2017-2018 Atlanta Urban Debate League

Introduction for Students

What is a Counterplan?

A Counterplan is a type of negative argument that proposes a different policy than the plan. It is introduced as an off-case position in the 1NC. A counterplan consists of two parts.

First, is the text of the counterplan.It explains what the counterplan does. It helps to distingusih the differences between the affirmative plan and the negative counterplan. For example - If the plan says the United States Federal Government should make J-Rol’s birthday National Pizza Day and the counterplan says the United States Federal Government should make J-Rol’s birthday National Burger Day, the difference is the plan says pizza and the counterplan says burgers.

Second, is the solvency of the counterplan.Similar in its necessity to the affirmative, the negative needs solvency for its counterplan to explain why it's a good idea.

Explanation of States Counterplan

The counterplan argues that the affirmative plan should be implemented by state and local governments instead of by the federal government. According to the negative, past failures at the federal level and advantages of local implementation will lead to a more successful school nutrition program.

The net benefit is that state action avoids any sort of disruption to the current federalism balance as described in the federalism disadvantage. Without any sort of federal education policy, the counterplan is consistent with President Trump’s current policy on education as described in the link evidence.

Arguing States CP on the Negative

When arguing the states counterplan on the negative, you need to convince your judge that doing the plan through the state government solves the affirmative’s advantages without disrupting the balance of federalism.

The first component of doing this is the counterplan’s solvency. The 1NC solvency evidence included in this packet explains how state governments will be more effective than the federal government because a stronger connection to the local community is required to be successful. The federal government is disconnected from parents and school officials that will be necessary to create an effective policy. If you do this successfully, the counterplan becomes an offensive reason for you to win the debate - it will be more effective at solving the harms of the status quo. If you completely fail, the affirmative’s advantages become disadvantages to the counterplan, and their impacts will weigh heavily against any other off case positions, including the net benefit. In really good debates, the judge will end up somewhere in the middle. This still really helps the negative win because the weight of the affirmative’s impacts are much smaller when being compared to the negative’s impacts. Affirmative responses will be discussed in more detail below.

Arguing that the counterplan will solve better than the plan is often not enough to win the debate. The second component of successfully arguing the states counterplan is the counterplan’s net benefit. To swing things in the neg’s favor, teams will want to include the Federalism Disadvantage in their 1NC when reading the states counterplan. The Federalism Disadvantage is a net benefit to the states counterplan because the counterplan does not include President Trump enacting education policy. When comparing the plan and the counterplan, only the plan has the federal government take action that would upset the balance of federalism. If anything, the negative can argue that the counterplan will STRENGTHEN federalism because it clearly gives rightful power over education to the states.

The final consideration when arguing the counterplan is its legitimacy in the debate. The affirmative will often argue that the counterplan is not relevant or unfair to the debate. They do this by testing its competitiveness with permutations and by making theory arguments. These arguments are important because they can make the rest of the counterplan debate irrelevant if won by the affirmative. If the counterplan is not competitive or unfair to the affirmative, there is no reason for the judge to even consider whether it solves or its net benefits. Help answering these arguments is included in the packet below.

Answering the States Counterplan on the Affirmative

When answering the states counterplan on the affirmative, you must argue that only the plan will effectively solve the harms of the status quo and that those harms outweigh any risk of the counterplan’s net benefit.

The most important part of doing this effectively is winning that the counterplan does not solve. With the states counterplan, you will need to highlight any reason why the federal government is necessary because it is the part of the plan that the counterplan does not include. These reasons include the federal government’s ability to serve vulnerable parts of the population effectively and ensuring a baseline of rights for citizens of all states. If effective, your advantages become disadvantages to the counterplan because only the plan has solvency for them.

In addition to attacking the counterplan’s solvency, part of your affirmative strategy should be to make a permutation to do both the plan and the counterplan. A permutation is debate terminology for saying that you think doing both the plan and the counterplan is better than doing just the counterplan. If the affirmative can prove that there is no disadvantage to doing the counterplan and the plan, then they can argue that the judge has no reason to consider the counterplan against the plan.

Finally, as the affirmative you can read theory arguments against the counterplan that question whether or not it should be a part of the debate. This packet includes arguments that say the negative counterplan is illegitimate because it unrealistically assumes all 50 state governments will act together. If you can win these arguments, then you can ask the judge to disregard the counterplan and stick to evaluating the affirmative plan versus the status quo.

Judging States CP

In most debates, the affirmative will argue in the 1AC that increasing federal government support for school nutrition will have a variety of benefits. The 1NC will often make several arguments as to why this plan will fail and have other dangerous consequences. The introduction of a negative counterplan augments this discussion, by creating another choice for the judge to consider.

With the addition of a counterplan, the judge now has 3 options - they can choose the affirmative plan, the negative’s defense of the status quo, or the negative’s counterplan.

