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Luxus Debate
Lincoln Douglas Debate Briefs

September- October 2019
Resolved: In the United States, colleges and universities ought not

consider standardized tests in undergraduate admissions decisions.
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Racism 5
Gender 15
Education 16
Amending CP 31
Grade Inflation DA 32
Black Nihilism K 40
Topicality Definitions 53
Introduction
This is our first brief for the 2019-2020 season on the September- October
topic, “Resolved: In the United States, colleges and universities ought not consider
standardized tests in undergraduate admissions decisions.“ This topic is pretty great
in terms of both util and kritikal positions but lacks a lot of access to larger impacts
and implications.
This brief contains a racism affirmative and a util affirmative with an education
advantage that has econ and heg impacts. There are also cards that discuss gender
and solvency. For the negative, there is an amendment counterplan, a grade inflation
disadvantage, an Afro-Pessimism kritik with a few links to main affirmative positions,
and some Topicality definitions. All of these access the core topic ground and should
be useful in a number of rounds.
As a reminder of common brief practices, it is our recommendation that this is

only used as an introduction to the topic or to supplant further research. While the
cards we provide can be enough, further independent research will be much more
beneficial as the season continues and to keep up with community norms.
Good luck and we hope for a great start to the season!
-LD
Racism
Standardized testing stemmed from racist and elitist individuals whose targeted
tests were meant to affirm their beliefs in white superiority. These origins are
engrained in the test.
Binnie 19 (Neil Binnie “The Racist Roots of the SAT render it ineffective” Daily
Trojan March 26 2019) Luxus
A study published in 1923 by Carl Brigham, one of the men who created [the SAT] one
of the original tests, wrote that the so-called “American Intelligence” would not
develop further “owing to the presence of the negro.”Now the test, more commonly
known as the SAT, is used as a metric for admission by most colleges. While Brigham’s
boilerplate racism is one of the past, students of color continue to be discriminated
against, even in the creation of test questions. Education Weekly writer Catherine
Gewertz studied SAT results in 2017 to look at trends among students of different
races taking the test. “Hispanic and African-American students score significantly
below [the average composite score],” Gewertz found.
The biases of the original test render it ineffective
Rosales 18 (John Rosales “The Racist Beginnings of Standardized Testing” National

Education Association, 2018 http://www.nea.org/home/73288.htm) Luxus
Biased Testing from the Start

Brigham’s Ph.D. dissertation, written in 1916, “Variable Factors in the Binet Tests,”
analyzed the work of the French psychologist Alfred Binet, who developed
intelligence tests as diagnostic tools to detect learning disabilities. The Stanford
psychologist Lewis Terman relied on Binet’s work to produce today’s standard IQ test,
the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Tests.
During World War I, standardized tests helped place 1.5 million soldiers in units
segregated by race and by test scores. The tests were scientific yet they remained
deeply biased, according to researchers and media reports.
In 1917, Terman and a group of colleagues were recruited by the American
Psychological Association to help the Army develop group intelligence tests and a
group intelligence scale. Army testing during World War I ignited the most rapid
expansion of the school testing movement.
By 1918, there were more than 100 standardized tests, developed by different
researchers to measure achievement in the principal elementary and secondary school
subjects. The U.S. Bureau of Education reported in 1925 that intelligence and
achievement tests were increasingly used to classify students at all levels.
The first SAT was administered in 1926 to more than 8,000 students, 40 percent of
them female. The original test lasted 90 minutes and consisted of 315 questions
focused on vocabulary and basic math.
“Unlike the college boards, the SAT is designed primarily to assess aptitude for
learning rather than mastery of subjects already learned,” according to Erik
Jacobsen, a New Jersey writer and math-physics teacher based at Newark Academy in
Livingston, N.J. “For some college officials, an aptitude test, which is presumed to
measure intelligence, is appealing since at this time (1926) intelligence and ethnic
origin are thought to be connected, and therefore the results of such a test could be
used to limit the admissions of particularly undesirable ethnicities.”
By 1930, multiple-choice tests were firmly entrenched in U.S. schools. The rapid
spread of the SAT sparked debate along two lines. Some critics viewed the multiple-
choice format as encouraging memorization and guessing. Others examined the
content of the questions and reached the conclusion that the tests were racist.
Eventually, Brigham adapted the Army test for use in college admissions, and his work
began to interest interested administrators at Harvard University. Starting in 1934,
Harvard adopted the SAT to select scholarship recipients at the school. Many
institutions of higher learning soon followed suit.
Since the beginning of standardized testing, students of color, particularly those from
low-income families, have suffered the most from high-stakes testing in U.S. public
schools.
Decades of research demonstrate that African-American, Latino, and Native American
students, as well as students from some Asian groups, experience bias from
standardized tests administered from early childhood through college.
The high stakes testing of standardized tests continue to create the same results.

Assessment
By the 1950s and 1960s, top U.S. universities were talent-searching for the “brainy
kids,” regardless of ethnicity, states Jerome Karabel in “The Chosen: The Hidden
History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.”
This dictum among universities to identify the brightest students as reflected by test
scores did not bode well for students from communities of color, who were—as a
result of widespread bias in testing—disproportionately failing state or local high
school graduation exams, according to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing,
also known as FairTest.
The center addresses issues related to accuracy in student test taking and scoring,
while working to eliminate racial, class, gender, and cultural barriers posed by
standardized tests.
According to Fair Test research, on average, students of color score lower on college
admissions tests, thus many capable youth are denied entrance or access to so-called
“merit” scholarships, contributing to the huge racial gap in college enrollments and
completion.
High stakes testing also causes additional damage to some students who are
categorized as English language learners (ELLs). The tests are often inaccurate for
ELLs, according to FairTest, leading to misplacement or retention. ELLs are, alongside
students with disabilities, those least likely to pass graduation tests.
African-Americans, especially males, are disproportionately placed or misplaced in
special education, frequently based on test results. In effect, the use of high-stakes
testing perpetuates racial inequality through the emotional and psychological power
of the tests over the test takers, according to FairTest.
The science behind standardized testing is based on eugenic theories of education

and have little proof of intelligence today.

A Flawed Science
In his essay “The Racist Origins of the SAT,” Gil Troy calls Brigham a “Pilgrim-
pedigreed, eugenics-blinded bigot.” Eugenics is often defined as the science of
improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of
desirable heritable characteristics. It was developed by Francis Galton as a method of
improving the human race. Only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis in
World War II was the theory dismissed.
“All-American decency and idealism coexisted uncomfortably with these scientists’
equally American racism and closemindedness,” Troy writes.
Binet, Terman, and Brigham stood at the intersection of powerful intellectual,
ideological, and political trends a century ago when the Age of Science and
standardization began, according to Troy.
“In (those) consensus-seeking times, scientists became obsessed with deviations and
handicaps, both physical and intellectual,” Troy states. “And many social scientists,
misapplying Charles Darwin’s evolving evolutionary science, and eugenics’ pseudo-
science, worried about maintaining white purity.”
Today, a reform movement is growing across the country to resist testing abuse and
overuse, and to promote authentic assessment.
In some communities, according to FairTest, parents, students, education support
professionals, and teachers are boycotting and opting out of tests. Also,
demonstrations, rallies, forums and town halls focusing on testing reform have been
organized.
These origins are present in tests today due to the method for creating new
versions.
Viera 18 ( Mariana Viera “The History of the SAT Is Mired in Racism and Elitism”
teenVogue OCTOBER 1, 2018, https://www.teenvogue.com/story/the-history-of-the-
sat-is-mired-in-racism-and-elitism) Luxus
In How the SAT Creates Built-in-Headwinds, Jay Rosner, a national admissions-test

expert, explains a process that was used by SAT designers to decide which questions
would be included on the test:
“Compare two 1998 SAT verbal [section] sentence-completion items with similar
themes: The item correctly answered by more blacks than whites was discarded by
[the Educational Testing Service] (ETS), whereas the item that has a higher disparate
impact against blacks became part of the actual SAT. On one of the items, which was
of medium difficulty, 62% of whites and 38% of African-Americans answered correctly,
resulting in a large impact of 24%...On this second item, 8% more African-Americans
than whites answered correctly...”
In essence, questions for future tests were deemed “good questions” if they
replicated the outcomes of previous exams; specifically, tests where black and Latinx
students scored lower than their white peers. Test-makers might argue that race was
not explicitly used to determine which questions would be included, but the method
used was inherently racist and biased toward knowledge held by white students.
Beyond the issue of affirming whiteness as a marker of neutrality — as questions are
deemed to be good when white students do well on them — the SAT is mired in a long
history of racism, classism, and nativism.
Standardized tests perpetuate a cyclical racial gap
The National Center for Fair & Open Testing, commonly known as FairTest, also
reported that students of color score lower on standardized testing used in college
admissions. Lower scores impact their ability to secure merit-based scholarships,
contributing to the racial gap in college enrollments and completion, according to the
NEA. Consistent low scores for minority groups create not only a systemic cycle of
racial gaps, but also a psychological one — the NEA reports that the use of high-stakes
testing affects test takers’ emotional and psychological states, causing poor
performance and a dismal academic outlook.
Standardized tests disadvantage minorities in a number of ways:
1) Economic
SAT tutoring also perpetuates economic inequity in testing. While very few students
paid exorbitant amounts of money to cheat on these tests, many affluent students
have access to expensive test prep that drastically improves their scores. Elite Test
Prep near Arcadia High School, the high school that sends the highest number of
students to USC, offers a morning SAT prep course that costs $2,740. While seeking
out tutoring for academic achievement is not inherently wrong, doing so places lower
income students who cannot afford such test prep at a noticeable disadvantage.
This economic inequality is represented in the student population of USC. A recent
study by The Equality of Opportunity Project found that USC was falling behind its
California peers in enrolling students whose family incomes were in the lowest 20
percent. Because the SAT is unfairly biased against minority students and those of
lower socioeconomic classes, the University must champion students from lower
income households, especially those from communities around USC.
2) Cultural
AAPF (The African American Policy Forum “Standardized Testing” No Date,

