive, technological and connected world, our individual and collective welfare depends on education. More than ever, in fact. Few would have
predicted that business
and industry would be more concerned with the plight of teachers and
classrooms than the elected representatives of the citizenry or the keepers of the public trust. Despite some reports to the
contrary, teachers like their jobs. Some studies indicate that nearly 90 percent of teachers are satisfied with their professional lot. Recent surveys also
tell us that as high as 75 percent of the public have confidence and trust in public school teachers. Unfortunately, attrition
rates are high
and continuing to rise; nearly half of the teaching force leaves within the first years. That is a
more than 50 percent increase in the past 15 years. And in some settings, the situation is even worse.
Attrition is well over 25 percent in many urban schools, and that is especially troubling to business leaders
who contend that this cannot continue if cities are to be attractive destinations in which to live. Teachers are woefully
underappreciated and underpaid. Even a majority of politicians agree. One needs to acknowledge that attrition costs
school districts nearly $8 billion a year on teacher turnover and that cannot be sustained. It is a societal travesty. But there are
emerging rays of hope as the private sector is more and more receptive to reaching out with a firm and
helping hand. To be fair, many candidates for public office are not comfortable debating issues surrounding
education; those matters are complicated and complex, more often than not, involving volatile matters like social class,
race and the economy. Democracy depends on civic engagement and civic engagement is a learned skill. It cannot be relegated. And this
lack of attention has very real consequences. Reality leads us to fear that the New Year will provide little relief, if any, in terms new state and local
dollars. Capital spending to build and renovate schools may also suffer. Many in education are worried and for good reason. A majority of university
chancellors/presidents do not anticipate much of anything in terms of new public support. Rather,
many see possible slippage in
terms of state support and further tuition and fee increases that are already too steep and forcing many deserving
students to abandon hope for graduation. Student loans are spiraling out of control and no answer is in sight. Perhaps the only bright spot is growing
access to needed and valued community colleges where many students keep their aspirations alive. These two-year colleges mean immediate job
opportunities and an opening for four-year degrees. Gene Budig has led three major state universities and was president of Baseball's American League.
Alan Heaps is a former vice president at the College Board.
Net Benefits
Market Education
The governmental stranglehold on monopoly suffocates innovation
and crushes reform- a market based approach is key to revive growth.
Ultimately, the only way to make school reform work on a large scale is to break the government
monopoly A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on School Choice | Third Edition 28 edchoice.org on schooling. The
monopoly isnt just one powerful obstacle to reform among many; its what makes all the many obstacles as powerful
as they are. The monopoly ensures that no meaningful accountability for performance can occur,
except in rare cases as a result of herculean efforts. The monopoly empowers a dense cluster of rapacious special interests
resisting all efforts to improve schools. The monopoly creates an environment where the urgent need for change
cant be made a tangible part of the daily cultural life of the school. Institutional culture in the existing
system is hostile not just to this or that reform, but to reform as such, because the monopoly excludes the only institutional
basis for making the need for change seem plausible and legitimate: the prospect of losing the institutions
client base and the funding that goes with it. When any institution has a captive client base, support for innovation vanishes. Reform
requires people and institutions to do uncomfortable new things, and change will not occur until discomfort with the status quo
becomes greater than the discomfort of the change. An institution with captive clients can continue to function
into the foreseeable future, more or less as it always has, without change. Why not just continue doing
things in the way that feels comfortable and natural? Worst of all, the monopoly pushes out educational
entrepreneurs who can reinvent schools from the ground up. Only a thriving marketplace that allows
entrepreneurs to get the support they need by serving their clients better can produce sustainable innovation. In any
field of human endeavor, whether education or medicine or politics or art or religion or manufacturing or anything else,
entrepreneurs who want to strike out in new directions and do things radically differently need a client base. There need
to be people who will benefit from the new direction and support it. And that client base must be robust on three
dimensions: size, strength, and suffrage. There must be enough supporters, they must have enough ability to provide
support, and they must have enough freedom to decide for themselves what to support. The government
school monopoly crowds out this
Geographic mobility and federalism go hand in hand- this is key to
educational competitiveness
Hoover 12 Hoover Institution Koret Task Force on K12 Education, Choice and Federalism:
Defining the Federal Role in Education (February 2012), Hoover Institution, Stanford
University http://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/choice-and-federalism.pdf
But there is a third and better way, an approach founded on two principles that have served the nation exceedingly well for our
entire history: federalism and choice. The federal structure of our government offers an opportunity to specify the role of Washington strategically, to leverage what it clearly can
do best, while allocating to states and locales what they are best suited to do. This may sound like familiar territory, but, for all the rhetoric about local control, states rights, and
rhetoric has not treated federalism thoughtfully. The Koret Task Force view of federalism is disciplined
the like in public education, the
by the laws of economics and empirical experience on how federalism works besta perspective known as fiscal federalism. Our second organizing principle is
choice. Much has been written and studied in this areacharters, vouchers, within-district choice among traditional public schools, and much morebut the idea of
choice, so powerful in our economy and other government enterprises including higher education, has rarely been examined in the context
of federalism and the appropriate roles of Washington and lower levels of government. One great virtue of a competitive systema choice system
offering lots of alternativesis that, even if no schools actually respond to the competition, the schools that are providing a
higher quality education Good schools will still have an advantage, the bad schools will lose students and money, and students will have options that
prevent them from being trapped in schools that are not serving them. Our analysis provides fresh insight by integrating federalism and
choice as the driving principles of change. Fiscal federalism argues that services are most efficiently delivered
if provided closest to the taxpayers/consumers receiving them and that competition among local
governments for residents/taxpayers will improve those services. We also know that education is a service that
can be undermined by excessive scale or at least by highly bureaucratized top-down control. Local control means that programs
and people can be much more easily chosen and deployed based on professional judgment rather than on formal rules set in Washington or even state capitals. But local
control in the sense of parental and taxpayer influence is undermined in the current system by special interests that
control school bureaucracies. The present arrangement of school boards, federal and state regulations, union contracts, teacher
licensing, and court orders is frozen in place and thus can resist or distort almost any new initiative. Further, the
ability of taxpaying parents of school-aged children to vote with their feet (leave school districts with which they are dissatisfied) is
severely constrained for 6 Koret Task Force on K12 Education low-income populations that are most likely to find themselves served by low-performing
schools. This lack of geographical mobility for large segments of the population undermines the competitive pressure that
low-performing schools and school districts would otherwise expect to face in the context of fiscal federalism. Vibrant,
open competition among the providers of education services for students and the funds that accompany them must go hand in
glove with federalism if our alternative proposal is to work. The absence of choice is why the ESEA state waiver actions taken by the Obama administration and
offered in ESEA reauthorization proposals are not consistent with our proposal. Simply devolving education authority from the federal government to the states through a
waiver mechanism or legislation puts us back under the governance model that motivated increased federal involvement in the first place. If states and localities are not
disciplined by a strong top-down accountability regime, they must be disciplined by something else or they will fall back into old habits. That something else in our proposal is
choice, that is, the ability of parents, armed with good information on school performance, to decide where they send their children to school. For the vast majority of families
with school-aged children, residential address determines the public school those children attend. The Choice and Federalism: Defining the Federal Role in Education 7 school
district assigns the child to a school, typically the one closest to the familys residence. This assignment policy has a strong effect on parents who want the best schooling
: a quarter of parents of school-aged children report that they moved to their current
possible
neighborhood for the school. Another 11 percent of families choose to pay for their children to attend private schools. Charter schools and homeschooling
account together for another 6 percent. Fifteen percent of school-aged children attend parent-selected public schools (i.e., schools to which the parents apply for their childs
enrollment). Thus more than 50 percent of parents of school-aged children have engaged in some form
of school choice, albeit primarily in the form of residential choice and private school tuition: two socially
inequitable means of determining where a child attends school. There is little doubt, based on the long waiting lists for
popular public schools of choice, that many more parents wish to exercise choice than are currently able to do so .
That poor families are least likely to be able to exercise choice means that the school districts that
serve those families are least subject to competitive pressure and least likely to change.
Extending school choice to every parent is central to our plan and critical to the success of any effort to replace
top-down accountability with local control. Further, that choice must be informed. Parents need reliable information on performance when choosing a school. In our view
assuring that parents have ready ac- 8 Koret Task Force on K12 Education cess to reliable information on the performance of schools is a federal function, one that in the frame
Student-based funding is critical to our
of fiscal federalism is unlikely to be taken on, much less carried out well, by lower levels of government.
package of recommendations. Funding must follow students and be weighted to compensate for the extra costs associated with
high- need students if schools are to compete for students and if parents are to be able to have a real choice.
This is key to fix a failing US education system-
That avoids a litany of impacts
Politics DA
Scholarship tax credits are key now- no deficits, and boosts GOP
credibility. Multiple impact warrants.
By Peter Murphy, 4/12, 2017. Peter Murphy is vice president for policy at the Invest in Education Foundation. The
Washington Times; http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/12/education-reform-can-be-accomplished-by-gop/
Republicans in control in Washington have to decide whether to exert themselves on a range of issues to improve the economic and social conditions
for millions of Americans or merely tinker at the margins with small-potato approaches. When it
comes to education, the Trump
administration and Congress have a historic opportunity to immediately improve the educational
landscape and lives of countless children from financially needy and working-class households by including a
scholarship donation tax credit in tax reform legislation under consideration this year. For decades, Republicans have
been preaching that the federal bureaucracy and forced conformity to traditional public education models wont
solve the education crisis, particularly for Americans in need. But theyve never delivered a national solution that moves the
needle. A stronger charitable tax incentive to offset income and corporate taxes would encourage
private donations to private scholarship funds and exponentially expand the pool of K-12
resources available to students. This would help families of limited means provide the
educational opportunities they need for their children something upper-income families take for granted. Using the
federal tax code this way would be seamless and simple. It would not affect or reorder existing federal education
funding, including Title I and other programs, nor would it impede states and school districts ability to
improve public education. Scholarship organizations exist now to help families access school options beyond the district public school
assigned based on residence. A federal scholarship tax credit should encourage charitable donations to
scholarship-granting organizations that empower families to have a wide range of schools to attend. The Childrens Scholarship
Fund based in New York City provides nearly 24,000 K-8 student scholarships either directly or in partnership with organizations across the country so
that students can attend the non-sectarian or religious school of their parents choice. Similarly, Catholic dioceses across the country operate, or partner
with, scholarship entities to financially enable students Catholic and non-Catholic to attend its schools. The reach of scholarship
funds
remains minimal compared to the need for quality educational options. When the Childrens Scholarship Fund
opened its doors in 1998, the parents of 1.25 million children applied for only 40,000 available scholarships. And while 17 states currently
have a scholarship donation tax credit, only four Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona are sizable enough to have an
impact. When discussing education reform, President Trump often refers to the problems plaguing large urban school districts that shortchange
their mostly low-income African-American and Latino students. Enacting a federal scholarship tax credit would increase the
financial capacity of scholarship-granting organizations and encourage new ones to spring up.
This would bring tangible and immediate educational benefits to thousands of children in need in every state, not
just those in troubled urban districts. The kinds of families who would potentially benefit from K-12 scholarship programs met recently at a parent
forum at the Immaculate Conception School, a Catholic school in the South Bronx where the poverty rate is more than double the national average.
Parents like Leslie Lombardo talked about the positive impact of scholarships and the larger need: With more scholarships, students can attend these
schools and have a stronger education, leading people out of poverty. Another parent, Jessica Santiago, a senior court clerk, added that her childs
Catholic school in the Bronx is a family environment, and I just wouldnt feel safe sending him anywhere else. Trey Cobb, a teacher at Mt. Carmel
Holy Rosary School in East Harlem, said, I see kids go from the [housing] projects to [public] school everyday and I know they would be way better off
with us, but a lot of them cant get there because they dont have the funds. Republicans
(and Democrats, for that matter) need to
listen to these parents. There are countless more such scholarship moms (and dads) whose children would benefit from a
federal tax credit scholarship program. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos expressed earlier this month in her speech to the Brookings Institution that
We must shift the paradigm to think about education funding as investments made in individual children, not institutions or buildings. Shes right. A
scholarship tax credit would do just that. Its a move that would signal congressional Republicans understand
that better, quality education and lifting people out of poverty go hand in hand. Indeed, education policy from the
federal level needs to finally be about empowering real people in the near term not sometime in the distant future laden with still more federal
mandates and dollars trickling down to bureaucracies and school districts. How Republicans proceed on educational opportunity either will help
thousands of families like the Santiagos, or again result in vapid, unmet promises. Its up to them.
Federalism DA
The counterplan maintains state autonomy and solves federal
overreach
Peter Murphy 3/9, 2017, Peter Murphy is vice president for policy at the Invest in Education
Foundation Special Report Trumps Pursuit of 50-State Scholarship Tax Credit Deserves
Applause https://spectator.org/trump-500-state-scholarship-tax-credit-education-273926-2/
On the Left, the opposition is naturally led by the two national teachers unions. This opposition is not intellectual,
but rather the dying gasp of a public monopoly that opposes giving parents an increased ability to choose an
option beyond the grip of the unions. The teacher union opposition is knee-jerk. They simply oppose any
school choice initiative that allows lower-income parents greater freedom to choose a private school, whether a
voucher, a school-choice block grant, education savings account, or increased tax incentive for scholarships. On the Right,
some simply oppose any federal education initiative, with some favoring the elimination of the U.S. Department of
Education altogether. Blocking any federal role in educational standards or curriculum decisions may have merit, but
scholarship tax credits are a 50-state solution they should be embracing. The Heritage Foundations Lindsey Burke
fears that a scholarship tax credit will lead to federal regulation of private schools. But nonprofit scholarship funds already benefit
from the charitable deduction, without this overreach. There is no reason to believe that increasing this incentive for
donations to scholarship funds by moving to the higher tax incentives of a dollar-for-dollar tax credit will
change the regulatory structure at all. Heritages Burke also warns that a scholarship tax credit would come at the
expense of state and local control and policy experimentation and innovation. That simply is untrue. All existing state
programs would be unaffected, and states would retain the ability to encourage or discourage
whatever they wanted through state tax codes. With President Trump in the White House and Republicans in
charge of both houses, the bad bill that Burke envisions is not likely. In lieu of a federal scholarship tax credit, Burke advocates for a
small-potatoes approach toward educational choice that would expand the D.C. Scholarship program and add choices for military
families and Native Americans. Nice ideas all, but hardly the bold national solution children need. The do little strategy embraced
by Heritage would leave millions of students stranded in bad schools. The fact that many of these students live in blue or purple
states does not mean they are less deserving of school choice. This solution stands in stark contrast to expanding
the educational bureaucracy to administer and oversee higher government spending that would then
flow through state and school district bureaucracies, with only the remaining crumbs trickling down to help students.
Scholarship tax credits are a federal incentive that maintains local
control of donations- solves the link to federalism
Jason Russell, 2015 Jason is the contributors editor for the Washington Examiner. Previously,
he was a researcher for Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute. He graduated from the
University of Rochester and is originally from Commerce, Mich. Rubio calls for federal tax credit
for school choice; http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rubio-calls-for-federal-tax-credit-for-
school-choice/article/2576198
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., wants the federal government to encourage school
choice without interfering with state and local governments. To do so, Rubio would create a tax credit for
companies that donate to nonprofits that give K-12 tuition scholarships to poor students. "American
companies, in lieu of a portion of their taxes being paid to the government, would pay it into a local not-for-profit
scholarship organization that gives scholarships to low-income families to send their children to a private
school of their choice," Rubio said in an interview with the 74's Founder Campbell Brown Wednesday. "I'm not saying it's a silver
bullet that's going to solve everything. But it will provide yet one more avenue by which low-income parents can have access to a
better education than the one their kids are getting now." Such a program would create a federal incentive for
school choice, without directly interfering in the affairs of state and local governments and their
education budgets. Not interfering in those affairs is a priority for Rubio, who said he opposes using
federal dollars to incentivize states to implement school choice programs. "The problem with that is that
federal dollars that start out as incentives become mandates," Rubio said. "The federal government has a long history of sending
dollars down as a suggestion and then ultimately becoming a mandate with not strings attached, chains attached
and ropes. I don't want us to have a national school board." Sixteen states have similar school choice
programs, according to the Center for Education Reform. The scholarships given out by the nonprofits can essentially be used as
tuition vouchers at private schools. Scholarship tax credits should not be confused with school voucher programs, however, since the
tax credits do not directly send taxpayer dollars to private schools. "Allowing parents to become the
ultimate and final arbiter and decision maker on where their kids are getting their education is, for me, deeply empowering," Rubio
said. "It's immoral that the only people in America who have no control over where their kids go to school are low-income parents."
Spending DA
Tax credit scholarships save billions of taxpayer money- multiple
studies prove.
Martin F. Lueken 2016, Ph.D. and Director of Fiscal Policy and Analysis at EdChoice. Marty
studied in the department of education reform and received his doctorate in education policy
from the University of Arkansas. He also earned a masters degree in economics from the
University of Missouri. His research interests include education finance and teacher pensions.
His work primarily focuses on fiscal policy issues as they pertain to education choice. He also
travels around the country to testify in states that introduce education choice legislation. THE
TAX-CREDIT SCHOLARSHIP AUDIT Do Publicly Funded Private School Choice Programs Save
Money? https://www.edchoice.org/blog/breaking-tax-credit-scholarship-audit/
In 2007, the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice (now EdChoice) released its report, School Choice by the Numbers: The
Fiscal Effects of School Choice Programs, 1990-2006. 10 In this report, Susan Aud estimated the fiscal impact of
most of the 19 school choice programs in operation at the time, including three tax-credit scholarship programs.
Overall, she estimated that there were about $444 million in net fiscal savings from school choice programs
between 1990 and 2006. The three largest tax-credit scholarship programs alone saved taxpayers
cumulatively more than $200 million. These programs saved taxpayers money because the cost of taxpayer
support for these programs was substantially less than the variable cost of students attending a
public school in the same state. Seven years later, the Foundation released The School Voucher Audit, which built upon
Auds seminal research.11 In The School Voucher Audit, Jeff Spalding estimated the net fiscal impact of 10 school voucher
programs on state governments, taxpayers, and public schools.12 This 2014 report looked at school voucher programs only and
estimated $1.7 billion in taxpayer savings. For consistency and to facilitate comparability, the methodology employed in
this report closely followed the methods used in Spaldings School Voucher Audit. Methods used in both of these reports differ in
significant ways from Auds report, however, and they have already been explained extensively in The School Voucher Audit. 13 For a
variety of reasons, there has been much more published analysis of proposed school choice programs than of existing programs.14
For example, early work by Lips and Jacoby estimated the fiscal impact of Arizonas Original Individual Tax Credit
Program during the programs first few years and estimated a fiscally neutral impact.15 Because this program does not
have any prior enrollment requirements, a fiscal analysis should account for how many students receiving scholarships did not or
would not have switched from public schools (i.e. students likely to enroll in a private school even without that financial aid). Not
doing so could overstate the expected savings. Lips and Jacoby estimated that about 80 percent of scholarship
recipients were currently private school students or likely to attend private school, though the
vast majority were from low-income households. The authors suggested it was likely that some portion of the
scholarship recipients would have had to return to public schools without the financial assistance. This was confirmed by
Vicki E. Murray, who analyzed student-level data and found that 66.8 percent of scholarship recipients family incomes would
qualify them for the corporate low-income scholarship program.16 More recently, Baylor economist Charles North estimated
Arizona taxpayer savings from the individual tax-credit scholarship program (in calendar year 2008) and presented his findings
during testimony to the Arizona legislatures Ad Hoc Committee on Private School Tuition Tax Credit Review. Though tax
revenue forgone because of the program was $55 million, he estimated savings to taxpayers at
between $100 million and $242 million.17 A critical factor for estimating the fiscal impact of school choice programs
is the number of students who leave public schools or who would have enrolled in public schools without financial assistance from
the program (commonly referred to as switchers.) While data on this group is usually not tracked at all, we can still get a
sense about whether a program saves or costs taxpayers money by calculating the break-even
switcher rate, which is the proportion of scholarship recipients who would need to be switchers in order for a program to be
fiscally neutral. Robert Buschman and David Sjoquist examined the fiscal effects of Georgias tax-credit scholarship program.18
Because they did not have data about the share of scholarship recipients who switched from public schools into the program, The
Florida legislatures Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA) conducted a fiscal analysis of the
Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program and estimated that the program saved state taxpayers $36.2 million in
FY 2009.21 Put another way, for each dollar of forgone revenue, the state saved $1.44. Andrew LeFevre
estimated the cost to Pennsylvania taxpayers if all of the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) program participants re-
entered public schools. The gap between the average cost of a public school student and the average
scholarship award given through the EITC was more than $13,000. The cost to educate the
38,600 EITC participants in 200910 would have been $512 million.22 This estimate overstates the true
impact, however, as not all of the students would likely have switched back to public schools.
Tax Credits save taxpayers millions- most comprehensive empirical
studies prove
Costrells work represents the most meticulous and comprehensive fiscal analysis ever conducted on a
school choice programprobably on any education program, possibly on any government program in any area. His final
analysis found that Milwaukee vouchers were saving $37 million per year as of 2009. Without the funding
flaw, that would be the end of the story. However, the program also was transferring money from local property taxpayers to the
state. The funding flaw took an additional $45 million from Milwaukee property taxpayers, allowing property taxpayers
outside Milwaukee to save $52 million total and generating $30 million in total savings on state
taxes.33 Floridas Legislative Office of Economic and Demographic Research produced the second state published
fiscal analysis of a school choice program in 2012. The results of the analysis were published with only a sparse
supporting narrative explaining the method, which limits the readers ability to assess its methodological quality. However, it is still
worth noting. The office found that Floridas tax-credit scholarship program was saving the state $23
million per year as of 2011-12.34 The most recent fiscal analysis was published by Patrick Wolf and Michael
McShane in 2013. Examining the federally funded Washington, D.C. voucher program, they found that each
participating student would have cost taxpayers $14,939 per year to educate in D.C. public
schools, compared to voucher expenses of $7,500 per student. They estimate that, from 2004 to 2009, the
program saved taxpayers a total of about $135 million.
Objectivism DA
Taxes are coercive and unethical -- privatization and individual choice
is the first step to stopping it.
Saint-Andre 94 Peter Saint-Andre, Peter Saint-Andre received a degree in Philosophy and
Ancient Greek, worked as a business writer and editor, April 1994, On the Road to Voluntary
Government Financing, http://stpeter.im/writings/essays/bp.html
Ayn Rand's position on government financing -- that taxation is by nature theft and that government is
best financed through purely voluntary means -- sets her apart from almost all other
political thinkers. This is, however, a double-edged sword for Objectivists. The good news is that hardly anyone else takes a
stand on the issue, so that we've got the field all to ourselves. The bad news is that the Objectivist position on government financing
can be a source of embarrassment or befuddlement, and is often held up to those new to the philosophy as an example of its
extremism and lack of concern for "the real world". In addition, the issue of voluntary financing has little
"resonance" with normal folks. Who cares about voluntary vs. coercive financing when there are so many more pressing
issues facing the polity -- who, that is, except ideological wackos with (hide the children!) libertarian leanings? Even among those of
basically libertarian principles (and despite what your opinion is of the Libertarian Party, the Objectivist political theory must be
classified as libertarian, though perhaps with a small "l"), the issue of voluntary financing is usually considered
one of the last that must be dealt with in the progression towards a free society, not one of the first.
Rand herself, for example, in her 1964 essay "Government Financing in a Free Society", writes that voluntary financing "will be
practicable only in a fully free society, a society whose government has been constitutionally reduced to its proper, basic functions."
Leaving aside the question of how any society can be "fully free" under a regime of forced taxation, I want to challenge the
conventional Objectivist wisdom about voluntary financing of government. If voluntary financing is so crucial to
liberty, then what are we waiting for? Do we want to wait for the arrival of a virtually libertarian society before we
introduce what Rand seems to consider "the last reform"? Why don't we find a path to tax freedom that we can embark on now? In
this essay, I propose just such a path, one which may not appeal to all (or even any) Objectivists, but one which I believe can move us
closer to the day when government will be financed through fully voluntary, non-coercive means. Read on. Not so long ago, George
Bush (remember George Bush?) floated the idea of a check-off on your income tax form, by which you could dedicate up to ten
percent of your income tax exclusively for deficit reduction. This modest proposal contains the germ of what I
call choice-based taxation: the ability -- the right -- to assign your taxes to whatever
governmental services you deem most important. The idea for full-blown choice-based taxation came
to me on witnessing the June 1990 elections in Czechoslovakia, in which 96% of the electorate cast their votes. Weeks before the
voting, each citizen received in the mail an election packet that included one-page descriptions of each of the 24 political parties and
its program -- advertisements, if you will, though they could include only text. Each citizen had weeks to reflect on the positions of
the parties and decide which candidates to vote for. Well, this bright idea, so respectful of the minds of the voters, set me to thinking:
What if you and I were so respected as taxpayers? What if you were supplied with an information packet along with your tax forms,
and could decide which government departments or services you wished to support with your tax money? Just think: each
department is required to come up with a one-page summary of what it has accomplished
recently and why its programs are so important to the people of the nation, and you get to
allocate your tax money among those departments or services that seem on reflection to be most
worthy of your support. Right there on the old 1040, you would have the final choice about the
percentage of your taxes you wanted to assign to each department. One of the beauties of
such a choice-based taxation scheme is that it co-opts the income tax, which every
self-respecting lover of freedom despises. I believe that we can turn the income tax, which is in
essence a way of punishing the creation of wealth, into a weapon against the state. If "the rich"
(successful businesses and the individually better-off) do pay most of the taxes in this country, then don't they deserve to have more
of a say in how that money is spent? Given all the talk about tax fairness, we need to ask: is it fair to soak the rich and give them little
or no say in what is done with the money that is taken from them? The old adage "He who pays the piper calls the tune" not only
does not hold true in the realm of government -- in the United States today those who pay the piper are being forced more and more
to play the tune, through increased regulation. This state of affairs isn't fair, and it's about time someone
(namely, Objectivists) said so. Furthermore, assigning your taxes as you wish has an impeccable "democratic" or old-line liberal
ring to it: after all, is it not right that you be allowed to decide which functions of government you want to support with your hard-
earned money, especially if you are morally opposed to foreign aid or national defense or government subsidies for art or whatever?
Who could argue with the principle of choice, applied even to taxation and fiscal matters? Another beauty of choice-
based taxation is that it takes the fundamental power of government -- the power of the purse --
away from our so-called representatives, at least in part. That portion of federal revenues derived from income taxes
(currently around 35% from personal income taxes and 7% from corporate taxes) would lie beyond the power of Congress.
Furthermore, everyone would be aware of the percentages assigned by the people to the various departments, which would make
highly suspect any effort by our "representatives" to allocate the funds at their disposal in wildly different percentages. There is no
guarantee that you or I would like the resulting percentages. What if the people in their wisdom vote for more welfare, more farm
supports, more government-supported art, more spending on environmental regulation? That outcome is entirely possible, but then
again it is entirely possible that the people would vote less money for the NEA and the EPA, and more money for such basic
functions of government as defense and criminal justice. Given the priorities of the average American vs. those
of the average legislator, I know I would rather entrust fiscal decisions to the people. A focus on such
results looks only at the short term, however. In the long run, a radically democratic financing system will
reintroduce the one principle capable of eradicating coercive government at its
root: the idea that government exists to serve the people, and not the other way around. In these
days of government of the Congress, by the Congress, for the Congress, we have lost sight of the fact that
government exists to serve the needs of the people -- that government is a service.
Where do all our taxes go? Into government services: justice, defense, welfare, farm supports, national parks, foreign aid, and all the
rest. You or I may not like them all, but they're all services provided by the government. Yet who is making the choices
about these services? Not those who are served, but our so-called representatives. No wonder
it seems more and more that the federal government serves not the people but the
Beltway establishment. Beyond the democratic pedigree of a choice-based taxation system could lie a path towards
fully voluntary government financing. For, once we establish the principle that it is services you are paying for with
your taxes, then slowly we can push the idea that it is right for you to pay only for the
government services from which you feel you benefit, and only to the extent that you benefit
from them. That is, we will be able to establish that even paying taxes is fundamentally not an example of forced expropriation
but of voluntary exchange of mutual value between consenting parties. At that point, there will be no need or justification for the
government to set required levels of giving (such as a flat 10% of income, say); instead, levels of giving will be left to the discretion of
the individual, and government financing will be fully voluntary. I believe that choice-based taxation may also provide
a way to reduce government to what Rand called its "proper, basic functions". One
mechanism for doing so would be the privatization of government-sponsored
businesses and charities such as the Postal Service, the NEA, foreign aid programs, public television, and the various
welfare programs. In performing such services, the government is in direct competition with private
businesses or private charities. In order to privatize these government-run services, they might
be given privileged status on tax forms for a few years, meriting a check-off box or a line for contributions to
charities that are making the transition to private status.
Neg PPP CP
1nc PPP
The United States federal government should:
Establish a Public Private Partnership for <the object of the aff>
Private-public partnerships solve -- over ten-thousand school districts

