An ideal form of No Child Left Behind would be beneficial to the welfare of the United States

Greetings ladies and gentleman. I would like to thank the judges (and the remainder of the audience) for watching and my opponent for participating. In today's case, I intend to show how an ideal form of "No Child Left Behind" would in fact NOT be beneficial to the welfare of the United States. I see no reason to provide any definitions concerning the topic, but should my opponent provide any, I must point out that I am not obligated to accept his rendering of the terms used. ============================================================================ PRO's Case ============================================================================ RE: "In an ideal world that the individual gave in to how No Child Left behind taught that masses, everyone would benefit." Let me stop the instigator right there. He states that in an IDEAL world, everyone would benefit from NCLB, yet no place in the resolution do I see anything indicating that we're discussing an IDEAL world. Rather, all it indicates is that we are discussing an IDEAL form of NCLB. So with that said, the real question is whether or not an ideal form of NCLB can benefit the welfare of the United States PERIOD. I say it cannot and for one simple reason: Although an ideal form of NCLB is a form of NCLB which is flawlessly carried out, we must keep it mind that this says NOTHING about the results it brings about. To pull an example out my good friend "Yraelz's" playbook, let us take Mercury treatment into consideration. Mercury treatment was considered a means of treating syphillis in the 1600s. However, not only was mercury treatment poisonous to humans (hence was harmful), but there is also the fact that it did not serve to cure syphillis. Even if one were to use an IDEAL form of mercury treatment, the fact of the matter is that even if it were performed flawlessly, it still wouldn't serve to cure syphillis as mercury does not cure syphillis. The only way to cure syphillis with the aid of mercury would require methods which no longer render the treatment to be "mercury treatment." The same can be said here in the case of this debate. We are discussing whether or not a plan carried out flawlessly will bring about results which bring about a positive net gain for benefits to US welfare. Now if the resolution were to have stated something along the lines of "The GOALS of NCLB would be beneficial to the welfare of the US", this would be a different story and my opponent's case would make sense. However, given that the resolution does not indicate anything like this, PRO's case is just one big usage of the non sequitur ("doesn't follow") fallacy. ============================================================================ MY CASE ============================================================================ CONTENTION #1: Encourages school administrations to manipulate test results. An example of this claim is the fact that schools have been shown to employ a "creative classification of dropouts" to reduce unfavorable statistics ( http://www.factcheck.org... ). Not to mention that because each state can produce its own standardized test, states may feel the motivation to simply make their tests easier(example: http://cbs2chicago.com... ). Ladies and gentleman, making tests easier will not solve the problem which stems from our horrible education system. Rather, with education standards lowered, we will have less people getting good jobs, not to mention that this lower standard in education could serve to indirectly decrease our technological standards as well (less educated people = less technology produced, not to mention other advancements that improve the way we live). CONTENTION #2: Teachers are encouraged to teach according to what is on the standardized tests, hence narrowing the teaching and going against the purpose of teaching in the first place. Through being encouraged to teach in accordance to the test, students are less likely to get a deeper understanding of the material and are less likely to have the understanding necessary to solve similar problems (http://www.reading.org... Teachers who have "taught by the test" have been known to misinterpret the educational outcomes the test are designed to measure. "On two state tests (New York State and Michigan) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) almost two-thirds of eighth graders missed math word problems that required an application of the Pythagorean theorem to calculate the distance between two points." -Direct quote found on wikipedia( Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design, 2nd Edition. ASCD. ISBN 9781416600350. p. 42-43) It goes on to state the following . . . "Wiggins and McTighe blamed the low success rate on teachers who correctly anticipated the content of the tests, but incorrectly assumed each test would present rote knowledge/skill items rather than well-constructed, higher-order items." CONCLUSION: Basically, taking my two contentions into consideration, in exchange for leaving no one behind (which is impossible, but we'll get to that in the next round), education standards are lowered and the country is worse off than it was. Ideal or not, this problem remains. I reserve the right to present new arguments in the next round should I find such necessary. Later. :D