Private School vouchers should be utilized in the United States.

Opponents arguments Off 1(competition): 1. I looked on the UNICEF website for the statistic you quote, and could not find it. Please post the link to it so I can evaluate its accuracy. 2. A system of accountability was to some extent created with No Child Left Behind, and there is no evidence of its success in actually making education better. Punishing schools for not meeting certain standards only makes it harder for them to actually meet those standards the next year, making our educational system worse. 3. Schools are failing because they are not getting what they need to be successful. Less property taxes in certain areas mean those schools get less money. Failed Levy's also hurt schools, those are a big part of the reason that schools fail. 4. There is no reason that in this field competition will make our teachers better teachers. Nobody becomes a teacher because they want to make money, so they already care about teaching and the kids. They don't fail because they don't have to compete, they fail because they don't have the resources, or perhaps they aren't good teachers (which you cant solve by competition). 5. Allowing vouchers would only further harm those children left behind. Some won't want to go to a private school, some wont be able to actually get to a private school and are forced to go to the public school. This could be that the parents cant get them to the private school, or that the money given by vouchers isn't enough for them to afford any of the private schools in their area. Off 2(quality education): 1. If schools are failing we need to fix the schools. That provides children a way out without harming those still left in the public schools Off 3(vouchers are successful): 1. "voucher winners" means that vouchers were prioritized for the more qualified students. Of course they are going to do better than the average population, they were given vouchers because they were above average. This study proves nothing about the success of vouchers, and furthermore the study did not evaluate what they could have accomplished had the money been put to use with the public school system, to improve them instead. 2. All you say is Sweden did it, and it wasn't taken away. What and how did they use vouchers, what were the results, absent that this is not an argument as they may have been utilized very differently than you propose. Off 4(vouchers address problems): 1. Where is this data from? I have doubts about its accuracy. 2. If public schools are wasting money then the solution is to solve that problem and evaluate where the money is being wasted. My arguments. My opponent accepts you vote CON absent reasons vouchers are good. "Vouchers are in a way like welfare, you wouldn't give welfare to someone who didn't need it, that would be wasteful and expensive." Welfare is a way to provide individuals below the poverty line a way to get the basic essentials for life. Private education is not like welfare at all, it is a luxury that is a choice individuals can make if they wish to, not something the state should be required to provide. The state provides public education, that is similar to welfare, not private schools. "He also complains that the cutoff is unfair, but there is no need for a cutoff. Voucher eligibility could be determined by necessity, with an applications system to determine if one needs a voucher." Based upon what? The federal government supposedly does this with providing aid for college tuition with the FAFSA. They ignore far too many things that need to be paid for, like mortgages and car payments, which can be pretty expensive. There is no reason to assume that the system setup to deal with vouchers would be any different. Families in the middle would be those cannot afford private tuition, but would be told by the government they did not qualify for assistance. Also, with the rising cost of college tuition, and the fact that parents need to save for retirement, means the money they are saving for those things will be counted as extra income, money that could be put into paying for private schools. Those individuals will be denied for vouchers, but would not be able to afford private school without failing to save any money, which they will probably choose over a private school. "Then my opponent claims that money will be taken away from public schools if a voucher system is in place. Again, although there is truth to this, the whole point is to instill competition. If a public school is competitive and attracts students away from private schools, they will get more money, if a school does poorly, it will get less money. It all depends on the number of students at a school as to the amount of money it will get. Even though a school may be getting less money, it will also be providing for less students, making it cheaper to run and balancing out the money decreases." 1.There is already the mindset that private schools are better than public schools, so students will leave the public schools for private schools even if it is a good public school. This will decrease the quality of the schools because they will receive less money. No matter how many students a school has, they have many expenses they will incur whether they have 300 or 3000 students. All of the facilities costs. Faculty costs. Whether there are 30 students in a science class or 10 students the teacher will get paid the same amount, but the school will be bringing in less money to afford those costs. That money will be taken away from other programs, perhaps sports and co-curricular activities, as well as books and equipment for classes. That will decrease the quality of education. Or maybe they do decrease what their staff are paid, in which case they will get the worst teachers at that school because they cant get hired at schools that pay more. Also making the schools worse. Those who still have to go to these schools will receive a far worse education than without the voucher system. 2.You need evidence that competition works in education for this to be a good response. "Finally, my opponent says it would be better to reform the public school system. This is not true, as I said before, the public school system is broken beyond repair, it is an over-centralized monopolistic dinosaur in today's age, we need to create a voucher system, and bring it into our market society" Really? That's odd because I recieved a pretty good education as the public school I attended. You need to actually WARRANT this claim, why are they beyond repair, what is so horrible about they system that it cannot be fixed if we actually put the money into education so that all public schools can have what they need to be successful. Otherwise, you are further harming students that have no choice but go to public schools. Also, all private schools are well funded because they can charge what they need. Many public schools do not receive what they need to be good schools. That is a part of why private schools perform better overall. The solution is to provide the poorer schools with what they need to succeed, not spending that money to send students to other schools. Finally, With a greater pool of applicants, the private schools could be more selective over which students to admit, excluding those who do not belong to a preferred group such as religion or ethnicity, those with disabilities, and those with disciplinary problems. By law, the public schools must accept any student. They would presumably end up with all students whom the private schools turn away for such reasons. This would likely further undermine the reputation and competitiveness of the public schools, leading to a vicious circle that tends toward the total abolition of the public schools and perhaps the end of universal education.