http://aapf.org/standardized-testing) Luxus
Standardized tests often measure knowledge of literature, language, or concepts that

white students are more likely to have been exposed to both through better funded
educational environments and through participation in white culture, particularly
among those with more class privilege (i.e. middle and upper class students). Studies
of cultural bias also indicate that school curriculum is heavily geared towards racially
dominant norms, and that students are more resistant to learning material that
contains negative cultural stereotypes or alternately that ignores or under-represents
their own cultures. As a consequence white students will often feel more “at home”
in areas like social studies, history, and English or literature, particularly if they have
not been taught using “multicultural” or culturally inclusive content.
Standardized Tests Measure Educational Privilege More Than Intelligence or Potential
Aside from the problems of stereotype threat, barriers to testing for students with
disabilities, and cultural bias, a major criticism of standardized testing focuses on
what it measures: the extent to which a student has already acquired knowledge
through education. Poor schooling, or “educational disparities” (inequalities in
education based on race or other categories), result in students getting less individual
attention from teachers, having fewer learning aids such as computers, games, field
trips, or other resources, out of date textbooks, and often facing more discipline or
policing in schools. All of these may result in students acquiring less knowledge or
skills, because they are not well taught or get fewer options for learning. Therefore
although standardized tests may measure differences in intelligence or learning
between students who actually have the same resources and backgrounds, on the
large scale, what they measure best is who has had access to higher or lower quality
education. As a way to measure the success or failure of schools, they may be useful –
for instance, if female students or students of color as a group are performing poorly,
then that tells us that educational discrimination is continuing. However, they are
instead used to judge or evaluate students as learners and individuals – whether they
should be allowed to advance, graduate, or go to college. As a consequence, they
become part of the pattern by which under-privileged students are reframed as less
intelligent, or less hard-working, and less deserving of higher education or
employment opportunity.
Removing standardized testing is a key step in removing racial boundaries and

fosters a laundry list of other benefits, Colleges agree.
Lash 15 (Johnathan Lash, President, Hampshire College, “Results of Removing

Standardized Test Scores From College Admissions” 09/24/2015 04:48 pm ET Updated
Sep 23, 2016, Huffington Post, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/results-of-removing-
stand_b_8184230) Luxus
You won’t find our college in the U.S. News & Word Report “Best Colleges” rankings
released this month. Last year Hampshire College decided not to accept SAT/ACT test
scores from high school applicants seeking admission. That got us kicked off the
rankings, disqualified us, per U.S. News rankings criteria. That’s OK with us.
We completely dropped standardized tests from our application as part of our new
mission-driven admissions strategy, distinct from the “test-optional” policy that
hundreds of colleges now follow. If we reduce education to the outcomes of a test,
the only incentive for schools and students to innovate is in the form of improving
test-taking and scores. Teaching to a test becomes stifling for teachers and students,
far from the inspiring, adaptive education which most benefits students. Our greatly
accelerating world needs graduates who are trained to address tough situations with
innovation, ingenuity, entrepreneurship, and a capacity for mobilizing collaboration
and cooperation. We weighed other factors in our decision:
We surveyed our students and learned not one of them had considered rankings when
choosing to apply to colleges; instead they most cared about a college’s mission
Some good students are bad test takers, particularly under stress, such as when a test
may grant or deny college entry; Multiple-choice tests don’t reveal much about a
student
We’ve developed much better, fairer ways to assess students who will thrive at our
college.
In our admissions, we review an applicant’s whole academic and lived experience. We
consider an applicant’s ability to present themselves in essays and interviews, review
their recommendations from mentors, and assess factors such as their community
engagement and entrepreneurism. And yes, we look closely at high school academic
records, though in an unconventional manner. We look for an overarching narrative
that shows motivation, discipline, and the capacity for self-reflection. We look at
grade point average (GPA) as a measure of performance over a range of courses and
time, distinct from a one-test-on-one-day SAT/ACT score. A student’s consistent “A”
grades may be coupled with evidence of curiosity and learning across disciplines, as
well as leadership in civic or social causes. Another student may have overcome
obstacles through determination, demonstrating promise of success in a demanding
program. Strong high school graduates demonstrate purpose, a passion for
authenticity, and commitment to positive change.
We’re seeing remarkable admissions results since disregarding standardized test
scores:
• Our yield, the percentage of students who accepted our invitation to enroll, rose
in a single year from 18% to 26%, an amazing turnaround
The quantity of applications went down but the quality went up, likely because we
made it harder to apply, asking for more essays; Our applicants collectively were
more motivated, mature, disciplined and consistent in their high school years than
past applicants
Class diversity increased to 31% students of color, the most diverse in our history, up
from 21% two years ago
The percentage of students who are the first-generation from their family to attend
college rose from 12% to 18% in this year’s class.
Our “No SAT/ACT policy” has also changed us in ways deeper than data and
demographics: Not once did we sit in an Admissions committee meeting and “wish we
had a test score.” Without the scores, every other detail of the student’s application
became more vivid. Their academic record over four years, letters of
recommendation, essays, in-person interviews, and the optional creative supplements
gave us a more complete portrait than we had seen before. Applicants gave more
attention to their applications including the optional components, putting us in a
much better position to predict their likelihood of success here.
This move away from test scores and disqualification from the U.S. News rankings has
allowed us to innovate in ways we could not before. In other words, we are free to
innovate rather than compromise our mission to satisfy rankings criteria:
• We no longer chase volumes of applications to superficially inflate our
“selectivity” and game the U.S. News rankings. We no longer have to worry that
any applicant will “lower our average SAT/ACT scores” and thus lower our U.S.
News ranking. Instead we choose quality over quantity and focus attention and
resources on each applicant and their full portfolio.
At college fairs and information sessions, we don’t spend time answering high school
families’ questions about our ranking and test score “cut-offs.” Instead we have
conversations about the things that matter: What does our unique academic program
look like and what qualities does a student need to be successful at it?
An unexpected benefit: this shift has saved us significant time and operational
expense. Having a smaller but more targeted, engaged, passionate, and robust
applicant pool, we are able to streamline our resources.
How can U.S. News rankings reliably measure college quality when their data-points
focus primarily on the high school performance of the incoming class in such terms as
GPA, SAT/ACT, class rank, and selectivity? These measures have nothing to do with
the college’s results, except perhaps in the college’s aptitude for marketing and
recruiting. Tests and rankings incentivize schools to conform to test performance and
rankings criteria, at the expense of mission and innovation.
Our shift to a mission-driven approach to admissions is right for Hampshire College
and the right thing to do. We fail students if we reduce them to a standardized test
number tied more to their financial status than achievement. We fail students by
perpetuating the myth that high standardized test scores signal “better” students. We
are in the top one percent of colleges nationwide in the percentage of our
undergraduate alumni who go on earn advanced degrees—this on the strength of an
education where we assess their capabilities narratively, and where we never, not
once, subject them to a numerical or letter grade on a test or course.
At Hampshire College, we face the same financial challenges as many colleges. But
these challenges provide an opportunity to think about who we are and what matters
to us. We can not lose sight of our mission while seeking revenues or chasing rankings.
We are committed to remaining disqualified from the U.S. News rankings. We’re done
with standardized testing, the SAT, and ACT.
The removal of standardized testing empirically boosts diversity in Colleges.
Sanchez 18 (Claudio Sanchez, “Study: Colleges That Ditch The SAT And ACT Can
Enhance Diversity” NPR, April 26, 2018
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/04/26/604875394/study-colleges-that-ditch-
the-sat-and-act-can-enhance-diversity) Luxus
There are now well over 1,000 colleges and universities that don't require SAT or ACT
scores in deciding whom to admit, a number that's growing every year. And a new
study finds that scores on those tests are of little value in predicting students'
performance in college, and raises the question: Should those tests be required at all?
Colleges that have gone "test optional" enroll — and graduate — a higher proportion of
low-income and first generation-students, and more students from diverse
backgrounds, the researchers found in the study, Defining Access: How Test-Optional
Works.
"Our research clearly demonstrates that these students graduate often at a higher
rate," said Steve Syverson, an assistant vice chancellor at the University of
Washington Bothell, and co-author of the study.
"When a college considers going test-optional, one of the first reactions that people,
including alumni, feel is that the college will be admitting less qualified students," he
added. Syverson says the study should reassure admissions officials who've decided to
go test-optional.
Syverson and his team of researchers studied 28 public and private institutions that no
longer require test scores, and tracked about 956,000 individual student records.
Students like Ian Haimowitz, a sophomore at George Washington University, a test-

