CDL/CMSDL Core Files Summaries 2017-2018

CORE FILES SUMMARIES

Note: these summaries are NOT Core Files and are NOT meant to be read out-loud in the debate as the Core Files are. These are merely background materials meant to aid comprehension and to help coaches and debaters to get introduced to the overall story and context of each argument in the Core Files. You might want to use some of the explanations in helping students to write out analysis and extensions for later speeches (particularly for Framework and the Classroom Kritik) and are welcome to do so, but they are not structured as being ready to read in a debate.

English Language Learners Aff 2

English Language Learners Neg 3

Federal Funding Inequality AFF 4

Federal Funding Inequality Negative 5

STEM AFF 6

STEM Negative 7

Topicality – “Regulations” (vs. Funding Inequality) 8

Answering Funding Inequality Topicality 9

Topicality – “Substantial” (vs. English Language Learners) 10

Answering English Language Learners Substantial Topicality 11

Topicality – “USFG”/“Its” (vs. STEM) 12

Answering STEM Topicality 13

Federalism DA - Negative 14

Answering Federalism DA - Affirmative 15

States Counter Plan 16

Answering States CP 18

Military Trade Off DA 19

Answering Military Trade-Off DA 20

HIGH SCHOOL ONLY SUMMARIES: 21

Charter Schools AFF 22

Charter School Negative 23

Topicality – “Regulation” (vs. Charters) 25

Answering Charter Regulation Topicality 26

Classroom K 27

Answering Classroom K 29

Framework 30

Answering Framework 31

English Language Learners Aff

Summary: US schools have not been educating our youth in different languages, emphasizing English-only education. This lack of truly bilingual education makes our youth less competitive in our growing and diverse workforce. The Every Student Succeeds Act has increased funding for English Learners but with no federal direction. The Affirmative Plan mandates that any state receiving funding for ELL will use the funds to increase Dual Language Immersion Programs. These programs help educate future generations for the changing global economy. It also helps break down borders between people and unite them through sharing different languages.

Harms - American Economy: As the workforce expands, the US needs more bilingual employees to fill demand. Some of the top global companies are recruiting more and more bilingual individuals to meet their customer's needs. Education and retention of bilingual speakers helps the US expand its markets and customer base outside of the English speaking realm. Bilingual speakers become more attractive to global businesses as opposed to local employers. The increase of bilingual workers fills the gaps in the US economy. Economic growth and efficiency prevents economic downturns and prevents countries from engaging in nuclear war.

Harms - American Racism: Historically, English-only initiatives have been rooted in racist policies, from ideas that there are cultural threats posed by Spanish-speaking to signs outright banning different languages. Dual Language programs counter that ideology and creates benefits to educating children in different languages. Students do not have to feel different or shameful for speaking different languages because their entire school does. These programs could help unite and expand interactions between different students. As a society, we have a moral obligation to address and speak out against racism. Racism leads to more violence and exclusion if we don’t take a stance against it at every instance.

Solvency: Dual Language Immersion programs help non-English speakers ease into learning English. English Language Learners will not learn English in a day, it will take time, but Dual Language Immersion is more sustainable and studies show ELL students will outperform similar peers by middle school.

English Language Learners Neg

1NC Harms - American Economy:

Defensive arguments:

There’s no real risk of the economic downturn the Affirmative claims might happen. The US job market has been steadily increasing, reaching an all-time unemployment low of 4.4%.

Many Latinos are already bilingual. More children of Latinos are retaining Spanish, increasing the chances of future generations retaining bilingualism, too.

Finally, history shows that economic decline hasn’t lead to international wars.

1NC Harms - American Racism:

Offensive arguments: Turn

Dual language immerstion schools are magnets for privileged families, leading to gentrification of schools and neighborhoods, and taking up resources that won’t help immigrant students.

Gentrification displaces lower-class and/or people of color from their communities and culture.

Solvency:

Offensive arguments: Turns

English-Only programs are more beneficial in the short term for students to learn English and do well in school. Studies prove ELL students increased their test scores and performance after having to learn in English sooner.

