Public highschool students inthe US oughtnot be required to pass standardized exit exams to graduate

Because dumb people are people too, I affirm. I define: A standardized test, according to the Department of Education is "A test administered in accordance with explicit directions for uniform administration." Because of the 10th Amendment to the Bill of Rights, standardized exams are administered at the state level. An exit exam is an exam taken at the end of a course, which in the case of this resolution is required to graduate. Observation 1: Because the resolution asks us whether standardized tests should be used as a requirement to graduate from high school, the negative must not only prove that standardized tests are beneficial, but also that making them a graduation requirement has some unique benefit. Proving that students should take standardized tests upon graduation does not negate the resolution because the affirmative can require students to take the test, just not mandate that they pass it to graduate. If the negative doesn't meet this burden, you affirm. Observation 2: Specific benefits or harms of a single test are insufficient to affirm or negate the resolution. Simply because an apple has a speck of red while the rest is green, doesn't make the apple a red apple. Rather, we would declare the apple green despite this minor discrepancy. Analogously, in the debate round we can only declare an impact to a standardized test valid at the point where it is an inherent impact, not one that is unique to a specific exam. The value is Justice, defined as giving each his due. The standard is Equal Academic Opportunity defined as giving each individual an equal opportunity to perform well in school and acquire academic benefits. You accept the criterion because: 1. Future differences in wealth and income cannot be just unless individuals start on an equal playing field. These inequalities are analogous to a race in which one person starts 5 meters from the finish line while the rest of the competition starts 100 meters away; even though the advantaged person finishes the race, the outcome of the race isn't just insofar as he began exceptionally close to the end. 2. There is no morally relevant distinction between individuals based on arbitrary factors such as race, class etc. There exists no logical reason why a minority student disproportionately hurt by a policy deserves to be hurt by that policy – rather, the concept of justice takes all human beings as equal entities and thus it logically follows that each human being ought to be provided the same opportunities for advancement. 3. Justifying higher opportunities for individual groups based on arbitrary factors allows social planners to label groups as "worthy" or "unworthy". These rationalizations are the justifying basis for global exterminations and rights violations on the scale of slavery. For this reason, the thesis of the affirmative is that exit exams disproportionately hurts minorities and other groups, and thus cannot provide the ground for equal academic opportunity Contention One: High-stakes exit exams increase the dropout rate significantly for minority and female students. Sean Reardon explains the negative effects that high-stakes tests have on minorities: "in a situation where an individual's performance has the potential to confirm a negative stereotype about his or her group, individuals experience performance-related stress or anxiety, leading their performance to be biased in the direction of that stereotype In other words, students may underperform (relative to their true ability) if they feel under pressure to disprove a negative stereotype about their own group, such as "girls are bad at math" or "black students are not as smart as white students." In Steele and Aronson's (1995) seminal work, black students led to believe that an exam measured innate ability performed worse than those told they were simply taking a difficult test; white students, not facing a stereotype threat (because there is no negative societal stereotype regarding white students' cognitive skill), performed the same under both conditions. " The negative effects of stereotype threat tend to be strongest for those with the highest "domain identification"-that is, those to whom the exam is most important domain identification [may, more broadly], indicate[s] that [the] stereotype threat will be activated when it has repercussions for the at-risk student: "It therefore may be more correct to say that high motivation – a sense that something important is at stake – is the necessary factor in stereotype threat, We might expect negatively stereotyped students to underperform on [an exit exam] precisely because their own graduation status is at stake. In contrast, we would expect no (or less) underperformance on the [regular] tests, which do not carry [such] consequences for students. Contention Two: Standardized exams hurt minorities and low performing students by providing inaccessible test prep opportunities. As the importance of standardized testing rises, many students attempt to prepare themselves for a test, either through purchasing books designed to prepare the student for a test, or private tutoring sessions. Some parents are willing to pay thousands of dollars to prepare their children for tests, a financial barrier that may give children of more wealthy parents an advantage compared to less affluent families. As the influence of test prep spreads, the economically advantaged reap the rewards, while the less fortunate are shuffled to the back. Bridget Terry Long explains: As competition for college admissions heats up, students have began switching their practices away from traditional measures (e.g. studying, hours spent on homework etc) and towards practices directed more towards standardized testing. The number of students using test prep programs has increased from 60% in '72 to 75% in '04. The increased competition that currently exists for admission to a more selective college might have real benefits if it were to increase learning amongst high school students. However, our analysis suggests that there are reasons to be suspicious that this congenial outcome might not hold true. Moreover, the increased resources parents and students are able to use to improve their odds of admission at top colleges put low-income students at a disadvantage. For many students, the cost of testing is far too great. In one circumstance, a commonly used test-prep organization charges up to $4000 for 35 hours of private study. Consequently, the likelihood of students being admitted to colleges has declined rapidly. The largest declines were among "low ability" students (who are often minorities); those in the two lowest quintiles saw their odds decline by 43 percent and 23 percent, respectively. Contention Three: Standardized exams exacerbate inequalities between school districts. School districts vary vastly in their ability to teach students and administer resources. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, some districts vary up to $6,000 spent per pupil. Because of these inequities, the ability of schools in poor districts to educate their students is far inferior to that in rich districts. One could expect a student attending school on the Upper East Side to attain a far greater education than one in rural New York. For this reason, standardized testing harms the students disproportionately who are brought up in these rural, poor districts.Because they do not have access to the necessary funding required to do well on standardized tests, their students often fall behind. Testing these diverse districts in a uniform manner hurts the districts with the lowest resources and poorest students,giving the richer, better funded students the upper hand. So it is because standardized exit exams disproportionately allocate opportunities for academic advancement on multiple levels, that I affirm.(PS I have another Reardon but didn't have enough room. Would you like it? T