use them and they are empirically effective.
Robinson 17 Gerard Robinson, U.S. News Contributer, May 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
Private corporations are an important asset to 13,500 school districts that consider public-
private partnerships a smart way of doing business on behalf of educators, students and
staff. Contractual public-private partnerships of this nature have existed for more than 100
years though not without challenges. As private corporations play a bigger role than ever before in the
delivery of teaching and learning, legitimate questions about private-sector influence on public
policies and the billions in profit they earn annually from public contracts begin to take up a
greater share of the discussion. These questions are not new, but they inevitably become hyperpoliticized under the
"privatization" banner when a Republican is in the White House. Privatization has multiple definitions, none of which depicts
private-sector involvement in public education in a good light. In the end, the anti-privatization crowd believes
private companies should not make a profit from doing business with public education or
government institutions. So how did we get here? The 1980s saw three important developments that gave rise to this
prevailing attitude. The first was the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980. Reagan campaigned for the White House on a
theme of efficiency, promising to make the federal government run more like a business. One way to fix government was to privatize
some of its services. Reagan outlined his case for privatization in a 1986 speech: Over the past 50 years, the public sector has
assumed many activities that are similar to, or even the same as, those done by the private sector. But when the private sector can
deliver service more efficiently than the public sectorthen the Government must step aside. The second development was the rise
of for-profit prisons. In 1983, Corrections Corporation of America became the first for-profit prison management company in the
nation. Its vision was "to create public-private partnerships in corrections, replacing the government-only failures of the past with
smarter, more effective solutions for the future." Some stakeholders believe otherwise. According to the American Civil Liberties
Union, private prisons were not the norm until the 1980s. By 1990, private companies managed 67 for-profit prisons for 7,000
inmates. Between 1990 and 2009, the inmate population increased to 129,000 and earned millions in profits for companies such as
Corrections Corporation of America. Reagan himself supported the privatization of prisons, stating in a message to Congress: State
and local governments have been in the lead in contracting out such public services as garbage
collection, street cleaning, and even prison services to the private sector. Not surprisingly the
result has been reduced costs and better service. The third development was school
vouchers. Beginning in the 1980s, a group of bipartisan reformers in Wisconsin laid the foundation for the Milwaukee Parental
Choice Program, the nation's first urban-based private school voucher program. At the federal level, Republican lawmakers
introduced several school voucher bills, none of which made it to Reagan's desk for signature. In a 1984 speech about the state of
education, Reagan said his administration supported "tuition tax credits and school vouchers" for students in need of better options.
During his second term in office, Reagan reiterated the importance of parental choice to his privatization concept in a 1986 message
to Congress: In most cases, it would be better for the Government to get out of the business
and stop competing with the private sector, and in this budget I propose that we begin
that process. Examples of such "privatization" initiatives in this budget include sale of the power marketing administrations and
the naval petroleum reserves; and implementation of housing and education voucher programs. 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.
[Insert Aff-Specific Solvency Card]
Solvency General
2nc Empirics
Public-private partnerships are critical to an effective educational
system -- Germany and Japan prove.
German and Japanese companies invest heavily in training young employees.
Workplace training in Germany occurs primarily in the context of an extensive and long
established apprenticeship program (70 percent of young people age sixteen through eighteen enter paid employment
through the apprenticeship system). After completing compulsory full time schooling at age sixteen, most
German youth enter apprenticeships that typically last two or three years. For each
occupation in which apprenticeships are offered, training curriculum is developed through negotiations
between representatives of the government, unions, and employers associations. Training is
constantly modified and kept up to date to reflect technological progress and
recent developments in industrial practices. Apprentices spend one or two days each
week in school studying vocational and academic subjects and the remainder of the week
receiving on-the-job training from their employers. Their education is well rounded,
extensive beyond the particulars they are being trained for. This extensive training not
only gives them a deeper understanding of their chosen occupation but provides a basis for later
promotion to more demanding jobs within the occupation. Upon completing their
apprenticeships, trainees take comprehensive examinations to certify their mastery of
occupational skills. This is a program that bears emulation due to the success in
Germany and the lack of an adequate technical program in the United States. In the
Japanese system, the employer bears more of the responsibility for developing the occupational skills
of the employee. Company based training is usually on-the-job training. Heavy investment
is usually justified since traditionally the employee stays with the same company his entire work
life. Specialized centers are also available. Each year, for example, Sanyo Corporation provides at least three
days of training at its corporate educational center to one-third of its work force. Germanys advanced dual system of
apprenticeship combined with vocational training in specialized schools explains in part the
great strength of small to medium sized firms in Germany called Mittelstand . . . 15,000 small to medium sized
firms bringing in revenues of $6 to 900 million per year are the backbone of Germany economic system. They take full advantage of
the technical workers provided by the vocational school system. Their workers are widely skilled for their chosen
occupation, not narrowed focused on only one firm, as a result of the broad program of studies
in the vocational school combined with specific training with a firm. This training
emphasizes in-depth knowledge of the technology. At the same time, general skills in math and
language are not neglected. This would suggest the need to increase the number of separate and truly
efficient vocational high schools. We agree on the need for more intensive cooperation
between employers and schools.
PPPs solve -- Florida and Nevada prove
Miller 9 Tracey Miller, Florida Atlantic University, A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of
The College of Education in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of
Education, 2009 SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION: MEETING THE CLASSROOM BUILDING
NEEDS OF FLORIDAS GROWING STUDENT POPULATION,
http://fau.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fau%3A2908/datastream/OBJ/view/School_constr
uction.pdf
Solution to Financial Barriers: Contributions by Builders and Developers Builders,
concerned that parents will not purchase homes in areas where schools are overcrowded ,
sometimes take matters into their own hands. Arvida, a builder in western Broward
County, secured $10 million in grants and loans to assist in the production of new schools in the
area of their construction to ease overcrowding (Perez, 1997). Authorized by President Bush in 2001,
towns and cities are given the opportunity to build public school facilities by forming public-
private partnerships with developers (Utt, 2001). Florida was one of the first states to utilize
this approach by allowing private sector investors to build the schools and to lease
back the facilities at a cost less than what the school district would pay for a
similar building (Utt, 2001). Home builders in Nevada, such as Pardee Homes of Nevada, have
donated land and equipment and even student scholarships to schools in the areas in which they
build (Clark County, 2003a). Though Nevada law does not require these donations, they assist the school districts
that benefit from their contributions.
2nc Effeciency
PPPs solve best -- project technology and economic efficiency
Li et al 5 Bing Li, PJ Edwards, C Hardcastle, Grenfell-Baines School of Architecture,
Construction and Environment, University of Central Lancashire, Department of Modern
Languages and Literatures, Mount Allison University, Engineering, Construction and
Architectural 2005, Perceptions of positive and negative factors influencing the attractiveness
of PPP/PFI procurement for construction projects in the UK: Findings from a questionnaire
survey, ProQuest
Better project technology and economy. This principal factor grouping accounts for 24.4 per cent of the total
attractive variances and represents five positive attractiveness variables indicating that PPP/PFI: (1) Improves
maintainability. (2) Improves buildability. (3) Saves time in delivering the project. (4) Reduces
the total project cost. (5) Transfers risk to the private partner. Higher loadings are given to improves
maintainability (sig. = 0.7598) and improves buildability (sig. = 0.7492). This indicates that technology innovations in a PPP/PFI
to achieve better maintainability and buildability are the most positive attractive factors for
adopting a PPP/PFI system. Technology improvements are associated with economic
benefits achieved through the project delivery process. These are reflected in the time
saved in delivering a project (sig. = 0.7140), reducing the total project cost (sig. = 0.6612) and
ensuring the transfer of risk to the private sector (sig. = 0.6404). In the primary analysis, risk transfer
tops all the positive factor variables (Table V), which suggests that risk transfer is not a pure transfer. The inference to be drawn
from this factor grouping is that PPP/PFI projects are expected to be built better and last
better; be built more quickly; and cost less - all at less risk to the client. The implication is
that, unless projects can be seen to deliver these outcomes, the future use of PPP/PFI in the UK (i.e. beyond existing commitments)
is unlikely to be sustainable and may be largely at the mercy of the prevailing political climate. Greater benefit to the public. Factor
Grouping 2 accounts for 18 per cent of the total PPP/PFI positive attractiveness factor variance, and represents four variables
indicating that PPP/PFI: (1) Transfers technology to a local enterprise. (2) Enhances
government integrated solution capacity. (3) Accelerates project development. (4)
Benefits local economic development.
Innovation and cost reduction.
survey, ProQuest
Another attractive aspect of PPP/PFI procurement is that it gives the public client and
private contractor opportunities for creative and innovative approaches to develop
the project; this has a loading of 0.6699. A PPP/PFI arrangement could facilitate creative and
innovative approaches in the delivery of public services in two ways. First, a PPP/PFI
procurement approach specifies desired outcomes rather than detailed definitions of inputs.
This allows bidders to compete on the basis of their ability to develop unique and creative
approaches to the delivery of the required project (Birnie, 1999; Government of Nova Scotia, 2000). Second,
PPP/PFI procurement can join a non-profitable project and a profitable project as a single
contract. For example, to attract private sector investment in sanitation, Sohail (2000) suggested that one favoured solution was
to combine sanitation and water supply together as a package for contractors. One implication of this factor grouping is that
"creative accounting" in the public sector may emerge as the most innovative element of
PPP/PFI procurement in practice. After all, there is little incentive for the private sector to innovate, given the
associated risks that would be over and above those already transferred to this sector. Public sector saving in
transaction costs. There is only one positive attractiveness variable in Factor Grouping 4: reduces public sector
administration costs, with 10.6 per cent of the total factor variance. It can be argued that the
government could make savings in project transaction costs by reducing public
sector administration costs in the processes of project tendering, preparation, and
monitoring during implementation.
2nc Flexibility
PPPs gives the counter-plan unique flexibility.
Utt 99 Ronald Utt, Visiting Fellow in Welfare Policy, Ronald Utt is the Herbert and Joyce
Morgan Senior Research Fellow., February 23, 1999, How Public-Private Partnerships Can
Facilitate Public School Construction, http://www.heritage.org/education/report/how-public-
private-partnerships-can-facilitate-public-school-construction
Flexibility Under the build/own process that characterizes most construction of public facilities today, there is
little leeway in devising construction, financing, and operating arrangements that
more closely fit the particular needs of a community. For rapidly growing communities with a steadily escalating
school-age population, classroom space can be added only in periodic and costly lumps whose "cost-
to-carry" initially will exceed tax revenues generated by new residents and businesses. As a
consequence, such communities often have higher-than-average tax rates; many respond
simply by prohibiting or severely limiting population growth by way of restrictive land-use regulations or high "impact fees" on each
new house or apartment.26 The flexibility of public-private partnerships can overcome these
cost constraints by designing and offering capital project packages a community can grow to
fit. Such fast-growing communities have capital needs beyond just schools, including libraries, community colleges, and
government office space, all of which may exceed a community's current borrowing capacity significantly. Such communities may
also be short of other non-public facilities, such as day care, job training, driver education, and places of worship. By using the Nova
Scotia model, developers could build facilities that initially serve multiple purposes and are used
intensively in off-hours for a variety of community purposes. As the population (and tax revenue) rises, a
combined elementary/middle school and public library branch could be replaced with separate facilities for the two schools and
another for the public library. Under this approach, fast-growing communities would face rising rental fees that more closely match
rising tax revenues, instead of the periodic, large capital expenditures that may impose burdensome debt service requirements on a
still-thin tax base. For older, established suburbs with stable overall populations but widely fluctuating
school-age populations due to demographic cycles, the partnerships of the Nova Scotia
approach would give the community the flexibility to add or delete classroom
space at minimal cost, which would allow 20-year leases with options to renew or terminate. If, at the end of 20 years--
or whatever period is deemed appropriate--the school-age population declined, the school system could consolidate the remaining
students in a smaller number of schools while the developer bore the risk of re-renting the space. In the event that the demographic
cycle repeated itself, the school system could re-contract for new space as may be needed temporarily. In either event, the risk of
holding costly empty space would fall on the developers/owners, whose expertise and
entrepreneurial skills make them better-suited to recycle the space quickly and more profitably
to its best use. For central city schools, in which years of financial mismanagement have left an
inventory of very old and poorly maintained facilities, declining student enrollment has led to vacant or
underutilized buildings and ongoing consolidation of students and teachers in better facilities. Here, too, public-private
partnerships could provide the key to promoting rebuilding and replacement
programs, particularly because many central cities have precarious financial conditions that
preclude or limit their access to bond markets. With a shrinking need for many of the facilities such school systems
currently own, a central city public-private partnership could incorporate elements of the land-swap programs that Britain's
Department for Education and Employment is trying as a way of tapping into the value of underutilized assets already owned by the
system. Such a program could involve either new schools or, considering the constraints on land
suitable for development in many central cities, the substantial renovation of existing structures.
For example, a private company could acquire a deteriorated building under a long-term lease, renovate it, and lease it back to the
school system at a higher rent. Of course, more than just building repairs could be involved in the renovation: The contract also
could call for the developer to provide a substantial upgrade in the building's telecommunications and information technology and
to install computers and other learning devices in all the classrooms. To the extent that the developer could rent out portions of the
facilities to other users on an after-hours basis, the rent paid by the school system for the improved facility would be less than the
capitalized cost of the renovation, as is the case under Nova Scotia's plan for new construction.
Solvency Specific Affs
Community/After-School
PPPs incentivize multi-purpose facilities and broad private-sector
interest which revitalizes the community.
Community-Wide Benefits In addition to the obvious improvements to educational services that these new facilities
would provide on a less costly basis, the availability of additional, conveniently located meeting and
classroom space would foster other for- and not-for-profit activities that benefit the
members of the community as well as school-aged children. Leasing space to one or several day
care providers before and after school hours would benefit working parents and promote the safety of children who otherwise might
be transported from one facility to another or become "latchkey" children at home. Likewise, other non-school-
sponsored, afterschool programs could utilize the space and reduce the time that children
otherwise might spend going from place to place. Moreover, by putting many afterschool services
within a single facility, the community would allow students greater access to activities they
otherwise might not be able to attend for lack of transportation. Similarly, programs of interest to adults--
whether civic groups, continuing education, work-related refresher courses, political meetings, or job training programs--could lease
the space in the school building. PRIVATE-SECTOR INTEREST Although growing evidence from Canada, Great
Britain, and a few U.S.
communities suggests that public-private partnerships for school facilities can
be attractive for public school systems, there is not much documentation to indicate that the concept offers private
U.S. real estate investors and developers an attractive investment option. That might be changing, however, as evidence begins to
emerge that, here and there, a few communities and a few entrepreneurs are experimenting with public-
private partnerships for public schools. For example, LTC Properties, Inc., in Oxnard, California, a real estate
investment trust holding nearly $500 million in assets, notes the following change in its investment policy in its quarterly 10Q report
to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (Up to this point, the firm had focused exclusively on investment in assisted-living
facilities.) This example and that of Florida's Haskell Education Services--as well as reports of exploratory interest by one of the
country's major financial investors and by one of the "big six" consulting/accounting firms--may represent growing interest on the
part of investors. It also shows that some have realized the opportunity. This suggests that there could be
even greater growth in private investment in school facilities once school systems and
investors become aware of the opportunity.
Funding
PPPs best -- solves budgetary bottlenecks and dampens financial risk.
Li et al 5 Bing Li, PJ Edwards, C Hardcastle, Grenfell-Baines School of Architecture, Construction and Environment,
University of Central Lancashire, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Mount Allison University, Engineering,
Construction and Architectural 2005, Perceptions of positive and negative factors influencing the attractiveness of PPP/PFI
procurement for construction projects in the UK: Findings from a questionnaire survey, ProQuest
Private sector involvement in public service provision means that the private investment
tackles the problem of bottlenecks in infrastructure demand and supply. Even in some wealthy
European Union countries, for the purpose of ensuring that the general government deficit is not more than 3 per cent of Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) and gross public sector debt not more than 60 per cent of GDP, governments are forced to
consider other sources of investment. The public liabilities involved in PFI projects do not
appear as public sector borrowing in annual financial reporting, in the sense that the loans are
taken out by private sector companies. By contrast, when public sector bodies borrow for
investment purposes, the full value of the capital raised counts towards the public sector
borrowing and other measures of government deficit. The "off balance sheet" accounting possibilities offered by
PPP/PFI are therefore attractive to financial administrators in the public sector.
The exemption of PFI transactions from the public sector borrowing requirements isolates such
schemes from centrally controlled budgetary allocations and the usual cash limits that
accompany public sector expenditure (Akintoye et al., 2001). PPP/PFI procurement is seen as
attractive to public and private sector participants because it forces a project to service any
financial debt from the revenue streams derived from the project itself. There is no
recourse to public funding, nor can the debt be secured by the underlying asset value since for
most projects ownership reverts to the public client after a pre-determined period. The revenue
streams may comprise fees paid directly to the concessionaire by users (e.g. toll road fees), or fees paid by
government on behalf of all potential users (e.g. fees per hospital patient serviced, or per school pupil
accommodated). This non-recourse or limited recourse public funding is an important ingredient of PPP/PFI procurement
(Carrick, 2000; Akintoye et al., 2001).
Contractors are less constrained -- that allows for unique innovation.
An attractive feature of PPP/PFI procurement method is that it offers both the public client and
the private contractor more freedom to select innovative methods in the provision of
assets and services. This should lead to time saving by accelerating project development and
by avoiding delays in project delivery (Downer and Porter, 1992; Hall, 1998; Utt, 1999). By taking over the
responsibility for design, construction, operation and maintenance, private contractors have to consider design suitability and
convenience for future construction and operation practice, by placing emphasis on improving the buildability and maintainability
of projects (Hambros, 1999). With PPP/PFI procurement, the project scope is capable of expansion to
reflect a broader context. This might permit the development of an integrated
solution, such as binding several small projects formerly dealt with under
different departments (for example: a school, library, and recreation centre) into a single project,
thus achieving economies of scale (Utt, 1999; Government of Nova Scotia, 2000). PPP/PFI is seen as
attractive in terms of the potential benefits it may bring to local economic development in the
region(s) where the facility is built or the services are delivered. Local employment
opportunities are enhanced, not only for the direct construction and operational activities
associated with the project, but also for ancillary services and businesses established by
entrepreneurs eager to exploit the opportunities created by its location (National Audit Office, 2001).
Internationally, and particularly in developing countries, PPP/PFI is seen as attractive in terms of its capacity
to achieve the transfer of technological knowledge to local enterprises. Project
procurement is arranged so that private sector partners with the desired technological expertise from more developed nations are
enticed into joint venture type agreements with local companies (Nielsen, 1997; Trim, 2001).
PPPs avoid legal regulation of funding.
OTHER ADVANTAGES OF PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS In addition to the substantial cost savings public-private
partnership offer compared with current publicly financed and managed school construction methods, there are other significant
advantages. Timeliness Public-private partnerships can shorten the time between the
determination that new school facilities are needed and the completion of the
project. In most states and communities, acquiring funds for major public construction
projects entails a complicated and lengthy process with an uncertain outcome. Once a need is
recognized, hearings must be scheduled and held by the community's elected body, usually a city or
county council. Depending on state law, the bond issue needed to raise the money then must be submitted to the voters for
approval; this sometimes must wait until the next election, which may be a year or two away. Because there is no assurance that the
voters will approve the bond issue (in 1998, voters rejected 33 percent of school bond issues),25 none of the necessary work that
must be finished prior to construction--including engineering, design, and bid solicitation--can go forward until the bond offering is
approved. As a result, as many as five years could pass before the school is ready for
occupancy. By placing the financial responsibility with the developer/owner and eliminating
the need for the public sector to raise the capital, the time-consuming political and legal
approval process can be greatly shortened with private-sector partnerships, although
the time saved will vary from state to state and community to community depending on existing procedures and laws. With
public-private partnerships, once the elected officials decide to go forward with the new school,
they can go right to the bidding process with competing developer/owners, although instead of
competing on the price to build, developers compete on the long-term lease rates they will offer.
Lunches
Only the counterplan solves -- private companies bring in expertise
and choice -- the plan fails miserably.
Hedges and Siegel 15 Allison Hedges, Dr. Marc Siegel, reporter for Fox News, Dr. Siegel
serves as an associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and as the Medical
Director of Doctor Radio with NYU Langone and SiriusXM Satellite Radio. 3/23/15, Big
appetite for private solution to Michelle Obamas school lunch
planhttp://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/03/23/big-appetite-for-private-solution-to-
michelle-obamas-school-lunch-plan.html
Its been nearly five years since the White House and the first lady pushed through stricter
guidelines for school lunch programs in legislation known as the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids
Act. But students nationwide have continued to complain about dreary dismal
portions and a lack of variety, posting pictures of food left on trays with a sarcastic #ThanksMichelleObama.
Enter Chartwells, a private company that is taking the governments strict
regulations and turning them into savory yet healthy baked lunches that no kid can
refuse. Fox News went to the Union City, N.J., Public School District, where one in four kids are living in poverty, and we
discovered incredible enthusiasm and compliance with school meals, from breakfast to dinner.
The district is being fully reimbursed by the state and federal government for compliance, and
the kids are eating it up. You have a variety of seven different feeding stations, Anthony N. Dragona, school
administrator and secretary of the Union City Board of Education, said in an interview. Create your own salad, create your own
sandwich, whole wheat pasta bar. We incorporate parent, students, faculty, and we ask them, what do you want to see in your
cafeteria? Dragona said that without a private company like Chartwells to lend a hand, food
ends up being left on the plate. On their own, school districts are hard pressed to come up
with innovative solutions in cafeteria design, menu creation, and school nutrition education.
Dragona emphasized that Chartwells forges a partnership between parents and the school community.
Margie Saidel, vice president of nutrition, culinary, and sustainability at Chartwells, brings close to 20 years of
experience in child nutrition and food service to the lunch table. Speaking about the National School Lunch
Program, she agreed with Dragona, Thats been difficult for a lot of school districts, and theyve seen their
participation drop. But what we have decided is we are focusing on the taste and a full balanced
meal. We still had our doubts when we arrived at Union City High School, but it soon became clear that Dragona and Saidel are
right, Chartwells has taken the USDA guidelines and converted them into something with a lot of
variety, a lot of health and a lot of choice. Just try a baked veggie roll and see for yourself. We bring
our team of experts, registered dietitians, culinarians and our food management
expertise, Saidel said. All the meals here are rich in color, all whole grain, many fruits
and vegetables. Student liaison Josie Martinez said she preferred Chartwells baked french fries to the fried kind. It's not
as greasy and it tastes a lot better, she said. It doesn't slow you down later on, and it makes you feel more energetic. She said the
kids were actually eating fruits and vegetables, even broccoli. Because the food tastes so great, they
participate, Seidel said. And the more they participate, the higher the revenue is for the school
district. All schools in the National School Lunch Program have the ability to do that. The National School Lunch Program cost
the government $70 million when it began in 1947. Its now in over 100,000 public and non-profit private schools and residential
child care organizations, and it costs over $12 billion. As of 2012, more than 31 million children were getting their lunch through the
program every day. Of those, 2.7 million had Chartwells as an intermediary. And Chartwells isnt alone. Another larger
national food company, Aramark, is servicing public school lunch programs in urban areas
around the country, and in New Jersey, a local vender called Masschio is doing the same thing.
Chartwells adds flavor, variety and exciting presentation to the food, and it uses a smartphone app, Nutrislice, that presents
students and parents with the weeks menu and nutrition information in advance. Focus groups and a voting system give the
students control over what they see in the lunch line. Youre empowering the students, Dragona says. Its not that the district is
just giving them lunch. Theyre actually helping to shape it. Dragona said that Chartwells has been working with
Union City School District for 18 years. When the new national school lunch guidelines were
adopted five years ago and other school districts cringed and thought they might resist, Dragona
said that Union City embraced them, since they already had many of the guidelines
in place and much more. The school district had long focused on decreasing amounts of fats and sugars and
increasing fruits and vegetables. According to Dragona, they switched to whole grains and stopped frying six years ago. Sure,
Chartwells turns a profit, but they work under a break even contract with Union City, where no matter what the cost, it doesnt cost
the school district anything. The federal government reimburses the school $2.30 for lunch, with a little more than half the students
at full participation and the rest at 60 percent participation. More than enough to keep everyone happy
and well fed. One walk through the elementary school is all you need to be convinced that a
private solution can turn a floundering public program around.
Farm to school Programs are healthy
Ziperstein 12, Robyn Ziperstein, March 15, 2012, Studied Public and Non-Profit
Management, Education Concentration at Cornell University, Intern and Student
researcher at Cornell Food and Brand Lab, School Food, Inc.: The Contracting of
Americas National School Lunch Program and its Nutritional Consequences
https://blogs.cornell.edu/policyreview/2012/03/15/school-food-inc-the-contracting-of-
america%E2%80%99s-national-school-lunch-program-and-its-nutritional-consequences/
Farm to school programs are alternatives that incorporate fresh school lunches, and are
unique to each school. These programs have been in existence for the past 10 years, but
have recently gained popularity. They afford fresher produce for meal programs,
increased opportunities for hands on nutrition education in the classroom, and new
markets with stable revenues for local farmers. Not only do they connect schools, from
kindergarten through the twelfth grade, with healthy meals, they also provides
agriculture, health, and nutrition education, waste management programs, composting,
gardens, demonstrations, and farm tours.
Farm to School Programs reduce waste, increase health, and improves engagement
and education
Becot et al 17, Florence Becot, Jane M. Kolodinsky, Erin Roche, Alexandra E. Zipparo,
Linda Berlin, Erin Buckwalter, and Janet McLaughlin, 1st Quarter 2017, a research
specialist for Center for Rural Studies at the University of Vermont, Do Farm-to-School
Programs Create Local Economic Impacts?
http://www.choicesmagazine.org/UserFiles/file/cmsarticle_565.pdf
First, anecdotal evidence suggests that FTS programs lead to reduced food waste, representing
a cost saving for schools (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2016b). The reduction in food waste
might be due to improved quality of meals served and increased awareness of the value of food
through FTS class programming. Since the current evidence is anecdotal, future research is
needed to explore the relationship among FTS programs, food waste, and food costs.
Second, focus on healthy diets and education through food and agricultural literacy leads to
improved nutritional intake, which could ultimately lead to improved health outcomes among
children (Joshi et al., 2008; Roche et al., 2012). Improved health outcomes, including reduced
rates of obesity and weight-related illnesses, would likely lead to healthcare costs savings (Fung
et al., 2012; Qian et al., 2016). If FTS programs lead to improved health outcomesand given
that better health leads to healthcare cost savingseconomic impact modeling may show that
these programs have a negative impact on the economy. However, despite potential losses for
the healthcare industry, gains at the societal level would likely be greater. The impacts of FTS
on health and the ensuing economic impacts are currently large research gaps.
Third, educational programming is a cornerstone of FTS programs, but its effect on educational
outcomes for students has received little attention. Research has shown that these educational
approaches lead to improved outcomes because increased student engagement lead to
positive attitudes towards learning (Bamford, 2015; Block et al., 2012). Schools participating in
FTS programs have seen a decrease in behavioral referrals and school nurse visits, further
indicating improved educational outcomes (Dirks and Orvis, 2005; Waliczek, Bradley, and
Zajicek, 2001; Zipparo, 2016). Better educational outcomes have been associated with
improved economic outcomes due to increased earning potential (Card, 1999).
Private food contracts good

Ziperstein 12, Robyn Ziperstein, March 15, 2012, Studied Public and Non-Profit
Management, Education Concentration at Cornell University, Intern and Student
researcher at Cornell Food and Brand Lab, School Food, Inc.: The Contracting of
Americas National School Lunch Program and its Nutritional Consequences
https://blogs.cornell.edu/policyreview/2012/03/15/school-food-inc-the-contracting-of-
america%E2%80%99s-national-school-lunch-program-and-its-nutritional-consequences/
In addition, if schools are given the option of contracting with independent food service contractors,
instead of the few major options that are currently available, the quality and price of the food may be
modified to a higher standard. Allowing students to become more involved in the creation and
preparation of the food they eat makes them more invested in their health and increases their
willingness to continue healthier behaviors.
STEM
PPP solves STEM -- tons of partnerships now prove.
Guymon 14 Dave Guymon, Online middle school teacher & educational blogger from Idaho
Falls, Idaho, JUNE 17, 2014, Public-Private Partnerships: The Real Future of Education,
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/public-private-partnerships-future-of-education-dave-guymon
As education reform initiatives continue to advance, the responsibility for rearing educated
citizens will increasingly broaden as well. Rather than focusing on the shortcomings of public schooling, a more
sensible approach to the problem will be increasing accountability for the process of public education. In other words, nurturing
educated citizens won't be delegated as solely the purview of school systems, but rather the
mission of various community stakeholders with an emphasis on public-private partnerships
(PPP). Changing the Equation Inside and out of classrooms, such relationships are already taking place. In response to President
Obama's Educate to Innovate initiative in 2009, Change the Equation, a non-profit dedicated to
"mobilizing the business community to improve the quality of STEM education in the United
States" was launched. In its first year, Change the Equation successfully spread proven STEM
education programs in districts across the country, empowered CEOs with a toolkit to
"advocate in communities where they are the largest employers for STEM reform," and designed
a new plan for how companies "can create and invest in STEM programs" as well. US2020 is
another PPP answering the STEM education challenge. Their vision is to "match one
million STEM mentors with students at youth-serving nonprofits by the year 2020." With a
focus on increasing access to STEM careers for "girls, underrepresented minorities, and low-
income children," US2020 and Citizen Schools have partnered to provide expanded STEM learning opportunities for students
across the country. Additionally, the US2020 City Competition is leveraging the "roles of cities
as centers for innovation, supporting outstanding efforts to build STEM mentoring
capacity at the local level." Applicants from around the country, including representatives from city governments,
corporations, nonprofits, schools, universities, museums, and libraries proposed plans to increase STEM mentoring in their areas
for the chance to share over $1 million in resources. City Competition recently announced the finalists from Round 1. The
Energy of Digital Youth Public-private partnerships have also drawn on research into students'
relationships with digital media to create student-owned learning labs in existing community
spaces. YOUmedia, an innovative, 21st century, teen-oriented learning space has experienced much success as part of the Chicago
Public Library since its first lab opened in 2009. A partnership between the MacArthur Foundation and the
Digital Youth Network, YOUmedia is a place for tweens and teens to connect with "books,
media, mentors, and institutions throughout the city of Chicago in one dynamic space designed
to inspire collaboration and creativity." Teens at YOUmedia are supported in their efforts to learn how to use digital
and traditional media to "engage in projects that promote critical thinking, creativity, and skill building." The response to the PPP-
driven YOUmedia initiative has been so positive that the MacArthur Foundation, in partnership with the Institute of Museum and
Library Services, is planning to fund the creation of "30 new hands-on learning centers around the country . . . based on the
successful YOUmedia center at the Chicago Public Library." Remaking the Future The Maker Movement has likewise
gained steam over the past few years, and partnerships have formed as a result. The Maker Education
Initiative was created to provide "more opportunities for all young people to develop confidence, creativity, and interest in science,
technology, engineering, math, art, and learning as a whole through making." Maker Corps, with the generous support of such
organizations as Cognizant, Google for Entrepreneurs, and the Grable Foundation, leverages host sites across the country by placing
Maker Corps members in youth-serving organizations to "diversify and expand the network of
makers, mentors, and community leaders" while increasing "the capacity of youth-serving
organizations to engage youth and families in making." Contrary to being the invasive
privatization of a cultural institution, public-private partnerships in education are a
community effort. This type of collaboration can lead to greater efficiency and increased
choice, and expand access to education services for a full range of communities. PPPs also "allow
governments to take advantage of the specialized skills offered by certain private organizations
and to overcome operating restrictions such as inflexible salary scales and work rules that may
prevail in the public sector." Despite the shrill tone of today's education reform rhetoric, the future of
education isn't a zero-sum tug-of-war between public systems of education and
private organizations. It's quite the opposite. In order for our students to receive the best educational
experiences possible, and in
order to improve America's standing in the global economy, partnerships
between our teaching and learning institutions and workforce industries must be forged. This
goes beyond our formal public school system to include community learning centers such as
libraries and after-school clubs as well. Only after this has taken place -- and after we learn how
to work synergistically to empower our students with their futures in mind -- will the future of
public education really involve the public.
PPP is necessary to solve