While judging debates with a counterplan are different, the considerations you have to make as a judge are very similar. Instead of only weighing the advantages and disadvantages of the plan versus the status quo, you are asked to also consider the plan versus the advantages and disadvantages (solvency risks) of a counterplan. When voting for the negative on the states counterplan, a judge must be convinced that the likelihood of the counterplan solving the case, and the weight of the net benefit are greater than the risk of a solvency deficit and the impacts that would stem from it.

A typical affirmative response will consist of solvency arguments and competitiveness questions. Affirmative solvency arguments question the counterplan’s ability to solve for the advantages and harms presented in the 1AC. Much like a negative asks you to weigh disadvantages against the plan, the affirmative will ask you to weigh this solvency risk against any decision for the counterplan. If the affirmative wins that the impacts of the affirmative are likely with the counterplan, and that the impacts of them occurring are greater than any net benefit argued by the negative, they have successfully defeated the counterplan.

Affirmative competition arguments are called permutations. Permutations are necessary to test whether or not the negative’s counterplan is “competitive” with the affirmative plan. A non-competitive counterplan is a counterplan that can be enacted simultaneously with the affirmative plan, without any sort of net benefit. Thus the negative must prove that their counterplan has a unique advantage over just doing the plan or doing both the plan and the counterplan. In your debates, the affirmative will argue that doing both the plan and the counterplan is not only possible, but standard practice. The negative will argue that even if it is possible, it would still upset the balance of federalism and become reason enough to support the counterplan over the plan.

In addition, the affirmative can weigh a procedural argument against the counterplan to exclude it from your consideration. They would argue that the negative is presenting an unfair policy, as it makes great assumptions regarding its ability to be implemented cohesively and realistically across all 50 states. If after weighing these specific arguments and the negative’s responses, it is possible to conclude that the counterplan is bad for a debate on the topic and should be excluded from the discussion. Removing the counterplan from your consideration means that you would default back to your original two options, the affirmative plan or the negative’s defense of the status quo.

States CP – Neg

1NC

Off

[First/Next] off is the counterplan with the following text:
The United States federal government should grant decision making and funding power over school lunch and nutritional programs to the states.
The fifty state governments of the United States should
substantially increase funding for nutrition education,
Farm to School lunch programs,
and require both the removal of vending machines and competitive food options and that school lunches meet uniform nutritional standards requiring increased fruits and vegetables for elementary and secondary education.
First, our counterplan solves the affirmative. The lunch programs described by the affirmative can best solved by local level specialized approaches.

Sheffield, 17

(Rachel, focuses on welfare, marriage and family, and education as policy analyst in the DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation, 1/4/17, “3 Steps Lawmakers Could Take to Roll Back Government Control of School Lunches.”

Congress should now take the opportunity to create child nutrition policy that rolls back the big-government policies currently in place, even if it means doing so before a reauthorization bill is considered. Congress can and should work to undo three particularly problematic provisions from the 2010 law: prohibitive government school meal standards, the community eligibility provision (which expanded free meals for students), and the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer program (a de facto expansion of the food stamps program). School Nutrition Standards The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act instituted extremely prescriptive school meal standards, disrespecting both local school officials and parents. It set forth calorie limits, strict nutrient requirements, and portion size restrictions. For example, children under this law are required to take fruits and vegetables, even if they don’t want them, and schools are told what types and colors of vegetables they must serve, as well as the type and amount of milk they are allowed to provide to students. The result has been public outcry, more waste in school cafeterias, and increased costs for schools.Policymakers should end this federal overreach into school cafeterias by rolling back these heavy-handed standards and allowing school districts to develop their own standards. This would allow local officials to tailor school meals to the needs of their communities and better respond to the demands of parents and students.Community Eligibility Provision The community eligibility provision, also part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, tries to expand welfare to middle-class and wealthy families. It inappropriately expands free meals to all students regardless of family income. Essentially, it’s a backdoor approach to universal school meals. No longer does a child need to be low-income to receive free meals. Under this provision, if 40 percent of students in a school, group of schools, or school district are identified as eligible for free meals because they receive benefits from another means-tested welfare program like food stamps, then all students can receive free meals. Moreover, by being able to group wealthy schools with high-poverty schools when calculating the threshold for eligibility, some schools could provide free meals to all students even if there’s s not a single child in that school who is low-income. Congress should stop allowing a means-tested welfare program to be distorted so much that the federal government no longer has to assess the “means” of families. It should eliminate the community eligibility provision and bring common sense back to school meal programs. Only low-income students should be able to receive free or reduced-price lunches, as was the case before this indefensible provision was added to the law. Doing so would restore integrity to school meal programs by ensuring that this welfare program serves those in need instead of simply transferring taxpayer money to those who don’t need assistance. Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer Program The Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer program is a pilot program that provides low-income families with funds via a debit card to pay for food during the summer months when children are out of school. Proponents claim that this program is necessary to ensure that children are fed when they are on summer vacation. The House and Senate child nutrition bills would have either continued this pilot program or made it permanent. Another government food assistance program is not the answer.Funding for child nutrition has doubled since 1990 (in constant dollars) and the federal government already operates about a dozen food assistance programs, including a summer food program for children. The Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer program is, in essence, a de facto expansion of the food stamps program rather than a child nutrition program—both provide households a debit card in order to purchase food, allowing both children and adults to receive the benefits. Policymakers should end this program rather than permanently adding it to the long list of federal food assistance programs. Serious child nutrition reauthorization would address these deeply flawed policies. Congress should steeraway from the failed policies of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act andtoward policies that respect parents and local leaders, avoid extending the welfare state to middle-class and wealthy families, and do not add to the already massive means-tested welfare system.

