Public High schools

Negative Constructive Resolved: Public high school students in the United States ought not be required to pass standardized exit exams to graduate. Observation 1: Moral Obligation In the resolution the word "Ought" is used to hold the resolution to a moral obligation. Meaning he is arguing that we are morally obligated to remove the necessity to pass exit exams in order to graduate. Now, in order for my opponent to uphold the resolution, he must do the following: 1) Prove his system of morality that obligates us to remove the necessity to pass exit exams in order to graduate. 2) Prove that removing the necessity to pass exit exams will be beneficial. Burden: Since I am going to prove in my case how the public school system does not teach the students, even the most basic knowledge, the AFF must give an alternative to standardized tests. He must do this because we can not leave our current public school system this way. Valued Premise: Quality Education, Quality education is a key component for a nation's youth if a bright future is ahead. Research has shown that since 1983 10 million 12th graders were unable to read at a basic level, and 20 million could not do basic math, also 25 million did not know the essentials of US history. In 1995 nearly 30% of first time college freshman enrolled in at least 1 remedial course to compensate for a sub-par high school education. Because the public school systems do not teach properly we have to insert standardized tests into the system to make sure 12th graders are ready to graduate at the end of their senior year. Valued Criterion: Encourage Public schools, If we administrate standardized tests we can measure how good, or poorly a public school is doing. If there are failures the school will lose its funding, because we know that the school has not properly taught their student. With my VC we can adequately measure the school's performance. We are giving incentives to public schools to teach their students well, because with standardized test we can truly measure how a school is teaching, and if there are still failures the school will lose the funding it was getting. Contention 1: Tests measure schools Standardized exit exams provide a measurement of how well or how poorly schools are preparing their students. These exams serve as a guide to what needs to be improved within an educational system. Nothing can be improved without a measurement that determines whether it is getting better or worse. Standardized tests are needed to provide an objective measurement. Standardized tests are imperfect, but they can be reliably used to measure the most basic skills, such as how well a student can read do simple math, reading, and writing. Educational policy should take into account how well those basic skills are taught. They are reliable in the essence of measuring whether a person is functional in moving on in life with a proper education. Davenport community schools states on its website states the importance of standardized tests. 1) To report individual progress to students and their parents; Furthermore, standardized tests – and the results for schools and districts – have become more important in recent years with new requirements in both state and federal laws. The federal law, No Child Left Behind, outlines the degree of improvement that schools should make in student achievement on standardized tests each year. This federal law also stipulates the consequences for schools and districts that do not reach annual improvement goals. Sub point A Standardized exit exams are able to level the playing field of competing school systems. Although there will always be some sort of unfairness in these exams, they still provide the opportunity for different institutions to prepare students for the exam and the future as well.