optional school in Washington D.C.
He says in the beginning, he felt like a fish out of water.
"I know for a fact I'm the first Nicaraguan-American, the first Latino, the first Jewish
Latino that a lot of kids meet," he says.
He adds that when he arrived at GW, he looked around and asked himself, "What am I
doing here with kids who went to private schools and got the best education possible?"
It was a very different world than he grew up in back in New Mexico.
"I remember my freshman year of high school, I didn't have a math teacher. Maybe
that's why you see in my test score that I didn't have a good grounding in math. But I
believed my potential was still there."
Ian was a straight-A student in high school, but his SAT scores were so low he didn't
think any top tier school would accept him. He says not having to submit his test
scores opened the doors to a top selective school.
This year, George Washington received about 26,500 undergraduate applications from
all over the country. Close to 20 percent did not submit their test scores, which GW
says has helped enroll more students from diverse backgrounds.
Still, some researchers question the impact that test-optional admissions policies have
had on schools.
Jack Buckley, a senior vice president at the American Institutes for Research, notes
that while diversity improved at schools that have gone test-optional, that also
happened "at the same rate among those that didn't."
In other words, says Buckley, test-optional schools are not more effective in enrolling
minorities than schools that still require test scores.
Syverson says that's not what the evidence in his study is showing. "We certainly are
not arguing that everyone should abolish test scores," he says. "Test scores do have
some value."
Syverson insists that his study shows that tests can be an obstacle not just for
students who don't test well, but for students from under-served, under-represented
populations.
More importantly, he adds, you can admit pretty good students by looking at
something other than test scores.
That's been the experience at George Washington University. "Our experience is
actually that (students') high school performance predicts college performance
extremely well," says Forrest Maltzman, the university's provost and chief academic
officer.
Maltzman says that whatever helped students be successful in high school tends to
work for them in college: "Standardized tests don't get at that."
Two years worth of data show that students who got into GW with high test scores
performed no better as freshman and sophomores than those who got in without
submitting their test scores, he says.
"The added value of test scores in predicting performance today is really very very
minimal," Maltzman argues. "The best thing these tests match up with is actually
family income."
And that, says Syverson, is consistent with his team's findings. Still, he cautions that
test optional policies are no panacea. They're just another way to make college more
accessible.
"Our study clearly supports the notion that if an institution wants to do a better job
serving traditionally under-served populations, test optional (policies) can provide a
very useful tool."
Gender
The original test the ACT and SAT took inspiration from was biased against women.
Singer 19 (Steven Singer “ Standardized Testing is a Tool of White Supremacy”