Chamber of Commerce of the United States, July 26, 2005, Tapping America's Potential: The Education
for Innovation Initiative https://www.uschamber.com/tapping-americas-potential-education-
innovation-initiative
Although numerous policy initiatives and programs are under way, none matches the coordinated
vision, concentrated energy, attention and investment that emerged from the shock Americans faced
when the Soviet Union beat the United States into space with Sputnik in 1957. We need a 21st-century
version of the post-Sputnik national commitment to strengthen science, technology, engineering and
math education. We need a public/private partnership to promote, fund and execute a new National
Education for Innovation Initiative. It must be broader than the 1958 National Defense Education Act
because federal legislation is only one component of a larger, more comprehensive agenda.
Cant solve without PPP

Lesic 15, Predrag Lesic, February 17, 2015, CEO of domain.ME, cofounder of Digitalizuj.Me, was
president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Montenegro, STEM requires innovation and
public/private partnership http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/education/232829-stem-requires-
innovation-and-public-private-partnership
It is heartening that the current US administration has committed to increased support for STEM
education. But federal resources only go so far. If the US, or any other country in the world, is to
remain competitive and meet the demand for skilled labor in the growing fields of science, technology,
engineering and math, it will take public/private partnership and entrepreneurial thinking. There is
much to be learned by examining international best practices, and gaining insight from what is working
beyond US borders.
Infrastructure/Construction
PPPs solve infrastructure
Savas 2000 E. S. Savas, E.S. Savas is the author of fifteen books and over 130 articles; his books have been published in 23
foreign editions. He is an internationally known pioneer in, and authority on, privatization.He served as First Deputy City
Administrator of New York, appointed by Mayor John V. Lindsay, and as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development, appointed by President Ronald Reagan. He also served as a councilman in his suburban town. He was a
professor of public management at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business and taught in Baruch's Department of
Management, where he also served for eight years as chairman. 2000, PRIVATIZATION AND PUBLIC-PRIVATE
PARTNERSHIPS,
http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/4617108/sem200601_md02_in.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y5
3UL3A&Expires=1499370215&Signature=%2BDN6ncPPC%2BybcUwXs3f3zzqxxQA%3D&response-content-
disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DPrivatization_and_public-private_partner.pdf
By Public-Private Partnership. Infrastructure projects are increasingly being built through public-private
partnerships (PPPs). Unlike the general use of this term as mentioned above, PPP
in this sense refers to an
arrangement where government states its need for capital-intensive, long-lived
infrastructure and the desired facility is built using a complex combination of government and (mostly) private financing and then
operated by a private entity under a longterm franchise, contract, or lease. The payments are usually spread over twenty to 99 years
and cover construction, operation, maintenance, and capital costs. Typical PPP projects are roads, bridges,
airports, water systems, pipelines, and power plants, but prisons, stadiums, schools, and
municipal buildings have also been developed through this method, as have urban
economic development projects.
PPPs solve school construction -- public projects waste money.
Utt 99 Ronald Utt, Visiting Fellow in Welfare Policy, Ronald Utt is the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Senior Research Fellow.,
February 23, 1999, How Public-Private Partnerships Can Facilitate Public School Construction,
http://www.heritage.org/education/report/how-public-private-partnerships-can-facilitate-public-school-construction
HOW PARTNERSHIPS WOULD HELP SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION IN THE UNITED STATES The success of private-
public partnerships in other countries offers policymakers in the United States the
framework for developing a cost-effective and timely means of financing and
constructing public schools. In these countries, as in the United States, the decision-making
and operating responsibility for public school systems lies primarily at the local level, albeit to
varying degrees, with some financial support and regulatory guidelines imposed from above. In
both Canada and the United States, schools are run locally but they operate under rules and
standards established by the state or province and may receive significant financial support
from the state or province for operating and capital costs. Construction Cost Advantages In the United States,
publicly funded construction projects often are guided by an extensive series of costly
regulations and mandates. Such mandates come in addition to the normal building safety and
soundness requirements embodied in the local building codes, which all private and public construction
projects follow in order to obtain building and occupancy permits. For example, with all federally funded projects, builders must
adhere to provisions on payment of prevailing wages, environmental reviews, minority contracting, small business set-asides, origin
of materials, and other constraints. All these provisions can add substantially to the cost of
construction, compared with the cost to build an identical structure to local building code
requirements and market-determined wages. Although such mandates are at their most costly at the federal level,
states have imposed similar mandates, which add to the cost of state- and locally financed projects, such as school facilities. Indeed,
31 states have their own Davis-Bacon-type laws mandating that prevailing wages be paid at all state-financed projects.21 In states
in which such restrictive laws exist, all public construction projects (including schools) are likely to
cost more than they would if built under the competitive conditions that guide all privately
financed construction projects. Depending on the way in which federal assistance is ultimately provided, these federal
mandates might extend to a part of the U.S. economy that heretofore had been free of such burdens--at least for those 19 states
without prevailing wage laws and possibly for another 12 states whose prevailing wage laws are less onerous than the federal law.
Even in the absence of state and federal regulatory mandates, privately funded and owned private-sector
construction projects generally have a cost advantage over publicly funded projects because the
owner has a powerful incentive not to waste money or incur unnecessary costs that will directly
reduce or eliminate profits. With public construction operating with taxpayer money
and in the absence of a profit incentive, the pressure to keep costs down is less
compelling. Indeed, to the extent that such buildings become monuments to the existing political leadership, there often is
the temptation toward costly and grandiose designs--frequently the case with federal office buildings, government housing projects,
and courthouses.22 Case Studies in Florida Pembroke Pines Public Charter School. Pembroke Pines, Florida,
highlights just how significant such private-sector construction efficiencies can be.
Pembroke Pines, a public charter school, teamed up with Haskell Educational Services (HES) of
Miami, a subsidiary of the Haskell Companies--a firm that specializes in designing and
constructing assisted-living facilities--to build and operate its new facility, which opened in
September 1998. The cost of building the school was between 22 percent and 34
percent below that incurred for each public elementary school built in recent
times. But while HES designed and built the school, the community financed it (with tax-exempt borrowing), owns it, and leases
it to HES to operate as a charter school.
Inequality
PPP prevents income inequality
Schwab 15, Katharine Schwab, February 11, 2015, CNNs global economic analyst, Global Business
Columnist and an Associate Editor at the Financial Times, Could Public-Private Collaboration Help
Reduce Income Inequality? https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/02/11/could-public-private-
collaboration-help-reduce-income-inequality/
This is an idea that is taking hold, that we are in a world that is bifurcated and will become ever more
bifurcated, that things are going to be getting more unequal in society before they become less so,
Foroohar said. The truth is that its going to take more than Washington, its going to take more than
government, to fix these things.
Foroohar said she thinks reforming education through collaboration between the private and public
sectors is one possible way to address income inequality. She added that her reporting shows that
companies arent finding enough qualified individuals to fill middle-tier jobs, while there is a large talent
pool for both high-paying jobs and low-end positions.
PPPs combat inequality Latin America Proves

WEF 14, April 2014, a Swiss nonprofit foundation committed to improving the state of the world by
engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and
industry agendas, Creating New Models Innovative Public-Private Partnerships for Inclusive
Development in Latin America
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GAC/2014/WEF_GAC_LatinAmerica_InnovativePublicPrivatePartnershi
ps_Report_2014.pdf
In the social and sustainable development spheres, partnerships between public and private actors are
less common but are becoming more widespread, suggesting that a new paradigm for collaboration,
action and impact is rapidly emerging. The issues to be addressed in these areas range from equal
access to quality public goods and services particularly in education and health combating income
inequality, improving access to formal jobs and reducing informality, tackling social vulnerability of
certain sectors (in particular women, indigenous populations and children), gender equality, housing,
and sustainable patterns of production and consumption. Developing iPPPs and meaningful models to
better bridge the significant divide between the quality of public and private service provision is key to
societal advancement.
PPPs solve inequality -- tons of countries have done it.

Hares and Villet 16 Susannah Hares, Dean Villet, Hares: Executive Director, Ark Education Partnerships Group,
Villet: Country Director, South Africa, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, 11/26/2016, When Schools Fail: Taking Radical Steps To
Improve Education, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susannah-hares/when-schools-fail-taking-_b_13228914.html
The world over, education systems are failing to give children from poor communities the
education they need to succeed in life. This is an injustice that needs to be addressed, with the future of children,
communities and entire nations at stake. But in too many places, including South Africa, the UK and the USA, the
achievement gap between rich and poor is stark and widening. In the UK, pupils eligible for free school meals
(FSM), an imperfect but revealing indicator of poverty, are almost twice as likely not to achieve basic standards in literacy and
numeracy at age 11 as their peers who do not qualify for FSM. And in South Africa, a wealthy minority of students (around 25
percent) attend decent schools and perform acceptably on international assessments, while the majority perform extremely poorly
on the same tests. Almost 60 percent of students in the poorest economic quartiles are functionally illiterate and innumerate,
compared with just 4 percent of the richest quartile. Recognizing this injustice, governments, policy makers
and practitioners around the world are searching out strategies to close the vast gaps in
educational outcomes and to improve the performance of their education systems . Understandably, as
well as developing locally grown strategies, they are looking to see what can be learned from elsewhere in the world. The
Collaboration Schools initiative in the Western Cape province of South Africa is one such
example. This bold education reform, spearheaded by Premier Helen Zille and Education Minister Debbie
Schafer, has drawn from the experience of UK academy schools and US charter schools, adapting
the most successful international models to the unique context in South Africa. Academies
and charter schools are a form of public private partnership (PPP). These are state funded
schools, often serving disadvantaged communities, that are run by non-
governmental organizations, but inspected, regulated and held to account in the
same way as government schools. Ark, which runs 35 schools in deprived inner city areas
of the UK, is one example of an academy or PPP network. Since its first school opened in 2006, Ark has
had an absolute focus on improving learning outcomes for the poorest learners. This
approach has worked: Ark was recently rated by the UK Department for Education as the highest
performing multi-academy trust for value added outcomes, which measures how much progress
learners have made since primary school. Poor and low prior-attaining learners in Arks schools are twice as likely to
achieve five good GCSEs (age 16 school leaving exam) than the national average. Collaboration Schools launched in the Western
Cape in January 2016. Five schools were paired with three non-profit school operating partners who
are accountable to the government for raising student achievement at a sustainable cost. The
schools are in some of the most challenging communities in the province, and have
been underperforming educationally for many years. This rightly prompted Premier
Zille and Minister Schafer to recognize that the time had come for a more radical approach:
something new and different had to be done. To accept the status quo would be to fail another
generation of young people.
Brazil proves -- it helps low-income children.