Second, in addition to providing the best chance of solving the affirmative harms, our counter plan also avoids disrupting federalism as described on our federalism disadvantage.

2NC

Solvency

In contrast to the federal action of the affirmative’s plan, our counterplan has the federal government give to state governments the authority to design, implement, and assess effective school nutrition programs.
Please extend from the 1NC our counterplan solvency evidence from ______that describes how state administered school nutrition programs can achieve successful results by taking advantage of a more localized approach. When state and local organizations administer school lunch programs, they are more likely to be in touch with and heard by knowledgeable parents and teachers. Local organizations are also more likely to understand unique advantages and challenges.
Federal action will also fail just as it has in the past—key education policy innovations get rejected when centralized

WRI 7

(World Resources Institute, “CLIMATE POLICY IN THE STATE LABORATORY How States Influence Federal Regulation and the Implications for Climate Change Policy in the United States”, 2007,

This confluence of political developments ended the debate over whether the federal government should have a role in education and created an opening—a “policy window” in John Kingdon’s terms—for bipartisan discussions about a centrist compromise that would establish a new reform-oriented federal education policy regime (Kingdon 1995). Actually, many of the reform ideas that later formed the core of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act—such as standards, assessments, adequate yearly progress, school report cards, and corrective action—can be found in the 1994 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Amendments. The ambitious requirements of this act were not, however, successfully enforced or implemented by the states. Scholars trace the roots of the NCLB to earlier state education reform efforts. One observer, Paul Manna, offered a “bottom-up agenda setting” model to explain the passage of the NCLB and argued that the state's’ activity on education reform put pressure on the federal government to embrace standards, accountability, and choice (Manna 2006). In 2000, forty-eight states had standards and tests in place, and thirteen states were testing students between the third and eighth grades every year in reading and math. By 1997, thirty-one states had established standards in the core areas of English, mathematics, science, and social studies. By 2001, only three states had not adopted academic- content standards in the four subject areas (Wang 2006). The state's’ increasing activity prompted the governors to support national standards and testing as early as 1990 at a Charlottesville, Virginia, summit with President George H. W. Bush. Their decision was partly due to national political ambitions and desire to replicate state policies on the national stage. Many governors also hoped that national standards would bolster the support of their state legislatures for state accountability models. State innovations are transferred to the federal level more directly when state officials become national leaders. For example, while he was governor, President George W. Bush became convinced of the efficacy of accountability in reforms in education while observing the effect of TASS (Texas Assessment of Academic Skills) tests. The national business community shared the governors’ enthusiasm for national standards and joined them at the Charlottesville summit and other forums to strategize how to enhance accountability in education at the national and state levels. Business depends on schools to help lure and retain employees and to train its next generation of employees and customers. Concerned about the low quality of the workforce and motivated to create a more attractive business environment in their communities and states, business groups viewed accountability as a linchpin of school improvement. The laboratories model may also help explain how state accountability models expanded to the federal level. On the one hand was evidence that federal spending and programs had failed to improve the performance of disadvantaged students and that the performance of mainstream students had deteriorated. On the other hand, a high-profile study of state National Assessment of Educational Progress re- sults suggested that states with standards and testing, such as Texas and North Carolina, were able to raise their test scores higher than the scores in other states. Although the federal policy drew its inspiration and design from state reforms, this by no means guaranteed that it would reflect the states’ policies. In fact, even in those states that had standards and tests in place, there were few consequences for schools that failed to perform well. While building on state models, the NCLB went well beyond the states’ own programs, imposing significant new intergovernmental burdens and tensions in state education programs. Eventually the enthusiasm for a new national commitment to education reform championed by the governorssoured when the partnershipreflected in the Charlottesville summit was transformed into a centralizing federal policy initiative, replete with regulatory constraints on and mandates for states accepting federal funds. During the implementation of the NCLB, the intergovern- mental community has become increasingly concerned about federal standards and insufficient funding. Opposi- tion to the law has been most pronounced among those states (such as Virginia) that had most aggressively adopted standards-based reforms. Even during the development of the NCLB, local officials opposed national regulation; teachers’ unions opposed testing; and conservatives op- posed the omission of vouchers. State officials protested that the law did not give the states enough federal money to meet the educational goals. In 2005, the National Edu- cation Association and school districts in Michigan, Texas, and Vermont filed suit against the federal government, claiming that the NCLB was an unfunded mandate. And the state legislatures in Utah, Vermont, New Hampshire, Hawaii, and Maine prohibited their states from spend- ing any of their own funds to implement NCLB (Janofsky 2005).