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

Contention 1: Con: “I would agree with Pro if the facts showed education to be under funded in the US”. Refutation 1. a: Con has not addressed the problem of unequitable funding in our K-12 school system; he has merely argued that the spending per capital out of all students between the age of 6 and 23 is higher than those of other nations (as cited by the appendix section of Con’s source [1] ), which compose of students in higher education; as this debate is regarding spending in K-12 education system, Con’s contention has no standing in this debate. In addition, nations such as Finland, Canada, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, which are all ahead of the US in terms of K-12 educational outcomes as measured by methods provided by both Pro [2] and Con [3] in the previous rounds, all have adopted a centralized funding system in which general K-12 funding is equitable – the amount of funding received by each school is based upon the number of attending pupils, not based upon the amount of tax revenue raised in that particular region. [4], [5], [6], [7]. Refutation 1. b: Even though Con was unable to provide accurate data comparing spending in primary and secondary schools per pupil between the US and other nations with higher educational outcomes, I argue that even if there were sufficient evidence to show that the US spends more money in K-12 education than others, the financial data is unreliable and meaningless since in the US, unlike other developed nations, K-12 spending includes extra costs in school breakfast/lunch, school bus transportation system, and healthcare for faculty/staff. Nations with higher educational outcomes than the US, such as Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Euro Zone, and Canada, have implemented a fully functional public transportation system and single-payer universal healthcare system, thus lowering spending for primary and secondary education. To elaborate, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the expenditures for transportation is over $21 billion for the school year of 2009-2010 [8] ; meanwhile, from a study provided by EducationNext, teachers’ healthcare benefit increased the cost of K-12 education by roughly $31 billion. [9] Finally, food services added another $19.9 billion to the total cost. But regardless, my point is not to show that the US spends less than other developed nations in education; rather, my point is that the funding problem with our K-12 education system is not how much we spend overall, but how equitably we spend per pupil. Contention 2: Con: “throwing money at the problem isn’t the solution” Refutation 2: Con’s contention is constructed upon the assumption that “US funds the educational system at a level far in excess of most other countries”; now, even if this assumption is true, as I explained in Refutation 1. a, the unequitable funding for K-12 in the US deprived a number of individual schools to provide adequate educational resources for their students. I am not advocating blindly increasing school funding everywhere indiscriminately, I’m simply arguing for a more equitable way to distribute those funds to help economically deprived schools to maintain a reasonable standard. Contention 3: Con: “Transferring funds from highly funded systems (to economically deprived school districts), which Pro has already cited as better performing systems, would… send these system toward the average. Refutation 3: Again, Con falsely assume that I argue higher funding must produce higher educational outcome; that is not at all what I am saying. I agree that increasing the funding of an already adequately funded school will not necessary produce better educational outcome due to the law of diminishing marginal returns. However, the law does not apply to schools with inadequate funding. What I am arguing is that schools with equitable and adequate funding can properly compete for essential personnel and maintain necessary facilities. A good example highlight this problem is the rural K-12 school districts along I-95 in South Carolina, the so-called “Corridor of Shame”. They are located in area with much lower property values, resulted the severe lack of funding and educational resources, these included: [10] Teachers from these districts comprise only 2.0% of the state’s teaching force but hold 11.4% of substandard certificates or out-of-field permits. Teacher salaries range from $3,000 to $12,000 less than neighboring wealthier districts. Teacher turnover rates are the highest in the state. In one such district, Hampton School District 2, almost 40% of its teachers have less than five years’ experience. 25% of the teachers in these district leave every year. These districts lack basic materials such as current textbooks, computers, calculators, and pencil sharpeners. Poorly stocked libraries, some books date to the 19th century. The resulting consequences are that these 36 elementary, middle, and high schools consistently ranks “below average” and “unsatisfactory” among the state’s 85 school districts in academic performance. Language and math scores in these schools are routinely the lowest in the state. Between 50% and 60% of the 8th grade students scored below Basic, Proficient, or Advanced levels on the state “PACT” tests. High school graduate rates in these districts range from 32% to 48%, all below the state average. [10] Better yet, here a video: Besides, better funded schools are suffering from complacency and entitlement due to the lack of competition from the under-funded schools; they may be better performing, but are pale in comparison to schools from other developed nations. Again, I argue that inequitable funding actually result in a race to mediocrity. Furthermore, my opponent totally ignored my argument regarding the lack of competition among different school districts due to unequitable funding. Contention 4: Con: “privatization may lead to higher performance”. Refutation 4: Con states that the private schools has better mean reading/math scores and smaller student to teacher ratios, even if those statistics are true (I cannot verify due to those links being broken), they are completely irrelevant to my argument. Students attending private schools, since there are tuition fees, are likely from a more privileged family with more educated and wealthier parents, who can provide more additional educational support to the students in terms of hired tutor, supplemental learning materials, and a generally more accommodating/forgiving education environment. Of course, similar disparity in family background will still exist regardless of the type of education system, but I argue that public schools, with adequate sources, can create a learning environment to foster student success. Student-to-teacher ratio is directly related to school funding, Con will have to show that private schools can somehow achieve lower ratio with less spending per pupil than public schools, after taken the extra spending in food services, school bus transportation system, and healthcare services into consideration, as I explained in Refutation 1. b. Furthermore, Con totally ignored my argument points in Round 2, Refutations 4. a and 4. b, which argues that privatization will deepen the problem of unequitable funding and limited school choices due to lack of public transportation. Contention 5: Con: ‘Common Core… seeks to impose a “one size fits all” nationwide disaster. ’ Refutation 5: Common Core is irrelevant to my argument. I'm not arguing for a, as what Con called, “Contents of the dumbed-down curriculum” styled national curriculum. I am arguing for a reasonable set of learning objectives that a student will “know, understand, and do” upon the completion of a particular school year. I am not arguing that the government should mandate on how the teacher should educate the students, I am arguing for what each student should be able to perform academically. Contention 6: Con: ‘a system needs focus… the educational system is failing not for not lack of “equality” or “funding” but rather from a lack of purpose’ Refutation 6: I argue that the lack of focus/purpose is attributed by the fact that our public schools lack the necessary resources and standard to become accountable. Once again I must stress that I am not an advocate of federal campaign such as “No Child Left Behind”, it is a short term formula that calculate the amount of federal funding to be spent on a state’s K-12 schools based upon a set of standards (test score, quality of teachers, curriculum, etc. ) that are designed, implemented, and measured by the states themselves – blindly throwing money at the problem without any accountabilities, in fact, states has incentives to dumb-down the standards (as to water-downed learning objectives and poorly defined the term “highly-qualified teachers”) in order to not penalize their schools. I argue for a minimum standard of what a student should academically perform upon the end of a particular school year (individual schools are free to add any extra learning objectives as they wish) – school administers are to be hold accountable in meeting those learning objectives, but that is only feasible provided that each schools have enough resource to maintain a reasonable faculty, staff, and other essential educational resources. Furthermore, my opponent totally ignored my argument regarding the difficulties in teaching a college course attended by students who completed the same course and yet with different level of relevant knowledge due to the lack of standardized learning objectives. Conclusion: This is not just a debate between I and Mr. bigdave, this is a debate regarding the future of this country.