Anker 16 Tomas Anker, Tomas Anker is an Investment Officer for the International Finance
Corporation (IFC), 06/28/2016, A PPP to take pride in: Early education in Brazil?,
http://blogs.worldbank.org/ppps/ppp-take-pride-early-education-brazil
A PPP that makes the grade A PPP had never been used in Brazils educational system before, so
we worked with the municipality to explore the role of private sector participation in the non-
pedagogical aspects of education. In this case, the private sector was able to render in a
more efficient manner services such maintenance, cleaning, surveillance, and
laundry. Another tremendous benefit was that by bundling in one sole contract the
management of many vendors embedded in school operations, the principals of the schools were
able to work more efficiently and focus on their work as educators and education strategists.
Once it became clear that a PPP could help address the shortage of preschools and primary
schools, and we created a transaction structure that would be open to public comments and
inputs. Results came fast. The process started in March 2011, and by August 2012, the
Municipality successfully closed a 20-year concession to finance, build, equip, and operate non-
pedagogical services of 32 new preschools and five primary schools. Compared with the
traditional procurement process, private sector involvement significantly shortened the
time required to build and launch these new schools. The new units were delivered
within a two-year timespan, which is a record in construction procurement timing. Like all
PPPs, this one looks at results, and these results are measured in the number of children who
can now be educated in state-of-the-art facilities. Construction of primary schools started in
September 2012, and these buildings were delivered in phases two years after signing. That
means that 18,000 children from low-income areas of the municipality now attend
kindergarten and elementary school.
Solves socio-economic inequality through creating awareness and
forging municipality cooperation.
Miller 9 Tracey Miller, Florida Atlantic University, A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of
The College of Education in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of
Education, 2009 SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION: MEETING THE CLASSROOM BUILDING
NEEDS OF FLORIDAS GROWING STUDENT POPULATION,
http://fau.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fau%3A2908/datastream/OBJ/view/School_constr
uction.pdf
When it started out, it was a partnership with the 38 municipalities and school district and there was
a lot to get the 38 to agree and concurrency needs 100% buy in. Some municipalities are adult oriented and
some are child oriented and some have different socio economic groups so everyone has a
different interest in education, so when it started, to get all the municipalities to buy in
was a monumental feat. What ended up happening is more of the obligation ended up on the school district. Some of
the municipalities help us more than others; the burden of concurrency really falls on the school district. I would say it is a good
thing because if nothing else, it created an awareness and the school board has more of the obligation and
as you can see, wehave a lot of schools built and mostly the working with the county has helped
because they are involved with almost everything and certain municipalities are growth areas and
some 103 have no schools, so I think it was and is good and has served us well. (SDPBC Real Estate Planer, lines
66-88)
Education
Solves effective education -- Florida proves.
Miller 9 Tracey Miller, Florida Atlantic University, A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The College of Education in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education, 2009 SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION: MEETING THE
CLASSROOM BUILDING NEEDS OF FLORIDAS GROWING STUDENT POPULATION,
http://fau.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fau%3A2908/datastream/OBJ/view/School_construction.pdf
Miami-Dade County Public Schools has been working with the concept of worksite
schools, which establishes a partnership with local businesses and the school district. Since 1987,
private businesses have been providing space for school activities as well as site maintenance
and the school district provides resources such as curriculum, teachers, and
textbooks (Taylor & Snell, 2000). Satellite schools may represent cost savings initiatives by school districts. In November
2004, Palm Beach County voters approved a half-cent sales tax initiative; it passed by a 58% to 42% margin (Freeman, 2004a).
This six-year sales tax increase is expected to bring $560 million to Palm Beach County for
school construction. According to Palm Beach County School Superintendent Art Johnson, schools have been
prototyped, meaning we the same schools are built over and over again to get efficiency in
terms of reproducing the same model and keeping construction costs down. Voters are willing
to pay an additional half-cent sales tax to help
Attendance/Scholarships
Schools can partner with scholarship entities to enable more
attendance but more support is necessary.
Murphy 17 Peter Murphy, Washington Times, April 12, 2017, The GOPs best choice for
education reform, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/12/education-reform-
can-be-accomplished-by-gop/
The Childrens Scholarship Fund based in New York City provides nearly 24,000 K-8 student
scholarships either directly or in partnership with organizations across the country so that
students can attend the non-sectarian or religious school of their parents choice. Similarly,
Catholic dioceses across the country operate, or partner with, scholarship entities to
financially enable students Catholic and non-Catholic to attend its schools. The
reach of scholarship funds remains minimal compared to the need for quality educational
options. When the Childrens Scholarship Fund opened its doors in 1998, the parents of 1.25 million children applied for only
40,000 available scholarships. And while 17 states currently have a scholarship donation tax credit, only
four Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona are sizable enough to have an impact.
Solvency 2nc Answers
2nc L i Prodict
Our evidence is based in statistical research.
Research survey design and administration A questionnaire survey was conducted in 2001. Survey targets were limited
to
the available information listing those with PFI experiences or expressed interests in PPP/PFI.
The sampling technique used for data collection for this survey was a convenience sample,
rather than random sampling, because there is no comprehensive, nor any standard, database of UK organisations
involved in PPP/PFI projects. In addition, PPP/PFI procurement is evolving and, as a result of this, the number of organizations
involved is growing, but not in a form whereby their population can readily be determined. Random sampling demands
that the organizations involved are sufficiently well distributed and the population is known
(Diekhoff, 1992, Fellows and Liu, 1997). Neither of these conditions can be met in current PPP/PFI research. The
questionnaire was pilot tested to ensure that it was practical. The initial draft was presented to the PFI
research group at Glasgow Caledonian University. A further pilot study was administered to Carillion Services Ltd, which is active in
PFI projects. The final questionnaire comprises three parts. The first part seeks background
information about the respondents and their organisations. The second part deals with general
issues about PPP/PFI projects. The third part investigates risk and risk management within
PPP/PFI projects. This paper reports one of the special issues of Part Two - positive and negative factors influencing the
attractiveness of PPP/PFI as a preferred procurement approach (see lists above for the variables included in the questionnaire).
Likert style rating questions, using a five-point scale, were used to elicit respondents' opinions of the importance of each nominated
variable. The scale intervals are interpreted as follows: (1) Not important. (2) Fairly important. (3) Important. (4) Very important.
(5) Extremely important. A zero option was also offered to filter any variable that respondents thought was not relevant to the
attractiveness of PPP/PFI, and zero scores were discarded in the data analysis. A total of 500 questionnaires were
sent out to establishments known to have had involvement in PPP/PFI projects. A total of 61
completely filled questionnaires were returned, comprising 16 public sector and 45 private
sector respondents. The effective return rate (12 per cent) was higher than that of earlier PPP survey
research which achieved a response rate of 9.6 per cent (Institute for Public Policy Research, 2000b), and is
comparable with other survey research in construction and project management. The response
was therefore deemed adequate for the purposes of data analysis. Of note in the survey response
demographics was the relatively high proportion of central government involvement in PPP/PFI, compared with regional and lower
level public sector entities. This suggests that useful PPP/PFI learning/skills transfer could be offered by central government. The
survey responses also revealed a substantial multi-role involvement on the part of private sector organisations, with a common
contractor role evident in all combinations. This suggests that a strong culture of role diversity is now developing in the UK
construction industry. All the respondents were either directors or managers in their respective organisations. Table I indicates the
roles undertaken by the survey respondents in PPP projects. Table II shows the PFI/PPP project types reflected in respondents'
experience. View Image - Table I. Enlarge this image. Table I. Survey results Data consistency Reliability analysis was
conducted to test the internal consistency of the survey variable data. Cronbach's Alphas are 0.821 (F-
statistic = 9.757, Sig. = 0.000) for "positive" factors, and 0.888 (F-statistic = 26.602) for "negative" factors. Both of them are much
higher than the 0.70 of Nunnally's (1978) guideline which suggests that, in the early stages of research on predict tests or
hypothesised measures of a construct, reliability of 0.70 or higher should suffice. It should be noted that the data recorded
respondents' opinions about the importance of each factor variable. The statistics thus reflect pooled subjective views. Although
these are not objective measures, internal data validity is enhanced by the demographics of the response
sample, which show that the average construction project experience of the respondents is just
over 21 years, and that more than 50 per cent of them recorded over 20 years of experience. For
the most part, reporting of the data analysis, for both the descriptive statistics and the rotated factor
analysis, is based upon the total sample response. This is based upon the view that the analysis
could not be certain that respondents were consistently recording opinions that represented
only their side of the PPP/PFI picture; for example, that central government respondents were only reflecting the
perceived attractiveness of PPP/PFI arrangements to the government.
A2 Internal Conflict
PPPs solve collaboration -- their evidence is citing instances where
professional contractors werent used -- obviously doesnt apply to the
counterplan.
Aarseth et al 16 Ole Andreas Aarseth, Vegar Mong Urdala, Svein Bjrbergb, Marit Stre-Valenc and Jardar Lohned,
M.Sc. Student, Department of Civil and Transport Engineering, NTNU, Hgskoleringen 7A, Trondheim 7491, Norway, 2016, PPP in
public schools as means for value creation for user and owner, http://ac.els-cdn.com/S1877042816308904/1-s2.0-
S1877042816308904-main.pdf?_tid=10a42d22-6283-11e7-be20-
00000aab0f26&acdnat=1499370251_6b90785e5d98bf9efb6d4e196b7bbff9
5.2 Collaborative working Case B was characterized by a high degree of collaborative working,
which, according to Meistad et al. (2013), can
contribute to improve performance in the construction
industry in general. Collaborative working can be achieved through a low level of
conflict. The interviewees from both the private and the public sector expressed a remarkable
low level of conflict during the project process. However, as Leiringer (2006) points out, it is of significant
importance in which the contracts are written in PPPs. Case A had a higher level of specification, which led to more discussion
during the project process. Interviewees underlined that the PPP-model provides incentives for the
public sector to grant the private part trust in delivering facets like quality and time. In case B, the
contractor received trust from the public sector. Findings indicate this as one of the reasons of the low level of conflict. Nevertheless,
the public sector expressed the importance of a professional contractor. Similar levels of conflict had been
achieved in other projects. This argues that collaborative working depends on many factors,
one being the need of a professional contractor.
A2 FG Key
Their authors dont know what a partnership is.
Hares and Villet 16 Susannah Hares, Dean Villet, Hares: Executive Director, Ark Education Partnerships Group,
Villet: Country Director, South Africa, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, 11/26/2016, When Schools Fail: Taking Radical Steps To
Improve Education, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susannah-hares/when-schools-fail-taking-_b_13228914.html
One. Dont go in lightly. This is a difficult concept to get right. There will almost certainly be opposition from
those who challenge that a PPP model, believing it will lead to an outsourcing of public education to the private sector.
In fact, PPPs should be a way for states to insource expertise and funding from the
private sector, while retaining governments crucial roles of regulator, quality assurer,
financer and ultimately guarantor of a quality education for every child. Two. Whats in a name? It is not
the label of an academy, a charter school or a collaboration school that makes the difference. It is the quality of school leadership,
teaching and management that really matters. Governments must decide how the commissioning process
will be managed to ensure that organizations selected to run public schools have strong
managerial capacity, the right leadership, and sound teaching and learning strategies that will
ultimately result in improved educational quality. Three. More public than private.
Collaboration schools are public schools. Academies are public schools. PPP schools should be
held to account in the same way as other public schools. Operating partners should
provide regular and reliable data, and be subject to the states inspection and monitoring
frameworks. Governments needs to be clear about what the consequences are for
poor performance and be ready to implement those should targets not be
achieved. Four. Build an ecosystem of operating partners. No single operating partner can or
should run a public schooling system. A well-structured PPP program can create a healthy
ecosystem, where operating partners compete with each other, held accountable by parents and
communities, to deliver better and better results for children. Governments need to find ways to attract a
range of providers with different talents and innovations into the system, and to create the opportunities for learning between these
organizations to take place. Five. Grow slowly, grow wisely. Running great schools in tough communities is difficult. It takes time
and investment to build up strong expertise and capabilities in school leadership, teaching and learning, community engagement,
curriculum, assessment and so on. School operating partners will make mistakes and will need time to get things right. Trying
to scale too quickly risks giving the wrong operating partner more schools.
Governments need the capability and the power to terminate the contracts of underperforming
operating partners, whilst encouraging successful partners to grow slowly and strategically.
A2 Businesses Say No
PPP model solves through incentives -- specifically works for
education.
Aarseth et al 16 Ole Andreas Aarseth, Vegar Mong Urdala, Svein Bjrbergb, Marit Stre-Valenc and Jardar Lohned,
M.Sc. Student, Department of Civil and Transport Engineering, NTNU, Hgskoleringen 7A, Trondheim 7491, Norway, 2016, PPP in
public schools as means for value creation for user and owner, http://ac.els-cdn.com/S1877042816308904/1-s2.0-
S1877042816308904-main.pdf?_tid=10a42d22-6283-11e7-be20-
00000aab0f26&acdnat=1499370251_6b90785e5d98bf9efb6d4e196b7bbff9
5.6 PPP and schools The findings in this paper indicate that the PPP model actually provides the
incentives discussed in the literature. It can be argued that one reason for this is the
clearly defined service delivery and easily defined performance measures in the contract (OECD,
2008). The school sector seems highly suited for PPP. A restricting is that Norways financial situation
does not apply for PPPs initial purpose of realizing project with limited resources (Ldre, 2009). Nevertheless, in our opinion, the
PPP model should none the less be considered, in particular due to the incentives it
provides for the operational phase. We recommend an approach where the municipality obtains a portfolio
including PPP contracts and traditional contracts. This could provide an opportunity for benchmarking the operation of the schools.
Comparing them allows the municipality to learn and optimize their operation. The process ultimately could provide
the users the best possible usability. 6. Conclusion The literature shows incentives provided by
PPP contributing to value creation for owner and users of public schools. Findings show
that these incentives to some extent occur in practice. The case studies presented in this paper show focus on output specification
and low-level detail in the projects. Little indication on user involvement has been found. Indications that the contractor considers
whole-of-life cycle were, however, found. The case studies illustrated clearly that the payment mechanism is critical for the
incentives. Further, the study shows collaborative working and a low level of conflict. However,
inadequate contract specifications concerning take-over of the building at the end of the
contract, have a significant conflict generating potential.
Past efforts prove -- we can attract businesses internationally.
Olchondra 12 Riza T. Olchondra, staff writer for the Inquirer, February 22, 2012, PPP schools project attracts 15 firms,
http://business.inquirer.net/45905/ppp-schools-project-attracts-15-firms
The governments Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for School Infrastructure Project has
attracted an initial pool of 15 companies, according to an official of the Department of Education (DepEd).
The three-phase project is estimated to cost P10.5 billion initially and the government
intends to pay for the infrastructure construction over 10 years using staggered appropriations
from the national government. Education Undersecretary Francisco M. Varela said at a conference in Makati City
Wednesday that as of this week, 15 companies have purchased bid documents for the PPP project. The 15 are apparently
a mix of local and foreign companies, some of them listed or affiliated with listed
companies. It remains to be seen whether they would partner with other companies later on, said Varela, who declined to
disclose other details this early in the process. The first phase of the PPP for School Infrastructure project has three packages:
Northern Luzon (660 schools, 2,050 classrooms), Central Luzon (745 schools, 2,999 classrooms) and Calabarzon (1,097 schools,
4,283 classrooms). The DepEd will accept bids for each package, which means there may be three different winners for the first
phase. It is also possible that there may be one winning company if its bids turn out to be the lowest for each package. The DepEd
published in January the invitation to pre-qualify and aims to bid out the first phase of the project, which covers Luzon, in June.
The department wants all the classrooms under the three-phase project delivered by July 2013,
in time for the start of the school year. The second and third phases will cover the Visayas and
Mindanao. Education Secretary Armin A. Luistro told reporters on the sidelines of the conference that the department was
starting to identify target sites and was aiming to bid out the next two phases within 2012. Public Works Secretary Rogelio L.
Singson said the Philippines was new to using the PPP mode for school projects but said he hoped this would gain traction as a new
business model so that his department could focus on upgrading the countrys roads and related infrastructure. Singson said
the government was committing about 30,000 classrooms under the PPP School Infrastructure
Project.
Net Benefits
Spending DA
PPPs avoid budgetary restrictions and transfer financial risk to the
private sector.
survey, ProQuest
The transfer of risk to private sector (Table III: mean value 3.98) is the primary objective of the
public sector in the introduction of PPP/PFI for public project development. This result could therefore
have been anticipated from public sector survey respondents. The similar result from private sector respondents is more difficult to
explain, but may be due to the greater clarity of risk allocation offered by PPP/PFI procurement. The problem of public
sector budget restraint (Table III: mean value 3.86) besets many municipal and other public sector
authorities, especially in terms of improving public infrastructure and delivering essential
services. Clearly, the attractiveness of PPP/PFI in addressing this problem is fully
recognized by both public and private sector stakeholders.
Solves econ -- reduces project costs
Two factor rankings: reduce the total project cost (Table III: mean value 2.97) and accelerate project
development (Table III: mean value: 2.95) show that the potential to deliver cheaper projects in
shorter time is still regarded as an attractive possibility in PPP/PFI procurement, by
both public and private sectors. This is despite the contrary research evidence noted earlier in this paper, and thus suggests that
further research into the pre-operational performance of PPP/PFI schemes is essential. The factor, benefit to local
economic development (Table III: mean value 2.62), is determined by government policy and is rarely correlative to an
individual project. Furthermore, accurate measurement of benefits achieved is difficult over most of the criteria used to define
economic development. Nevertheless, it appears that both partners in PPP/PFI are aware of the need for
their projects to demonstrate tangible economic benefits to the areas in which they are located.
Objectivism DA
Taxes are coercive and unethical -- privatization and individual choice
is the first step to stopping it.
Saint-Andre 94 Peter Saint-Andre, Peter Saint-Andre received a degree in Philosophy and
Ancient Greek, worked as a business writer and editor, April 1994, On the Road to Voluntary
Government Financing, http://stpeter.im/writings/essays/bp.html
Ayn Rand's position on government financing -- that taxation is by nature theft and that government is
best financed through purely voluntary means -- sets her apart from almost all other
political thinkers. This is, however, a double-edged sword for Objectivists. The good news is that hardly anyone else takes a
stand on the issue, so that we've got the field all to ourselves. The bad news is that the Objectivist position on government financing
can be a source of embarrassment or befuddlement, and is often held up to those new to the philosophy as an example of its
extremism and lack of concern for "the real world". In addition, the issue of voluntary financing has little
"resonance" with normal folks. Who cares about voluntary vs. coercive financing when there are so many more pressing
issues facing the polity -- who, that is, except ideological wackos with (hide the children!) libertarian leanings? Even among those of
basically libertarian principles (and despite what your opinion is of the Libertarian Party, the Objectivist political theory must be
classified as libertarian, though perhaps with a small "l"), the issue of voluntary financing is usually considered
one of the last that must be dealt with in the progression towards a free society, not one of the first.
Rand herself, for example, in her 1964 essay "Government Financing in a Free Society", writes that voluntary financing "will be
practicable only in a fully free society, a society whose government has been constitutionally reduced to its proper, basic functions."
Leaving aside the question of how any society can be "fully free" under a regime of forced taxation, I want to challenge the
conventional Objectivist wisdom about voluntary financing of government. If voluntary financing is so crucial to
liberty, then what are we waiting for? Do we want to wait for the arrival of a virtually libertarian society before we
introduce what Rand seems to consider "the last reform"? Why don't we find a path to tax freedom that we can embark on now? In
this essay, I propose just such a path, one which may not appeal to all (or even any) Objectivists, but one which I believe can move us
closer to the day when government will be financed through fully voluntary, non-coercive means. Read on. Not so long ago, George
Bush (remember George Bush?) floated the idea of a check-off on your income tax form, by which you could dedicate up to ten
percent of your income tax exclusively for deficit reduction. This modest proposal contains the germ of what I
call choice-based taxation: the ability -- the right -- to assign your taxes to whatever
governmental services you deem most important. The idea for full-blown choice-based taxation came
to me on witnessing the June 1990 elections in Czechoslovakia, in which 96% of the electorate cast their votes. Weeks before the
voting, each citizen received in the mail an election packet that included one-page descriptions of each of the 24 political parties and
its program -- advertisements, if you will, though they could include only text. Each citizen had weeks to reflect on the positions of
the parties and decide which candidates to vote for. Well, this bright idea, so respectful of the minds of the voters, set me to thinking:
What if you and I were so respected as taxpayers? What if you were supplied with an information packet along with your tax forms,
and could decide which government departments or services you wished to support with your tax money? Just think: each
department is required to come up with a one-page summary of what it has accomplished
recently and why its programs are so important to the people of the nation, and you get to
allocate your tax money among those departments or services that seem on reflection to be most
worthy of your support. Right there on the old 1040, you would have the final choice about the
percentage of your taxes you wanted to assign to each department. One of the beauties of
such a choice-based taxation scheme is that it co-opts the income tax, which every
self-respecting lover of freedom despises. I believe that we can turn the income tax, which is in
essence a way of punishing the creation of wealth, into a weapon against the state. If "the rich"
(successful businesses and the individually better-off) do pay most of the taxes in this country, then don't they deserve to have more
of a say in how that money is spent? Given all the talk about tax fairness, we need to ask: is it fair to soak the rich and give them little
or no say in what is done with the money that is taken from them? The old adage "He who pays the piper calls the tune" not only
does not hold true in the realm of government -- in the United States today those who pay the piper are being forced more and more
to play the tune, through increased regulation. This state of affairs isn't fair, and it's about time someone
(namely, Objectivists) said so. Furthermore, assigning your taxes as you wish has an impeccable "democratic" or old-line liberal
ring to it: after all, is it not right that you be allowed to decide which functions of government you want to support with your hard-
earned money, especially if you are morally opposed to foreign aid or national defense or government subsidies for art or whatever?
Who could argue with the principle of choice, applied even to taxation and fiscal matters? Another beauty of choice-
based taxation is that it takes the fundamental power of government -- the power of the purse --
away from our so-called representatives, at least in part. That portion of federal revenues derived from income taxes
(currently around 35% from personal income taxes and 7% from corporate taxes) would lie beyond the power of Congress.
Furthermore, everyone would be aware of the percentages assigned by the people to the various departments, which would make
highly suspect any effort by our "representatives" to allocate the funds at their disposal in wildly different percentages. There is no
guarantee that you or I would like the resulting percentages. What if the people in their wisdom vote for more welfare, more farm
supports, more government-supported art, more spending on environmental regulation? That outcome is entirely possible, but then
again it is entirely possible that the people would vote less money for the NEA and the EPA, and more money for such basic
functions of government as defense and criminal justice. Given the priorities of the average American vs. those
of the average legislator, I know I would rather entrust fiscal decisions to the people. A focus on such
results looks only at the short term, however. In the long run, a radically democratic financing system will
reintroduce the one principle capable of eradicating coercive government at its
root: the idea that government exists to serve the people, and not the other way around. In these
days of government of the Congress, by the Congress, for the Congress, we have lost sight of the fact that
government exists to serve the needs of the people -- that government is a service.
Where do all our taxes go? Into government services: justice, defense, welfare, farm supports, national parks, foreign aid, and all the
rest. You or I may not like them all, but they're all services provided by the government. Yet who is making the choices
about these services? Not those who are served, but our so-called representatives. No wonder
it seems more and more that the federal government serves not the people but the
Beltway establishment. Beyond the democratic pedigree of a choice-based taxation system could lie a path towards
fully voluntary government financing. For, once we establish the principle that it is services you are paying for with
your taxes, then slowly we can push the idea that it is right for you to pay only for the
government services from which you feel you benefit, and only to the extent that you benefit
from them. That is, we will be able to establish that even paying taxes is fundamentally not an example of forced expropriation
but of voluntary exchange of mutual value between consenting parties. At that point, there will be no need or justification for the
government to set required levels of giving (such as a flat 10% of income, say); instead, levels of giving will be left to the discretion of
the individual, and government financing will be fully voluntary. I believe that choice-based taxation may also provide
a way to reduce government to what Rand called its "proper, basic functions". One
mechanism for doing so would be the privatization of government-sponsored
businesses and charities such as the Postal Service, the NEA, foreign aid programs, public television, and the various
welfare programs. In performing such services, the government is in direct competition with private
businesses or private charities. In order to privatize these government-run services, they might
be given privileged status on tax forms for a few years, meriting a check-off box or a line for contributions to
charities that are making the transition to private status.
Neg Objectivism DA
1nc Objectivism
[Insert Aff-specific method link here]
Taxes and Entitlements are Unethical -- there is no reason why
individuals have an inherent obligation to others -- private actors
historically solve their offense.
Brook and Watkins 11 Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, Executive Chairman, Ayn Rand Institute, Former Fellow
(2006-2017), Ayn Rand Institute, 2011, THE ENTITLEMENT STATE IS MORALLY BANKRUPT,
https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-business/regulations/The-Entitlement-State-Is-Morally-Bankrupt#filter-bar
After Rick Perry called Social Security a Ponzi scheme, pundits everywhere smugly assured the world that Perry is crazy because,
after all, the government can never really go bankrupt: it can always print money to pay its debts. Of course, thats hardly a comfort
to those who know what hyperinflation can do to an economy. In any case, Perry can be commended for daring to violate the first
law of politics: whatever you do, do not question entitlements. Despite the fact that the big three entitlement programs Social
Security, Medicaid, and Medicare have the U.S. government facing upwards of $100 trillion in
unfunded liabilities, they largely remain a third rail: touch not lest ye be voted out of office. Why are they sacrosanct?
Because, whatever else you can say about the entitlement state, no one disputes that its a moral
imperative. Inefficient? Maybe. Expensive? You bet. But morally questionable? Absolutely not. The problem with the
entitlement state is not simply that it is bankrupting this country the problem is that it is
morally bankrupt. The basic principle behind the entitlement state is that a persons need
entitles him to other peoples wealth. Its that you have a duty to spend some irreplaceable
part of your life laboring, not for the sake of your own life and happiness, but for the
sake of others. If you are productive and self-supporting, then according to the entitlement
state, you are in hock to those who arent. In Marxs memorable phrase: From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs. As weve argued in past columns, no system that treats you as other peoples
servant can be called moral. What made America the noblest nation in history was that it
was the first country founded on the idea that each of us has a right to live and work for our own
sake, that its our own job to try to make the most of our life, and that the governments sole purpose is to
protect our freedom to do so. Some have raised objections to this line of argument, however. Here are
three of the most popular objections. 1. The entitlement state is no different from
insurance. When Social Security first passed, under FDR, most Americans regarded being on the dole as shameful. One
way the program garnered widespread support was by positioning itself, not as welfare, but as insurance. Medicare would later take
the same tack. You pay in when youre young and healthy, and when money is paid out to you, youre not going on the dole youre
simply getting back whats yours. This was always a fraud. Your taxes arent invested in order to
generate your future benefits they are used to supply benefits to current enrollees. If a private
insurance company operated that way, racking up $100 trillion in debts it couldnt pay, it would
be bankrupt and its executives would be sent to prison. But the most vital difference is this:
the entitlement state is involuntary. For the rational person, insurance is something he chooses
to buy when he judges that a given policy represents a net gain. Even in a voluntary, competitive
system where profit-seeking companies tailor policies to your individual needs, insurance isnt for
everyone. A young entrepreneur might rationally decide to forego homeowners insurance in order to make his fledgling business a
success. But the entitlement state forces us into costly, one-size-fits-all programs
regardless of whether we think its in our personal interest. 2. The entitlement state
benefits everyone. Far from offering genuine benefits, whenever the government takes
peoples money and decides how that money is best spent, it makes life harder for rational
people. A rational person needs the freedom to plan his own life, make his own
choices, and support his own existence. Consider the impact of Social Security. In a world without
Social Security, the rational person would think about his own long-range plans and interests.
He might rationally decide that he loves working and never wants to retire, or that hed rather
invest his current income in growing his business today and start saving once he has established
himself. When he does invest, he will think carefully about where to park his savings, consulting experts, judiciously diversifying.
As a result he will know where his investments stand and why, and will not be at the mercy of a political
process that might raise the retirement age, curtail promised benefits, etc. For him,
Social Security is all downside. All its alleged benefits he could attain much better on his own. So why
is he deprived of this
freedom to live and plan his own life? Because some people may choose not to plan. Social Security,
and the entitlement state more broadly, institutes a basic injustice: the rational and
productive are sacrificed in the name of the irrational. From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs. 3. But what about those who cant take care of themselves? Sure,
some people say, most of us would thrive without the entitlement state but what about those who cant? What happens to them?
Dont they starve in the streets? In any industrialized nation, it is only a fraction of a sliver of a minority
who are unable to support themselves, and even in the days before Americas entitlement
state, they didnt starve in the streets. Most turned to friends and family. Many others turned to
voluntary social insurance programs run by private mutual aid societies, like the Security
Benefit Association. And some turned to private charities. If Americans a century ago
could flourish without an entitlement state, how much easier would it be today, when even most
poor people own cars and color TVs? The entitlement state was never needed to
ensure that the unable got fed. It is and always has been geared, not to the unable, but to the unwilling: to that
entitlement mentality that expects payment according to his needs. And by rewarding that mentality, we foster that mentality.
The entitlement state is geared to the unwilling at the expense of the willing and
able. What could be greater evidence that it is morally bankrupt?
2nc Answers General
A2 Taxes Inevitable
Voluntary taxes solve
Rand 63 Ayn Rand, the Mother of Freedom, graduated University of Leningrad, 1963, The
Virtue of Selfishness, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/taxation.html
In a fully free society, taxationor, to be exact, payment for governmental serviceswould be
voluntary. Since the proper services of a governmentthe police, the armed forces, the law courtsare
demonstrably needed by individual citizens and affect their interests directly , the
citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for
insurance. The question of how to implement the principle of voluntary government financinghow to determine the best
means of applying it in practiceis a very complex one and belongs to the field of the philosophy of law. The task of political
philosophy is only to establish the nature of the principle and to demonstrate that it is
practicable.
A2 Taxes are Neutral
Taxation is inevitably non-neutral.
Sechrest 99 Larry J. Sechrest, The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, 1999, RAND, ANARCHY,
AND TAXES,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41560112.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Aaed4a58968ef457824ce2
6bfd289fe8a
This observation is known in economics as the "non-neutrality" of taxes. It parallels the non-
neutrality of money, the fact that, as long as men are not omniscient, changes in the money
supply will have different effects on different people (Mises [1949] 1966, 415-19). Assume, for instance, the usual
modern case in which the money stock is controlled by a central bank. Assume further that the money stock rises. Those who
receive the increased money balances first will benefit most, while those who
receive them last will benefit little or not at all. Because such monetary changes are not
experienced equiproportionately and simultaneously by everyone, they bring about changes in
(1) the relative prices of both consumer goods and the factors of production, (2) the structure of
production, and (3) the distribution of income and wealth. Every change in money changes
the relative economic positions of individuals. The same is true of taxes. "[T]here is
no such thing as a 'neutral tax'-a tax that will leave the market free and undisturbed-just as
there is no such thing as neutral money" (Rothbard [1970] 1977, 137). It is of course true that all taxes affect
individuals' income or wealth in absolute terms. That is, all taxes intentionally
redistribute command over resources from the private sector to the government. In
absolute terms, clearly, no taxes are neutral.
A2 Causes Inequality
Upward mobility was at its highest before the welfare state.
Brook and Watkins 13 Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, Executive Chairman, Ayn Rand
Institute, Former Fellow (2006-2017), Ayn Rand Institute, April 12, 2013, TO BE BORN POOR
DOESNT MEAN YOULL ALWAYS BE POOR, https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-
and-business/capitalism/To-Be-Born-Poor-Doesnt-Mean-Youll-Always-Be-Poor#filter-bar
Long after he had established himself as one of Americas leading businessmen, as well as historys greatest steelmaker, Andrew
Carnegie reflected that We all live in the richest and freest country in the world, where
no man is limited except by his own mental attitude and his own desires. At the time
a decade or so before the First World War Carnegies attitude was nearly universal. In America, anyone could carve out a better
life for himself if he worked hard. Today, Carnegies attitude is considered almost quaint. Opportunity? Why, opportunity is a rare
thing, and those Americans not lucky enough to be born with it should be given it at other peoples expense. Whether its an
education, a job, a house, or a grant, opportunity is seen as something that others have to provide you with. If you dont succeed, its
not because you failed to capitalize on plentiful opportunities. Its because you just werent one of the fortunate few. Carnegie would
have bristled. My men began in exactly the same station in life which I occupied a few years ago ,
Carnegie once observed. They have had the same privileges for personal advancement that I had. Its hard to imagine anyone
beginning in a lower station. Carnegie had arrived in America, a twelve-year-old Scottish immigrant.
With barely a penny to his familys name, and with only five years of formal education behind
him (Lack of schooling is no valid excuse for failure; neither is an exhaustive schooling a guarantee of success, he would later
say), young Andrew went to work at a textile mill, twelve hours a day, for $1.20 a week. It wasnt much, but it was enough. The
job gave Carnegie the opportunity to learn and to demonstrate his dedication to
hard work. Very quickly he moved on and up: less than a year later he had secured a position at OReillys
Telegraph Company, starting at more than twice what he had earned at the mill. It was there that Carnegies rise
began in earnest not through some lucky break but through the habit Carnegie would later
refer to as going the extra mile. Carnegie, still working incredibly long days, began going to
work early in order to learn how to send and receive telegraph messages. He worked so hard at it that he
could eventually take telegraph messages by ear rather than by transcribing the Morse code a feat only two other people in
America could perform. That ability helped him gain the notice of Thomas A. Scott, a superintendent for the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Scott hired the young man, still a teenager, to be his secretary and telegrapher at $35 a month a tidy sum at the time and a far cry
from $1.20 a week. Carnegie soon became indispensable to Scott. The real turning point came not too long after he was hired.
Carnegie was in the office alone one day when news came of a wreck on the Eastern Division. Rail traffic started backing up; instead
of shrugging his shoulders and saying not my job, not my problem, Carnegie chose to take action. Mr. Scott was not to be found,
he would later write. Finally, I could not resist the temptation to plunge in, take the responsibility, give train orders and set
matters going. It was no easy decision. Although Carnegie had watched Scott deal with similar problems in the past, lives and
property were at stake. I knew it was dismissal, disgrace, perhaps criminal punishment for me if I erred. On the other hand, I could
bring in the wearied freight-train men who had lain out all night. I could set everything in motion. I knew I could. And he did,
forging Scotts signature and issuing orders until rail traffic was back to normal. Thanks to Carnegies determination and hard-won
abilities, Scott started opening doors for the young man and teaching him the skills he would need to succeed in business. Later, he
would help Carnegie make his first investment, launching Andrews career as a capitalist in earnest. By 1860, at the age of 25,
Carnegie was making almost $50,000 more than enough to count himself as wealthy.
Opportunity means a set of circumstances in which a course of successful action
is possible. Opportunity is abundant. Whats scarce is the willingness to take advantage of it. To the extent
a country is free, a person with no money, no education, no connections can rise as far as his
ability and ambition will take him. But developing ability and ambition is a challenging,
uncomfortable, even scary process. Relatively few people in any era choose to do
it, and as a result, few capitalize on lifes unlimited opportunities. In Carnegies words, a
man may be born in poverty, but he does not have to go through life in poverty.
He may be illiterate but he does not have to remain so. But . . . no amount of
opportunity will benefit the man who neglects or refuses to take possession of his own mind
power and use it for his own personal advancement. That was what led Carnegie to success: the constant use of
his mind in pursuit of a better life. Whether he was learning a new skill, taking decisive action in an emergency, or forging the most
innovative and efficient steelmaking company in the world, the commitment to following the judgment of his
reasoning mind was the only opportunity he needed. That the willingness to think is
something no one else can give you.
A2- Aff Solves
Their model for equality is unethical -- it forces everyone into the
lowest common denominator.
Watkins 16 Don Watkins, Don Watkins was a writer and fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute
between 2006 2017, 2016, EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY DOESNT EXIST IN AMERICA
AND THATS A GOOD THING, https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-
business/capitalism/Equality-of-Opportunity-Doesnt-Exist-in-America-and-Thats-a-Good-
Thing#filter-bar
Dont believe doomsayers like Bernie Sanders, Joseph Stiglitz, and Paul Krugman. America is still the land of
opportunity. If youre willing to work hard, constantly improve your skills, and hold yourself
to a high standard of excellence, you can make something of yourself in this country. But that could
change if we decide to pursue an agenda of equality of opportunity. Equal opportunity
appeals to many people because it evokes the idea of a level playing field. We believe everyone should play by the
same rules, and that no one should get special privileges at the expense of others. But the people who
go around advocating equality of opportunity today often arent talking about a level playing field, where the laws apply equally to
all. What they mean is that we should all enjoy an equal chance of success. According to
todays leading critics of economic inequality, if a child born to loving, affluent, educated parents is more likely to achieve economic
success than someone born without such advantages, that is an injustice that the government has to fight. But is that a fight we really
want the government to wage? It would mean, first and foremost, an unprecedented program of wealth
redistribution, sapping affluent parents of every honestly earned dollar theyve made so long as
it could be used to give their child a head start in life. And even that wouldnt come close to achieving equality
of initial chances. To approach that goal, parents would not be allowed to provide their children
with any opportunities a better school, a better computer, a better book
collection, a trip abroad if other peoples children did not have the same
opportunities. One philosopher recently mused that it might even be wrong for parents to
read to their children since it could give them an unfair advantage in life. And after all that, you would
still be left with the great injustice of the smart and the dumb, who are so differently rewarded for comparable effort, complains
leading egalitarian Thomas Nagel. We can never enjoy equal opportunities. All of us are born with
certain advantages and certain challenges, and our happiness depends on maximizing our
advantages and overcoming our challenges. Will the struggle upward be harder for some than for others? No
question. If your parents are loving, rich, educated, and well connected, youll probably have an
easier time building a successful life than if youre born a poor orphan. This is one reason
parents work so hard to provide their children with opportunities: opportunities
matter. But to the extent we live in a free society, even those starting out with limited opportunities can
succeed as evidenced by the remarkable success achieved by many second- (and
sometimes first-) generation immigrants. Trying to equalize opportunities would really
mean destroying opportunities. You cant make parents equally affluent but you can
make them equally impoverished. You cant make children equally intelligent
but you can throttle the intelligent. You cannot level up. You can only level down. That is not only
grotesquely unfair to those with greater opportunities, but it also comes at the expense of those
with fewer opportunities. The favorable circumstances other people enjoy cant hold us back.
Exactly the reverse is true. Part of the reason people flock to the United States is precisely because it is a
land in which other people are wealthier, better educated, and more productive than in their
home countries. If other peoples opportunities really held us back, then instead of foreigners
immigrating to America, Americans should be immigrating to places like Mexico and India,
where they would be among the wealthiest and best educated people in the country. The reason this
doesnt happen is because we know in some terms that other peoples successes are a boon to our lives not a threat. The
success of the Walton family hasnt held anyone backits created opportunities
for millions to buy affordable products (and to find employment). The real source of a level
playing field is not economic equality but freedom. In a free society, no one can use the
power of the government to gain special privileges that hold us back or exploit us. We all have
the liberty to rise by means of our own thought and effort, regardless of where we start.
Links
2nc Taxes Bad
Taxes are a form of governmental control -- they homogenize the
values and behaviors of others
Brook 8 Yaron Brook, Executive Chairman, Ayn Rand Institute, April 17, 2008, LIFE AND
TAXES, https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-business/regulations/Life-And-Taxes
Tax policy works by attaching financial incentives to a long list of values deemed morally worthy.
If you want to maximize your wealth come tax time and who doesnt? you must look at the world through tax-colored glasses,
voluntarily adjusting your behavior to suit social norms and thereby qualifying for tax breaks. In this way, the social
engineers of tax policy preserve the impression that youre exercising free choice,
while theyre actually dispensing with your reason and your judgment. As an example,
consider the choice between buying and renting a home. In a free market, a dollar paid in rent is equivalent to a dollar paid for
mortgage interest. But when the federal government offers a mortgage interest deduction based on some alleged need for an
ownership society then each purchase dollar saves a few pennies in tax that a rental dollar does not. So the path to wealth
maximization suddenly veers away from renting and toward home ownership. Over the past century, such social
engineering has inflated the nations tax laws to an estimated 66,000 pages of statutes,
regulations and rulings. At the core of this unreadable agglomeration is the most arrogant scheme of all, the
progressive income tax. Its basic idea is that the more productive you are, the
more you should pay in taxes. If you dare to suggest that penalizing success is neither a
moral ideal nor a practical tax policy, you will be told that all such questions must be decided by
reference to the good of society. And now the presidential candidates want to bulk up this already bloated system. For
instance, Hillary Clinton wants you to take care of your elderly relatives ($3,000 caregivers credit), Barack Obama wants you to
keep your companys headquarters and jobs in America (Patriot Employer program) and both Obama and McCain want you to
fund more research and development (making an existing credit permanent). Of course, theres nothing wrong with caring for
grandparents, hiring local people or spending on R&D if a rational thought process leads you to conclude that those choices
actually serve the self-interest of you or your company. But government has no right to influence your
decisions one way or the other. Heres the point: Governments job is not to dictate your
values but to protect them. In a free country, you choose values and then use your own
money as a tool to achieve them. But a value-rigged tax policy reverses this cause and
effect it uses your money against you, bribing you with tax breaks that let you
keep some of your earnings in exchange for abandoning your preferred values.
Clearly, we have slid a long way downhill from this nations founding, when political leaders
respected individuals ability to make rational decisions for themselves about how to pursue
their own health, wealth and happiness. Today, it is commonly accepted that Uncle Sam has
a right to reach not only into your wallet but into your soul, through tax policies
that substitute some version of the public interest for your own rational desires.
Of course, tax policy is only one form of social engineering spending and direct regulation are other coercive methods of
substituting collective values for private choice. But when it comes to micro-managing our lives, there are two reasons why tax
incentives remain one of politicians favorites. First, people find comfort in the illusion of self-direction
that goes along with tax incentives they would rather be lured by a tasty carrot than
beaten with a stick. Second, tax law is an easy mechanism through which politicians
can dispense favors to supporters, as Clinton, Obama and McCain have each pledged to do. Every year
numerous pages are added to the long list of politically correct values. In place of the limitless
variety that emerges when individuals plan their own lives in a free society, tax laws strive to
impose a dreary sameness as if every individual should get married, have children, buy a home and save for
retirement on a government-approved schedule and as if every company should look to bureaucrats for the one true path to
selecting real estate, equipment, fuels, employees and financing. Such artificial homogeneity has no place in
the tax policy of a government dedicated to protecting individual rights. If
government were restricted to its proper functions police, courts and a strong military to defend individual
rights against physical force and fraud our 66,000-page coercive tax code would be a thing of the past.
Whats more, a great burden would be lifted, not just from the economy, but from our lives. Imagine reasserting
ourselves as rational, sovereign individuals, whose rights to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness include the right to choose values without asking societys
permission and without chasing our own money, like lab rats sniffing cheese, down the twisting corridors of a labyrinthine
tax code.
2nc Government Bad
Governmental services are unethical
Rand 63 Ayn Rand, the Mother of Freedom, graduated University of Leningrad, 1963,
Government Financing in a Free Society,
https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/04/taxes_and_government
The principle of voluntary government financing rests on the following premises: that the
government is not the owner of the citizens' income and, therefore, cannot hold a
blank check on that incomethat the nature of the proper governmental services
must be constitutionally defined and delimited, leaving the government no power to
enlarge the scope of its services at its own arbitrary discretion. Consequently, the principle of
voluntary government financing regards the government as the servant, not the ruler, of the
citizensas an agent who must be paid for his services, not as a benefactor whose services are
gratuitous, who dispenses something for nothing.
Government intervention is inherently coercive and right-denying.
Thomas 8 William Thomas, Director of Programs, The Atlas Society 2008, Objectivism
against Anarchy, https://atlassociety.org/sites/default/files/AgainstAnarchy.pdf
Rights are principles that only develop relevance in the context of government. A
government is an institution that establishes social rules within a geographic area, enforces
them coercively, and cannot be challenged with impunity.1 Another way of looking at government is to note
that whatever institution arises to predominate in the use of force in a region, that institution is a government. It may be a
federal institution, or one of divided powers, or one that incorporates more or less competitive
and/or for-profit provision of traditional government services such as courts and security forces.
It may be elected, or it may not. It may be just or unjust. We need rights principles to prevent
government from overstepping its proper function.
2nc Regulations Bad
Regulations are unethical -- it controls production and thought.
Rand 63 Ayn Rand, the Mother of Freedom, graduated University of Leningrad,1963, POV:
HAVE GUN, WILL NUDGE, https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-
business/regulations/Have-Gun-Will-Nudge#filter-bar
The governments sole function, according to Ayn Rand, is to secure and protect the rights of the
individual. Proper laws define the crimes and other actions that violate rights and establish the rules by which government
may prosecute these crimes and settle disputes among men. Proper laws thereby place the governments
use of force under objective control. But when laws are non-objective, they enslave
rather than liberate. The best example of non-objective laws today are the thousands and
thousands of pages of impenetrable regulations, whose meaning and purpose you as a citizen must try to guess and
whose actual enforcement is determined by the whims of some bureaucrat, which you must try to predict. Non-objective
law, according to Rand, is the most effective weapon of human enslavement: its
victims become its enforcers and enslave themselves. Rand provides a glimpse of how this regulatory process
works in Have Gun, Will Nudge. In this essay she discusses the actions of the FCC in the early 1960s to pressure broadcasters to
improve the quality of their programming. Rands observations about the destructive impact of that by-
now-forgotten episode of non-objective law apply to the hundreds of other regulatory agencies
from the FDA to the EPA to the SEC that control an ever greater part of our daily lives. It is for this
reason that ARI makes a sharp distinction between law and regulation. Laws that protect individual rights are necessary and proper.
But in a free society there is no place for regulation: for any attempt to control the
individuals thought, production or trade.
2nc Public Schools Bad
An Objectivist society would give more access to education for
industrious disadvantaged people.
Sanders 11 Nicole Sanders, College Bursar Assistant III at City Colleges of Chicago Olive-
Harvey, January 25, 2011, Education for the Poor,
https://atlassociety.org/commentary/commentary-blog/4285-education-for-the-poor
Question: How is someone who is born into a class of lower economic means able to go to a top
university, and how will universities be able to get the highest intellectuals if everyone is not
given the same education and opportunities? The class system is something inherent in the
capitalist system, and those who have are given much more freedom and choices than those who
have not. Answer: First, in a free society there really isn't as much of a class system as you may
think. The correlation between a person's income and that of his grandparents is extremely low. Indeed, it is more likely you won't
have wealth or earnings like your grandparents than it is that you will. And this goes for wealthy people, by and large, as much as for
poor people. Of course there are exceptions, but that doesn't change the general social characteristic. But while this should ease your
mind a bit, it isn't the fundamental issue. You want to know why some children are entitled to an easier or better
education than others. But theentitlement is not the children's: it is the entitlement of those giving the
education. Any child depends on others for support and education. In the Objectivist view, parents
are obligated to provide a reasonable minimum in this regard, but beyond that parents
have the right to vary the degree of their investment. And others are free to invest in the
child's education as they choose and the parents permit. Who will support meritorious
children and young adults in seeking a good education? Those who care to, or those who can
make money from doing so. Those who care to will include philanthropists and
universities bent on finding brilliant students. But let's consider the latter group, though the former have
been bountiful. In a free society, it is quite conceivable that poor people with potential should be able
to finance their education by taking out loans. The main reason such loans are not widely
available now without government support is the personal bankruptcy laws, which show little
respect for contracts. Under a system that held people to debt obligations (allowing bankrupts to
manage, not evade, debts), loans for education should be a good business. Just as today one can go to professional
school on commercial loans, so could one get a college education in a system based on individual freedom and responsibility. Of
course, this only works if one graduates from University prepared to get a good job and earn enough to pay back one's loans, but
that's how it should be. In a free society, independence would be rewarded and poor people
especially would learn to value education. And you further should consider the effects of
such a system on poverty itself. People have free will, and they can always make mistakes or
through misfortune end up in difficult circumstances. But incentives matter. In our system today,
government welfare systems have created a class of impoverished dependents who
grow up thinking like dependents, without good work skills or a pro-education
culture. In a free society, independence would be rewarded and poor people especially would learn
to value education. Indeed, we have seen hints of how this would work in the effects of the partial welfare reform on the
1990s. And we have seen how culture matters in experiences of motivated, impoverished immigrant groups who valued education.
So Objectivists envision a society where no one has to apologize for having earned wealth , and
where politics is not driven by jealousy. But we also envision a dynamic, vibrant society in
which real, grinding poverty is little known and where people live responsible,
rational lives taking advantage of opportunity, and where others assist those less
fortunate because it is in their own interest to do so.
Public education is unethical
Bowden 8 Tom Bowden, Analyst and Outreach Liaison, Ayn Rand Institute, March 31, 2008, YOUR CHILD IS
NOT STATE PROPERTY, https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/culture-and-society/education--multiculturalism/Your-
Child-Is-Not-State-Property
Rocked by a nationwide storm of criticism, the Los Angeles County court that declared homeschooling illegal in California has
agreed to rehear the case in June. At issue is Justice H. Walter Croskeys Feb. 28 decree, which ordered the parents of Rachel L. to
send her away to a public or private school, where she can get a legal education. Justice Croskeys edict interpreted state education
laws that govern all children, whatever their home situation and whatever the quality of their home education. Except for the rare
case when parents already hold state teaching credentials, parents
who find public schools intolerable and
cannot locate or afford a suitable private school were branded by the decree as outlaws if they
choose to instruct their child at home. California legislators were entitled to enact this blanket prohibition, according
to the judge, because they feared the supposed social disorder that would result from allowing every person to make his own
standards on matters of conduct in which society as a whole has important interests. Allowing? By what right does government
presume to allow (or, in this case, forbid) you to make your own standards concerning your childs education? Government has no
such right. Neither the state nor society as a whole has any interests of its own in your childs education. A society is only
a group of individuals, and the governments only legitimate function is to protect
the individual rights of its citizens, including yours and your childrens, against
physical force and fraud. The state is your agent, not a separate entity with interests that can
override your rights. If Justice Croskeys description of California law is correct, then the states educational policy
is at odds with Americas founding principles. Parents are sovereign individuals whose
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness includes the right to control their
childs upbringing. Other citizens, however numerous or politically powerful, have no moral right to substitute their
views on child-raising for those of the father and mother who created that child. Instead, a proper legal system recognizes and
protects parents moral right to pursue the personal rewards and joys of child-raising. At every stage, you have a right to set your
own standards and act on them without government permission. This parental right to control your childs
upbringing includes the right to manage his education, by choosing an appropriate school or
personally educating him at home. Of course, there are certain situations in which government must step in to protect
the rights of a child, as in cases of physical abuse or neglect. But no such concern for individual rights can account
for Californias arrogant assertion of state control over the minds of all school-age children
residing within its borders. Education, like nutrition, should be recognized as the
exclusive domain of a childs parents, within legal limits objectively defining child
abuse and neglect. Parents who starve their children may properly be ordered to fulfill their parental obligations, on pain
of losing legal custody. But the fact that some parents may serve better food than others does not permit government to seize control
of nutrition, outlaw home-cooked meals, and order all children to report for daily force-feeding at government-licensed cafeterias.
The shockwaves from Justice Croskeys decision will likely impact not just homeschoolers but also the apologists for government
education teachers unions, educational bureaucrats, and politicians. Their political and financial survival
depends on a policy that treats children as, in effect, state property but only rarely is the
undiluted collectivism of that policy trumpeted so publicly. What if, in the harsh glare of the
Rachel L. case, parents start asking whether the state has any right at all to be running schools and dictating educational standards
for children, in order to advance societys interests? This calls into question the moral foundation of public
education as such. In this light, one wonders if the courts decision to rehear the case could be a first step toward muting, and
muddying, the controversy. For their part, the defenders of public schooling can be expected to stay busy
papering over their systems own failures the very failures that helped fuel the
homeschooling movement, by driving desperate parents to seek refuge at home
from the irrationality, violence, and mediocrity that have come to characterize
government education, in California and elsewhere. For now, at least, the battle lines are
clearly drawn. Are parents mere drudges whose social duty is to feed and house their spawn between mandatory
indoctrination sessions at government-approved schools? Or are they sovereign individuals whose right to guide their childrens
development the state may not infringe? The answer could determine not only the future of homeschooling
but the future of education in America.
Public schools are ineffective and unethical
Hurlbut 12 TERRY A. HURLBUT, Hurlbut is qualified as a medical doctor and works as a
clinical pathologist, hes a writer for the Examiner, 2012, AYN RAND WORLD: PUBLIC
SCHOOLS, http://www.conservativenewsandviews.com/2012/04/19/education/ayn-rand-
world-public-schools/
The Ayn Rand world has no room for public schools. They indoctrinate instead of
educating, and far from protecting rights, often violate them. The Ayn Rand case against public schools Ayn
Rand herself said little about public schools per se. She said, often scathingly, that most schools do not properly
teach children about their own moral worth. In Atlas Shrugged she poured contempt on teachers who
taught pupils to conform instead of standing up for justice or their rights. But she said little about public schools directly. But in one
essay (Mans Rights), she directly criticized the Democratic Party for its 1960 platform. In that platform the Democrats
mentioned eight rights that President Franklin D. Roosevelt said that every person should
expect from society. Those were not rights at all, but entitlements: a job, adequate pay, guaranteed security, a decent
home, adequate protection from economic fears, andthe keyhealth care and education. A single question
added to each of [these guarantees] would make the issue clear: At whose expense? In other words: these are goods and
services. Someone has to make them or do them. None of these have anything to do with
protecting real rights, and protecting people from one another. Today, The Ayn Rand Institute says volumes
about public schools (and colleges and universities), and why free citizens should abolish them. Thomas A. Bowden, in 2008,
condemned a California appellate judge for saying that children are State property. Of course, State property is a misnomer
anyway; anything that the State holds is a common, not the property of any one person. The point here is that children
are no ones property or common. The adults who have responsibility for children are
the parents or guardians, not the government. The specific context of Bowdens remarks is worse than
the usual context of an entitlement from the State that other taxpayers must pay for. The defendant-appellant in that case chose to
home-school her children, and a judge said that she may not do this. Why? Because allowing every person to make his own
standards on matters of conduct in which society as a whole has important interests would lead somehow to social chaos. Matters of
conduct? What matters of conduct do interest society? CNAV can name at least five: do not murder, cheat, steal, lie, or covet. What
irony! These are the last five of the Ten Commandments. But public schools must not teach anything called The Ten
Commandments. That would break separation of church and state. (Yet in California, no one in authority objects to blending
mosque and state. But CNAV digresses.) Furthermore, public school teachers teach their pupils to covet, both in lessons and by
example. Public schools do not work The most important reason that any parent wants to home-school his
or her children is that the public schools have failed. Trade media for the public school industry admits
as much. In 2011, according to School Library Journal, only thirty-two percent of Americans
graduating from high school were proficient in math, and thirty-one percent proficient in
reading. These figures come from a Harvard University study. Detractors of American freedom often cite figures like these. But
this study looked at all American students, most of whom graduated from public schools. The Harvard team broke their sample
down by race, but not by public schools v. private schools or home-schooling. They took no interest in schooling other than public
schools, schooling that might give better results. By what authority? But more important than whether public schools work or not, is:
by what authority does government keep a school? Ayn Rand focused on one problem only: schooling is a
service. Student and teacher (or parent and teacher) decide together, by mutual consent, how
much that service is worth. When government does any service, it decides what it is
worth. (And often it decides that a school needs more administrators, and secretaries for the same, than teachers.)
Impacts
Coercion
Governmental collectivism is coercion.
Watkins 13 Don Watkins, Former Fellow (2006-2017), Ayn Rand Institute, January 25,
2013, ENTITLEMENTS ARENT COMMITMENTS THEYRE COERCION,
https://ari.aynrand.org/blog/2013/01/25/entitlements-arent-commitments-theyre-coercion
From Obamas inauguration speech: The commitments we make to each other through Medicare, and Medicaid,
and Social Security these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. This is wrong from start to
finish: Im certainly not strengthened by having thousands of dollars taken out of
my pay each year. But its the first part that made me feel like Wile E. Coyote taking an anvil to the head. Entitlements are
a commitment we make to each other? Really? I didnt make such a commitment, except in the sense that
John Dillingers victims made a commitment to give him their money. But Obamas euphemism isnt
accidental. Its part and parcel of how the left talks about democracy as if it were some social
club where we all get together and hash out decisions. Can't you just see the smiles and back-
patting? You could say its just a metaphor, but its an intellectually unjustifiable metaphor, because
the salient fact about a social club is that, if you dont like what the majority decides, you can go
your own way: it cant force its will on you. In the sort of unlimited democracy the left
savors, the majority (or a politically influential minority) can vote to violate your
rights. The left regularly denounces as coercion many actions that leave others perfectly free
to make their own decisionsas when a corporation doesnt offer employees health insurance, or uses corporate funds to
engage in political speech. Meanwhile, the left treats actual coercion like entitlement schemes as voluntary.
If it was honest and clear about what it stood for, it would have a much harder time selling its
agenda.
Economy
Government spending and the redistribution of wealth kills the
economy.
Brook 8 Yaron Brook, Executive Chairman, Ayn Rand Institute, February 14, 2008, TO
STIMULATE THE ECONOMY, LIBERATE IT, https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-
and-business/regulations/To-Stimulate-The-Economy-Liberate-It#filter-bar
While some in Washington are quibbling about the details of the economic stimulus package, nearly everyone agrees with its basic
idea: that our ailing economy needs Uncle Sam to play doctor and hand out some $150 billion in
consumer spending money. But this sort of government intervention is not the cure for our
economic troubles. It is the cause. To understand why, we must first recognize that the key
economic activity that causes growth is not consumer spending but production. Economic
growth means an increase in the amount of wealth that exists in a countryand all
wealth must be produced. Houses, health care, air-conditioning and transportation do not come ready-made from nature.
We have them only to the extent that individuals and businesses bring them into
existence. The focus of todays stimulus packages on consumer spending is therefore
completely backward. Consumption is a consequence of production. This fact is ignored by the Bush plan, which attempts to
achieve prosperity through $100 billion in deficit-spending. Though this might bring the appearance of prosperity, in the same way
that an unemployed man appears prosperous if he goes on a shopping spree with his credit cards, the reality will be the opposite.
The fact is that consumer spending is slowing because production is slowing. There
have been massive misallocations of capitalwitness, for instance, the housing marketwhich
are now coming home to roost. The resulting financial losses, economic uncertainty and more
tenuous job market are all contributing to the American consumers inability or unwillingness to
spend. If the Bush spending plan cant productively stimulate the economy, what government economic plan can? None.
Production does not need stimulation from the government; it needs liberation from the government. What a productive,
dynamic economy requires of a government is that it restrict itself to protecting property rights
from force and fraud, and refrain from interfering in free production and trade. Now it is of course
popular practice to blame economic problems, not on government intervention but on the free market. But observe that all
of the most prominent problems todayproblems with housing, financial markets,
health care, oilinvolve some of the least-free sectors of our economy, those with
the most government intervention. Consider the extent of government culpability in the current subprime
meltdown. There is the Federal Reserve, which wrought havoc with the markets by manipulating
interest rates, first setting them below the rate of inflation and then quintupling them. The Feds
initial policy convinced subprime borrowers that if they took out mortgages tied to Fed rates, they could afford homes that they
ordinarily couldnt. The Feds artificially low rates fueled a borrowing spree and housing bubble that were instrumental in the
subprime meltdown. Then there is the network of entities backed by the government, like Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac , which were big champions of subprime lending and big propagandists for the
idea that everyone needs to own a home to live the American Dream. Finally, there is the governments
long-standing policy of assuring large financial institutions that they are too big to fail, which encourages short-range, high-risk
investments. Given all these influences, is it any surprise that so many people with poor credit bought expensive homes, that so
many financial institutions lent them the money and that all hell broke loose once the unsustainable could no longer be sustained?
In an unhampered market, private lenders and borrowers dont behave this way. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of how our
government today stifles economic productivity through its gargantuan regulatory and welfare state. Try to project the
impact on productive businesses of the vast burden of federal and state regulationsregulations
that render off-limits a huge range of productive endeavors. For example: If a fast-growing software
company needs to quickly import a dozen eager and talented Indian programmers, it cant,
thanks to our immigration laws. If a company needs to fire a group of incompetent
employees to make its workforce more productive, it risks a million-dollar lawsuit.
If a developer seeks to offer low-cost housing in the vast, unused tracts of land in expensive
California districts, too badthat would go against environmentalist open space laws. If a
health insurance company tries to win more customers with deductibles, coverage and limits
that will make insurance far more affordable, the idea is sunk; states dictate the terms of health
insurance contracts. If a group of venture capitalists want to invest in new nuclear power, to
supply cheap energy to a new market, it cannotenvironmental regulations have prevented any
new plants for decades, despite the technologys stellar safety record. If the board of a struggling public
company wants to hire a top-flight CEO to turn its company around, its job is much harder (and more expensive) thanks to the CEO-
repelling climate created by Sarbanes-Oxley, whose vague laws and new criminal penalties make managing a firm much riskier.
Even the simple project of building a larger facility to house a growing business can easily be held up for six months, while the owner
must glad-hand zoning and permit bureaucrats. And this is just the smallest indication of the regulatory
strangulation that American businesses suffer. Imagine the economic stimulus, the
explosion of productivity, that would occur if these regulatory nooses were
removed. For that matter, consider how our government wreaks economic destruction by taxing
the wealth of the productive and diverting it unproductively. Americans pay trillions of
dollars in taxes annuallythe vast majority of which is not for the agencies that
protect our rights (police, military and courts), but for regulations and for entitlement
programs that transfer wealth from productive individuals who have earned it to
those who havent. Over the years, these programs have prevented individuals from investing
trillions of dollars in new ventures. It took a million dollars to start Google ; if the government hadnt drained us of
millions of dollars, picture what other amazing technologies, products and services we would be enjoying today. The economic
stimulus that would result from drastically cutting government regulation and spending (and thus taxation) is almost unimaginable.
Faced with recession, therefore, we should be asking not, What can the government do to stimulate the economy? but What can it
stop doing? Washington should be debating which disastrous programs to phase out first: Sarbanes-Oxley, or the constellation of
agencies that distort the housing market, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Politicians should be committing to drastically cutting
government spending, so that Americans can have real and lasting tax relief. What our economy needs is not a
stimulation package, but a liberation package.
Government wealth redistribution suppresses the productive and
destroys the economy
Tamny 9 John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets, a senior economist with H.C.
Wainwright Economics and a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research and Trading. He
writes a weekly column for Forbes., 4/20/2009, Ayn Rand Rises Again,
https://www.forbes.com/2009/04/17/ayn-rand-atlas-shrugged-opinions-columnists-taxes-
bailout.html
In her timeless book Atlas Shrugged, author Ayn Rand chronicled the fictional doings of many great industrialists who were dealing
with the greedy hand of government, including Hank Rearden. In an early chapter, Rearden was asked by a relative who his man in
Washington was, but he had no answer. A productive person driven by his own self interest, it never occurred to Rearden to look to
Washington for help in growing his business, or for handouts meant to keep it afloat. Success for him resulted from being profitable,
and profits were the certain signal that he was giving customers of his massive steel corporation what they wanted. The story of
Rearden takes on greater meaning today as evidenced by the return of Atlas Shrugged to the best-seller lists. Many Americans
intuitively understand that our collectivist shift toward bailouts of companies and individuals is
exactly what Rand warned us about over 60 years ago. Simplified, if the government allows the
unproductive to partake in the gains created by the productive, the productive just
might disappear. By now, most are quite familiar with the actions of General Motors and Chrysler in this regard, not to
mention the many banks that were recipients of TARP money after their cash on hand dried up. Unable to survive on their own,
certain corporations have used their Washington connections in order to survive on the
productive gains of others. Sadly, the story doesnt end there. With Washington having signaled that it is
open for business through various stimulus measures and corporate aid programs, all manner
of private entities have lined up for handouts. Two weeks ago, the U.S. Treasury announced that life insurance
companies will be the latest recipients of TARP funds. Having gamed the system through the purchase of banks, insurers are now
eligible for their own government funding. Having seen how successful the housing industry has been in terms of procuring
government subsidies, the commercial real estate industry is presently trying its hand. With the Federal Reserve already offering
short-term loans through its TALF program, commercial real estate firms are now lobbying for the Fed to offer longer-term low-
interest loans in order to avoid a wave of commercial property defaults. Aluminum giant Alcoa just announced a 41% drop in sales,
but it doesnt fear the future, thanks to the allegedly benevolent existence of the federal government. As Alcoa President Klaus
Kleinfeld told the Wall Street Journal, the federal governments current stimulus programs that target infrastructure and energy
efficiency will create a demand for aluminum. Perhaps most disappointing: Even companies historically known for
their entrepreneurial ways, such as Intel , Cisco and Microsoft , are getting in on the act. As Reuters reported last
week, demand for the semiconductors made by Intel is down, but Intel Chairman Craig Barrett told reporters that stimulus packages
being rolled out by governments around the world should lead to recovery in the next 6 to 18 months. Gregg Stahl, a technology
administrator for the North Carolina Court System, has lately had to suspend a $9 million project that would have given its courts a
Cisco phone system. No problem there: The company employs grant writers skilled at crafting applications for federal stimulus
funds. Stahl told the Wall Street Journal that companies like Cisco have a tendency to spend time with lobbyists. According to the
same article in the Journal, over the last four weeks Microsoft has trained its U.S. education sales staff to identify eligible stimulus
funds and apply for them. This month Oracle plans to hold an event for customers offering advice on
how to tap stimulus funds. Whats not being discussed enough is that when it comes to
applying for grants, skillful people with knowledge of how the government works take their
hammers and go looking for the proverbial nail. Rather than finding customers with problems
and solving them, these rabidly entrepreneurial firms of the past are basically trying to figure
out how to get equipment purchases funded by the government. What must be remembered by the firms
searching for growth through government largesse is that this is a fools paradise. These government
programs funded by tax revenues cannot last forever. Ultimately the federal
government will have to claw its money back to pay down the very debt issued to keep these
technology giants afloat. In that case, the beneficiaries of excessive spending today
would be nave to assume they ultimately wont give it back in spades. Moreover, to the
extent that firms devote resources to the procurement of government contracts, they must be taking resources from the innovative
processes that made their products appealing to begin with. Political regimes are a moving target, so the very government spending
cushioning them now wont always be there. In that case, many companies will wake up from a government-funded hangover absent
the innovative skills necessary to survive in a true meritocracy. Most chilling, however, is the basic truth that government spending
is a hidden tax on the present. What this means is that for every dollar spent by the government thats
one dollar less for tomorrows innovators that may never get off the ground thanks to our federal
minders hogging available capital. Much ink has already been spilled by commentators on the economic
paralysis being caused by a bailout culture that seemingly has no endpoint. Whats unknown, however,
is the kind of destruction massive government outlays will bring to the healthy companies in our midst. The answer is still to
be determined, but if our best and brightest firms increasingly author their growth through
connections to the state, theyll have nothing to show for it when the truly productive shrug and
the once-generous state ceases to be generous.
Aff Privatization General
No Solvency
2ac Privatization fails
Privatization fails -- its too opaque and damages holistic education.
Strauss 16 Valerie Strauss, Valerie Strauss covers education and runs The Answer Sheet
blog, she writes for The Washington Post, July 14, 2016, Why the movement to privatize public
education is a very bad idea https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-
sheet/wp/2016/07/14/why-the-movement-to-privatize-public-education-is-a-very-bad-
idea/?utm_term=.137d59915692
However, where there is insufficient transparency for proper contract enforcement,
the free market fails. Laissez-faire enthusiasts neglected to differentiate discrete (that is,
easily measurable) from complex services. In the case of schooling, which is a classic complex
service, the direct consumer is a child, who is in little position to judge whether
classes are being properly taught. The parent, taxpayer and legislator are at a necessary
distance. And standardized testing as a check on quality is rife with problems. It isnt merely that
teachers and principals under tremendous pressure to raise test scores can correct wrong answers on bubble sheets, as documented
in Atlanta most notably, but they can also give students more time to complete tests and lend help in the process. More
fundamentally, heavy reliance on standardized testing leads to teaching to the test,
which means crowding out instruction in subjects that arent tested, particularly art, music,
crafts and play, which are fundamental to a well-rounded education. Predictions on Wall Street a
generation ago that for-profit school managers educational management organizations (EMOs), to be precise could do a far
better job in managing schools than municipalities and would, thus, be running 10 to 20 percent of the nations K-12 public schools
by 2010 were way off. EMOs by that time would be running 0.7 percent of the nations K-12 public schools. Wall Street
underestimated the challenge of managing public schools and overestimated the appeal of EMOs to parents and taxpayers. Investors
in firms such as Edison Schools launched in 1992, taken public by Merrill Lynch in 1999 and running 133 schools (including 20 in
Philadelphia alone) by 2002 accordingly got crushed, as I explain in my book. Yet Wall Street was implicitly right that
policymakers would embrace a bottom-line approach to assessing school quality and favor substantial choice for parents. The
bottom-line approach has meant annual testing in reading and math in grades three through eight and one year at the secondary
level. Choice has meant a proliferation of nonprofit charter schools. We started with two in Minnesota in 1992. We now have nearly
7,000 across 41 states and the District of Columbia. Whether such outsourcing to nonprofit school managers has been wise is
another matter. Q) Please carry on with that thought, whether it has been wise to turn over schools to nonprofit managers. There are
some who argue that even nonprofit charters are part of the privatization movement because they do not have to operate like public
institutions in terms of transparency and accountability to the public. And some courts and labor boards have said they were in
effect private institutions for certain purposes. What do you think of this sort of thinking? A) Privatization takes the form
of nonprofit as well as for-profit school management, as privatization technically means
outsourcing the provision of government services to independent operators, whether nonprofit
or for-profit. Insufficient transparency and, thus, accountability can become
problems. While nonprofit charter operators must file 990s with the IRS documenting expenses and salaries, for instance,
many are less detailed in their reportage than they should be. Moreover, these charters report
only indirectly, if at all, to elected school board members. Yet there are far greater issues with
outsourcing school management to nonprofit charter operators: First, this outsourcing generates the atomization
of school districts, meaning the diminishment of neighborhood schools and the civic
involvement such neighborhood affiliation involves; second, this atomization makes for
navigational challenges for many parents, who either have a hard time finding the right school
for their children or getting them there day after day when the school is across town; third, this
atomization translates into good schools and bad schools, with students who cant
succeed in the good schools concentrated in the bad schools, which are often
default neighborhood schools, where learning can become far harder given the negative effects
struggling students can have on other students. In sum, such outsourcing leads to opportunities
at high-performing schools for some students but leaves many others behind. Privatization
accordingly amounts to a flawed response to state failure, not a solution. The
solution calls for investing the resources necessary to make all neighborhood schools solid in the
way all neighborhood schools are solid in middle- and upper-class suburbs, with well-paid
teachers, good working conditions and smaller classes. But we have to go further than that. We have to invest in
quality preschool, with college-educated teachers, so children show up to school ready to learn. We have decades of evidence of the
positive impact of quality preschool. Its expensive, but only in the short run. We likewise must invest in school-associated medical,
dental and counseling services, which are also expensive but only in the short run. Privatization has brought many bright, dedicated
agents of change, but it diverts us from addressing our state failure squarely. Q) So how do we address our problems especially
now that it seems we have made something that needs improvement even worse? A) The first step we should take is to drop the
annual testing in reading and math in grades three through eight and one year at the secondary level mandated by No Child Left
Behind (NCLB) 15 years ago and reaffirmed in somewhat different terms by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) several months
ago. The mission of this testing to identify and eliminate deficiencies in the academic achievement of underprivileged children
represents the noblest of democratic ideals, as I write in my book. But this regular testing has done little more than repeatedly
identify deficiencies. In the process, the pressure to boost test results has led to stressful test
prep for students and teachers alike, and it has constricted curricula, cutting time
for important subjects on which students arent tested. Even former secretary of education Arne
Duncan conceded in 2014 that testing is sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools.
Privatization fails -- 4 reasons.
Buchheit 14 - PAUL BUCHHEIT, writer for Salon and AlterNet, February 2014, 4 ways
privatization is ruining our education system,
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/19/4_ways_privatization_is_ruining_our_education_system
_partner/
There are good reasons powerful reasons to stop the privatization efforts before the winner-take-all free market creates a new
vehicle for inequality. At the very least we need the good sense to slow it down while we examine the evidence about charters and
vouchers. 1. Charter Schools Have Not Improved Education The recently updated CREDO study at
Stanford revealed that while charters have made progress since 2009, their performance is about the
same as that of public schools. The differences are, in the words of the National Education Policy Center, so
small as to be regarded, without hyperbole, as trivial. Furthermore, the four-year improvement demonstrated by charters may
have been due to the closing of schools that underperformed in the earlier study, and also by a variety of means to discourage the
attendance of lower-performing students. Ample evidence exists beyond CREDO to question the effectiveness of charter schools
(although they continue to have both supporters and detractors). In Ohio, charters were deemed inferior to traditional schools in all
grade/subject combinations. Texas charters had a much lower graduation rate in 2012 than traditional
schools. In Louisiana, where Governor Bobby Jindal proudly announced that were doing something about [failing schools],
about two-thirds of charters received a D or an F from the Louisiana State Department of Education in 2013. Furthermore,
charters in New Orleans rely heavily on inexperienced teachers, and even its model charter
school Sci Academy has experienced a skyrocketing suspension rate, the second highest in the
city. More trouble looms for the over-chartered city in a lawsuitfiled by families of disabled
students contending that equal educational access has not been provided for their children. 2.
The Profit Motive Perverts the Goals of Education Forbes notes: The charter school
movement began as a grassroots attempt to improve public education. Its quickly becoming a backdoor
for corporate profit. A McKinsey report estimates that education can be a $1.1 trillion business in the United States.
Meanwhile, state educational funding continues to be cut, and budget imbalances are
worsened by the transfer of public tax money to charter schools. Education funding continues
to be cut largely because corporations arent paying their state taxes. So philanthropists like Bill Gates and
Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch and Jeff Bezos and the Walton family, who have little educational experience
among them, and who have little accountability to the public, are riding the free-market wave and promoting education reform
with lots of standardized testing. Our nations impulsive experiment with privatization is causing our
schools to look more like boardrooms than classrooms. Charter administrators make a lot
more money than their public school counterparts, and their numbers are rapidly
increasing. Teachers, on the other hand, are paid less, and they have fewer years of experience
and a higher turnover rate. The patriotic-sounding Teach for America charges public school districts $3,000 to $5,000
per instructor per year. Teachers dont get that money, business owners do. The profit motive also leads to shortcuts
in the educational methods practiced on our children. Like virtual instruction. The video-game-named
Rocketship Schools have $15/hour instructors monitoring up to 130 kids at a timeas they work on computers. In Wisconsin, half
the students in virtual settings are attending schools that are not meeting
performance expectations. Only one out of twelve cyber schools met state standards in Pennsylvania. In Los
Angelespublic money goes for computers instead of needed infrastructure repair. K12 Inc., the largest online, for-profit Educational
Management Organization in the U.S., is a good example of what theCenter for Media and Democracy calls Americas Highest Paid
Government Workers that is, the CEOs of corporations that make billions by taking control of public services. While over 86
percent of K12s profits came from taxpayers, and while the salaries of K12s eight executives went from $10 million to over $21
million in one year, only 27.7 percent of K12 Inc. online schools met state standards in 2010-2011, compared to 52 percent of public
schools. It gets worse with the Common Core Standards, an unproven Gates-funded initiative that requires computers many schools
dont have. The Silicon Valley Business Journal reports that Next year, K-12 schools across the United States will begin
implementing Common Core State Standards, an education initiative that will drive schools to adopt technology in the classroom as
never beforeApple, Google, Cisco and a swarm of startups are elbowing in to secure market share. States are being hit with
unexpected new costs, partly for curriculum changes, but also for technology upgrades, testing, and assessment. Finally, the
profit motive leads to questionable ethics among school operators, if not outright
fraud. After a Los Angeles charter school manager misused funds, the California Charter Schools
Association insisted that charter schools areexempt from criminal laws because they are private.
The same argument was used in a Chicago case. Charters employ the privatization defense to justify
their generous salaries while demanding instructional space as public entities.
States around the country are being attracted to the money, as, for example, in Texas and Ohio,
where charter-affiliated campaign contributions have led to increased funding and licenses for
charter schools. 3. Advanced Profit-Making: Higher Education At the college level, for-
profit schools eagerly clamor for low-income students and military veterans, who conveniently
arrive with public money in the form of federal financial aid. For-profit colleges get up to
90 percent of their revenue from U.S. taxpayers. Less incentive remains for these schools after tuition is
received, as evidenced by the fact thatmore than half of the students enrolled in for-profit colleges in 2008-9 left without a degree or
diploma. As with K-12 education, the driving need for profit directs our students to computer screens rather than to skilled human
communicators. A Columbia University study found that failure and withdrawal rates were significantly higher for online courses
than for face-to-face courses. The University of Phoenix has a 60 percent dropout rate. The newest money-maker is the MOOC
(Massively Open Online Course). Thanks to such sweeping high-tech strategies, higher ed is increasingly becoming a network of
diploma processors, with up to a 90 percent dropout rate, and with the largest business operations losing the most students. For a
2012 bioelectricity class at Duke, for example, 12,725 students enrolled, 3,658 attempted a quiz, and 313 passed. Yet schools like
edX are charging universities $250,000 per course, then $50,000 for each re-offering of the course, along with a cut of any revenue
generated by the course. 4. Lower-Performing Children Left Behind The greatest perversion
of educational principles is the threat to equal opportunity, a mandate that was eloquently
expressed by Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1954 Supreme Court decision on Brown vs. the Board of Education: Education is
perhaps the most important function of state and local governmentsSuch an opportunityis a
right which must be made available to all on equal terms. But were turning away from that important
message. The National Education Policy Center notes that Charter schoolscan shape their student enrollment
in surprising ways, through practices that often exclude students with special needs,
those with low test scores, English learners, or students in poverty.
2ac Bad at Teaching
Private schools are worse at teaching than public schools
Ryan 13, Julia Ryan, October 18, 2013, A former writer for The Atlantic, A marketing
assistant at AKRF, Studied English language and literature at Harvard University, Are
Private Schools Worth It?
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/are-private-schools-
worth-it/280693/
Summarize what you discovered in your research.
CAL: We already know that scores for students in private schools tend to be higher.
The question is, is that because theyre from more affluent familiesor is that
because the schools are doing better? If you go back for a generation the research
suggests that there is a private school effect, that even when you control for
background factors, private schools seem to be more effective, particularly for
certain populations, at boosting their achievement.
So what we did, controlling for these background factors, we actually found that the
opposite appears to be true and that there is actually a public school effect. Which
was a surprise We were not expecting that at all, but then digging deeper into the
data, using multiple data sets, that actually held up. And since that time, other
researcherspeople at the Educational Testing Service, Notre Dame, and Stanfordhave looked at
these data sets and come to similar conclusions.
Offense
2ac Causes Inequality
Privatization re-entrenches inequality
Assesor 11 An Assessor, An Assessor is a researcher and activist who has made extensive
studies of education and testing, as well as national and international struggles for social
change. August 2011, Testing, Privatization, and the Future of Public Schooling,
https://monthlyreview.org/2011/07/01/testing-privatization-and-the-future-of-public-
schooling/
Privatization complements high-stakes testing and funding inadequacies and
inequities. The past decade has seen a sharp rise in the numbers of charter schools. These
privately controlled (for- and not-for-profit), publicly funded entities are promoted by the same
constellation of forces that back high-stakes testing. Most states have laws authorizing charters; most are raising
or removing caps on the number of allowable charters; and most charters cater to low-income communities. The most
prominent, such as the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) and the Harlem Childrens Zone, receive large sums from
private entities, enabling them to provide more for their students than do under-resourced,
nearby public schools. On the other side are the McDonalds of the charter world, corporate entities such as White Hat in
Ohio (which made big payoffs to electoral candidates), which are chains of charters offering test-prep malnourishment while the
owner pockets the big bucks. Charters often remove students whose behavior or test scores create
problems for the school, and they under enroll English language learners and students with
disabilities. Despite such advantages, several major research studies, including one by the
federal government, found that charters on average perform less well than public
schools on standardized tests.7 No matter, the push goes on, now focused increasingly on
virtual charters in which kids get their lessons via computer.8 This saves on bricks and mortar, passes
many costs on to parents, and cuts teacher expenses greatly. Now a master teacher can organize the courses, with ill-paid
assistants to respond to particular student questions online. They can presumably be outsourced
overseasindeed, so can the master teachers. The proof of their success will remain
standardized tests. The combination of tests and privatization played out in the competition for
a share of the billions of federal dollars doled out by RTTT. Education Secretary Arne Duncan warned states
that they would not be eligible for the funds if they did not allow virtually unlimited numbers of charters. Many states obediently
responded; some unions went along, others fought it. Duncan having won this battle, the final competition rules did not mandate
dropping limits on the number of charters, but they did require that teachers and principals be evaluated (and given tenure and
raises or fired) in significant part based on student test scores. States have again been jumping through the hoops and getting in
line, some even requiring test scores to comprise half a teachers evaluation. (Although even in conservative Tennessee, a February
2011 Vanderbilt University poll found 65 percent of the respondents did not support awarding bonuses based on scores.)9 Usually
this involves so-called value added measurements (VAM), statistical tools for tracking student test score gains over the years. The
research shows that the methodology is inaccurate and should not be used for judging teachers.10 The use of VAM is thus another
weapon in the attack on teachers, even as it intensifies central control over curriculum. Indeed, research evidence clearly
indicates that privatization and high-stakes testing do not even boost scores on tests that are not
the direct target of instruction, never mind improve real learning. It would seem, then, that the
bipartisan neoliberal education goal is not really about improving academic outcomes. Here, however, as in many things, it is
important to consider how long-standing social inequities of race and class are used by capital to
mobilize some sectors to attack others and deflect attention from the doings of capital itself
Privatization causes inequality, the Aff solves