Common Dreams, April 6, 2019,
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/04/06/standardized-testing-tool-
white-supremacy) Luxus
Another major eugenicist who made a lasting impact on education was Lewis Terman,
Professor of Education at Stanford University and originator of the Stanford-Binet
intelligence test. In his highly influential 1916 textbook, The Measurement of
Intelligence he wrote:
Among laboring men and servant girls there are thousands like them [feebleminded
individuals]. They are the world’s “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” And yet,
as far as intelligence is concerned, the tests have told the truth. …No amount of
school instruction will ever make them intelligent voters or capable voters in the true
sense of the word.
...The fact that one meets this type with such frequency among Indians, Mexicans,
and negroes suggests quite forcibly that the whole question of racial differences in
mental traits will have to be taken up anew and by experimental methods.
Children of this group should be segregated in special classes and be given instruction
which is concrete and practical. They cannot master, but they can often be made
efficient workers, able to look out for themselves. There is no possibility at present of
convincing society that they should not be allowed to reproduce, although from a
eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem because of their unusually
prolific breeding (91-92).
Education
Removing standardized testing opens the doors to other alternatives that boost
learning and teaching outcomes, increasing educational opportunities.
Strauss 18 (Valerie Strauss, “There are better ways to assess students than with
high-stakes standardized tests. These schools are using them with success.”
Washington Post, April 3, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-
sheet/wp/2018/04/03/there-are-better-ways-to-assess-students-than-with-high-
stakes-standardized-tests-these-schools-are-using-them-with-success/) Luxus
For years, education policy dictated that student standardized test scores be central in
the assessment of students (not to mention teachers and principals and schools) —
despite protests by parents, educators, students and even assessment experts.
More recently, however, we’ve seen reductions in how often students are tested and in
the importance of the results — and now there are schools finding success with
assessment alternatives.
This post details that success and how it can be expanded to other schools and
districts. This was written by Monty Neill, executive director of the National Center for
Fair & Open Testing, a nonprofit group known as FairTest that works to end the abuse
of standardized tests.
By Monty Neill
The misuse and overuse of standardized testing has greatly damaged education. The
harm has been most severe for low-income and minority-group children, often turning
their schools into little more than mind-numbing test-preparation programs. The
evidence clearly shows it has failed to improve educational outcomes. The good news
is the nation is making slow progress toward leaving the high-stakes testing era
behind.
This progress is gradually removing major impediments to genuine assessment reform.
But what would that look like? Are there good models?
The New York Performance Standards Consortium is an excellent example for high
schools that is also relevant to elementary and middle schools. The consortium
focuses on inquiry-driven, project-based learning measured by performance-based
assessments — and its success with the most vulnerable students makes its outcomes
particularly impressive.
The consortium is made up of 38 traditional public high schools. Thirty-six are in New
York City. These follow the same admissions process as other New York City high
schools that do not require entrance exams. The student populations largely mirror the
city’s student body, with nearly identical shares of black and low-income youth and
students with disabilities, and higher percentages of Latinos and English language
learners (ELL). Students enter consortium high schools with slightly lower English
Language Arts and math average scores than citywide averages.
A new report, “Redefining Assessment: Data Report on the New York Performance
Standards Consortium,” shows that consortium schools significantly outperform other
New York City public schools.
It found that the consortium’s dropout rate is significantly lower than that of regular
New York City public schools. Four- and six-year graduation rates for all categories of
students are higher than for the rest of the city. Graduation rates are roughly 50
percent greater for ELLs and students with disabilities. Eighteen months after high
school graduation, the college enrollment rate is 83 percent. That’s 24 points higher
than the city’s. These rates compare favorably with national data on persistence into
the second year of college. The college enrollment rate for “minority males” is more
than double the national average.
Central to the consortium’s success are its “proven practitioner-developed, student-
focused performance assessments.” These are created by teachers and rooted in
inquiry-based curricula and teaching. Students learn to investigate topics in depth and
to explore their own interests within each subject.
To “demonstrate college and career readiness and to qualify for graduation,” all
consortium schools require students to complete four Performance-Based Assessment
Tasks (PBATs). These include an analytic literature essay, a social studies research
paper, a student-designed science experiment, and high-level mathematics problems
with real-world applications. They have both written and oral components. In the oral
component, students respond to questions from a panel of teachers and outside
experts, similar to a graduate school thesis defense.
For example, in social studies, each student must write and defend a research-based
analytic paper on questions that have grown out of a history, government, or
economics class. The Data Report explains that “in some cases the tasks are crafted
by the teacher and in other instances by the student.” The report includes samples of
the wide range of interests addressed by the students.
Avram Barlowe, who teaches history at consortium member Urban Academy, says
PBATs require students to learn perseverance, how to assess and apply evidence, and
explain their thinking in written and oral forms. They “demand that students learn,
through practice, how to read, write, calculate, observe and research in a critical
manner.”
A DVD series, “Teacher to Teacher,” shows how teachers and students build their
courses to attain these ends. One student said: “Being educated at a consortium
school had a profound effect on my life. Every student is entitled to an educational
community as enriching and inspiring as mine was.”
School Improvement and Accountability
The consortium has permission from the New York Department of Education to
administer only one of the five required state graduation tests, English Language Arts.
The PBATs, generally completed in 11th and 12th grades, replace the Regents exams
in other subjects and for school accountability.
All the PBATs and oral defenses completed for the common graduation requirement
are evaluated using consortium-wide scoring guides. (They are in the report.) Written
and revised as needed by consortium teachers, they enable consistent evaluations
across schools. Samples of student work are blindly re-scored to evaluate both
reliability of scoring and the challenge level of teacher assignments. Carefully selected
examples help scorers and students think about high-quality work. These scoring
guides could be adopted by other schools as well as states.
The college persistence data show that the extensive reading, writing and long-term
planning required for the performance assessments prepare students well for higher
education. Consortium head and FairTest board member Ann Cook argues this
evidence is far more valuable than test scores.
The consortium’s success challenges other schools and states to overhaul assessment
and put educators back in control of assessment. The results give the lie to the claim
that low-income youth need a tightly controlled intellectual and social environment or
top-down mandates to succeed. The focus on teacher- and student-led performance
assessments enables true instructional “personalization.”
The consortium is also collaborating with elementary and middle-school teachers to
design new assessments. These enable close observation and documentation of
student growth and support inquiry-focused education. The City’s Education
Department has approved the consortium’s assessment as one of the options for
schools to use when assessing preschool children.
However, an overhaul in Grades 3-8 runs into federal Every Student Succeeds Act
(ESSA) mandates. One path forward is for states to take advantage of ESSA’s
Innovative Assessment pilot project. The pilot is based on New Hampshire’s success in
transitioning from standardized tests to teacher-crafted performance tasks. FairTest’s
report, “Assessment Matters,” uses New Hampshire, the consortium, and other strong
examples to show how states can build a new system that ends the educational
domination of standardized tests. And the consortium shows how implementing
performance assessment can have great success where it most matters – for the
students.
Studies prove increases in educational attainment account for the largest part of
economic growth – it’s the best thing we can do for our economy.
Keating 15 (Raymond J. Keating, chief economist with the Small Business &
Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council) - a nonpartisan, nonprofit small business
advocacy group. FEBRUARY 2015 SCHOOL CHOICE AND ECONOMIC GROWTH¶ A
Research Synthesis on How Market Forces Can Fuel Educational Attainment The
Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice edchoice.org
http://www.edchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/School-Choice-and-Economic-
Growth.pdf) Luxus
Economist Yolanda K. Kodrzycki has pointed out, “The most detailed accounting of the
role of educational attainment in U.S. growth is found in a series of papers by Dale
Jorgenson and various co-authors. These studies conclude that increases in labor
quality via rising educational attainment have had a measurable effect on economic
growth in recent decades.”28 For example, in a 1993 study, Jorgenson and Barbara M.
Fraumeni explained, “[I]nvestment in human beings, like investment in tangible forms of
capital such as buildings and industrial equipment, generates a stream of future
benefits…. One of the most important benefits of education is higher income from
participation in the labor market. This increase in income is the key to understanding
the link between investment in education and economic growth. People differ
enormously in effectiveness on the job. Substituting more effective for less effective
workers increases output per worker. More highly educated or better-trained people
are more productive than less educated or poorly trained people. However, education
and training are costly, so that substitution of people with more education and training
requires investment in human capital.”29 The authors summed up: “The most
important finding is that investment in human and nonhuman capital accounts for the
largest part of U.S. economic growth during the postwar period.”30
Strong academic achievement necessary to econ growth and competetiveness.
Cooper 12 (Donna Cooper, Adam Hersh, and Ann O'Leary Center for American
Progress, August 21, 2012, 9:00 am The Competition that Really Matters¶ Comparing
U.S., Chinese, and Indian Investments in the Next-Generation Workforce¶
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2012/08/21/11983/the-
competition-that-really-matters/) Luxus
The U.S. economy is weakening relative to our global competitors. Recent economic
growth is 40 percent below any other growth period since World War II as other
economies around the globe draw in more investment, both foreign and domestic. In
contrast, despite still being the world’s leading recipient of direct foreign investment,
business investment overall in the United States between 2001 and 2007 was the
slowest in U.S. history.
Meanwhile, competition is on the rise. From 1980 to 2011 China increased its share of
world economic output from 2 percent to 14 percent. And India more than doubled its
output during that period, from 2.5 percent of global production to 5.7 percent. The
U.S. share of the world economy fell to 19 percent from 25 percent.
While increasing global competition is inevitable, lackluster U.S. performance need not
be. Indeed, rising growth and incomes in other countries present potential new
opportunities and markets for American workers and companies. But if the United
States means to continue to lead the world and to share our prosperity with it, U.S.
policymakers must deploy an American strategy that is responsive to modern
economic challenges—a strategy that makes it possible for every American family to
ensure that children entering adulthood are prepared to find a successful place in the
global economy.
What should the strategy be? Economists of all stripes point to a robust pipeline of
skilled workers as the essential ingredient of a strong and growing economy. Indeed,
the two countries most rapidly gaining on the United States in terms of economic
competitiveness—China and India—have ambitious national strategies of investing and
promoting improved educational outcomes for children to strengthen their positions as
contenders in the global economy.
The good news is that the successful history of the American middle class since World
War II offers crucial insights for how to grow the world’s best-skilled, most innovative,
and most dynamic workforce. Those insights, combined with best practices being
employed in other developed economies, offer the parameters for a winning American
economic strategy.
That’s what this report attempts to do. It takes stock of our own nation’s human capital
challenges, explores the competitive strategies underway in India and China, then uses
a comprehensive review of the economic literature to create a broad set of principles
for U.S. lawmakers and policy experts to tackle the greatest economic challenge in a
generation: How to ensure that all American children have the opportunity to become
high-skilled workers prepared to compete in a global economy.
This is obviously a sweeping and complex topic, which we document in detail in the
main pages of this report. But here is a brief summary of the report’s findings and
recommendations.
The U.S. competitiveness problem and the case for investing in children
Competition from rapidly growing countries such as China and India are changing
business norms and the links between national economies. We are quite familiar with
what economists call “global labor arbitrage,” the substitution of high-wage workers in
advanced economy countries with low-wage workers in developing economies. That’s
led to a global re-ordering of production, jobs, and growth.
More recently, technological advances in telecommunications and transportation, as
well as skills development in the developing world, are dragging more U.S. industries—
including computer programming, high-tech manufacturing, and service sectors—into
international competition. This development is feeding a mounting demand for high-
skilled labor around the world.
To position the United States for the future, substantial investments are needed in
research, infrastructure, and education. The most important of these areas to address
is education. Why? Because as this report shows, the overwhelming economic
evidence points to education—and human capital investments, generally—as the key
drivers of economic competitiveness in the long term.
Harvard University economist Gregory Mankiw, for example, has shown that in
advanced countries such as the United States, human capital investment had three
times the positive effect on economic growth as did physical investment. And
educational investment is particularly important in early childhood development and
learning, according to growth economists. The return on investment from interventions
such as prenatal care and early childhood programs is higher than for virtually any
class of financial assets over time, according to Nobel Prize winning economist James
Heckman.
The academic literature also shows that failing to provide broad opportunities for
nurturing, learning, and productive development harms economic growth and national
competitiveness.
Having established the primacy in human capital investments as the key to U.S. long-
term economic competitiveness, it’s important for policymakers and the public to
understand how American children are faring today, and where they need to catch up.
Competitiveness key to US leadership and sustained hegemony
Tellis 09 (Ashley Tellis, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, “Preserving Hegemony: The Strategic Tasks Facing the United States, Global
Asia
http://www.globalasia.org/Back_Issues/Volume_4_Number_1_Spring_2009/Preserving
_Hegemony_The_Strategic_Tasks_Facing_the_United_States.html) Luxus
Second, and equally importantly, who wins in the ensuing struggle — whether that
struggle is short or long, peaceful or violent — is as important as by how much. This is
particularly relevant because the past record unerringly confirms that the strongest
surviving state in the winning coalition usually turns out to be the new primate after the
conclusion of every systemic struggle. Both Great Britain and the United States
secured their respective ascendancies in this way. Great Britain rose through the
