RESOLVED: An ideal form of No Child Left Behind would be beneficial to the welfare of the USA

Observations: 1) It is pro's job to show that NCLB is beneficial to the welfare of the United States. In order to be beneficial, then it must increase the welfare. In round two my opponent agreed that it is his job to show how "NCLB improves the prosperity of our nation." I believe that decreasing the prosperity would be a bad thing and doesn't improve the prosperity. Increasing prosperity does improve the prosperity of our nation. Therefore it is pro's job to show that NCLB increases prosperity. He agreed with that in round 2. That is what the resolution boils down to and we both agreed that that's the definition of the resolution. He then says he only needs to show one benefit. That is not at all what he agreed to. He has yet to show that the prosperity of the United States would increase with an ideal form of NCLB. 2) Once again his second observation is voided, since he has agreed to different terms. 3) The burden of proof is a large part of debate and indeed has much to do with this. Since pro is advocating the change in status quo, he must provide how it will be implemented. He did no such thing in this debate and has failed what his job of being pro. He does concede that army recruiting would continue in an ideal form though. In the previous round I asked him to either denounce it or it is assumed that an ideal form would have it. This means that our kids are being bombarded by military recruiters constantly. It's definitely not increasing this nation's prosperity. I know I hate it when recruiters call me, plus those recruiters have to be paid. More employees = less money and therefore decreases prosperity. Contentions: 1) States define the standards - I'll just start out by defining the straw man fallacy. Blaming something or somebody else. Ex: Gas prices wouldn't be so high if we had another president in the White House. I'm somewhat perplexed that he would attempt to cite me on this since I clearly didn't put blame on anyone or thing. Anyways, my opponent says there should be counter-measures, but who is going to set these? The state itself? Obviously states won't impose counter-measures on themselves. The only one that can step in is the national government if indeed you are so adamant about counter-measures. Like I said, that would be unconstitutional. Once again, there's no way around this and states will define the standards in any form of NCLB. My opponent hasn't even tried to refute my objection in round 1. Please flow this contention through round 3. 2) Standardized Tests - My opponent has given no reason as to another possibility to test for progress, therefore we must go with the current. He has the burden of implementation and he hasn't given anything better to test progress. I certainly can't think of any, therefore we must assume standardized tests will be used in an ideal form. This presents a problem since standardized tests aren't good as I stated in round 1. If people aren't perfect, no matter how perfect the law is, it won't function perfectly. The resolution states that the law is perfect. Just because the law is perfect, doesn't mean it works perfectly. Teachers are still human and NCLB clearly gives incentives for those teachers to teach to the tests. He says NCLB should give incentives to not teach to the test, but that's not possible since NCLB basically says "your students do poorly, you didn't do your job, so you're fired." He also says that they shouldn't inform teachers of the format of the test prior. As it is, teachers aren't informed prior. Rather they take examples from previous years and expect it to be similar. Once again there is no way around this. My opponent hasn't given a better way to test progress so the use of standardized tests still stands. He also doesn't refute any of the negatives of standardized testing which means he agrees that these tests are bad. My argument from round 1 upholds. Please flow it through round 3. 3) NCLB is flawed - Once again I'm not sure strawman really fits here. Anyway, I conceded the performance based funding argument since my opponent clearly wanted the advantages of removing poor students to be done away with. This means he agrees an essential theme of NCLB should be done away with. Performance based funding was even a large part of his definition of NCLB. By removing performance based funding he is saying the concept of NCLB is flawed. He then insists he is talking about "counter-measures". Once again that brings a few questions. How do you counter-measure it? Pro has the burden of implementation. The national government is the only place the "counter-measures" can come from and that is unconstitutional. Therefore the only way I can think of to combat performance based funding is to do away with it. There are 3 options here; it's unconstitutional with counter-measures, it is completely done away with and NCLB is admittedly flawed, or performance based funding is bad and not beneficial to the welfare of the United States. Go ahead and pick any of the three you would like, but any way you look at it, they are all the opposite of beneficial. 4) It costs money - My opponent says to cross apply his third argument. This doesn't at all refute my second round argument that it costs money. They are two completely different topics and he doesn't even begin to touch on this point. Please carry this argument all the way through round 3 since my opponent doesn't try to argue against it. All of my arguments have showed how NCLB is not beneficial and Con didn't even try to show anything positive about NCLB in his final round. Even before that, the only thing he said is that increasing education means that welfare is increased. However my arguments have shown that this actually decreases education in many sectors and directly bad for the prosperity of the USA since it costs a lot of money. My last thing is this: I have shown that NCLB is a bad thing. A perfect form of a bad thing doesn't make it beneficial. In fact it probably makes it more of a bad thing. Let's look at it this way. You have the joker who is a nemesis to batman. He is flawed and is a bad thing for the city of Gotham. Now imagine that possesses incredible super powers and is unstoppable. Now he is an ideal joker. He is a perfect form of him, but that's even worse for Batman and Gotham. NCLB is much the same. In its fundamental elements it is drastically flawed. Making a perfect form of a flaw only creates a bigger flaw. Whether it's ideal or not, NCLB is bad for the United States. I would like to thank logical-master for this debate. It's been fun and good luck in your upcoming rounds.