Moberg 14, David Moberg, June 6, 2014, senior editor of In These Times, has a Ph.D. in anthropology
at the University of Chicago, Privatizing Government Services Doesnt Only Hurt Public Workers
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/16811/privatization_IPTI_report
Contracting out public work also rolls back critical progress toward equality on the basis of gender, race
and income. Whatever their shortcomings, public employers in recent decades have opened up more
opportunities and paid fairer wages to both African Americans and women than the private sector. For
several decades, the ITPI report says, direct government employment of public service workers has
provided a ladder of opportunity for many workers. Public jobs have opened up opportunity,
especially where unions have bargained for contracts and influenced public policy. They have played an
especially important role for women and African Americans, who still suffer disadvantages in the job
market and are most hurt by cuts in public service pay and benefits.
For example, women comprise 57 percent of all government workers. And African Americans are 30
percent more likely than all other Americans to work in the public sector. Compared with black workers
in the private sector, black public employees earn 25 percent more.
Cutting public service pay, therefore, compounds the inequities of income in America, replacing the
ladder of opportunity upwards with a downward spiral. And though this downward shift may most
negatively impact African Americans and women, it hurts all workers, says economics professor
Daphne Greenwood of the Colorado Center for Policy Studies.
Economists argue over the degree to which broad forces such as technology development or
globalization account for rising inequality in the United States, says Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at
the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But privatization, he says, is one major cause of increased
inequality that smart policy could easily reverse.
2ac Turns Economy
Privatization causes economic decline
Cohen 14, Donald Cohen, 06/06/14, founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, a national
resource and policy center advocating for the democratic control of public goods and services,
Privatization widens economic inequality and punishes communities
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/208427-privatization-widens-economic-
inequality-and-punishes
The idea of working and middle class families losing out while far-away corporations who've never
stepped foot in their neighborhoods rake in their tax dollars is bad enough. But research also shows that
when these jobs are privatized, entire communities suffer.
When contractors cut wages, public service workers have less income to spend in their communities.
Thats less shopping at local retail businesses, less eating out at local restaurants, and less economic
activity across the entire community. Local and state governments collect less in sales taxes to reinvest
in community schools and infrastructure. Workers are also less likely to earn enough to buy a home, and
sometimes must move out of the community all together in search of affordable housing. These
consequences mean that the effects of outsourcing on a community arent limited to wages and
benefits, but are widespread and can be devastating.
The body of research is clear. Without proper protections in contracts that ensure workers receive fair
pay and benefits, taxpayers are inadvertently pushing our neighbors into poverty and eroding our
services to boot. In the Public Interest has proposed steps that state and local governments can take, to
ensure responsible contracting and keep tax dollars invested in local communities keeping local
families strong.
First and foremost, local and state governments must guarantee that any company that wants to profit
off local taxpayers must in turn make a commitment to the local community by paying their workers a
living wage and reasonable benefits. Otherwise, privatization just ends up rewarding the wealthy while
the rest fall further behind.
2ac- Democracy Turn
Privatization is at the tipping point. Encouraging policies like the CP
that incentivize privatization destroys democracy.
Ben Tarnoff 6/21/17 - Ben Tarnoff writes about technology and politics. He lives in San Francisco. Writer for The
Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/21/privatizing-public-services-trump-democracy
The most obvious examples are Uber and Lyft, which aspire not merely to eliminate the taxi
industry, but to replace public transportation. Theyre slowly succeeding: municipalities around
America are now subsidizing ride-hailing fares instead of running public buses. And earlier this
year, Lyft began offering a fixed-route, flat-rate service called Lyft Shuttle in Chicago and San
Francisco an aggressive bid to poach more riders from public transit. These companies
wouldnt have customers if better public alternatives existed. It can be hard to find a
water fountain in Manhattan, and public transit in American cities ranges from mediocre to
nonexistent. But solving these problems by ceding them to the private sector ensures that public
services will continue to deteriorate until they disappear. Decades of defunding and outsourcing
have already pushed public services to the brink. Now, fortified with piles of investor cash and
the smartphone, tech companies are trying to finish them off. Proponents of privatization
believe this is a good thing. For years, they have advanced the argument that business will
always perform a given task better than government, whether its running buses or schools,
supplying healthcare or housing. The public sector is sclerotic, wasteful and undisciplined by the
profit motive. The private sector is dynamic, innovative and, above all, efficient. This belief has
become common sense in political life. It is widely shared by the countrys elite, and has guided
much policymaking over the past several decades. But like most of our governing myths, it
collapses on closer inspection. No word is invoked more frequently or more fervently by apostles
of privatization than efficiency. Yet this is a strange basis on which to build their case, given the
fact that public services are often more efficient than private ones. Take healthcare. The United
States has one of the least efficient systems on the planet: we spend more money on healthcare
than anyone else, and in return we receive some of the worst health outcomes in the west. Not
coincidentally, we also have the most privatized healthcare system in the advanced world. By
contrast, the UK spends a fraction of what we do and achieves far better results. It also happens
to provision healthcare as a public service. Somehow, the absence of the profit motive has not
produced an epidemic of inefficiency in British healthcare. Meanwhile, we pay nearly $10,000
per capita and a staggering 17% of our GDP to achieve a life expectancy somewhere between that
of Costa Rica and Cuba. A profit-driven system doesnt mean we get more for our money it
means someone gets to make more money off of us. The healthcare industry posts record profits
and rewards its chief executives with the highest salaries in the country. It takes a peculiar frame
of mind to see this arrangement as anything resembling efficient. A profit-driven system doesnt
mean we get more for our money it means someone gets to make more money off of us
Attacking public services on the grounds of efficiency isnt just incorrect, however its beside
the point. Decades of neoliberalism have corroded our capacity to think in non-economic terms.
Weve been taught that all fields of human life should be organized as markets, and that
government should be run like a business. This ideology has found its perverse culmination in
the figure of Donald Trump, a celebrity billionaire with no prior political experience who
catapulted himself into the White House by invoking his expertise as an businessman. The
premise of Trumps campaign was that America didnt need a president it needed
a CEO. Nowhere is the neoliberal faith embodied by Trump more deeply felt than in Silicon
Valley. Tech entrepreneurs work tirelessly to turn more of our lives into markets and devote
enormous resources towards disrupting government by privatizing its functions. Perhaps this
is why, despite Silicon Valleys veneer of liberal cosmopolitanism, it has a certain affinity for the
president. On Monday, Trump met with top executives from Apple, Amazon, Google and other
major tech firms to explore how to unleash the creativity of the private sector to provide citizen
services, in the words of Jared Kushner. Between Trump and tech, never before have so many
powerful people been so intent on transforming government into a business. But government
isnt a business; its a different kind of machine. At its worst, it can be repressive and corrupt
and autocratic. At its best, it can be an invaluable tool for developing and sustaining a
democratic society. Among other things, this includes ensuring that everyone receives the
resources they need to exercise the freedoms on which democracy depends. When we privatize
public services, we dont just risk replacing them with less efficient alternatives we risk
damaging democracy itself. If this seems like a stretch, thats because pundits and
politicians have spent decades defining the idea of democracy downwards. It has come to mean
little more than holding elections every few years. But this is the absolute minimum of
democracys meaning. Its Greek root translates to rule of the people not rule by certain
people, such as the rich (plutocracy) or the priests (theocracy), but by all people. Democracy
describes a way of organizing society in which the whole of the people determine how society
should be organized. Analysis Neoliberalism turned our world into a business. And there are two
big winners Fearmongering Donald Trump and optimistic Silicon Valley seem to epitomize
opposing ideologies. But the two have far more in common than you think What does this have
to do with buses or schools or hospitals or houses? In a democracy, everyone gets to participate
in the decisions that affect their lives. But thats impossible if people dont have access to the
goods they need to survive if theyre hungry or homeless or sick. And the reality is that when
goods are rationed by the market, fewer people have access to them. Markets are places of
winners and losers. You dont get what you need you get what you can afford. By contrast,
public services offer a more equitable way to satisfy basic needs. By taking things off the market,
government can democratize access to the resources that people rely on to lead reasonably
dignified lives. Those resources can be offered cheap or free, funded by progressive taxation.
They can also be managed by publicly accountable institutions led by elected officials, or subject
to more direct mechanisms of popular control. These ideas are considered wildly radical in
American politics. Yet other places around the world have implemented them with great
success. When Oxfam surveyed more than 100 countries, they discovered that public services
significantly reduce economic inequality. They shrink the distance between rich and poor by
lowering the cost of living. They empower working people by making their survival less
dependent on their bosses and landlords and creditors. Perhaps most importantly, they entitle
citizens to a share of societys wealth and a say over how its used. But where will the money
come from? This is the perennial question, posed whenever someone suggests raising the
welfare state above a whisper. Fortunately, it has a simple answer. The United States is the
richest country in the history of the world. It is so rich, in fact, that its richest people can afford
to pour billions of dollars into a company such as Uber, which loses billions of dollars each year,
in the hopes of getting just a little bit richer. In the face of such extravagance, diverting a modest
portion of the prosperity we produce in common toward services that benefit everyone shouldnt
be controversial. Its a small price to pay for making democracy mean more than a hollow
slogan, or a sick joke.
The US system of democracy has been modeled around the world