Bilingual education is not effective and is far more expensive, wasting time and money that could go to programs that work.

Federal Funding Inequality AFF

Summary: This Affirmative seeks to establish grant incentives around Title I within a progressive funding model to establish equal access to resources across state and district lines. This is essential to fight poverty and systemic racial bias in resource allocation.

Inherency: Lack of unified federal funding now to deal with achievement stratification that affects people of color.

Harms - Poverty: Poverty is runaway in the status quo and that is ever apparent in schools. This culture of poverty leads to skewed life chances and inadequate access to basic survival needs. This situation culminates in mass structural inequity and is unethical.

Harms - Racism: Lack of resources in public education is entrenched in racism that must be overcome for the betterment of the life chances of students of color. Resource inequity perpetuates racist ideology that must be reversed through the Affirmative’s incentive structure

Solvency: The Affirmative reform of resource allocation represents the best chance for equity in schools and addresses the funding disparity across state and district lines through federal oversight and regulation

Federal Funding Inequality Negative

1NC Harms – Racism:

Defensive arguments:

First, we have alternate causality arguments, which basically make the argument that there are other forms of systematic injustice that the plan doesn’t resolve that are more central issues of racism. For instance, police brutality or housing segregation outweigh the need for equality in school through funding.

We also argue that money doesn’t solve racism within schools.

Finally, we read evidence arguing that even with many examples of racism today, overall the data shows that racism has declined over the years.

1NC Harms - Poverty:

Defensive arguments:

First, we argue that global poverty and inequality is declining and will decline even further.

We also argue that the existing social safety net helps people out of poverty, regardless of the education system’s problems.

Offensive arguments:

We argue a turn that says there’s already more money for students of color now in our education system and that more funding will be mismanaged by bureaucrats.

1NC Solvency:

Defensive arguments:

First, we have a chicken-or-egg argument: it’s not a lack of education that causes poverty, it’s poverty that makes it difficult for students to benefit from education.

We also say that simply allocating money toward the poor doesn’t specifically help students of color – much of the money goes toward rural school districts without students of color.

Offensive arguments:

We have a Solvency Turn, which says regulations would lead to tax increases, which inevitably lead to teacher cuts and the poorest students losing out once again.

STEM AFF

Summary: This Affirmative argues we need to orient our resources and teaching around Science and Mathematics to make ensure the United States is producing students prepared to participate successfully in the global economy. This is necessary for the United States to maintain hegemony and use technology to resolve problems like global warming.

Inherency: There is no federal mandate for common curriculum regarding Mathematics and Science education. The Department of Education just requires that testing take place, but fails to establish a benchmark for proficiency and improvement in students in the subjects of Mathematics and Science.

Plan Text: The affirmative uses Title I as the mechanism to get states to adopt Next Generation Science Standards for elementary schools and high schools.

Advantage 1: Hegemony The technology sector is increasing rapidly, but we don’t have enough educated workers to meet the demand. This hurts our ability to compete internationally versus other countries with strong STEM education. Failing global economic competitiveness in technology leads to these other countries eclipsing American hegemony and results in geopolitical instability throughout the globe, causing everything from nuclear proliferation to armed conflict.

Advantage 2: Warming Dealing with runaway global warming requires massive investments in technology at multiple levels. First, in terms of adaption, the effects of a warming planet will require major changes in infrastructure, especially in coastal cities to make those areas livable, and most major cities will require innovative solutions in facing more intense natural disasters, hotter summers and colder winters. This requires having the best and brightest leading innovation in this sector. Another important aspect of dealing with climate change is geo-engineering. This area of technology is essential in potentially removing carbon gases trapped within the atmosphere, which is essential to develop to reverse the amount of greenhouses gases stored and produce significant results in the fight against climate change.

Solvency: NGSS sets up a standard achievement benchmark in the area of Science and Mathematics. This is to make sure students are on track to be able to compete in the global marketplace and lead American innovation, preserving American hegemony and allowing us to successfully face the global warming crisis.