wreckage of the wars with Louis XIV and with Napoleon. The United States did so
through the carnage of the hot wars with Hitler and Hirohito, finally achieving true
hegemony through the detritus of the Cold War with Stalin and his successors. If the
United States is to sustain this hard-earned hegemony over the long term, while
countering as necessary a future Chinese challenge should it emerge, Washington will
need to amass the largest differential in power relative not only to its rivals but also to
its friends and allies. Particularly in an era of globalization, this objective cannot be
achieved without a conscious determination to follow sensible policies that sustain
economic growth, minimize unproductive expenditures, strengthen the national
innovation system, maintain military capabilities second to none and enjoin political
behaviors that evoke the approbation of allies and neutral states alike.
The successful pursuit of such policies will enable the United States to cope more
effectively with near-term challenges as well, including the war on terrorism and
managing threatening regional powers, and will ineluctably require — to return full
circle — engaging the central tasks identified earlier as facing the new US
administration. These tasks involve the need to satisfactorily define the character of
desirable US hegemony, the need for sound policies that will renew the foundations of
US strength, and the need to recover the legitimacy of US purposes and actions. What
is clearly implied is that the principal burdens facing the next US president transcend
Asia writ large. The success of these pursuits, however, will inevitably impact Asia in
desirable ways, even as the resolution of several specifically Asian problems would
invariably contribute to the conclusive attainment of these larger encompassing goals.
US hegemony solves great power wars – acquiescence is not an option
Kagan 17 (Robert Kagan senior fellow at the Brookings Institute 2017 “Backing Into
World War III” http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/06/backing-into-world-war-iii-russia-
china-trump-
obama/?utm_content=buffera4da4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&ut
m_campaign=buffer) Luxus
Think of two significant trend lines in the world today. One is the increasing ambition
and activism of the two great revisionist powers, Russia and China. The other is the
declining confidence, capacity, and will of the democratic world, and especially of the
United States, to maintain the dominant position it has held in the international system
since 1945. As those two lines move closer, as the declining will and capacity of the
United States and its allies to maintain the present world order meet the increasing
desire and capacity of the revisionist powers to change it, we will reach the moment at
which the existing order collapses and the world descends into a phase of brutal
anarchy, as it has three times in the past two centuries. The cost of that descent, in
lives and treasure, in lost freedoms and lost hope, will be staggering. Where exactly we
are in this classic scenario today, how close the trend lines are to that intersection
point is, as always, impossible to know. Are we three years away from a global crisis,
or 15? Americans tend to take the fundamental stability of the international order for
granted, even while complaining about the burden the United States carries in
preserving that stability. History shows that world orders do collapse, however, and
when they do it is often unexpected, rapid, and violent. The late 18th century was the
high point of the Enlightenment in Europe, before the continent fell suddenly into the
abyss of the Napoleonic Wars. In the first decade of the 20th century, the world’s
smartest minds predicted an end to great-power conflict as revolutions in
communication and transportation knit economies and people closer together. The
most devastating war in history came four years later. The apparent calm of the
postwar 1920s became the crisis-ridden 1930s and then another world war. Where
exactly we are in this classic scenario today, how close the trend lines are to that
intersection point is, as always, impossible to know. Are we three years away from a
global crisis, or 15? That we are somewhere on that path, however, is unmistakable.
And while it is too soon to know what effect Donald Trump’s presidency will have on
these trends, early signs suggest that the new administration is more likely to hasten us
toward crisis than slow or reverse these trends. The further accommodation of Russia
can only embolden Vladimir Putin, and the tough talk with China will likely lead Beijing
to test the new administration’s resolve militarily. Whether the president is ready for
such a confrontation is entirely unclear. For the moment, he seems not to have thought
much about the future ramifications of his rhetoric and his actions. China and Russia
are classic revisionist powers. Although both have never enjoyed greater security from
foreign powers than they do today — Russia from its traditional enemies to the west,
China from its traditional enemy in the east — they are dissatisfied with the current
global configuration of power. Both seek to restore the hegemonic dominance they
once enjoyed in their respective regions. For China, that means dominance of East
Asia, with countries like Japan, South Korea, and the nations of Southeast Asia both
acquiescing to Beijing’s will and acting in conformity with China’s strategic, economic,
and political preferences. That includes American influence withdrawn to the eastern
Pacific, behind the Hawaiian Islands. For Russia, it means hegemonic influence in
Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which Moscow has traditionally regarded
as either part of its empire or part of its sphere of influence. Both Beijing and Moscow
seek to redress what they regard as an unfair distribution of power, influence, and
honor in the U.S.-led postwar global order. As autocracies, both feel threatened by the
dominant democratic powers in the international system and by the democracies on
their borders. Both regard the United States as the principal obstacle to their
ambitions, and therefore both seek to weaken the American-led international security
order that stands in the way of their achieving what they regard as their rightful
destinies. President Xi Jinping makes a speech during the opening ceremony of the
G20 Leaders Summit as President Barack Obama, left, and President Vladimir Putin,
right, listen on Sept. 4, 2016 in Hangzhou, China. (Photo credit: NICOLAS ASFOURI -
Pool/Getty Images) It was good while it lasted Until fairly recently, Russia and China
have faced considerable, almost insuperable, obstacles in achieving their objectives.
The chief obstacle has been the power and coherence of the international order itself
and its principal promoter and defender. The American-led system of political and
military alliances, especially in the two critical regions of Europe and East Asia, has
presented China and Russia with what Dean Acheson once referred to as “situations of
strength” that have required them to pursue their ambitions cautiously and, since the
end of the Cold War, to defer serious efforts to disrupt the international system. During
the era of American primacy, China and Russia have participated in and for the most
part been beneficiaries of the open international economic system the United States
created and helps sustain; so long as that system functions, they have had more to
gain by playing in it than by challenging and overturning it. The system has checked
their ambitions in both positive and negative ways. During the era of American primacy,
China and Russia have participated in and for the most part been beneficiaries of the
open international economic system the United States created and helps sustain; so
long as that system functions, they have had more to gain by playing in it than by
challenging and overturning it. The political and strategic aspects of the order,
however, have worked to their detriment. The growth and vibrancy of democratic
government in the two decades following the collapse of Soviet communism posed a
continual threat to the ability of rulers in Beijing and Moscow to maintain control, and
since the end of the Cold War they have regarded every advance of democratic
institutions — especially the geographical advance of liberal democracies close to their
borders — as an existential threat. That’s for good reason: Autocratic powers since the
days of Klemens von Metternich have always feared the contagion of liberalism. The
mere existence of democracies on their borders, the global free flow of information
they cannot control, the dangerous connection between free market capitalism and
political freedom — all pose a threat to rulers who depend on keeping restive forces in
their own countries in check. The continual challenge to the legitimacy of their rule
posed by the U.S.-supported democratic order has therefore naturally made them
hostile both to that order and to the United States. But, until recently, a preponderance
of domestic and international forces has dissuaded them from confronting the order
directly. Chinese rulers have had to worry about what an unsuccessful confrontation
with the United States might do to their legitimacy at home. Even Putin has pushed
only against open doors, as in Syria, where the United States responded passively to
his probes. He has been more cautious when confronted by even marginal U.S. and
European opposition, as in Ukraine. The greatest check on Chinese and Russian
ambitions has been the military and economic power of the United States and its allies
in Europe and Asia. China, although increasingly powerful, has had to contemplate
facing the combined military and economic strength of the world’s superpower and
some very formidable regional powers linked by alliance or common strategic interest
— including Japan, India, and South Korea, as well as smaller but still potent nations
like Vietnam and Australia. Russia has had to face the United States and its NATO
allies. When united, these U.S.-led alliances present a daunting challenge to a
revisionist power that can call on few allies of its own for assistance. Even were the
Chinese to score an early victory in a conflict, such as the military subjection of Taiwan
or a naval battle in the South or East China Sea, they would have to contend over time
with the combined industrial productive capacities of some of the world’s richest and
most technologically advanced nations and the likely cutoff of access to foreign
markets on which their own economy depends. A weaker Russia, with its depleted
population and oil- and gas-dependent economy, would face an even greater
challenge. For decades, the strong global position enjoyed by the United States and its
allies has discouraged any serious challenge. So long as the United States was
perceived as a dependable ally, Chinese and Russian leaders feared that aggressive
moves would backfire and possibly bring their regimes down. This is what the political
scientist William Wohlforth once described as the inherent stability of the unipolar
order: As dissatisfied regional powers sought to challenge the status quo, their alarmed
neighbors turned to the distant American superpower to contain their ambitions. And it
worked. The United States stepped up, and Russia and China largely backed down —
or were preempted before acting at all. Faced with these obstacles, the best option for
the two revisionist great powers has always been to hope for or, if possible, engineer a
weakening of the U.S.-supported world order from within, either by separating the
United States from its allies or by raising doubts about the U.S. commitment and
thereby encouraging would-be allies and partners to forgo the strategic protection of
the liberal world order and seek accommodation with its challengers. The present
system has therefore depended not only on American power but on coherence and
unity at the heart of the democratic world. The United States has had to play its part as
the principal guarantor of the order, especially in the military and strategic realm, but
the order’s ideological and economic core — the democracies of Europe and East Asia
and the Pacific — has also had to remain relatively healthy and confident. In recent
years, both pillars have been shaken. The democratic order has weakened and
fractured at its core. Difficult economic conditions, the recrudescence of nationalism
and tribalism, weak and uncertain political leadership and unresponsive mainstream
political parties, and a new era of communications that seems to strengthen rather
than weaken tribalism have together produced a crisis of confidence not only in the
democracies but in what might be called the liberal enlightenment project. That project
elevated universal principles of individual rights and common humanity over ethnic,
racial, religious, national, or tribal differences. It looked to a growing economic
interdependence to create common interests across boundaries and to the
establishment of international institutions to smooth differences and facilitate
cooperation among nations. Instead, the past decade has seen the rise of tribalism and
nationalism, an increasing focus on the Other in all societies, and a loss of confidence
in government, in the capitalist system, and in democracy. We are witnessing the
opposite of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history.” History is returning with a vengeance
and with it all the darker aspects of the human soul, including, for many, the perennial
human yearning for a strong leader to provide firm guidance in a time of confusion and
incoherence. This crisis of the enlightenment project may have been inevitable, a
recurring phenomenon produced by inherent flaws in both capitalism and democracy.
In the 1930s, economic crisis and rising nationalism led many to doubt whether either
democracy or capitalism was preferable to alternatives such as fascism and
communism. And it is no coincidence that the crisis of confidence in liberalism
accompanied a simultaneous breakdown of the strategic order. Then, the question was
whether the United States as the outside power would step in and save or remake an
order that Britain and France were no longer able or willing to sustain. Now, the
question is whether the United States is willing to continue upholding the order that it
created and which depends entirely on American power or whether Americans are
prepared to take the risk — if they even understand the risk — of letting the order
collapse into chaos and conflict. That willingness has been in doubt for some time, well
before the election of Trump and even before the election of Barack Obama.
Increasingly in the quarter century after the end of the Cold War, Americans have been
wondering why they bear such an unusual and outsized responsibility for preserving
global order when their own interests are not always clearly served — and when the
United States seems to be making all the sacrifices while others benefit. Few
remember the reasons why the United States took on this abnormal role after the
calamitous two world wars of the 20th century. The millennial generation born after the
end of the Cold War can hardly be expected to understand the lasting significance of
the political, economic, and security structures established after World War II. Nor are
they likely to learn much about it in high school and college textbooks obsessed with
noting the evils and follies of American “imperialism.” Both the crises of the first half of
the 20th century and its solution in 1945 have been forgotten. As a consequence, the
American public’s patience with the difficulties and costs inherent in playing that global
role have worn thin. Whereas previous unsuccessful and costly wars, in Korea in 1950
and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and previous economic downturns, such as with
the energy crisis and crippling “stagflation” of the mid- to late 1970s, did not have the
effect of turning Americans against global involvement, the unsuccessful wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan and the financial crisis of 2008 have. The Obama administration
responded to the George W. Bush administration’s failures in Iraq and Afghanistan not
by restoring American power and influence but by further reducing them. Obama
pursued an ambivalent approach to global involvement, but his core strategy was
retrenchment. In his actions and his statements, he critiqued and repudiated previous
American strategy and reinforced a national mood favoring a much less active role in
the world and much narrower definition of American interests. The Obama
administration responded to the George W. Bush administration’s failures in Iraq and
Afghanistan not by restoring American power and influence but by further reducing
them. Although the administration promised to “rebalance” American foreign policy to
Asia and the Pacific, in practice that meant reducing global commitments and
accommodating revisionist powers at the expense of allies’ security. The
administration’s early attempt to “reset” relations with Russia struck the first blow to
America’s reputation as a reliable ally. Coming just after the Russian invasion of
Georgia, it appeared to reward Moscow’s aggression. The reset also came at the
expense of U.S. allies in Central Europe, as programs of military cooperation with
Poland and the Czech Republic were jettisoned to appease the Kremlin. This attempt
at accommodation, moreover, came just as Russian policy toward the West — not to
mention Putin’s repressive policies toward his own people — was hardening. Far from
eliciting better behavior by Russia, the reset emboldened Putin to push harder. Then, in