Latin America, East Asia, Middle East, Africa all prove
Mark P. Lagon 2/11/11, a Research Associate at the American Enterprise Institute for Public
Policy Research and Adjunct Professor of Government at Georgetown University, The Whys
and Hows of Promoting Democracy, https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/whys-and-hows-
promoting-democracy
To say there are major interests in democracys enlargementthat central concept in both national security
strategy blueprints of the Clinton presidencydoes not settle what role the United States should play and what
policy tools are appropriate. These are the questions not of why but of how. A look at waves of U.S.
policy since World War II offers apt lessons. After World War II, the
United States played a significant role in
deepening and widening democracy in Western Europe. The United States encouraged
European integration to stabilize the West European democracies, and NATO was a bulwark
within which Italy, West Germany, Portugal, and Spain democratized. Later, after the Cold War, the twin
institutions of NATO and an integrated Europe together created powerful incentives for emerging East European democracies to
join Western multilateral institutions. Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, however, frequently led the United States to
support illiberal governments. (President Franklin D. Roosevelts revealing quip about Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio SomozaHe
may be a bastard, but hes our bastardtoo often became U.S. policy during the Cold War years.) Eventually, a consensus
emerged in the 1980sarguably President Ronald Reagans greatest legacythat the United States had
strategic interests in urging its autocratic Latin American and East Asian allies toward
democracy. And so, in the 1980s, the United States supported land reforms in El Salvador that
were deeply unpopular among ruling elites; facilitated the departure of General Augusto Pinochet as
Chiles leader; and pushed Taiwan, South Korea, and the Philippines in the direction of veritable
electoral democracy. After 9/11, President George W. Bush elevated democratization in the Middle East
as a strategic priority. This apt aim, however, was undermined by several factors: the association of democracy promotion
with military intervention in Iraq (which did not yield democracy with ease); the use of harsh counterterrorism measures that
undercut the symbolism of freedom; the tendency to flinch when likely winners of elections were worrisome (such as in the
Palestinian territories); and the failure to meet democracy rhetoric with action in places like Egypt and Pakistan. The protests
sweeping the Middle East in early 2011, which have so far caused the ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and
rocked the government of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, are now confronting President Barack Obama with a familiar
challenge. In Egypt, the United States appears to face a classic dilemma: how to handle the potential demise of a friendly autocrat in
a strategically important country. On the one hand, President Obama is under pressure to offer more vocal support to those
demanding democracy on the streets of Cairo and call for an early change of leadership. On the other, many argue that President
Mubarak has protected American interests in the Middle East for thirty years, and there is no guarantee that a new democratic
government in Egypt would do the same if the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood should be elected. President Obamas struggle to
reconcile these pressures comes after he began his term distancing himself from Washingtons mixed democracy-promotion legacy.
His failure to embrace Irans inspiring Green Movement in the summer of 2009presumably to keep a door open for dialogue on
Irans nuclear programwas a clear indication of the Obama administrations more realist turn. Now several signals
indicate greater comfort with the bipartisan democracy consensus of the Reagan, Clinton, and
George W. Bush presidencies. These include President Obamas 2009 Nobel Laureate address; Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clintons unveiling of another U.S. fund to help besieged human rights
defenders; and President Obamas 2010 address to the UN General Assembly, where he said, There is no right more
fundamental than the ability to choose your leaders and determine your destiny. A record of
implementation now needs to follow these public statements, whether in Egypt or any number of countries where democracy is
absent or at riskand where long-term U.S. interests are abundantly at stake. Questions of Means These historical legacies help
highlight the central questions of how to promote democracy. First, is democracy most legitimately and effectively achieved through
U.S. or multilateral action? At times, this might prove to be a false choice. If the action of the United States (or another power) is
truly in the service of the consent of the governed, rule of law, and fundamental freedoms as understood in the UN Charter, then it
ought not be rejected out of hand. Yet multilateral action has more perceived legitimacy. Second, is the use of military force or covert
action justified to promote democracy? Sometimes military action may be necessary not just to facilitate or
restore democracy, but to end a particularly inhumane form of autocracy. Military intervention
in Rwanda in 1994 to prevent or stop genocide would have been just such a case. However,
intervention should be a truly last resort. As for covert activity, the United States conducted secret operations to
help forces of democracy in Western Europe early in the Cold War and in Eastern Europe later.
Some covert action was justified as promoting democracy when it was merely promoting anti-
Soviet actors. Using transparent means to support democratization is best whenever possible.
One effective alternative to direct intervention that the United States has pursued is to engage
and support civil society around the world. For a quarter-century, operated separately from the
U.S. government and working through affiliates of the Democratic Party, Republican Party,
Chamber of Commerce, and AFL-CIO, the National Endowment for Democracy has assisted civil
society actors to establish or consolidate democracy all over the world. In addition, private
foundations, often in partnership with government, have funded grassroots organizations to help build civil
societies globally as well. Support for indigenous, locally led movements is better than direct U.S. government action,
whether civilian, military, or covert. In the past five years, the United Nations has gone farther in actively promoting
civil society. In 2006, Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan launched the UN Democracy Fund (UNDEF) to
support an array of civil society organizations. Eighty-five percent of the funds are required to go to
nongovernmental organizations rather than UN agencies or governments as implementers. Prior to UNDEF, a great deal of dialogue
occurred in the UN about the importance of civil society to economic development and human rights, but the rhetoric was
unmatched by empowering programming. UNDEF is beginning to change that. To date, its four rounds of grants have wisely funded
a broad range of democracys building blocks, including womens empowerment, civic education, and anticorruption measures.
Although UNDEF remains underfunded, it is a step in the right direction. President Obama was right to note in his 2010 address to
the UN General Assembly that its time for every Member State ... to increase the UN Democracy Fund. U.S. enthusiasm for
democracy promotion has been shaken in recent years due to a number of political and economic setbacks. These include
the turmoil in post-invasion Iraq, election results favoring extremists, growing doubts about the neoliberal economic model, and the
rise of an alternative Chinese statist model. Yet the need for democracy is as great as ever, and the most effective
means to encourage it are in plain sight.
Democracy is the controlling impact DPT.

Havard Hegre 14 (Dag Hammarskjld, Professor of Peace and Conflict Research at
Uppsala University and Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, Journal of
Peace Research, Democracy and armed conflict, March 2014,
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022343313512852)
Interstate conflict Although there is scholarly agreement that democracies rarely if ever have
fought each other, there is less consensus as to why. The following five sets of explanations are important:
First, the normative explanation (Doyle, 1986; Maoz & Russett, 1993) holds that the culture, perceptions,
and practices that permit compromise and the peaceful resolution of conflicts without the threat
of violence within countries come to apply across national boundaries toward other democratic
countries as well (Ember, Ember & Russett, 1992: 576). States externalize the domestic norms that encourage
compromise solutions and reciprocation, and strictly inhibit the complete removal from political
life of the loser in political contest. The absence of a monadic democratic peace is troublesome for the normative explanation, in
particular since it implies that the probability of conflict between democracies and non-democracies must be higher than that between two non-
democracies (Raknerud & Hegre, 1997). Rosato (2003) points to the frequent violation of liberal norms when democracies have decided to go to war
in imperial wars, as well as in frequent US interventions intended to overthrow democratically elected governments (Rosato, 2003: 589590).11
Another notable caveat noted as early as in Kant (1795/1991), is the incentive to intervene in non-democracies to press for democratization (Peceny,
1999; Gleditsch, Christiansen & Hegre, 2007). A particularly critical view of democratic war behavior is found in Geis, Brock & Mller (2006). Second,
according to the legislative constraints explanation, democratic leaders are constrained by other bodies
(such as parliaments) which ensure that the interests of citizens and powerful organizations are
taken into account. Debate is public, so information on the real costs of war is likely to enter the
decision calculus. Democratic political leaders will be removed from office if they
circumvent these constraints.12 Democracies ability to signal resolve is a third
explanation. Why are states not able to agree to a solution that reflects the distribution of power and the actors resolve, without incurring the
costs of war (Fearon, 1995)? One answer is that if crisis escalation is not very costly, both parties have an
incentive to exaggerate their power or resolve, mobilize, and back down when the bluff is
discovered. Fearon (1994) argues that audience costs the costs that a leader suffers when backing
down lock leaders into their positions, increasing the costs of bluffing. Democracies have
higher audience costs, Fearon argues, and may more credibly commit to policies with little
crisis-inducing behavior to signal intentions.13 Making use of various empirical strategies to distinguish the explanations,
Schultz (1999) and Prins (2003) find stronger support for the signaling argument than for the constraints explanation. Weeks (2008) builds on this
argument by showing that single-party regimes also indicate behavior in line with a signaling argument. Downes & Sechser (2012), Snyder & Borghard
(2011), and Trachtenberg (2012), on the other hand, find little empirical evidence for the audience cost argument.14 Fourth, in a mobilization argument
Bueno de Mesquita et al. (1999, 2003) argue that the
democratic re-election pressures on leaders tend to
make them more careful to select only wars they are likely to win, and to mobilize
more resources for the war efforts they select than do autocratic leaders. This makes
democracies unattractive targets, since they are likely to win the wars they fight (Reiter & Stam, 1998).15
Both of these tendencies tend to reduce the probability of war between
democracies. One aspect of the effectiveness of democracies in war is their ability to form
large alliances in important wars (Doyle, 1986; Raknerud & Hegre, 1997). The empirical analysis in Gartzke &
Gleditsch (2004), however, suggests that democracies are less reliable allies. Leeds, Mattes & Vogel (2009), on
the other hand, find that countries with democratic institutions are much less likely to abrogate
international commitments than autocratic countries in instances where domestic leadership
transitions result in leaders with different primary bases of societal support. Fifth, Gartzke (1998)
points out that the democratic peace finding might be due to joint interests. Democracies
may fail to disagree sufficiently on international policies to be willing to suffer the
costs of war. Such joint interests may be due to the fact that most democracies were on the
same side during the Cold War (Farber & Gowa, 1995).16 The failure to observe a monadic democratic peace (Gartzke & Weisiger,
2013: 172) and the observation of an autocratic peace (Werner, 2000; Peceny, Beer & Sanchez-Terry, 2002) support this argument.17 An
autocratic peace can hardly be explained by constraints inherent in autocratic regimes, but must
be due to shared interests. Gartzke (1998, 2000) shows that controlling for joint interests weakens the magnitude and significance of the
evidence for a democratic peace.18 Joint interests and joint regime types may be linked through three pathways. First, joint democracy may itself give
rise to joint interests, such as an interest in the promotion of democratic regimes or through similar incentives for political leaders to expand the
territory they control. The profitability of occupation is less certain for democratic leaders than for autocratic countries, since the benefits of occupation
have to be shared between almost as many as those who bear the costs (Rosecrance, 1986). Moreover, in order to extract much from the conquered
territory, the people resident there have to be denied the political rights that are held by the citizens of the occupying country.19 Hence, joint
democracy may lead to the mutual acceptance of international borders, removing an important source of war (Huth & Allee, 2002). Relatedly,
Schweller (1992) argues that regime type affects how declining powers behave. When challenged by rising powers, realist theory posits that leading
powers wage preventive wars to maintain their military hegemony. Preventive wars are less attractive to democratic leaders. If the rising power is
another democracy, the historical absence of war between democracies indicates that the threat is minimal. If it is non-democratic, the public is wary of
the risks and costs of a war where the danger is not imminent, and the formation of alliances to counterbalance the non-democratic threat is often a
preferable strategy.20 Internal conflict The earliest arguments for an internal democratic peace are related to
the normative and structural explanations of the interstate variant. Democracy is seen as a
system for peaceful resolution of conflicts, as conflicting claims by rival social groups are solved
by majority votes or consensual agreements. If individuals are denied the political rights and the
economic benefits they believe they are entitled to, they may react with aggression and organize
violent political opposition. If conflict results from relative deprivation (Davies, 1962; Gurr, 1968),
democracies should be more peaceful internally than other regime types. Armed rebellion will not be
profitable since democracies both allow discontent to be expressed and have mechanisms to handle it. Another argument holds that
democratic institutions alter the risk of internal conflicts by facilitating effective bargaining and
reducing commitment problems. Acemoglu & Robinson (2006: 2425) note that citizens are excluded from de
jure power in a non-democracy. Still, they always enjoy some de facto power that sometimes
allows citizens to obtain policy concessions from the elites in the short run. It is uncertain
whether these will be maintained, however, since the balance between various social groups is
transitory. Citizens, then, should demand that todays de facto power is translated into de jure power that secures long-term concessions. This
demand may be backed by a threat of revolution a civil war. The elites cannot credibly commit to a promise of policy concessions in the indefinite
future, however, as long as de facto power is transitory. Democratic institutions are the solution to this commitment problem (Acemoglu & Robinson,
2006). This explains democratization and shows why democratic institutions reduce the risk of (revolutionary) civil wars. Fearon (1995) likewise argues
that bargaining failures and commitment problems are important explanations of war, and Fearon (2004: 288) argues that democratic regimes
facilitate bargaining and credible commitments for internal conflicts.21 If either of these accounts is true, fully
fledged
democracies are less conflict-prone than repressive autocracies. One possible reason for not
observing this is that democracies often are faced with opportunistic rebels whose aims do not reflect the interests of broad social groups. For internal
conflicts, a parallel to the mobilization argument formulated for interstate conflict would encounter difficulties. Both democracies and non-democracies
use military force to counter illegitimate armed opposition, but autocracies may make much more extensive use of repression without losing legitimacy
using violence to silence opponents, censorship, arbitrary imprisonment without trial, etc. Autocracies may indiscriminately target entire population
groups to coerce influential individuals (Davenport & Armstrong, 2004; Carey, 2010).22 Autocracies also buy off other parts of the opposition by
granting ministerial posts and by the selective channeling of public funds (Fjelde & de Soysa, 2009). The combination of these two methods allows
effective divide-and-rule strategies. Autocracies also repress the formation of organizations before they can reach the stage of armed insurgencies.
Hence, regimes that feature both democratic and autocratic characteristics are partly open yet lack effective means of solving conflicts. In such political
systems, repression is difficult since some organization of opposition groups and some opposition expression of discontent are allowed, but
mechanisms to act on the expressed discontent are incomplete (cf. Davies, 1962; Boswell & Dixon, 1990; Muller & Weede, 1990; Hegre et al., 2001).
Hence, repression is ineffective if grievance is not simultaneously being addressed, which is why we observe an inverted-U relationship between
democracy and peace.
2ac- Lunches Turn
Privatized schools are mismanagement and are forced into buying
unhealthy foods from giant corporations.
Lucy Komisar 12/3/11 -Lucy Komisar is an investigative journalist who specializes in uncovering corporate misconduct.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/opinion/sunday/school-lunches-and-the-food-industry.html
An increasingly cozy alliance between companies that manufacture processed foods and
companies that serve the meals is making students a captive market fat and sick while
pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. At a time of fiscal austerity, these companies
are seducing school administrators with promises to cut costs through privatization. Parents
who want healthier meals, meanwhile, are outgunned. Each day, 32 million children in the
United States get lunch at schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program, which
uses agricultural surplus to feed children. About 21 million of these students eat free or reduced-
price meals, a number that has surged since the recession. The program, which also provides
breakfast, costs $13.3 billion a year. Sadly, it is being mismanaged and exploited. About a
quarter of the school nutrition program has been privatized, much of it outsourced to food
service management giants like Aramark, based in Philadelphia; Sodexo, based in France; and
the Chartwells division of the Compass Group, based in Britain. They work in tandem with food
manufacturers like the chicken producers Tyson and Pilgrims, all of which profit when good
food is turned to bad. Heres one way it works. The Agriculture Department pays about $1
billion a year for commodities like fresh apples and sweet potatoes, chickens and turkeys.
Schools get the food free; some cook it on site, but more and more pay processors to turn these
healthy ingredients into fried chicken nuggets, fruit pastries, pizza and the like. Some $445
million worth of commodities are sent for processing each year, a nearly 50 percent increase
since 2006. The Agriculture Department doesnt track spending to process the food, but school
authorities do. The Michigan Department of Education, for example, gets free raw chicken
worth $11.40 a case and sends it for processing into nuggets at $33.45 a case. The schools in San
Bernardino, Calif., spend $14.75 to make French fries out of $5.95 worth of potatoes. The money
is ill spent. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has warned that sending food to be
processed often means lower nutritional value and noted that many schools continue to exceed
the standards for fat, saturated fat and sodium. A 2008 study by the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation found that by the time many healthier commodities reach students, they have
about the same nutritional value as junk foods. Monica Zimmer, a Sodexo spokeswoman, said
that much has changed since those studies, pointing to the companys support for nutrition
education to encourage young students to eat more fruits and vegetables. Roland Zullo, a
researcher at the University of Michigan, found in 2008 that Michigan schools that hired private
food-service management firms spent less on labor and food but more on fees and supplies,
yielding no substantive economic savings. Alarmingly, he even found that privatization was
associated with lower test scores, hypothesizing that the high-fat and high-sugar foods served by
the companies might be the cause. In a later study, in 2010, Dr. Zullo found that Chartwells was
able to trim costs by cutting benefits for workers in Ann Arbor schools, but that the schools
didnt end up realizing any savings. Why is this allowed to happen? Part of it is that school
authorities dont want the trouble of overseeing real kitchens. Part of it is that the management
companies are saving money by not having to pay skilled kitchen workers. In addition, the
management companies have a cozy relationship with food processers, which routinely pay the
companies rebates (typically around 14 percent) in return for contracts. The rebates have
generally been kept secret from schools, which are charged the full price. Last year, Andrew M.
Cuomo, then the New York State attorney general, won a $20 million settlement over Sodexos
pocketing of such rebates. Other states are following New York and looking into the rebates; the
Agriculture Department began its own inquiry in August. With the crackdown on these rebates,
food service companies have turned to another accounting trick. I found evidence that the rebate
abuses are continuing, now under the name of prompt payment discounts, under an
Agriculture Department loophole. These discounts, for payments that are often not prompt at
all, are really rebates under another name. New York State requires rebates to be returned to
schools, but the Sodexo settlement shows how unevenly the ban has been enforced. The food
service companies I spoke with denied any impropriety. Our culinary philosophy, as a
company, is to promote scratch cooking where possible and encourage variety and nutritionally
balanced meals, said Ayde Lyons, a Chartwells spokeswoman. We use minimally processed
foods whenever possible. There are economic and nutritional consequences to
privatization. School kitchen workers are generally unionized, with benefits; they are also
typically local residents who have children in public schools and care about their well-being.
Laid-off school workers become an economic drain instead of a positive force. And the rebate
deals with national food manufacturers cut out local farmers and small producers like bakers,
who could offer fresh, healthy food and help the local economy. Children pay the price. Dr.
Zullo found that privately managed school cafeterias offered meals that were higher in sugar and
fats and made unhealthy snack items soda, cookies, potato chips more readily available.
The companies were also less likely to use reduced-sugar recipes. Linda Hugle, a retired school
principal in Three Rivers, Ore., told me that when her district switched to Sodexo, the savings
were paltry. She added, You pay a little less and your kids get strawberry milk, frozen French
fries and artificial shortening. Advocates who fight for better food face an uphill battle. Dorothy
Brayley, executive director of Kids First, a nutrition advocacy group in Pawtucket, R.I., told me
she encountered resistance in trying to persuade Sodexo to buy from local farmers. (Sodexo says
it does buy some local produce and has opened salad bars in many schools.) Donna D. Walsh, a
former school board president in Westchester County, N.Y., told me she worked with a
supportive superintendent to get Aramark to stop deep-frying food and to open a salad bar. But
after a new superintendent came in, she said, the company went back to profit-driven menus of
pizza and bagels. The federal government could intervene. The Agriculture Department
proposed new rules this year that would set maximum calories for school meals; require more
fruits, vegetables and whole grains; and limit trans fats. Not surprisingly, the most committed
foes of the rules are the same corporations that make money supplying bad food. Aramark,
Sodexo and Chartwells, as well as food processing companies like ConAgra, wrote letters
arguing, among other things, that children may not want to eat healthier food. Any increase in
fruit and vegetables might result in plate waste, wrote Sodexo. A protein requirement at
breakfast, Aramark said, would hamper efforts to offer popular breakfast items. Their lobbying
persuaded members of Congress to block a once-a-week limit on starchy vegetables and to
continue to allow a few tablespoons of tomato sauce on pizza to count as a vegetable serving.
Thanks to that cave-in, children will continue to get their vegetables in the form of potatoes for
breakfast and pizza for lunch. One-third of children from the ages of 6 to 19 are overweight or
obese. These children could see their life expectancies shortened because of their vulnerability to
diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Unfortunately, profit, not health, is the priority of the food
service management companies, food processors and even elected officials. Until more parents
demand reform of the school lunch system, children will continue to suffer.
School Privatization doesnt save money, hurts quality of service and

