Federal standardization of K-12 education system is more beneficial than privatization/voucher

Introduction: First, I believe both I and my opponent (in fact, most of our voters) accept that K-12 education in the United States is broken and have failed to empower our future generations to be competitive in the global economy. The latest result from PISA showed the United States ranked number 30th in mathematics, 20th in reading, and 23rd in science. [1] US companies are not only outsource manufacturing jobs to third world nations, but they are also insourcing high skilled technical workers such as engineers and statisticians; [2] more disturbingly, STEM graduate programs in the US are also dependent on prospective students from oversea, with foreign students making up the majority of enrollments according to a study from NFAP. [3] During my time as a graduate student in Mathematics, I can attest that the majority of the faculties and students received their primary and secondary education from oversea, with products of US K-12 education system constitute less than 10% of the department. Simply put, students graduated from our grade schools are no longer the most attractive prospect nor most academically prepared individuals in comparison to their global competitors. I argue that the problem plaguing our K-12 system can be more effectively dealt with by federal standardization on primary and secondary schools in the US, and will yield better educational outcome than privatization or the school voucher system. Argument: 1. Uneven funding for K-12 schools – about half of the funding for primary and secondary education in the US is provided through local taxes, creating huge gaps between wealthy and impoverished communities. The differences exist not only among states, among school districts within each state, but even among schools within certain districts. Here is an example comparing the state of Vermont and Arizona: [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] State Spending Per Pupil Cost of Living Index Median Household Income H.S. Graduation Rate Bachelor’s Degree % Ranking by Alec Vermont $15,925 120.7 $55,808 91% 33.1% 2 Arizona $7,666 101.9 $48,689 80.6% 29.9% 36 While the median household income of Vermont is 14.6% higher than that of Arizona, yet spending per pupil is 107.7% higher! Education outcome are also miles ahead of Arizona’s. Here is an example comparing the Palo Alto school district and Lynwood school district, both from the state of California: [9], [10], [11], [12], [13] State Spending Per Pupil Average Teachers’ Salary # of Enrollment # of Teachers Teacher to Student Ratio Rank Index Palo Alto $13,159 $87,271 12,286 706 1 : 17.4 0.963 Lynwood $9,330 $50,200 15,515 595 1 : 26.1 0.296 As you can see, two school districts from the same state can have much different school conditions due to the disparity in funding. Teachers from Lynwood school districts are underpaid, overworked, leading to a much lower education quality than that of Palo Alto school district, which outspend Lynwood by 41%. The solution is to standardize school resource based on the number of pupil and adjusted by cost of living in order to achieve adequate and equitable funding. In the absence of that, school districts with less revenue cannot compete for credentialed teachers, possess less access to textbooks and other instructional materials, and obtain fewer necessaries such as libraries, counselors, building modernization, AP courses, etc. But does that mean the wealthier school districts fare better? Perhaps within the United States but certainly not in the global market. By depriving less privileged students of education opportunities, our country has effectively prevented them from competing with the “richer” students fairly. That leads to a lack of competition for students, creates complacency and a sense of elitism/entitlement among the ranks of the students from well-to-do districts; until they have to compete against foreign students/workers from nations that embrace the right-to-education (i.e. Finland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, Japan…), where students from across all levels of economic status have the tools to compete against each other on a leveled-playfield. Furthermore, the unequal access to education on the basis of economic status also lead to a boarder issue – wealthier families tend to have more access to our lawmakers thanks to lobbyists and political campaign donations, result in less effective changes in educational policy since poor school districts with deeper issues are not being heard. There is absolutely no rational reason to assume privatization or school voucher system can provide a more effectively remedy to this problem. If anything, privatization will exaggerated the problem with school funding as the richer families will then contribute even more than the poor in their children’s education. Meanwhile, school voucher system on its own would not solve the problem of unequal funding among school districts unless the general funding for each student voucher is standardized by federal standard. 2. Non-uniformed learning objectives in K-12 – learning objective of primary and secondary education, much like school funding, varies among different educational entities. For example, the learning objective of algebra in Maryland states that a student must learned how to represent a system of linear equations as a single matrix form in a vector variable [14]; while in Texas, a student will only need to learn how to multiply matrices. [15] As a math professor, it is extremely frustrating to teach a class of students with different knowledge level despite the fact that they all completed the same course from their own state. And yes, in a college level course, especially in larger universities, student body tends to be made up by people from across different states. Federal standardization of learning objectives thus is needed to ensure each student is equipped to tackle the next level of courses. The quality of post-secondary education is affected by just a hand-full of students from state with poor standards, which leads to the same conclusion as argument (1), where students from certain areas have an unfair disadvantage. And once again, privatization/voucher system will not provide more effective solution to this problem; private schools are, by definition, not regulated by the government, which means the gap of learning objectives will be even wider than the current system. Note: In order to disprove my argument, Con must provide enough reasons and/or evidence to either debunk my claim that general funding and learning objectives are negatively impacting K-12 education in the US, or argues that privatization/voucher system can solve the previous mentioned problems more effectively than federal standardization. Thank you to my opponent and voters, and I am looking forward to my opponent’s response! Sources: [1] http://www.npr.org... [2] http://www.businessinsider.com... [3] http://www.insidehighered.com... [4] http://www.governing.com... [5] http://www.missourieconomy.org... [6] http://www.alec.org... [7] http://www.commonwealthfoundation.org... [8] http://www.census.gov... [9] http://pausd.org... [10] http://ballotpedia.org... [11] http://justschools.gseis.ucla.edu... [12] http://www.schooldigger.com... [13] http://www.careerbliss.com... [14] http://www.corestandards.org... [15] http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us...