2014, the West’s inadequate response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and seizure
of Crimea, though better than the Bush administration’s anemic response to the
invasion of Georgia (Europe and the United States at least imposed sanctions after the
invasion of Ukraine), still indicated reluctance on the part of the U.S. administration to
force Russia back in its declared sphere of interest. Obama, in fact, publicly
acknowledged Russia’s privileged position in Ukraine even as the United States and
Europe sought to protect that country’s sovereignty. In Syria, the administration
practically invited Russian intervention through Washington’s passivity, and certainly
did nothing to discourage it, thus reinforcing the growing impression of an America in
retreat across the Middle East (an impression initially created by the unnecessary and
unwise withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq). Subsequent Russian actions that
increased the refugee flow from Syria into Europe also brought no American response,
despite the evident damage of those refugee flows to European democratic
institutions. The signal sent by the Obama administration was that none of this was
really America’s problem. In East Asia, the Obama administration undermined its
otherwise commendable efforts to assert America’s continuing interest and influence.
The so-called “pivot” proved to be mostly rhetoric. Inadequate overall defense
spending precluded the necessary increases in America’s regional military presence in
a meaningful way, and the administration allowed a critical economic component, the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, to die in Congress, chiefly a victim of its own party’s
opposition. The pivot also suffered from the general perception of American retreat and
retrenchment, encouraged both by presidential rhetoric and by administration policies,
especially in the Middle East. The premature, unnecessary, and strategically costly
withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, followed by the accommodating agreement
with Iran on its nuclear program, and then by the failure to hold the line on threats to
use force against Syria’s president, was noticed around the world. Despite the Obama
administration’s insistence that American strategy should be geared toward Asia, U.S.
allies have been left wondering how reliable the U.S. commitment might be when
facing the challenge posed by China. The Obama administration erred in imagining that
it could retrench globally while reassuring allies in Asia that the United States remained
a reliable partner. The effect on the two great revisionist powers, meanwhile, has been
to encourage greater efforts at revision. In recent years, both powers have been more
active in challenging the order, and one reason has been the growing perception that
the United States is losing both the will and the capacity to sustain it. The
psychological and political effect of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the United
States, which has been to weaken support for American global engagement across the
board, has provided an opening. It is a myth, prevalent among liberal democracies,
that revisionist powers can be pacified by acquiescence to their demands. American
retrenchment, by this logic, ought to reduce tensions and competition. Unfortunately,
the opposite is more often the case. The more secure revisionist powers feel, the more
ambitious they are in seeking to change the system to their advantage because the
resistance to change appears to be lessening. Just look at both China and Russia:
Never in the past two centuries have they enjoyed greater security from external attack
than they do today. Yet both remain dissatisfied and have become increasingly
aggressive in pressing what they perceive to be their growing advantage in a system
where the United States no longer puts up as much resistance as it used to. The two
great powers have differed, so far, chiefly in their methods. China has until now been
the more careful, cautious, and patient of the two, seeking influence primarily through
its great economic clout and using its growing military power chiefly as a source of
deterrence and regional intimidation. It has not resorted to the outright use of force yet,
although its actions in the South China Sea are military in nature, with strategic
objectives. And while Beijing has been wary of using military force until now, it would
be a mistake to assume it will continue show such restraint in the future — possibly the
near future. Revisionist great powers with growing military capabilities invariably make
use of those capabilities when they believe the possible gains outweigh the risks and
costs. If the Chinese perceive America’s commitment to its allies and its position in the
region to be weakening, or its capacity to make good on those commitments to be
declining, then they will be more inclined to attempt to use the power they are
acquiring in order to achieve their objectives. As the trend lines draw closer, this is
where the first crisis is likely to take place. Russia has been far more aggressive. It has
invaded two neighboring states — Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 — and in both
cases hived off significant portions of those two nations’ sovereign territory. Given the
intensity with which the United States and its allies would have responded to such
actions during the four decades of the Cold War, their relative lack of a response must
have sent quite a signal to the Kremlin — and to others around the world. Moscow
then followed by sending substantial forces into Syria. It has used its dominance of
European energy markets as a weapon. It has used cyberwarfare against neighboring
states. It has engaged in extensive information warfare on a global scale. More
recently, the Russian government has deployed a weapon that the Chinese either lack
or have so far chosen not to deploy — the ability to interfere directly in Western
electoral processes, both to influence their outcomes and more generally to discredit
the democratic system. Russia funds right-wing populist parties across Europe,
including in France; uses its media outlets to support favored candidates and attack
others; has disseminated “fake news” to influence voters, most recently in Italy’s
referendum; and has hacked private communications in order to embarrass those it
wishes to defeat. This past year, Russia for the first time employed this powerful
weapon against the United States, heavily interfering in the American electoral process.
Although Russia, by any measure, is the weaker of the two great powers, it has so far
had more success than China in accomplishing its objective of dividing and disrupting
the West. Its interference in Western democratic political systems, its information
warfare, and its role in creating increased refugee flows from Syria into Europe have all
contributed to the sapping of Europeans’ confidence in their political systems and
established political parties. Its military intervention in Syria, contrasted with American
passivity, has exacerbated existing doubts about American staying power in the
region. Beijing, until recently, has succeeded mostly in driving American allies closer to
the United States out of concern for growing Chinese power — but that could change
quickly, especially if the United States continues on its present trajectory. There are
signs that regional powers are already recalculating: East Asian countries are
contemplating regional trade agreements that need not include the United States or, in
the case of the Philippines, are actively courting China, while a number of nations in
Eastern and Central Europe are moving closer to Russia, both strategically and
ideologically. We could soon face a situation where both great revisionist powers are
acting aggressively, including by military means, posing extreme challenges to
American and global security in two regions at once. Then-Republican presidential
candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Macomb Community College on
March 4, 2016 in Warren, Michigan. (Photo credit: SCOTT OLSON/Getty Images) The
dispensable nation All this comes as Americans continue to signal their reluctance to
uphold the world order they created after World War II. Donald Trump was not the only
major political figure in this past election season to call for a much narrower definition
of American interests and a lessening of the burdens of American global leadership.
President Obama and Bernie Sanders both expressed a version of “America First.” The
candidate who spoke often of America’s “indispensable” global role lost, and even
Hillary Clinton felt compelled to jettison her earlier support for the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. At the very least, there should be doubts about the American public’s
willingness to continue supporting the international alliance structure, denying the
revisionist powers their desired spheres of influence and regional hegemony, and
upholding democratic and free market norms in the international system. The
weakness at the core of the democratic world and the shedding by the United States
of global responsibilities have already encouraged a more aggressive revisionism by
the dissatisfied powers. Coming as it does at a time of growing great-power
competition, this narrowing definition of American interests will likely hasten a return to
the instability and clashes of previous eras. The weakness at the core of the
democratic world and the shedding by the United States of global responsibilities have
already encouraged a more aggressive revisionism by the dissatisfied powers. That, in
turn, has further sapped the democratic world’s confidence and willingness to resist.
History suggests that this is a downward spiral from which it will be difficult to recover,
absent a rather dramatic shift of course by the United States. That shift may come too
late. It was in the 1920s, not the 1930s, that the democratic powers made the most
important and ultimately fatal decisions. Americans’ disillusionment after World War I
led them to reject playing a strategic role in preserving the peace in Europe and Asia,
even though America was the only nation powerful enough to play that role. The
withdrawal of the United States helped undermine the will of Britain and France and
encouraged Germany in Europe and Japan in Asia to take increasingly aggressive
actions to achieve regional dominance. Most Americans were convinced that nothing
that happened in Europe or Asia could affect their security. It took World War II to
convince them that was a mistake. The “return to normalcy” of the 1920 election
seemed safe and innocent at the time, but the essentially selfish policies pursued by
the world’s strongest power in the following decade helped set the stage for the
calamities of the 1930s. By the time the crises began to erupt, it was already too late to
avoid paying the high price of global conflict. In such times, it has always been
tempting to believe that geopolitical competition can be solved through efforts at
cooperation and accommodation. The idea, recently proposed by Niall Ferguson, that
the world can be ruled jointly by the United States, Russia, and China is not a new one.
Such condominiums have been proposed and attempted in every era when the
dominant power or powers in the international system sought to fend off challenges
from the dissatisfied revisionist powers. It has rarely worked. Revisionist great powers
are not easy to satisfy short of complete capitulation. Their sphere of influence is never
quite large enough to satisfy their pride or their expanding need for security. In fact,
their very expansion creates insecurity, by frightening neighbors and leading them to
band together against the rising power. The satiated power that Otto von Bismarck
spoke of is rare. The German leaders who succeeded him were not satisfied even with
being the strongest power in Europe. In their efforts to grow still stronger, they
produced coalitions against them, making their fear of “encirclement” a self-fulfilling
prophecy. BEIJING, CHINA – OCTOBER
20: President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping
review the honor guard as they attend a welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the
People on October 20, 2016 in Beijing, China. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is
on a four-day state visit to China, his first since taking power in late June, with the aim
of improving bilateral relations. (Photo by Thomas Peter-Pool/Getty Images) Give ‘em
an inch, they’ll take a mile This is a common trait of rising powers — their actions
produce the very insecurity they claim to want to redress. They harbor grievances
against the existing order (both Germany and Japan considered themselves the “have-
not” nations), but their grievances cannot be satisfied so long as the existing order
remains in place. Marginal concession is not enough, but the powers upholding the
existing order will not make more than marginal concessions unless they are
compelled to by superior strength. Japan, the aggrieved “have-not” nation of the
1930s, did not satisfy itself by taking Manchuria in 1931. Germany, the aggrieved
victim of Versailles, did not satisfy itself by bringing the Germans of the Sudetenland
back into the fold. They demanded much more, and they could not persuade the
democratic powers to give them what they wanted without resorting to war. Granting
the revisionist powers spheres of influence is not a recipe for peace and tranquility but
rather an invitation to inevitable conflict. Granting the revisionist powers spheres of
influence is not a recipe for peace and tranquility but rather an invitation to inevitable
conflict. Russia’s historical sphere of influence does not end in Ukraine. It begins in
Ukraine. It extends to the Baltic States, to the Balkans, and to the heart of Central
Europe. And within Russia’s traditional sphere of influence, other nations do not enjoy
autonomy or even sovereignty. There was no independent Poland under the Russian
Empire nor under the Soviet Union. For China to gain its desired sphere of influence in
East Asia will mean that, when it chooses, it can close the region off to the United
States — not only militarily but politically and economically, too. China will, of course,
inevitably exercise great sway in its own region, as will Russia. The United States
cannot and should not prevent China from being an economic powerhouse. Nor should
it wish for the collapse of Russia. The United States should even welcome competition
of a certain kind. Great powers compete across multiple planes — economic,
ideological, and political, as well as military. Competition in most spheres is necessary
and even healthy. Within the liberal order, China can compete economically and
successfully with the United States; Russia can thrive in the international economic
order upheld by the democratic system, even if it is not itself democratic. But military
and strategic competition is different. The security situation undergirds everything else.
It remains true today as it has since World War II that only the United States has the
capacity and the unique geographical advantages to provide global security and
relative stability. There is no stable balance of power in Europe or Asia without the
United States. And while we can talk about “soft power” and “smart power,” they have
been and always will be of limited value when confronting raw military power. Despite
all of the loose talk of American decline, it is in the military realm where U.S.
advantages remain clearest. Even in other great powers’ backyards, the United States
retains the capacity, along with its powerful allies, to deter challenges to the security
order. But without a U.S. willingness to maintain the balance in far-flung regions of the
world, the system will buckle under the unrestrained military competition of regional
powers. Part of that willingness entails defense spending commensurate with
America’s continuing global role. For the United States to accept a return to spheres of
influence would not calm the international waters. It would merely return the world to
the condition it was in at the end of the 19th century, with competing great powers
clashing over inevitably intersecting and overlapping spheres. These unsettled,
disordered conditions produced the fertile ground for the two destructive world wars of
the first half of the 20th century. The collapse of the British-dominated world order on
the oceans, the disruption of the uneasy balance of power on the European continent
as a powerful unified Germany took shape, and the rise of Japanese power in East Asia
all contributed to a highly competitive international environment in which dissatisfied
great powers took the opportunity to pursue their ambitions in the absence of any
power or group of powers to unite in checking them. The result was an unprecedented
global calamity and death on an epic scale. It has been the great accomplishment of
the U.S.-led world order in the 70 years since the end of World War II that this kind of
competition has been held in check and great power conflicts have been avoided. It
will be more than a shame if Americans were to destroy what they created — and not
because it was no longer possible to sustain but simply because they chose to stop
trying.
Amending CP
Colleges and Universities ought to be allowed to use standardized tests on the
grounds that they are amended the test to provide more predicable readings and
prevent school districts from using the test to evaluate schools, districts, and
teachers.
Standardized tests provide too much of a benefit to be removed entirely. The