harms workers and local economy
AFSCME, 2015 - AFSCME is the nations largest and fastest growing public services employees union with more than 1.6
million working and retired members. AFSCMEs members provide the vital services that make America happen. We are nurses,
corrections officers, child care providers, EMTs, sanitation workers and more.
https://www.afscme.org/news/publications/privatization/power-tools-to-fight-privatization/document/6-Schools-Factsheet.pdf
Some officials and commentators believe that outsourcing school support services will save
money while maintaining quality and accountability. Theyre wrong. Outsourcing generally
leads to a loss of accountability, fails to save money and lowers the quality of services, while
harming workers and the local economy. Privatization Means a Loss of Accountability When a
school district outsources support services, those unhappy with contractor employees or the
quality of work have little recourse. For example, Durham School Services hired bus drivers with
felony records and serious motor vehicle violations to work for Memphis area school districts.
The number of bus crashes skyrocketed, with Durham drivers at fault in 125 crashes in less than
three years. School officials had few alternatives to working with Durham because the district
sold its buses to the company. As one school official explained, It put you in an awkward
position, yes it did. They had us over a barrel. Even when a school district can identify
problems with a contractors substandard service, the district has to follow inflexible procedures
to get the company to fix the problem. GCA Services standard contract requires school districts
to file two notices and wait 90 days before they can cancel contracts for cause.1 Privatization
Doesnt Save Money Privatizing doesnt save money, and often costs more, because the contract
fails to include all of the duties that school employees perform, and the cost comparison omits
many hidden costs of outsourcing. For example: Cleaning firms submit low-ball bids based on
unrealistic staffing assumptions. When classrooms are dirty and parents complain, it costs the
district more to boost staffing and improve cleanliness. Chicago Public Schools found this out
with its custodial contract with Aramark. In the first 11 months of the deal, the company charged
$22 million more than budgeted, wiping out all of the projected savings for the year. The
company had to increase staffing by hundreds of workers after complaints about school
cleanliness and the districts failure to include some facilities in the contract.2 Food service
contractors promise to save districts millions of dollars, but any financial improvement comes
from increased federal reimbursements from school lunch programs that smart school districts
can achieve themselves.3 Privatization is no guarantee of success, as District of Columbia Public
Schools found when its contract with Chartwells cost taxpayers $7 million more than projected
while serving 15 million fewer meals.4 School districts across the country have brought student
transportation back in-house when they found they could save money and improve service
compared to outsourcing.5 School officials assume in their cost comparisons that privatization
will save in administration, overhead and utilities, but those costs do not go away after the work
is outsourced and do not result in savings. Meanwhile, actual costs of administering and
overseeing vendor contracts are ignored. Privatization Diminishes the Quality of Service Private
contractors cut corners to increase profits, but that comes at the expense of quality. At Volusia
County Public Schools in Florida, teachers complained their schools werent clean with Aramark
and resorted to cleaning classrooms themselves. An inspection revealed 14 deficient schools,
including restrooms without soap and paper, which the school board chairman called
unacceptable. The company admitted it had not hired enough custodians.6 Contractors often
seek savings with a lower-quality workforce. The contractor may offer jobs to current school
staff, but most employees cannot afford to take the jobs at the pay the company is offering.
Schools go from having a stable, experienced staff to a contractor workforce with constant
turnover. Because of low pay and benefits, contractors are desperate to recruit enough workers.
This impacts the quality of service and school safety. Contractors are found to employ people
who do not belong in a school environment. Incidences of theft and worse are all too
common. Privatization Harms Workers and the Local Economy Privatization replaces decent,
middle-class school district jobs with substandard, poverty-level jobs. When Chelmsford,
Massachusetts, schools outsourced custodial jobs, wages were slashed from $19 per hour to
about $8.50 per hour. Employees couldnt afford to take the new jobs at poverty-level wages,
meaning the community lost many experienced, familiar workers in their schools.8 Outsourcing
means more than lower wages. It leaves workers with only part-time hours, inferior health
insurance at higher cost, inadequate retirement benefits and little or no sick leave. When
Aramark, Sodexo, Compass and others took over school cafeterias in New Jersey, the companies
not only cut wages by $4 to $6 per hour, but many workers lost their health insurance, leaving
them uninsured or dependent on Medicaid or childrens health insurance programs.9 GCA
Services bid for New Haven Public Schools custodians proposed cutting wages, hours and
benefits so much that custodians would have been eligible for food stamps and Medicaid.10
When school employees, who are parents and grandparents of district schoolchildren, lose good
jobs in our schools, they are pushed into unemployment and poverty. The local economy and
stability of neighborhoods is harmed.11 School employees, instead of strengthening the
community, will need public benefits just to make ends meet.
Aff Scholarship Tax Credits CP
No Solvency
2ac School Choice Bad
School Choice is bad for education
Camera 17, Lauren Camera, April 27, 2017, an education reporter at U.S. News & World Report, a
2013 Spencer Education Fellow at Columbia Universitys School of Journalism
When Secretary DeVos own departments independent research office tells her that siphoning
taxpayer dollars into private schools has a negative impact on students, its time for her to finally
abandon her reckless plans to privatize public schools across the country, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.,
the top Democrat on the Senate education committee, said in a statement.
"We know vouchers don't work, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the top Democrat on the House education
committee, said in a statement. For years I've been saying that on average, voucher programs are
average, but IES confirms that they are actually worse than traditional public schools. D.C. students
using vouchers actually lose learning.
Vouchers/school choice bad

William J. Mathis and Lorna Jimerson, March 2008, serves on the Vermont State Board of Education
and chairs the legislative committee, the managing director of the National Education Policy Center at
the University of Colorado Boulder and the former superintendent of schools for the Rutland Northeast
Supervisory Union in Brandon, Vermont, was a National Superintendent of the Year finalist and a
Vermont Superintendent of the Year, A Guide to Contracting Out School Support Services: Good for the
School? Good for the Community?
https://greatlakescenter.org/docs/Policy_Briefs/Mathis_ContractingOut.pdf
Vouchers or Choice. In practice, school choice means parents can choose the school within the system
they want the child to attend. Few of the myriad systems tried from 1970 to 2008 operated in such a
pristine fashion. Enrollment limits, transportation and a host of other factors complicate realities.
Despite intense examination, there is no consistent body of evidence that show vouchers or choice
systems provide higher test scores. Evidence to date suggests social segregation is the result and cost-
savings have not been established.
2ac Parent Choice Fails
Parents dont know how to properly choose schools
Howell and Peterson 06, William G. Howell and Paul E. Peterson, 2006, the Sydney Stein
Professor in American Politics at Chicago Harris and a professor in the Department of Political Science
and the College at the University of Chicago. School Choice and American Democracy
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/educationgaprevised_chapter.pdf
When useful information is unavailable, parents may divine the quality of a school from the
appearance of the students attending it, the exhibition of new computers, the quality of the
sports team, or some other consideration that may have little academic content. According to
education sociologist Amy Stuart Wells, when parents in the St. Louis area were given a chance
to send their child to a school outside the central city, not one of the [eleven] transfer
parents she interviewed actually went to visit a county district before listing their top three
choices. She concluded that their choice of school was based more on a perception that
county is better than city and white is better than black, not on factual information about the
schools.65
Offense
2ac Vouchers Unconstitutional
School Choice is unconstitutional- it violates separation of church and
state
Lynn No Date, Barry w. Lynn, No Date, executive director of Americans United for Separation of
Church and State, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and a prominent leader of the religious
left, the case against
vouchers http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/vouchers/choice/convouchers.html
About 96% of the students who get some benefit from the Ohio voucher program are going to religious schools,
and whenever you take funding from the general treasury of the state and divert it into the treasuries of private
religious schools, you've helped to promote religion. You've helped to make it more likely for parents to send
their children to that religious school. That kind of government support for religion violates the constitution of
most states and also the Constitution of the United States.
The First amendment is important

Anderson 17, Owen Anderson, May 24, 2017, an associate professor of philosophy and
religious studies in ASUs New College, research fellow in the James Madison Program at
Princeton University and a visiting scholar at Princeton Seminary, Why the First Amendment is
first in importance http://www.learnliberty.org/blog/why-the-first-amendment-is-first-in-
importance/
The First Amendment is first, not simply because it falls at the beginning of a list of amendments, but because it
articulates the first freedom and the nature of that freedom. It guarantees the freedom essential to humans as
rational beings.
By connecting the freedom of religion with the freedom of speech, the First Amendment gets to the essence of
what it is to be a human for it is self-evident that we are thinking beings. We use reason to form thoughts,
and we think in order to make sense of, or give meaning to, our experiences in light of our basic beliefs.
Our most basic beliefs answer the most basic questions that can logically be asked. These include beliefs
about authority, existence and value. Because of how these beliefs shape the rest of our
worldview, and because of their relationship to our search for meaning, they are identified as our religious
beliefs.
To be concerned for thinking, reason and meaning is to be concerned for common ground in human civilization.
The historical circumstances of the First Amendment might include the background of the European Wars of
Religion and the role of the Church of England in the British government. However, philosophically, it
is about what is needed for humans as rational beings to prosper.
After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ended the religious wars, an increased but still limited freedom of
religion was enforced.
Today, the First Amendment protects against coercion in matters of religious belief and practice. This is
because coercion is contrary to the nature of belief and thought.
Although a person can in some measure be coerced into outward conformity, it is impossible to impose a
change of belief through external laws. At best, it makes a person agree until the threat of force is removed.
In beliefs about the basic questions, any attempt to impose agreement without understanding is contrary to the
nature of thought. There is a natural liberty of thought that is, in the words of the Declaration, inalienable.
Aff PPP CP
No Solvency
2ac Contracting Bad
Contracting out poses a myriad of hidden costs and creates a lack of competition
William J. Mathis and Lorna Jimerson, March 2008, serves on the Vermont State Board of Education
and chairs the legislative committee, the managing director of the National Education Policy Center at
the University of Colorado Boulder and the former superintendent of schools for the Rutland Northeast
Supervisory Union in Brandon, Vermont, was a National Superintendent of the Year finalist and a
Vermont Superintendent of the Year, A Guide to Contracting Out School Support Services: Good for the
School? Good for the Community?
https://greatlakescenter.org/docs/Policy_Briefs/Mathis_ContractingOut.pdf
Critical Considerations in Contracting Out At first, contracting out may appear an ideal arrangement. Someone else provides
services. Administrative problems disappear. Costs drop. The vendor guarantees quality and cost savings. Newly freed from responsibilities in
contracted areas, superintendents, principals and school boards have more time to focus on educating children. Unfortunately, the ideal does
not always translate to the real. Many districts find that contracting out brings negative effects as well sometimes serious ones. Potential
problems generally fall into five categories: hidden costs; quality control; impact on administrative time; social costs; and loss of control and
restricted flexibility. Hidden Costs We've been duped, we've been had, we've been hoodwinked, we've been suckered. Those were the
sentiments of a school board member in Richmond, Va., in 2005, just before the board voted to cancel a contract with Chartwells, a large
international food service provider. District officials found that after less than one year, contracting out
had caused the district to lose over $900,000.35 Other examples confirm that this is not an isolated
case. When it contracted out custodial services to Sodexho, the Guilford County (N.C.) school district originally expected to save $1.2 million
over four years. Instead, it actually saved only $120,000 the first yearand then lost money the following year.36 Guide to Contracting Out
School Support Services 13 of 30 In Texas, the Carroll School District contracted out food services to Aramark. A district audit subsequently
uncovered an $80,000 deficit due to contract overruns.37 At
the end of a billing cycle, a district may experience sticker
shock, when contracting a vendor submits a much higher invoice than expected. Cost overruns, which
are fairly common, come from several areas. Contract language can contain loopholes. Cost-benefit analyses may be
misleading. Indirect costs may be ignored. Monitoring costs may be disregarded. Contractors may present initial low-ball bids. A lack of
competition may curtail theoretical market-based benefits. Loopholes in the Contract. Typically,
contract loopholes take the
form of specific contractual conditions that allow private service providers to bill districts for more than
the base amount. These are not always obvious or clearly explained when the vendor pitches the contract.38 Some contracts place no
caps on costs, so that there is no maximum on what a provider can charge. Many contracts cap services, giving vendors a right to impose
additional charges after a certain point. Service caps are especially problematic. Districts have experienced higher costs when they
unexpectedly needed additional work. While rates for special events, like an annual picnic, may be included in the
contract, vendors often charge a much higher rate for services that are unexpected, uncovered, or
both. Other possible loopholes include charging retail rates for supplies, or charging a non-contracted,
walk-in rate for uncovered services. Myriad possibilities for loopholes exist. Thus, careful contract review by
qualified attorneys and business officials is essential. Misleading Cost-Benefit Analyses. Projected savings for districts can prove
unrealistic if the vendorsor the districtsanalysis uses questionable financial data, ignores additional
costs for uncovered services, or makes inaccurate assumptions about future trends.39 When district officials in
Brandon, Vt., examined a Honeywell proposal for privatizing energy management they found that the vendor assumed the district would save
$46,000 per year in avoided maintenance costs. There was no basis for this assumption in the districts maintenance records or in the vendors
proposal. Thus, rather than realizing the proposals projected savings of $23,995 per year, the district was more likely to incur a $22,000 annual
loss.40 In
another example, a Sodexho food service contract estimated management fees of $40,000, a
figure based on the number of meals to be served. However, the estimate was based on old data, and it
did not account for enrollment growth in the district. A more realistic estimate showed management
fees far more likely to reach $80,000, or double the amount the contractor estimated.41 Another Sodexho
contract offers a case of inaccurate assumptions. Service costs were projected, at least in part, on the assumption that Guide to Contracting Out
School Support Services 14 of 30 Oregon's minimum wage would remain fixed. Existing Oregon law, however, already specified that the
minimum wage would increase annually with inflation. Because the contract specified renegotiation would be required if any costing
assumptions proved inaccurate, eventual renegotiationand higher costswere certain. 42 Indirect Costs. Indirect costs, often called
transaction costs, are expenses the district must pay in addition to contracted service fees. Typically,
indirect expenses average
an additional 20% of the bottom line of the contract.43 For example, someoneperhaps district
administrators or attorneysmust prepare the request for proposals (RFPs), publish them for bids,
review competing proposals, check references, and carefully and continuously monitor the services. The
districts costs for the time and expertise necessary for such work are seldom included in cost-benefit
analyses. In addition, many contracts require that districts supply equipment, facilities and custodial
services in addition to specific administrative work. The Sodexho contract for food services in Lincoln County, Ore., for
example, includes these district responsibilities (among others):44 Repair and maintenance of all facilities involved in food preparation,
storage and delivery Determining and verifying students application and eligibility for free or reduced priced meals and milk Developing,
distributing and collecting parental letters and applications for subsidized food service... Resolving program review and audit issues
Monitoring food service operation and guaranteeing everything in the contract is being carried out Providing contractor with office space,
furnishings and equipment, including telephone service45 Monitoring Responsibilities. Oversight cannot end simply because a contract has
been awarded. Even the pro-market Mackinac think-tank cites the crucial need for districts to Monitor, Monitor, Monitor.46 Mackinac
suggests that a centralized monitor, a district employee in charge of contract compliance, might provide impartial oversight.47 A large urban
district with multiple contracts might reasonably support such a position. However, the same cannot be said for small districts, rural districts,
and districts with only a few contracts. Since
the average U.S. school district has fewer than 3000 students, the
question of who will monitor contracted services is a common one. The task might fall to the
superintendent or building-level principal, or it might require a new hire. In any event, personnel costs
for monitoring reduce, and in many cases eliminate, the potential savings of contracting out. Unrealistic
Introductory Rates: Low-ball bids. Like credit card companies, school service vendors frequently offer
reduced rates for a first Guide to Contracting Out School Support Services 15 of 30 contract cycle in
order to attract new customers. Typically, these initially low contracts can be renewed only at much
higher rates in later years. This practice, often called low-balling, is used across many fields, including, but not limited to, health care,
construction, insurance, and communication. The premise behind this approach, though usually unstated, is that
privatization creates a dependency on outsourcing. Reverting to in-house services can become
inconvenient or very difficult; and, if there are no other vendors in the area, the school district is captive.
Lack of Competition. At least in theory, competition is claimed to be the vital force that enables a free market to
produce high quality at a low cost..Without adequate competition, there is little reason to expect that
privatization will produce significant savings. Two factors work to decrease the level of competition for school districts when
contracting out. First, in many rural or small districts, few, or even no, qualified vendors respond to RFPs.
Larger companies often consider profit margins in less populated areas too small to warrant the
investment.48 Second, the school service industry has experienced an increasing number of mergers
and consolidations.49 This trend has reduced the number of private contactors and lessened
competition. For example, FirstGroup recently acquired Laidlaw Education Services. As a result, a FirstGroup subsidiary (FirstStudent) will
now operate 12% of all school buses in the United States and Canada.50 Not surprisingly, this consolidation sparked an 11- state antitrust suit,
with states asserting they faced a virtual transportation monopoly, sure to increase bids and higher education costs. A settlement in a
Massachusetts federal court required FirstGroup to pay $1.1 million for the states legal costs and to offer concessions to various states. Such
concessions included transferring property to local districts51 and selling existing contracts to local bus operators.52
Offense
2ac- Undermines Democracy
Education has to be public, outsourcing to private corporations
undermines democracy
Jack Hassard 11/19/12 Jack Hassard is a former high school science teacher and Professor Emeritus of Science
Education, Georgia State University. While at Georgia State he was coordinator of science education, and was involved in the
development of several science teacher education programs, including the design and implementation of TEEMS, a clinically based
masters program for mathematics, science, and engineering majors. He was director of the Global Thinking Project, an internet-
based environmental program linking schools at first between Russia and U.S.A, and then among many countries around the world.
He also conducted seminars around the country on science teaching, inquiry and technology for the Bureau of Education and
Research and for school districts' staff development programs.
Education needs to be in the public domain, and citizens need to fight to make sure that the slow
creep of privatization does not turn into an avalanche. The democratic values that are the
centerpiece of our society have been under assault, especially with the rise of the extreme
conservative movement that began with Barry Goldwater, and continues today with the take
over of the Republican party by extreme right-wing ideologues. However, the ideologues, who
wont go away, were dealt a blow by the 47% who wouldnt go away either. Although the
election might mean an opening for progressives to move their agenda, and hold firm against on
issues such as health care, social security, and education, there is the need to be vigilant, as well
as activist. But there is a conundrum about the nature of education, and the ideas that are
flowing out of Washington about the future course of public education. Both major political
parties show little difference in how they approach education, including standards, testing,
teacher evaluation, and funding. Neither party seems to understand why education needs to stay
public, and should not be privatized, or sold off piece meal to the point that all of education is in
the hands of corporate education wanna bees. George Lakoff and Elizabeth Wehling are helpful
in making clear why education must stay in the public domain. They write American democracy
is built on the ethic of citizens caring about other citizens empathizing with each other, taking
responsibility, both individual and social, for our citizenry as a whole, and creating a public
government through democratic participation. Democracys sacred mission is to protect and
empower everyone equally by the provision of public resources, what we call the Public.
2ac- Turns Economy
Public-private partnerships are extremely expensive and inevitably
fail. They were the cause of the 2008 crisis. Canada proves.
Toby Sanger and Corina Crawley 3/1/09 - Toby Sanger is the economist for the Canadian Union of Public
Employees in Ottawa, Canada's largest union. he produces the quarterly Economy at Work and the weekly Eye on the Economy.
Corina Crawley is the Senior Research Officer, Canadian Union of Public Employees
If there is one thing that the current financial and economic crisis has shown, it is that the
neoconservative economic model of deregulation, privatization, tax cuts, free trade and unequal
growth is bankrupt. And yet, incredibly, Canadian governments and corporations are using the economic crisis to push more
of the same policies: tax cuts, the sale of public assets, and, especially, more privatization through public-private partnerships (P3s).
https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/problem-public-private-partnerships The shifting rationales of
P3s has always been highly dubious. P3s had been used by politicians as a form of off-
book accounting to make it appear as if public spending and deficits were lower
than they actually were but then public auditors forced governments to include these
obligations on their books. P3 proponents then claimed that their projects could be less
expensive, more innovative, speedier, and more accountable than public service delivery but a
string of failures, delays, little transparency, and secretive deals proved these claims wrong.
Most recently, P3 advocates have acknowledged that they cost more, but they try to justify these
deals by claiming that P3s transfer massive amounts of risk from the public sector to the
private sector. By using highly questionable value for money accounting, they claim that the
higher costs of P3s, particularly on the financing side, are offset by transferring colossal
amounts of risk to the private sector. While independent experts have criticized these deceptive
rationales and faulty accounting for years, the details can be complicated. The misleading
accounting practices remain, but the financial crisis has exposed the false economics of P3s in a
number of different ways: The economic and financial crisis was caused by the same policies
behind the push for public-private partnerships. Private financing is more costly and risky than
public financing. The private sector is worse at managing risk than the public sector. Risks
can never be completely transferred through P3s. Additional and complicated P3 requirements
lengthen the process and add to delays. This economic and financial crisis has a number of deep
roots, but what propelled both the later stages of the boom and the consequent crisis was a
systemic cover-up of losses, mispricing, and mismanagement of risk in the private sector. Sub-
prime mortgages were only a small part of this. On top of these and other debts, the financial
industry built a web of speculation and highly leveraged securitized assets that were sold to
unsuspecting buyers as solid investments. This helped to provide easy credit for a number of
years, but it was only a matter of time before the financial house of cards came tumbling down.
Despite trillions of dollars provided by the taxpayers in public bailouts (and much more in
accommodative actions by central banks), financial institutions around the world, including
many of those behind P3 projects, continue to teeter on the brink of insolvency. It was only
effective public nationalization of major banks and financial institutions in a number of
countries that managed to save the worlds financial system from collapsing around the world.
In a thoroughly perverse twist, these free market economic policies led to the largest public
bailouts in history and what Nobel-Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has described as a
"new form of public-private partnership, one in which the public shoulders all the risk, and the
private sector gets all the profit." Public-private partnerships have fundamentally been about
giving private investors and financiers high returns with low risks, at the long-term expense of
taxpayers and the public. The financial backers of P3s were able to borrow capital at lower rates
of interest, thanks in large part to unregulated and often fraudulent activities in financial
markets. This narrowed the interest rate spread between private and public sector borrowing
rates, allowing P3s to appear more financially attractive than otherwise. They were still a bad
deal for taxpayers, but low private sector costs of borrowing meant that faulty accounting didnt
have to cover up as much. These low borrowing rates for the private sector were not based on
economic fundamentals or realistic calculations of risk in the private sector. Private financial
institutions engaged in systemic cover-ups, miscalculations, and passing on of undisclosed risks
to unsuspecting investors. The unregulated financial markets allowed financial speculation to
flourish, siphoning funds away from productive investments in the real economy. As a result, the
paper economy grew, but real economy stagnated. Then the whole house of cards came crashing
down. As a result, private financing costs for P3s have increased and will continue to stay
relatively high, while costs of public borrowing have tumbled. This will continue to make P3s
both more costly and more risky for the public. The spread (difference between public and
private sector interest rates) for short-term borrowing rates in Canada is now about 100 basis
points higher than it was during the five years of easy credit. According to a recent industry
report, the spreads for P3 financing have doubled, on average, compared to last year. On a
typical project, this increased spread of 100 basis points would increase the cost of financing by
about 10% to 15%, or by upwards of $20 million for $100 million over 30 years. There is no
foundation to the claim that the private sector is better at managing risk than the
public sector. Virtually all P3s in Canada have been justified on the basis that they transfer
large amounts of risk to the private sector. But a growing list shows that P3s are both more risky
and more costly for the public
Aff Objectivism DA
Objectivism Bad General
2ac Objectivism Bunk
Objectivism is based on gross misrepresentations of political theories
Brennan 14 Jason F. Brennan (born 1979) is an American philosopher and political
scientist. He is currently the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Associate Professor of
Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business and
Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University,2014, Craig Biddles Chart on
Essential Moral Theories; Objectivist Strawmen,
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2014/07/craig-biddles-chart-on-essential-moral-
theories-objectivist-strawmen/
Attacking straw men Rand seriously misrepresents the history of ethics.
Essentially, she leads the reader to believe that there have been only two
alternative views in ethics: (a) that moral knowledge comes by mystical revelations
from God, and (b) that moral principles are arbitrary conventions. Either way,
ethics is regarded as the province of the irrational. One other position is
mentioned: that of Aristotle, who allegedly based ethics on what noble and wise
people choose to do but ignored the questions of why they chose to do it or why he
thought they were noble and wise. Next to these alternatives, Rands theory looks almost reasonable
by comparison. However, the above is a gross caricature of the history of ethics, and
Rand makes no effort to document her claims with any citations. In short, Rand
draws plausibility for her position by attacking straw men. Rands theory does forbid
human sacrifice, but only contingently. Ethical egoists are committed to the view that if
raping, dismembering, and murdering some other person were slightly better for
you than any alternative action, then youd be justified, indeed, obligated to rape,
dismember, and murder some other person. Randians of course deny that raping,
dismembering, and murdering someone could ever serve your interests. Its possible theyre right about that,
though it seems easy to imagine thought experiments where doing so would serve your interests. Still, it
doesnt matter if theyre right that the conditions under which it would be serve
your interests never obtain. Theyre still committed to the view that you should
rape, dismember, and murder others when it serves your interests.
Objectivism is a cult without logical basis.
Wilson 15 David Sloan Wilson, David S. Wilson is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology
and Anthropology at Binghamton University and Arne Nss Chair in Global Justice and the
Environment at the University of Oslo, 2015, Lets Take Objectivism Back from Ayn Rand,
http://evonomics.com/lets-take-back-objectivism-from-ayn/
In short, a true objectivist, who is dedicated to creating a moral system based on a rational respect for the facts of reality, including
the facts about our human nature and needs, would be willing to change his or her mind on these points based on the results of
rational inquiry. But Ayn Rand treated them as axiomatic and so do most of her followers. There is no freedom of
thought, which inverts the customary meaning of objective and makes Ayn Rands creed as
restrictive as the Newspeak of George Orwells fictional totalitarian regime. Another comparison
is with fundamentalist religions, which also restrict freedom of thought. A fundamentalist
religion portrays all actions as either good for everyone or bad for everyone. Thats false as an objective
description of the world but it is highly motivating, hurling the true believer away from ruin and toward glory in his or her own
mind. In an academic article that I wrote long ago, I showed that Ayn Rands creed has exactly the same linear structure as a
fundamentalist Christian creed (go here for a popular account). The only differences are that glory is the
unrestricted pursuit of self-interest, ruin is conventional virtue and stupid forms of
selfishness, and Rationality replaces God as the authority that is supposed to justify the whole
system. There is no room for authentic rational inquiry and it is no secret that the Ayn Rand
movement had all the earmarks of a cult.
Objectivism is baseless -- social science proves
Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University,2015, Ayn Rands Philosophy:
Who Needs It? Is Bullshit, http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2015/10/ayn-rands-
philosophy-who-needs-it-is-bullshit/
Rands probably right that most people dont spend much time thinking about philosophy. Fair enough. She asserts that
failing to think through foundational philosophical questions, or that failing to having an
integrated philosophy, causes fear and undefined guilt, a lack confidence and happiness, and so forth. But
notice she does not offer any evidence for these claims. To what degree philosophical
beliefs (or whether having an integrated philosophy) affect our behavior or our mental health is a social
scientific question. In principle, we could test whether studying philosophy, or in particular studying or adopting
Objectivism, makes people happier, more confident, less fearful and guilty, or whatnot. We could in principle study whether any
correlations (between philosophical beliefs and behaviors, or between philosophical beliefs and psychological health) are selection or
treatment effects. We could test to what degree people compartmentalize their beliefs, and how such
compartmentalization affects their health and behavior. Some people actually do such
work. If we wanted to know whether changing philosophical beliefs changes behavior, wed study this with the tools of the social
sciences. Wed suspend judgment until the evidence comes in. After all, its possible that changing our deep beliefs has little impact
on our day-to-day activity. (Its not like Berkeley acted much different from Reid.) Its also possible that our behaviors and our
psychological health are caused by deeper factors, and our philosophical beliefs are merely epiphenomenal. Perhaps the emotional
dog wags the rational tail. Perhaps the economic superstructure causes us to behave in certain ways and believe certain things.
Perhaps were each genetically disposed to behave in certain ways and to have a particular
degree of psychological health, and we end up accepting beliefs that go along with those
dispositions. (Unusually altruistic people become utilitarians or whatnot.) Or perhaps adopting new philosophical beliefs has
the effects Rand claims it does. Again, these are all social scientific questions. A rational person
would try to use good social scientific methods to tease out the causality here, and would
suspend judgment until the evidence comes in. A rational person would not try to answer
this stuff from the armchair, the way Rand does. Rand has no evidence for any of her
claims. Even her own anecdotal experience is unhelpful. She was, by all accounts, a rather
miserable person, surrounded by other miserable people (some of whom she seems to have made miserable).
Further, theres no reason, a priori, to assume that having the correct philosophical
beliefs will make you happier or more confident.
Objectivism is wrong -- doesnt take into account natural altruism and
the inevitability of temporary dependence
Dalmia 9 Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation and writes a bi-weekly
column for Forbes. She recently won the inaugural Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism, 2009,
Where Ayn Rand Went Wrong, https://www.forbes.com/2009/11/03/where-ayn-rand-went-
wrong-opinions-columnists-shikha-dalmia.html
By grounding capitalism and economic liberties in the psychic needs of individuals as opposed to, say, GDP growth, Rand avoided
the collectivist trap under which individual rights are dependent for their legitimacy on serving some broader social purpose.
However, this great virtue of her approach turns into a great vice in the context of her
broader message, which seems to regard anything beyond a perfunctory interest in the well-being
of others as vaguely illicit. Unlike Smith, Rand failed to fully recognize that though human beings
are not constituted for self-sacrifice, they have an innate need to see others prosper.
Hence, there is something crabbed and withholding in her writings, as if she is going out of her way on principle to avoid giving any
assurance that everyone in fact would be better off under capitalism. Other libertarian theoristsFriedrich Hayek and Ludwig von
Misesavoided this flaw. But Rand regarded their defense of capitalism as insufficiently pure. And to the extent that it is Randsnot
theircase for capitalism that sticks in the popular imagination, it might enhancenot diminishthe allure of government over free
market solutions to social issues such as health coverage for the uninsured. Most people read Rand when they are young and are
deeply moved by her, only to outgrow her by mid-life. Her adherents like to blame this on the moral pusillanimity and irrationality
of the readers. But the real problem is perhaps with Rand herself: Her ideology of self-actualization speaks much more to the
concerns of the young than the matureagain, because she ignores the other-interested side of human nature.
Consider what she wrote in her essay The Ethics of Emergency: The proper method of judging when or whether one should help
another person is by reference to ones own rational self-interest and ones own hierarchy of values: The time, money or effort one
gives or the risk one takes should be proportionate to the value of the person in ones own happiness. This statement certainly
doesnt preclude helping others so long as they are important to us. But it doesnt tell us whether we should make them important to
us in the first place. For example, under Rands schema would a person who abandons some passion in order to look after an elderly
parent have a higher or lower moral standing than someone who doesnt (assuming that the parents are equally worthy)? Will the
former be happier? More at peace? Rand gives us no real reason to believe so. In fact, the
distinct impression one gets
from her work is that an individuals first duty is to cultivating his own passions rather than
nurturing his interest in the flourishing of those around him (with the possible exception of ones romantic
partner). No surprise then that the virtue of generosity or benevolence, though it has pride of place in the work of Aristotlethe only
philosopher to whom Rand acknowledges any intellectual debtoccupies a second-class status in her own work. The fact is that
Rand gets harder to take as one grows older and concerns about those around us become more important than our own personal
project of self development. The relentless, single-minded dedication to ones passions that Rand seems
to favor requires a coldness of the soul, a narrowing of ones humanitythe natural interest
in the fortune of others that Smith alludes tothat most people find is not exactly conducive to
their happiness. This has profound and unfortunate political consequences. On the
practical level, it makes it difficult to build a strong and growing anti-government movement based solely on Rands philosophy,
because the older cohort of her followers is falling off on a regular basis. On the theoretical level, Rands ideas offer no
real possibility of developing robust civil society responses to address the needs of
those down on their luck. It is difficult to imagine a Randian qua Randian, say, volunteering
in a soup kitchen to feed the hungry, or even founding the Fraternal Order of Fellow Randians to
provide free health coverage and housing to jobless and homeless Randians. Since misfortune
and distress are a normal part of the human condition, a philosophy that offers no
positive, private solutions to deal with them will just have a harder time making
the case against government intervention stick.
Objectivist morality is logically incoherent -- the absolute respect of