STEM Negative

Hegemony 1NC Harms Answers:

Defensive arguments:

The main defensive argument we’re making here is that more students are earning STEM certification in status quo, thus the plan is not a necessity.

Another defensive argument to make is that American hegemony is sustainable now – we’re a strong world leader.

Offense arguments:

Terrorism Turn - seeking to maintain U.S. Hegemony leads to increased terrorism. Major terrorist attacks cause military conflicts, which then go nuclear. We also make the argument that hegemony doesn’t deter terrorism – it incites it.

Global Warming 1NC Harms Answers:

Defensive arguments:

Action is being taken now to solve climate change, meaning the Plan isn’t necessary to solve.

STEM education can’t possibly do enough to solve the effects of climate change.

We are beyond the tipping point for C02 emissions: this means that climate change is runaway and the plan can’t ever solve.

Their global warming Impacts are over exaggerated and not based on peer-reviewed science.

Solvency 1NC Answers:

Defensive arguments:

NGSS standards will be rolled back once the Plan is passed - some states will unilaterally circumvent the standards

NGSS standards are overrated and don’t actually address resource disparities which are the real problem, according to the Finn and Porter-Magee evidence

Another argument you can make on the Solvency debate is that there aren’t enough qualified teachers who can teach the NGSS curriculum, according to the Kobler evidence.

Topicality – “Regulations” (vs. Funding Inequality)

Summary: This is the Topicality the Negative will run against affirmatives reading the Funding Equality Aff. Remember that Topicality is not speaking to the substance of the case, but rather the educational legitimacy of having to argue about it on the topic. Topicality can be a powerful argument for the Negative because it can effectively argue that even if the Affirmative is a good idea on-balance, it shouldn’t be allowed as part of this year’s topic because it is bad for our education that we receive from debating this year’s topic.

Interpretation: The Negative defines the word “Regulations” from the resolution as being a “mandatory requirement.”

Violation: The Negative makes the argument that the Plan text is written such that the government is providing incentives to produce change rather than complying with the proper definition of “regulations” of forcing a mandatory requirement. That means that given the way the Plan text is worded, schools would not have to change, they would have a choice of whether or not to comply.

Standards: There are two standards

1. Mixing Burdens- the Negative claims that because the Affirmative does not require schools to adopt the progressive funding model, the Aff may not actually cause anything to happen at all in education reform. This makes it hard and unfair to be the Negative team because there is very little strategy a Negative team can have if the plan does not mandate a change.

2. Limits: There are already too many potential Affirmative cases on this topic that give funding. The Negative is making the argument that debating all the Affirmative cases that don’t make it “mandatory” to change regulation makes the topic far too big. That makes it unfair or un-educational because there are too many cases to research and understand.

The Voters are reasons why Topicality comes before anything else in the debate and are reasons the Negative can win the debate on Topicality even if they are losing the rest of the debate. The Voters in this Topicality, fairness and education, are tucked within each standard and should be impacted in later speeches if the Negative chooses to continue attacking Topicality.

Answering Funding Inequality Topicality

We meet - this is an essential argument in responding to Topicality, where you argue that you do not in fact violate the Negative’s interpretation. The “we meet” we argue here is based off of 1AC evidence that outlines that the Plan mandates state enforcement for equal funding, resolving any and all regulatory burdens.

Counter Interp - this should be an interpretation that best supports the Affirmative Plan and takes a different angle on what the words in the resolution mean than the restrictive interpretation that the negative proposed. Here, the 2AC counter interpretation defines regulation as voluntary incentives. This means that under our Affirmative interpretation, incentives don’t have to be regulatory mandates.

Counter Standards: Key to establish reasons why your Affirmative interpretation should be preferred and why the Negative interpretation is bad

Topic Education – Here, the Affirmative makes the claim that the Negative’s definition of federal mandates runs contrary to the vast majority of education reform policy and is not the direction in which education policy is going. There are many factors that prevent such top-down orientation between the federal government and states