counterplan allows for them to be altered.
Wexler 18 (Natalie Wexler, “What To Do About Standardized Tests” Forbes,

November 15, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2018/11/15/what-
to-do-about-standardized-tests/#dba53ed3074f) Luxus
Test scores provide a valuable general barometer of how much knowledge different
groups of students have been able to accumulate. But there are reasons to build
knowledge that are more important than test scores. The more knowledge you have,
the better able you are to understand high school- and college-level texts—or
newspapers, or on-the-job instruction manuals. People with more knowledge have a
better chance of getting good jobs and exercising their responsibilities as citizens.
The question is whether standardized tests are more of a help or a hindrance in
addressing the gap in knowledge. On the one hand, the tests uncover inequities that
are masked by schools’ grading systems, thereby holding educators’ feet to the fire.
It’s not as though schools were doing a great job of building knowledge, or equalizing
access to it, before high-stakes testing came along.
On the other hand, because of widespread misunderstanding about what the tests
measure, testing may have made the situation even worse. When educators feel
they’re being evaluated on the basis of their students’ skills, it can be hard for them
to take in the message about the importance of building knowledge.
The counterplan solves cultural bias and school impact
Wexler 18 (Natalie Wexler, “What To Do About Standardized Tests” Forbes,

November 15, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2018/11/15/what-
to-do-about-standardized-tests/#dba53ed3074f) Luxus
There’s no ideal solution, but here’s what I recommend: Keep giving tests, but make
the topics of reading passages more predictable, thereby providing an incentive for
teachers to cover content and not just "skills." Alternatively, ease up on using test
scores to rate schools and evaluate individual teachers. Either of these measures
could give educators breathing room to consider whether what and how they teach is
providing all students—and especially the most vulnerable—with the knowledge they
need and the skills that can only develop in tandem with it.
Grade Inflation DA
Standardized Tests are key to prevent grade inflation. Without them, they grow
quicker.
Koedel 18 (Cory R. Koedel “As grades inflate, standardized tests keep us grounded”
Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 9/21/2018,
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/grades-inflate-standardized-tests-
keep-us-grounded-0) Luxus
I enjoyed reading Fordham’s recent study by Seth Gershenson on a topic that has
always been high on my list of interests: grade inflation.
Grade inflation has a number of important implications for education policy at the K–12
and postsecondary levels, but is notoriously difficult to measure. Some of the more
compelling evidence on the consequences of grade inflation include (a) Philip
Babcock’s 2010 study showing that students with higher grade expectations give less
effort, and (b) Kristin Butcher, Patrick McEwan, and Akila Weerapana’s 2014 study
showing that students choose college majors based in part on differences in the
grades awarded across departments. These studies show that grade inflation has
important implications for how much and what type of human capital is produced in
our society.
Gershenson performs a clever analysis to help us better understand grade inflation in
K–12 schools. The basic idea of his research design is to benchmark course grades
against scores on end-of-course exams (EOCs) in Algebra I. While neither the EOC nor
the course grade is a complete measure of performance, both provide useful
information.
Course grades are assigned by teachers, whereas the Algebra I EOC is independently
scored. Noting that grades are a specific type of performance evaluation, we can draw
on the larger performance evaluation literature for insight into the factors that drive
grade inflation (e.g., see Kevin Murphy and Jeanette Cleveland’s 1991 book,
Performance Appraisal). A prime factor in my view is that human nature pushes us to
inflate performance evaluations in socially proximal settings. Another is that teachers
likely view grades as a reflection of their own performance, rightly or wrongly.
Gershenson identifies important inconsistencies in the mapping between course
grades and student performance on EOCs. For example, only two-thirds of students
who receive in a B in Algebra I score at a level deemed proficient or better on the EOC;
among C students, fewer than a third score proficient or better. The extent to which
this is a surprise depends on how we interpret grades. My sense is that to most of us,
a “C” indicates proficient performance, in which case course grades are sending a
message quite different from what is conveyed by the EOC.
Gershenson also shows that the course grades have improved over time relative to
EOC performance in more-affluent schools, and declined in less-affluent schools.
Benchmarking GPAs against ACT scores yields a qualitatively similar grading gap.
Although this finding cannot be attributed to grade inflation conclusively, it is a
plausible explanation, and even more so in a “hard skills” course like Algebra I.[1] Of
particular concern is the possibility that Gershenson’s findings reflect the fact that
more affluent students, their families, and their schools have become relatively more
strategic over time in gaming the college admissions system. They recognize that high
grades are of prominent importance, and increasingly so as more colleges reduce the
emphasis on test scores in their admissions decisions. They may be responding by
inflating grades at a higher rate.
While one could be dismissive of this concern on the grounds that Gershenon’s study
cannot be conclusive about the grade inflation mechanism, in my view this would be a
mistake. The empirical results are consistent with the many pressure points in the
education system that incentivize lax grading standards, and the fact that few if any
incentives exist to encourage honest but unpleasant assessments by teachers. When
grades are higher everyone is happy: students, parents, teachers, and administrators.
The pressure to give high grades is almost surely more pronounced at more affluent
schools. As a professor myself, I am constantly nudged to weaken my standards in
small ways. It reduces complaints from students, makes grading easier, makes
everyone happier when they interact with me, improves my teaching evaluations, etc.
No one pressures me to uphold rigorous standards.
Gershenson’s analysis points to the value of standardized tests as measures of student
performance. These tests are routinely criticized, but they play an important role in our
education system. Among other things, they help keep us grounded. Without the
grounding these tests provide, the temptation to ignore performance deficiencies
would only become more problematic.
Grade inflation holds sever impacts on the educational outcomes of students and
hinders future academic success
Wright 19 (Brandon L. Wright, Editorial Director of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute,

