Public High School Students ought not be Required to Pass Exit Exams to Graduate

Second, [Overview ONE] I would like to quote the rules we agreed upon, more specifically "Not making extra-topical arguments" Read his AC and then look at the rules. ALL my opponent's arguments are out of the context of the resolution. He's going to get up and say in his next speech that he impacts to the resolution in each contention, but if we as voters and judges are going to be intellectually honest about this debate, you negate his AC on the grounds that it is a joke. Overview TWO: My opponents contentions only criticize standardized tests. This is NOT sufficient to secure a vote for the Affirmative, because he doesn't give us an alternative. Sure, assume Standardized Exit Exams (SEE) are bad and all his negative impacts flow through, what changes in the Affirmative realm? He gives us no alternative and no solvency to the issue of measuring high school students' academic achievement. This is enough for you to negate on face, because there is no pragmatic difference in the status quo and the Affirmative realm. I will accept my opponent's value of the pursuit of happiness. However, I propose that we replace his criterion of the ability to enjoy golf with one of Academic Achievement. This is basically a localized version of the ideal of Maximizing Social Welfare, contextualized to the resolution. This is defined as what best helps students in their pyschological and physical well-being. You prefer my criterion over his because: 1) His criterion is irrelevant to the resolution. He explains that there is a large group of citizens who enjoy golf, but this does not give us any reason to support it. There is a great number of americans who hate certain races, do they deserve our praise and focus because of their mass? 2) My criterion outweighs his insofar as that all american citizens go to (or can go to) a public high school, which means that my criterion tiers into social welfare as a whole, thus impacting to EVERY citizen in the US. This out weighs the Affirmative's criterion because I impact to all of his golf population and the rest of the US. 3) This is the most direct and clear question that the resolution poses. Negative Contentions: Contention One: SEE's and High Stake Testing Improves Academic Acheivement As examined in The Brookings Papers on Education Policy, studies show that exit exams contribute to student achievement: "Norman Fredericksen's study is the most valuable because he had access to confidential data on 1978 and 1986 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test scores of public school students together with the location of the school they were attending. This enabled him to classify NAEP test takers in 1978 and 1986 by whether they lived in a state with high-stakes testing, moderate-stakes testing, or no- or low-stakes testing in 1986. His 1978 base year was before the introduction of minimum competency testing systems. Student data for both 1978 and 1986 were available for twenty-seven states. Fredericksen selected NAEP mathematics items that had been administered in both years and classified them into routine items (generally simple computation) and nonroutine items (assessing higher-order thinking skills). Using a difference of differences methodology, he compared the 1978 to 1986 change in percent correct for high-stakes states with the change in percent correct for low-stakes states. Because stakes applied to promotion decisions, graduation, schools, and individual students, he studied all three of the age groups assessed by NAEP. He found that 1978 to 1986 gains in percent correct for routine items were 7.9 percentage points higher for. .. seventeen-year-olds in high-stakes states than in low-stakes states. "[1] As the study proves, it is clear that academic achievement is not only maintained but improved by standardized testing. This impacts back to the criterion of academic achievement directly, and tiers into the pursuit of happiness, because being a smarter human enables personal utility to be easier achieved on an individual and sociological level. Affirmative Contentions: C.1: In this argument, my opponent contends that golf club shafts (of choice) are made of graphite, which is not only best for golfers, but can be recycled, unlike pencil graphite. You reject this argument for many reasons: 1) Pencils are not required for classes in high school, in fact, they are often discouraged in comparison to gel pens and other more efficient writing objects because they do not smear with pressure, and stand out bolder (this is a large reason why older teachers prefer them) on paper so they are easier to see. Also, absolutely nowhere in the resolution did we say that standardized tests need to be bubble-sheets or even written tests. My opponent conceedes to this via frameworked definitions. 2) TURN. Pencils are therefore used more in golf (marking scores on a score sheet) than in high school classrooms. ALSO, TURN his own logic against him: "most places where pencils are used in society can be replaced with pens, markers, or other writing utensils, or even pencils with non-graphite centers" This quote forces one of my two arguments to be advanced next round, because if he says pens can replace pencils, argument one goes through, if he says they can't, then argument two goes through. 3) My opponent is playing up the useage of graphite in both high schools and golf. So-called "graphite stock" golf clubs actually contain very little graphite [2] as well as pencil 'lead', which isn't always graphite material anyway. This minimalizes his impacts to the point where they don't matter anymore. 4) He points out that the advantage to graphite clubs is that they let you put less effort into the swing, but get the same quality hit. This is bad for the golf community, esspecially the golf watching community, because it allows athletes get lazier and makes their job overly easy. This is proven to be a value that americans agree with when you look at emperical acts in other sports, such as the baseball league. 5) Graphite may be a finite resource, but it IS NOT in the red. Water is a finite resource, but right now we have plenty of it and we are going at a fixed and controlled rate. This is the same for graphite. My opponent has yet to prove that graphite: A. even IS a finite resource and B. that we are diminishing it at a rate that would cause us to want to change the status quo. (The same for the 'steel' argument) Until he does both, you drop this argument. C.2: In this argument, the affirmative adheres to a false stereotype that is not supported in the resolution. We are discussing a form of test that is "standardized", which fits in my opponent's own biased definition as simply a test that is equitable insofar as the same via a standard. Reread my first argument against his C.1. This is enough to drop this argument, but even then, you negate because: 1) The vast majority, if not entirety of my opponent's C.2 impacts are NOT bad! He talks about how you have to know the right or wrong answer, and you have to learn to do so. If you are driving a car, and the light at an intersection is GREEN, you know that that means "Go", so you go, instead of stopping in the middle of trafic. Is this bad? Because according to my opponent's logic, it sure is. 2) This contention does not impact back to his standard, nor does it answer the resolution. Reread my C.1 arguments for more articulation on this. I have little-no characters remaining, so I will stop the arguing here, and wish best of luck to my opponent. [1] - The Role of End-of-Course Exams and Minimum Competency Exams in Standards-Based Reforms. John H. Bishop, Ferran Mane, Michael Bishop, and Joan Moriarty Brookings Papers on Education Policy 2001 (2001) 267-345 [2] - . http://www.ehow.com...