individualism necessitates an inherent obligation towards others.
Breslin 14 Joseph Breslin, staff writer at the Washington Times, December 31, 2014, Ayn
Rand: The good, bad & obscene or why objectivism is flawed,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/31/ayn-rand-good-bad-obscene-or-why-
objectivism-flawe/
It is flatly impossible to separate moral duties to oneself from moral duties toward
others. Even granting, for the sake of argument, that the highest moral duty one has is toward oneself, this still implies a moral
duty toward others. How? Well suppose I have a duty to fulfill my rational self-interest, and you have a
duty to fulfill yours. Suppose I decide that my rational self-interest is best fulfilled by taking your
property. Now a truly consistent Randian will have to either permit himself to be
robbed (thus violating his own self-interest), which he cannot do under Randianism, or he has to object
on the grounds that, in addition to the moral duty, I have toward myself, I also have a moral
duty toward him. In other words, the only way that our duties toward our own well being can be
practically fulfilled is if we all have duties toward each other as well. Now this is fatal to the
whole Randian program, because if I have moral duties toward you and myself, there are at
least some circumstances in which I, according to justice, owe you something, just for
being you. Thats altruism and according to Rand, its verboten. Now the only way that Randians and their Libertarian cousins
can avoid this consequence is to claim that because a person has duties toward himself, he also has, as a logical corollary, rights. He
has a right to his person, property, labor, etc. While I do not dispute that he has such rights, there is
nothing in this that rules out coercion, unless I also have a duty not to coerce
against you. There are, however, two problems with this. The first is that this still admits altruistic duties
toward your person; at the very least, I have to place your rights above my desires for my own
fulfillment, at your expense. The second reason is that negative rights, such as a right
not to be coerced, are potentially infinite in number, and therefore practically
useless in reality. You could never list all the things Im not allowed to do to you. The minute you
start to make a short, sensible list of thingsthe right not to be killed, tortured, robbed or blackmailed, for exampleI must
immediately ask Why did you pick those four, and not The right not to have a piano shot from a cannon at me? At this point you
will have to come back to some positive conception of rights and duties, which brings us right back to altruism: You and I only have
rights and duties if we have an obligation to care for each other, but if we have such an obligation, then altruism is back on the table.
2ac Objectivism Impractical
Objectivism is impractical -- conservatives agree.
Benen 7/5/17 Steve Benen, writer for MSNBC, 07/05/17, Some Republicans give up on the
idea of an Ayn Rand utopia, http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/some-
republicans-give-the-idea-ayn-rand-utopia
A core tenet of Republican ideology in recent years is the belief that no tax should go up on anyone, at any time, by any amount, for
any reason. GOP officials unflinching commitment to this idea has created all kinds of governance
problems, but not enough to undermine the partys fealty to the idea. For the first time in recent memory,
however, were starting to see some examples of Republicans carefully inching away
from the partisan principle. The New York Times reported over the holiday weekend on conservative
lawmakers in Kansas, South Carolina, and Tennessee agreeing to significant tax increases in
recent weeks to meet demands for more revenue. This was especially notable in Kansas, where Republicans were
willing to go along with Gov. Sam Brownbacks (R) radical economic experiment, before it failed so spectacularly that even many of
the governors former allies felt they had no choice but to start undoing some of the damage. And with many Republicans in
Congress eager to make the same mistake Brownback did, the Times piece quoted one Kansas Republican whose perspective is
worth considering. If there were three words I could say to Congress right now, said Stephanie Clayton, a Republican state
representative from a district in the Kansas City area, they would be, Dont do it. She criticized what she said was a desire by her
party to be more faithful to the principle than to the people Republicans were elected to help. Mr. Brownback and many
conservatives, she said, overpromised on the tax cuts as a sort-of Ayn Rand utopia, a red-state
model, citing the author whose works have influenced the American libertarian movement.
And I loved Ayn Rand when I was 18 before I had children and figured out how the world
really works, Ms. Clayton added. Thats not how it works, as it turns out. Congress
would probably be a more productive place if other Republicans came to the same conclusion.
Lets note for context that Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) both recently identified Ayn Rand as one of their key
political influences. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has credited Ayn Rand for inspiring his political career. Sen. Ron Johnson, a
far-right Wisconsin Republican, told a Randian group in 2013, We really have developed this culture of entitlement and
dependency. That is not what America is all about. I mean, America and thats of course what Atlas Shrugged is all about it is
about individuals aspiring to build things to make their life and, as a result, the world a better place. If we shift to a culture
where people are saying, Im happy to sit back and let the government provide me with things, that becomes a dangerous point and
time for this country. The GOP novel, the senator added, is his foundational book. As regular readers may recall, Barack Obama
sat down with Rolling Stone in 2012 and noted, Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling
misunderstood, wed pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which were only thinking
about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which were considering the entire
project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and
making sure that everybody else has opportunity that thats a pretty narrow vision. Its not one
that, I think, describes whats best in America. Some Republicans now realize that. For other
Republicans, its taking a little longer.
Objectivism is illogical, over-simplifies human relations, and isnt
feasible.
Wilson 12 David Sloan Wilson, the SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and
Anthropology at Binghamton University and Arne Nss Chair in Global Justice and the
Environment at the University of Oslo, September 5, 2012, https://evolution-
institute.org/article/ayn-rand-and-modern-politics/?source=tvol
This gave me an insight into fundamentalist religions. Its not just that religious fundamentalists
believe in God. They also believe in a world without tradeoffs. According to their beliefs, if they
behave in a certain way, everyone will win. If they behave otherwise, everyone will lose. There are no messy
tradeoffs where some win and others lose. Their world has been simplified to the point
that their only choice is to head toward glory and away from ruin. Thats where Ayn Rand
came into the picture. Her book of essays written with Nathanial Branden titled The Virtue of Selfishness caught my
eye. Rand regarded herself as a serious philosopher in addition to a novelist and The Virtue of
Selfishness outlined her doctrine of Objectivism. As I read through the essays categorizing words and phrases that
referred to the effects of actions on self and others, another world without tradeoffs emerged. In Rands world, the
pursuit of self-interest was invariably good for everyone and the traditional virtues
were disastrous for all. Rand also had a lexicon of words and phrases for stupid forms of selfishness (e.g., blind
desires, hedonism, irrational values) that were bad for both self and others. Not a single word or phrase ended up in the
quadrants that reflect a tradeoff between the welfare of self and others. She even stated explicitly that there are no conflicts of
interest among rational men (p. 50). In other words, Rand created a system of thought that is just like
religious fundamentalism in portraying a world without tradeoffs. This begins to explain
her enduring appeal. She offers a world that has been simplified to the point where the only
choice is to head toward glory (the pursuit of self-interest) and away from ruin. Nathaniel Branden,
Rands disciple who also became her lover and eventually left the faith, provides a vivid example of the spell that she
was able to cast, as he described in his memoir Judgment Day. As a teenager growing up in a culture that
emphasized conformity, he recalls that Rands constructions, images, rhythms, all took hold of me in
some profound way. He read her novels repeatedly and described them as like a shield and fortress that allowed him to
pursue his own goals. When he first met Rand, he described her writing as a stylized universe, a
phrase that delighted her. Here is how he describes Rands inner circle: This is how we were back then, Ayn and I
and all of usdetached from the worldintoxicated by the sensation of flying
through the sky in a vision of life that made ordinary existence unendurably dull.
If that doesnt sound like a fundamentalist religious experience, what would? The problem with
visions of life that are detached from the worldno matter how intoxicatingis that they crash
and burn when they encounter the real world. The real world includes win-lose and lose-win situations that must
be managed, and pretending that they dont exist doesnt make them go away.
Objectivism is illogical and based in false assumptions.
McCaskey 13 John P. McCaskey, PhD in history from Stanford researches the history of
philosophy of science, especially the history of induction, Dec 10, 2013, How Best to Attack Ayn
Rands System, http://www.johnmccaskey.com/attacking-rand/
Following the highest established standards of logic, the most rigorous canonical reasoning, any
logic professor can decimate Ayn Rands moral and political philosophy in one 45-minute
lecture. It took the Harvard professor Robert Nozick only a few paragraphs. But Rand doesnt follow the
conventional standards of logic. She has her own distinctive method of arguing. If that
method is valid, her moral and political philosophy stands. If it is invalid, her whole system comes crashing
down. What is her method and is it valid? The crucial element of Ayn Rands method amounts to avoiding
what she calls the fallacy of the stolen concept. The fallacy is like a petitio principii, but applied to concepts
instead of propositions. Lets look at a couple examples (mine not Rands). Do you know what school means? If you really do, then
you must know that there is knowledge, that some people have knowledge that others dont, and that there are venues where people
with knowledge impart what they know to others. You could not, say, legitimately invoke the concept of school to argue that there
is no difference between a teacher and a student. If your argument had that conclusion, you must have made a mistake, for the fact
that there is a difference between a teacher and a student is contained in the very concept school. If you made that
argument, you would commit the fallacy of the stolen concept. You would be using a concept
while denying knowledge that is needed to understand that concept in the first place. Consider
funeral. You cant have that conceptat least not a mature and essentialized understanding of that conceptwithout also
accepting that people die. You could, though, have an immature understanding. When I was young, I had the word funeral before I
understood death. To me, a funeral was like a party, but when Mom and Dad left for one they wore black and werent happy. But
now that I have a mature understanding, I couldnt legitimately use the word funeral in a premise and infer that there is no such
thing as death. Rands distinctive method to answering many philosophical questions is to ask what knowledge is already presumed
by the very terms in the question. You say, Miss Rand, I want to argue with you about the proper role of government. She replies,
in effect, OK, but let us first unpack the concepts you are using. What are you already assuming by using the words proper and
government? If you think of a government as the owner of buildings where you fill out forms and proper as whatever avoids your
mothers wrath, then Rand will insist that the two of you first work out a mature and essentialized understanding of these concepts.
Once you do, she claims, you will find that you have already answered your question. You will find that the proper role of a
government is to protect the rights of its citizens. She will have defended laissez faire capitalism merely by unpacking the meaning of
the concepts needed to ask the question. For details, see The Nature of Government. If you ask her about ethics, she notes that that
is a value-laden concept and wants first to know what is included in any concept of value, virtue, vice, should, shouldnt, ought, etc.
Shell conclude that the very concept of value includes the fact that the life of the actor is the standard of value for any living
organism. She will have concluded that selfishness is a virtue merely by unpacking should. Her argument is not a
syllogism or string of syllogisms. It is not: Premise 1, Premise 2, Premise 3, . . . , therefore, by the rules of
deduction, you should act selfishly. Her argument, instead, has this structure: <<graph omitted> For details on the argument for
selfishness, see The Objectivist Ethics. The logic here is not challenging. This is a straightforward
application of the rules of modus tollens. If no one died, its not a funeral (If not-q, then not-p) implies If there is a
funeral, someone died (If p, then q.) The challenging part of Rands method is this: Can words really have objectively
correct meanings? The challenging parts of the moral and political cases are: Do all valid
concepts of virtue presuppose the propriety of selfishness? Does the very concept of government
include an essential role for protecting individual rights? To defeat Ayn Rands moral or
political philosophy, dont waste time asking what will happen to the poor under
capitalism or insisting that a selfish person would never help others. Instead, go
after her epistemology, her distinctive way of arguingbecause if you can refute
that, her whole system falls apart.
2ac Objectivism Ableist
Objectivism is patently ableist.
Breslin 14 Joseph Breslin, staff writer at the Washington Times, December 31, 2014, Ayn
Rand: The good, bad & obscene or why objectivism is flawed,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/31/ayn-rand-good-bad-obscene-or-why-
objectivism-flawe/
Finally, it should be quite obvious that in all societies, a substantial number of individuals are in
no position to look after their own self interest. Infants, children, many of the elderly and the
physically and mentally infirmthe latter whom Rand called subnormal and
ungiftedcannot look after their own rational self interest. They require others to
sacrifice their own freedom and apparent self-actualization. Moreover, every human
being must exist, at some point in his life, in a state of dependency upon the care of
others. Even Ayn Rand was a child at one time. * Now an Objectivist can avoid this issue by pointing out
that there are some who will take care of these people because they happen to find it fulfilling, but exactly what he cannot say is that
such people, simply in virtue of being people, merit or are owed such care. Therein lays the secret monstrosity
of Rands philosophy. It is with this sort of thing in mind that Whitaker Chambers, in his famous review of Atlas
Shrugged quipped: From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: To a gas
chamber go! Rand, reacting against the aggressive collectivism of our day, which treats every
individual person as a mere fungus, a mere node of the Great Organism called Society,
preached an individualism that is just as anti-personal.
2ac Objectivism Entitled
Objectivism is an archaic idea based in feudal conceptions of
entitlement.
Milanovic 10 Nikola Milanovic, Business Manager, Stanford Progressive, March, 2010,
Denying Objectivism, https://web.stanford.edu/group/progressive/cgi-bin/?p=183
Determining ones political, social, and economic beliefs, if done right, is a difficult affair, and one that many Stanford students
undoubtedly grapple with. In my own pursuit for developing the best outlook on life, I came across the peculiar philosophy of an
author named Ayn Rand as a sophomore in high school. Her ideas, entitled Objectivism, have enjoyed a recent intellectual
resurgence on Stanfords campus. This movement brings to mind my own trajectory as an objectivist, which began with scholarly
infatuation but ended with bitterly realistic rejection. Rands principles are, like so many doctrines, attractive
on paper but inapplicable to the real, modern world. Objectivism strives to provide a comprehensive
answer to questions of metaphysics, politics, morality, and epistemology. This article is not an effort to unravel the rationale behind
the philosophy. Instead, it is a comprehensive look at what the objectivist viewpoint means in everyday life. How does Rands
philosophy play out in practice? The central tenet of the movement is that there is a non-subjective reality that can be accessed
through reason, and that when we access it, it becomes clear that rational pursuit of self-interest is the best way to lead ones life.
Based on Rands aggrandizement of self-interest, her followers believe in libertarian politics,
centered around capitalism and the rights of the individual. The world is in a period of economic
recession. Inequality is a pervasive fact for the international community. Systematic
discrimination, unjust wars, and insurmountable barriers to opportunity still impact many
people. Its these facts that make objectivism an unrealistic worldview. The objectivist
standpoints on universal healthcare, government welfare programs, progressive or redistributive taxation, and economic stimuli are
all the same: they contend that these programs are unjust. But in a country where businesses are declaring bankruptcy, homes are
foreclosing at alarming rates, and people are falling below the poverty line and into the unemployment line, can objectivism be a
rationally ethical view? One that doesnt violate our intuitions about morality? The answer is no, it cant be. Rands intellectual roots
can be traced back to Adam Smith, the famous 18th century economist who championed self-interest. The prevailing system before
Smith was feudalism, which is now universally abhorred because it held that entitlements were God-given. In feudalism, some
people were born into luxury while others were born into poverty, and this was seen to be the natural, and therefore right, order of
things. Much like the insurmountable caste system that creates a birthright hierarchy of some over others, feudalism arbitrarily
justified inequalities due solely to coincidence of birth. Smith, rebelling against the feudal mindset, argued that through capitalism
order, self-interest, and personal liberty could all coexist. Markets are amazing man-made institutions in that they provide
incentives to maintain order. For instance, if I try to cheat people by charging an exorbitant amount for something I produce, other
vendors will enter the market with lower prices, and I will be punished by losing customers. Markets also allow for personal liberty; I
can buy from who I want, and am not tied to one creed or a single employer. In this way, markets eliminate hierarchies by creating
horizontal, instead of vertical relationships; I am not dependent on any one vendor, just as they arent dependent on any one
customer. Smith, like Rand, argued that this was all possible because people pursue their own rational self-interest. This pursuit
harmonizes liberty and order by bringing people into a network of anonymous, mutually beneficial exchanges. This is the
central concept of objectivism: reciprocal self-interest creates a motivation that allows us to
avoid depending on altruism (in the words of economist Albert Hirschman). For example, if I had to depend on a doctors
beneficence to receive a life-saving treatment, I might be out of luck. But because the capitalist system allows me to pay him (in his
interest) in exchange for the treatment (in my interest), we both win. Smith, though Rands intellectual heirs all idolize him, came to
different conclusions than the founder of objectivism. He did not support laissez-faire capitalism or even mention it in his writings
because he realized that markets could create dependency and subordination due to the equivalency of money to power. Smith, in
his utilitarian analysis of capitalism, understood that markets engender inequality to an extent that is bad
for society, and that they create an inflexibility of options in which people lose their
equality of opportunity based on the conditions theyre born into or the paths they take. For
this reason, he (unlike the libertarian objectivists) supported some government intervention in the economy. The reason Rands
viewpoint is so dangerously misguided in the modern world is because it rests on the faulty underlying
assumption that the state people are born into is justified. In his paper, Altruism in Philosophical
and Ethical Traditions, Will Kymlicka argues that people today are seen by the Western world as free and equal, and that they
therefore deserve equality of opportunity. This being the case, any inequalities that result in the world should be due to peoples own
choices and decisions. Like Thomas Jefferson asserted in the Declaration of Independence, certain beliefs are held to be true: that
all men are created equal with the rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. But these rights are meaningless in the
objectivists world. Without the opportunity or tools to improve their social position, a
right to the pursuit of happiness is hollow to people disadvantaged by inequality. Kymlicka holds that
peoples fates should be determined by their choices, not by the circumstances that they are born or thrust into. This is not how the
world works, however. Consider four people: one born in a war-torn region of Africa, one born into a poor family in inner-city New
York, one born into a middle-class home in Florida, and one born into wealth in Beverly Hills. These people all have the
same right to pursue their own happiness, but they are not born equal. They lack equality of
opportunity. This inequality is not the result of their decisions, but is instead the
result of systematic injustice. To deny that this is injustice would be to deny that people
should be born with equal opportunity. This is what objectivists ignore: that pursuit of our
rational self-interest is meaningless if we are born without tools to pursue it. A
popular philosopher in the objectivist tradition, Robert Nozick, equated tax to theft because he considered it an unjustified
sequestration of money, the same as a robber stealing ones wallet at gunpoint. Famed economist Milton Friedman agreed in his
classification of such taxes as charity through violence. But this, like objectivism, assumes that the conditions we
are born into are justified, exactly what feudalism assumed centuries ago. The fact of the matter is that
our birthright entitlements are not justified. I was born into an upper-middle class family, but this wasnt
my right. So how can I get upset when some of the taxes I pay go to support the poor autoworker in Detroit or the luckless
homeowner in East Palo Alto? If people are born in worse situations than I am, its luck of the draw, but not a justified luck of the
draw. The reason they were born with less opportunity than I is because of
systematic, institutional injustices that exist in our society and create inherent
inequality. That is why policies like redistributive taxation, government-funded education, and
unemployment insurance are justified: they serve to level the uneven playing field we
are born into. I loved objectivist libertarianism because it made me feel comfortable about my
privilege. I read just about all of Rands work and attended seminars on her philosophy. It was easy to accept my
abundance of opportunity as a right, but it didnt quiet a nagging thought in the back of my
head: I shouldnt feel so deserving of being privileged. Like Kymlicka assesses, its easy to
accept gross inequalities without batting an eye when they are viewed as natural.
Objectivists accept them the same way feudalists accepted serfdom, the way Sharia law accepts the subjugation of women, the way
India accepted castes. Viewed as the natural order of things, objectivism justifies inequalities that are the result of systematic
injustice in how our societies and economies are organized today. Rand sought to defend inequalities that were
not the result of merit, providing no fairness in the available processes of acquiring property or
the resultant distribution. In her best-known collection of essays, The Virtue of Selfishness,
Rand affirmed that compassion is a vice, selfishness a virtue, and that good people should not
respond altruistically to others predicaments. This doctrine only makes sense to those who believe the inequality of
birthright to be naturally justified. Objectivism is a good way to make yourself feel intellectually
comfortable with being born into privilege. It is a reassuring self-justification for many that they shouldnt
feel insecure about their luck. Maybe they should. Inequality is a natural fact of life, but its one that can be reduced and
marginalized by the right political and economic systems. We need to pursue these systems, instead of
ignoring inequality the way objectivism would have us do.
2ac Justifies Murder
Objectivism justifies sadistic murder in the name of egoism
Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, 2014, Rand, Egoism, and
Rights: To Be Clear, http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2014/07/egoism-and-rights/
3. However, I claim that Rand is mistaken about what ethical egoism implies. Her moral
theory has horrific implications, implications which she thankfully does not endorse. As the Huemer
link above explains, ethical egoism logically implies the following claim, If it were in
your interest to kill an innocent person, you may do so. Rand cant escape that
implication. (To see why Rands theory implies this, see Huemers example here, of a person zapping a
homeless man as if he were a piece of trash.) Rand does not endorse zapping homeless men
But Rand doesnt get to stipulate what ethical egoism implies. No one, not even an
imposing person like Rand, gets to decide what the logical implications of ones
statements are. Just as hedonistic act utilitarianism implies the statements We should torture people to
satisfy sadists and Omelas is a good society, ethical egoism implies the statement I may kill
innocent people if doing so would serve my interests slightly more than not.
Ethical egoism, by definition, cannot allow you to value other people as ends in
themselves. As soon as you endorse the statement Others are ends in themselves, not merely
means to my own ends, and not merely constitutive of my self-interest, you reject
egoism. Egoism implies that other people can at most only have 1) instrumental or
2) constitutive value to you.
2ac A2 Specific Methods
A2 Taxes Bad
Taxes are inevitable -- Rand agrees
AND TAXES,
6bfd289fe8a
To anyone familiar with a wide range of libertarian, anarchist, and Objectivist literature, one very basic fact can be
neither avoided nor overemphasized. No one has yet uncovered a clear-cut historical
example of a minarchy whose functions remained strictly limited to rights-
protection for any period of time, or of a society of any significant size that was entirely devoid
of government and yet survived. As for the former, Rand (1967) herself admitted that even in the
United States "certain contradictions in the Constitution did leave a loophole for the growth of
statism" (336). As for the latter, the examples that are most frequently cited are both from the Middle Ages: Ireland and
Iceland.11 Despite the interesting lessons that might be learned from the Irish and Icelandic cases, the temporal remoteness of these
two has caused many people to question their applicability to modern society.
Governmental establishment of rights occurs ab inito -- involuntary
taxes are a necessary evil for their utopia.
AND TAXES,
6bfd289fe8a
Because government is inherently necessary to define rights ab inito , and to give
substance and meaning to rights by protecting them thereafter, its very existence is both a
prerequisite and a component of rights. Thus, the parameters of property rights must
account for access by government to some portion of one's money to support its
existence. To withhold that support is to destroy government. (Franck 1994, 9-10) Franck implicitly
recognizes the infeasibility of voluntary taxation and, given his a priori rejection of anarchy,7 takes the only path left open to him. If,
then, the necessity of government implies the necessity-and morality-of taxation, what
sorts of taxes are appropriate? "Possibly a transaction tax pegging payment to the scale of individual economic activity.
A2 Public Schools Bad
Privatization is bad for education -- 10 reasons
Ghezzi 7 Patti Ghezzi, writer for More Lifestyle, 2007, Ten Reasons to Love Public Schools,
http://www.more.com/lifestyle/ten-reasons-love-public-schools
How do families find the love when public schools are their destination of last resort and not their first choice? Many say their
public school delivers on these ten important points. 1. Neighborhood school Your
child can go to school with her palsthe kids she plays with at the park and tumbled around
with as a toddler. When families choose private schools, the kids scatter. Parents who send
their child to public school say they love the proximitysome can walk to classand the sense of community. 2. Choices If
your neighborhood school isnt up to par, you may have alternatives. Many districts now
offer choices such as charter, theme, or magnet schools. Some districts will allow you to transfer
to a school in another neighborhood that has open seats. 3. Teachers Dont assume public school
teachers are less capable than those at private schools. Many teachers choose public
schools, motivated by a conviction in public education or a desire to teach all kids. They may
also want to make more money. On average, public school teachers made $51,000 in 2007, according to the American
Federation of Teachers. Teachers at academies belonging to the National Association of Independent Schools made $47,280 on
average. 4. Parents have a voice You can join the PTA or PTO and there are other ways
to get involved. Many schools have advisory councils, where elected parents, teachers, and
community members have a voice in decisions such as the hiring of a new principal. Diplomacy
is required, but it is possible to get your voice heard. 5. Curriculum Public school teachers
follow a curriculum dictated by the state and local district. While some parents long for their
child to be in a free-spirited environment, others praise the structure in public schools, which are held
accountable through their test scores. Speaking of test scores, school-wide averages are publicly
available and can give you an idea of the level of achievement. (Test scores dont, however, tell the whole
story. For that, you have to visit.) 6. Diversity Private schools work hard to diversify their student
bodies, but they often remain homogeneous. Advocates for public schools praise the real-world
environment. They believe their kids will be better prepared as adults. 7. Supplies Dont laugh! Some parents who have
experienced private and public schools swear the public schools have more good stuff. Many schools
qualify for additional federal or state aid as well as foundation grants and other resources. Some
PTAs raise $100,000 a year or more. 8. Services Public schools are required to provide special
education services to eligible students. Bright students may be eligible for the gifted program.
Parents sometimes have to lobby hard to access the services their kids need, but the quality of such services is
often top notch. 9. Transportation Your child will probably get a free lift to school compliments of the school
bus. 10. Price tag Public schools are not free. You pay with your tax dollars. The thing is, you pay whether you send
your child there or not. If you pay for private school on top of public school, youre shelling out a
bundle. Public school quality varies widely and is largely dependent on two things: parental
involvement and the principal. All students are different.

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Notes

This file has a few parts:

Materials provisions by private companies-

Contract schools-better organization and they work

Empirics prove that privatization makes education more effective.

Scholarship Tax Credits are the best mechanism for providing

States are experimenting with voucher systems now -- it solves

The private sector

Private-public partnerships solve -- over ten-thousand school districts

Private food contracts good

PPP is necessary to solve

Cant solve without PPP

PPPs combat inequality Latin America Proves

PPPs solve inequality -- tons of countries have done it.

Brazil proves -- it helps low-income children.

Privatization causes inequality, the Aff solves

The US system of democracy has been modeled around the world

Democracy is the controlling impact DPT.

School Privatization doesnt save money, hurts quality of service and

Vouchers/school choice bad

The First amendment is important

Objectivist morality is logically incoherent -- the absolute respect of

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