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

I thank Confor the response and I hope to read more of his elaboration regarding hiscontention points in the next round. Since both Con and I agree that oureducation system is broken, the outcome of this debate is therefore dependenton which side can make a more convincing case to support our claims regarding the sources of problem in K-12. Let me first state that since Con has already accepted that oureducation system is broken, the results from PISA and TIMSS are thus not a relevant point of contention, as they were put forth to support the mentioned claim. Unless Con is making a claim that United States’s K-12 education is superior to those of all other developed nations in the world. In which case it would actually undermine the claim that our education system is broken. Refutation of Con’s contentions: Contention 1 – Con states that ‘equalizing the funding will produce a “race toward mediocrity” and send America back to pre Sputnik era of Joe McCarthy’. Refutation – First I would like to remind Con that my ideal solution for K-12 general funding is equitable funding of all primary and secondary schools on the basis of number of pupils and adjusted by cost of living. Second, while we have not yet heard Con’s elaboration of what he meant by “race toward mediocrity”, I would like to reaffirm our voters the harms of inequitable school funding. While our need for education is a necessity and thus not subjected to the supply and demand market model (in other words, each one of us require education in order to be a functioning part of our economy, therefore we will seek to be educated regardless of the cost – effectively creating an inelastic demand), the process of hiring faculty and staff members for K-12 schools certainly falls down economic laws. A school with an advantage in funding naturally has more spending power, which means, in a free market, that school can also afford to hire teachers with more experience and superior education, thus providing higher teaching quality for students in said school than those that are deprived of funding unfairly. That is especially true given the fact that we live in a society where many of our educated workers have to relocate from state to state to find suitable employments, and most of them incurred sizable student loans during their pursuit of college degrees. It is unlikely that a bachelor’s degree holder in mathematics with $50,000 student loans debt to accept a teaching position in a rural K-12 school that offer a salary of under $30,000. Underfunded schools likely have to contend with teachers with less qualifications, experience, and motivation. In some cases, school failed to attract enough faculties to teach their STEM classes and have to fill the vacancy with teachers holding degrees from a different academic field, or worse yet, with VCR tapes. [1] Furthermore, underfunded schools also lack an adequate teacher support system such as libraries, teacher assistants, counselors, security guards… Effectively creating a disadvantage learning environment for less-privileged students and fail to empower them to compete against students from richer schools fairly, resulting in complacency and entitlement for those are more privileged. Therefore, I argue that an inequitable funding model actually create what Con has quoted a “ race towards mediocrity”, simply because the students from richer school districts can outperform those from poorer school districts without having to work hard to compete, they can afford to be mediocre and still have the upper hand in an unfair competition. Think of it as having a football league with only two teams with vastly superior amount of resources, they can afford the best players, the best coach, the best training facilities at the expense of the rest of teams, do you believe that will produce the best champion? The answer is no according to economic laws, because competition can drive up the productions. Contention 2: Con states that ‘“throwing money at a problem” is outdated and outmoded’. Refutation – this contention is irrelevant to my argument points, I have never called for higher spending in our K-12 education system; I’m merely arguing for more equity in the way we distribute general funding in K-12. In fact, some school districts will experience less spending as a result. Contention 3: Con states that ‘the educational system is failing not for the lack of “equality” or “funding” but rather from a lack of purpose.’ Refutation – I will have to wait for Con’s elaboration on exactly what he meant by “a lack of purpose”. Nevertheless, Con will have to debunk my claims that inequitable funding for K-12 schools is not harmful to the education outcome of the system. Contention 4: Con states that ‘a system of competition such as privatization or vouchers will “shakethe rooftops” of a stagnant system. Refutation – There are a number of flaws in claiming that privatization or voucher system will enhance education outcome in the United States. a) Privatization will deepen the problem of unequitable funding for K-12 schools - since privatization will allow the more privileged families to spend more money into their children’s education. Voucher system won’t do much to solve the problem, since the money coming from voucher system will still be coming from local school districts in the absence of federal standardization. b) Privatization and voucher system do not necessary increase school choices – most students in K-12 rely on the school bus system due to the lack of public transportation system; especially in more remote areas. It is a lot more expensive and perhaps outright unfeasible for each school to provide means of transportation for every child who wish to attend there. And if the family is made responsible to provide their own transportation, then the number of school choices are severely limited as better schools are usually located in wealthier neighborhood due to inequitable funding, and the poor will have more difficulties in attending due to lack of personnel vehicle, lack of public transit, unreasonable length of travel time to school, etc. Besides, the implementation of school voucher system doesn’t mean that a student can now choose to attend a school that is not in his/her school districts, which still suffers from the inequitable funding issue. Also, Con has not state any alternative to remedy the problem of uneven learning objectives, and I will remind our voters that neither privatization nor school voucher will solve this issue; as per my round 1 argument, privatization will likely increase this problem due to the lack of regulation. So I’m hoping to read more of Con’s contention to my claim of this problem in future rounds. On a final note, I found Con’s statement of “Some ideas will need to be abandoned and some child may get left behind” interesting; while I agree with this statement, I disagree on the exactly which ideas to be abandoned and how a child may get left behind. Should a child be left behind because he/she is born into an economically-deprived household and attending an underfunded school? Or should a child be left behind based on his/her own (or lack thereof) merits in hard work, intelligence, and talent? I recall that once I heard, from the movie “Gettysburg”, that Colonel Chamberlain said that America is based upon the idea that “here we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was”. If you accept that, as I do, I urge you to vote for Pro. [1] http://tntp.org...