The U.S. Federal Government Should Abolish the Department of Education

First off, thank you to everyone for actually looking at this very interesting, though very long debate. :) I'd also like to sincerely apologize to my opponent for calling her a he, my mistake. Now, to the arguments. As this is my last speech, I shall be refuting the negative's points and presenting to you the main voting issues in this debate. These are the things that I shall prove to you by the end of today's debate. 1. The Department of Education is irresponsible and has harmed students. 2. The Department of Education has wasted its budget. 3. The Department of Education must be abolished. Now, my opponent says that having the Federal government choose the education for our children is a good thing. She said I did not offer evidence that Federal control over education was harmful. Well, I would like to mention my advantage in my first speech. There I did mention the horrendous effect that the Federal standards have had on our students. I will list some more evidence to prove my point. Common Core Harms Students Jane Robbins, a Senior Fellow with the American Principles Project and someone actively involved in the national fight to stop Common Core. . http://www.nccivitas.org... "Common Core is an attempt by private interests in Washington, DC, aided by the federal government, to standardize English language arts (ELA) and math education (and ultimately, education in other subjects as well) throughout the nation. By adopting Common Core, North Carolina has agreed to cede control over its ELA and math standards to entities outside the state. Not only does this scheme obliterate parental control over the education of their children, but it imposes mediocre standards based on questionable philosophies, constitutes a huge unfunded mandate on the state and on local districts, and requires sharing students" personal data with the federal government. In ELA, the child will be exposed to significantly less classic literature " the books and stories that instill a love of reading " and significantly more nonfiction "informational texts. " The idea is not to educate him as a full citizen, but to train him for a future static job. In math, the child won"t learn the standard algorithm (the normal computational model) for addition and subtraction until grade 4, for multiplication until grade 5, and for division until grade 6. Until then, the child will be taught what we used to call "fuzzy math" " alternative offbeat ways to solve math problems. He probably won"t take algebra I until grade 9 (meaning he"s unlikely to reach calculus in high school, as expected by selective universities), and will be "taught" geometry according to an experimental method never used successfully in K-12 anywhere in the world. Even the Fordham Institute, which has been paid a lot of money by Common Core-financier the Gates Foundation to promote the standards, admitted that many states had better standards and others had standards at least as good. The Common Core website itself no longer claims that the standards are "internationally benchmarked," and the Common Core Validation Committee was never given any information on international benchmarking. And one of the drafters of the math standards admitted in 2010 that when Common Core proponents talk about "college-readiness," they"re aiming for a naive community college, not a four-year university. " Now, there is definitive proof that the standard offered by the Department of Education is harmful. Now, my opponent also said that some schools would make extremely poor choices concerning curriculum. But when education is federalized, there are programs like Common Core. When education is under local control, there are high performing homeschool groups, faith based private schools, charter schools, and school choice, and parents are taking an active role. In short, when education is localized, students win. The success of education should be rooted in free market economics. Allowing competition, demanding a better product, rewarding efficiencies and high performance are principles that work in the free market and will elevate education. Who knows what the students need more than their teachers? Allowing the Federal Government to provide the same standard for every child regardless of their individuality is a failing principle. Education is best when localized. Teachers and parents know best what each individual student needs. "When the federal government controls the education of all of our children, they have the dangerous and illegitimate monopoly to control and influence the thought process of our citizens. " - Michael Badnarik Now, let's move on to the second point. 1.4 trillion dollars has been wasted. Now, I would like to correct my opponent's inference of my logical syllogism. P1: The Department of Education has spent 1.4 trillion dollars to attempt to reach its goal. P2: The Department of Education has not gotten a single bit closer to its goal since its inception. P3: The Department of Education has wasted 1.4 trillion dollars. Now, my opponent has gotten extremely technical and said that the Department of Education has not wasted every single of the 1.4 trillion dollars. And yes, maybe the Department has not wasted EXACTLY 1.4 trillion dollars. The point of the piece of evidence is, the Department has spent 1.4 trillion dollars over the course of its existence, and all this spending has not gotten us a single bit closer to its goal. So this money has been largely wasted. The harm is still significant. My opponent also mentioned that the states will need some sort of funding. I'm sorry if I forgot to mention this, but the Department of Education provides 10% of the funding to the states. The states will still have enough funding. And since this Department of Education funding has done essentially nothing to improve student achievement, we've discovered that throwing money at the problem isn't the answer. Federal control is. My opponent's second subpoint stated that the failure to meet a standard is not the department's fault. Now, I'm not saying that the problem is that schools have failed to meet the standard. I'm saying the standards are useless. The standards focus all the education on test-taking and leave little to no room for actual life applicable learning. "You"re not going to be a scientist if you can"t read," a superintendent once told me in defense of a school"s pared-down curriculum. Well, you can"t be a scientist"one of the most common career goals of Tyler Heights" graduating fifth-graders"if you never learn science either. You can"t be a lawyer if you never learn to think critically, you can"t be a computer programmer if you never learn to solve problems, you can"t be a professor if you never learn to research, and you can"t be an author if you don"t learn how to write. " - Linda Perlstein Now, the third point made by my opponent is that reform is an option. I apologize for my bluntness, but reform is not an option! This department has existed in stagnancy for 36 years with absolutely no visible effect on students. If we continue to reform useless agencies, we will get nowhere. Our country is 18 trillion dollars in debt. We aren't going to get out of this hole unless we begin to cut unnecessary, and in this case, harmful agencies from our spending. The time for reform is over. The Department of Education has had 36 years to prove to us why it should exist. And we're still waiting for an answer. About the inherent unconstitutionality of the Department of Education, my opponent had one simple answer. Who cares? We'll just change it. That is a dangerous view to hold! If we just add amendments whenever we see fit, we are headed down a slippery slope to our destruction. The fact is, the Founding Fathers had a vision for what our country should be. And any attempt to destroy that vision must be carefully thought out. The process for creating an amendment was purposefully made difficult by our founders. 38 out of 50 states must agree in order for an amendment to be created. This was to ensure that we wouldn't recklessly be rewriting the Constitution like we are in this case. Now, let's return to my three voting issues. 1. The Department of Education is irresponsible and has harmed students. I have proven to you that the Department of Education has initiated standards that provide a heavy emphasis on test taking and not enough of a focus on real life learning. And that they are blackmailing schools into adopting these standards, and refusing funding to those who do. 2. The Department of Education has wasted its budget. I proved to you in my first speech that the Department of Education has done nothing towards improving student achievement since its inception. And I would like to mention that my opponent has not challenged that point at all, and to do so in his next speech would be unfair to me as I could not refute. Yet, it has somehow spent 1.4 trillion dollars with no benefit. This money has been wasted and has done nothing to improve student achievement. 3. The Department of Education must be abolished. The Department of Education has been around for 36 years now. You think with 36 years, and 1.4 trillion dollars that we should see major improvement right? Wrong. The Department of Education has not moved toward accomplishing its goal in any way. Reforming it will not solve the problem, it must be removed. All these issues have one main point, the Department of Education has done nothing to make our students better adults. In fact, in many cases they have done the opposite. I must strongly urge that we abolish this useless, wasteful, agency.