“Rampant grade inflation is harming vulnerable high schoolers” National Association
For Gifted Children, Feb 13 2019, https://www.nagc.org/blog/rampant-grade-
inflation-harming-vulnerable-high-schoolers) Luxus
“Being valedictorian, it didn’t mean anything,” said Shanika Bridges-King about her
time at Bryn Mawr to the Boston Globe last month, as part of a series of exposés.
Reporters spent a year tracking down the city’s public high school valedictorians from
the mid-2000s to learn how their lives had turned out. “I didn’t understand anything I
read. I didn’t know how to write. I felt like I was disabled in this elite environment.”
Bridges-King graduated at the top of her class at The English High School in Boston.
Her statement is upsetting, yet not really surprising, due to an all too common
problem at low-income high schools nationwide: Inflated grades that wrongly and
harmfully signal to graduates—even valedictorians—that they’re ready for college.
“I felt like I wasn’t prepared to be there,” echoed Jose Barbosa, who attended Boston
University after he finished at the top of his class at the Jeremiah E. Burke High
School, also in Boston. “I was massively unprepared,” said Abadur Rahman,
valedictorian of East Boston High School and recipient of a full scholarship to
Northeastern University, who added, “Folks were at a different quintile than we were
in terms of how much material they had [already] comprehended and internalized.” “I
felt like Hyde Park High School did nothing, really, to prepare you for a school like
Boston College,” said Michael Blackwood, valedictorian of The Engineering School in
the Hyde Park Education Complex.
The fact that America’s high school education is broken is not new. Over the last
year, stories have cast doubt on the stratospheric graduation rates reported in several
states, including Alabama, California, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, New
Jersey, Texas, and Washington, D.C. Pressure to boost those rates, often due to
school accountability policies, plays a role—but so do complex motivations like
empathy and concern for kids’ future well-being. It’s these latter impulses that lead
folks to believe that easing expectations, at least for disadvantaged and struggling
students, is a victimless, thoughtful, and maybe even noble act. Though it does young
people no real good to be awarded unearned diplomas.
The harm done by lowered expectations doesn’t just befall the kids who are barely
making it through high school. As illustrated by those profiled in the Globe, a
disservice is being done to their high-achieving peers—not young people at risk of not
graduating at all, but those who leave high school at the top of their class and under
the impression that they’re fully ready for college, including elite schools like Bryn
Mawr, B.U., and B.C. They discover—with surprise, pain, angst, embarrassment—that
they’re nowhere near ready. The culprit is grade inflation, which occurs when
subjective course grades exceed objective measures of performance.
According to a September 2018 Fordham study of the problem, “rising high school
grade point averages have been accompanied by stagnant SAT, ACT, and NAEP
scores.” That’s true just about everywhere in America. In North Carolina, the focus of
the study, the median grade in affluent high schools in 2016 was a B; in less affluent
schools, it was a slightly lower B-. In Kentucky, my colleague Adam Tyner found much
the same thing using data compiled by the Bluegrass Institute: in 2016, the average
GPA in rich schools was 2.95, and 2.93 at lower-income ones.
Standardized tests, however, indicate far wider gaps—and a much more dire situation
for disadvantaged teens. More than seven out of ten affluent twelfth graders in North
Carolina were proficient on statewide assessments, but barely four in ten of their low-
income peers cleared that bar. ACT scores in Kentucky are considerably higher at
richer schools than poorer ones. Back in Boston, the 53 percent proficiency rate on
MCAS among tenth graders in the city’s public schools, most of which are low income,
falls well short of the statewide rate of 74 percent. And this phenomenon isn’t new: A
1994 U.S. Department of Education study found that A students at high-poverty
schools had the same average English and math scores on tests administered as part
of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 as C and D students at affluent
schools. These kids’ dreams are being killed by kindness.
Grade inflation causes many problems, but two are especially harmful. The first, aptly
explained by Seth Gershenson, a professor at American University who conducted the
Fordham Institute analysis, is complacency that stunts kids’ potential: “When a
student thinks he has already mastered material that he has not, the student will not
invest the extra effort and time necessary to truly learn it. Likewise, parents will not
recognize the need to help their child catch up. In this case, the complacency is not
due to lack of desire or ability, but rather faulty information about the student’s
academic standing.”
The second problem is that inflated grades allow students to progress through high
school and then into colleges for which they aren’t actually prepared—a problem
known succinctly as “overmatching.”
When reality hits—especially if students are disadvantaged and therefore lack the
familial safety net and support of their more privileged peers—this combination of
faulty information and academic ill-preparedness can be devastating. Consider, again,
the valedictorians featured in the Globe series. Jose Barbosa reported feeling
disappointed in himself and withdrew from Boston University after three semesters,
though he later graduated from Mount Ida College. Abadur Rahman got to a point
where “Maybe you’re not who you think you are. Maybe you’re not good enough.
Maybe you’re not meant to be in school.” He had to leave Northeastern’s honors
program and switch to a less challenging major. Scariest of all is Telma Taveres,
whose 4.76 GPA made her the 2005 valedictorian at the John D. O’Bryant School of
Mathematics and Science, one of the city’s three prestigious exam schools. In her
third year at Smith College, one of America’s top liberal arts schools, she suffered a
panic attack so severe that she ended up in a psychiatric ward and was told to take a
year off. She never returned to Smith, though later was able to earn a degree at
UMass Boston.
Of the ninety-three valedictorians the Globe checked in with, one in four failed to
graduate with a college degree in six years. Forty percent earn less than $50,000 a
year, while just one in sevenhas an annual income exceeding $100,000. One in
four has an advanced degree. Four have been homeless.
If these are the outcomes of the top graduates of the city’s low-income high schools,
one can't help but wonder what hope students with a 3.5 GPA have of succeeding, let
alone those with 3.0 or 2.5. Their schools are lying to them about what they’ve
accomplished. This most harms the most vulnerable among them—and it needs to
change.
Yet the policy winds are blowing the other way. The easiest way to check inflated
grades is via external exams, but states are rushing to get rid of those—and colleges
are pushing to make admissions SAT-optional. That might help the children of
privileged parents who are pushing for their children to look even better to the
admissions teams at the colleges from which they’ll almost surely graduate. But it
won’t help poor and minority kids like those valedictorians in Boston.
Studies prove increases in educational attainment account for the largest part of
economic growth – it’s the best thing we can do for our economy.
Keating 15 (Raymond J. Keating, chief economist with the Small Business &
Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council) - a nonpartisan, nonprofit small business
advocacy group. FEBRUARY 2015 SCHOOL CHOICE AND ECONOMIC GROWTH¶ A
Research Synthesis on How Market Forces Can Fuel Educational Attainment The
Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice edchoice.org
http://www.edchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/School-Choice-and-Economic-
Growth.pdf) Luxus
Economist Yolanda K. Kodrzycki has pointed out, “The most detailed accounting of the
role of educational attainment in U.S. growth is found in a series of papers by Dale
Jorgenson and various co-authors. These studies conclude that increases in labor
quality via rising educational attainment have had a measurable effect on economic
growth in recent decades.”28 For example, in a 1993 study, Jorgenson and Barbara M.
Fraumeni explained, “[I]nvestment in human beings, like investment in tangible forms of
capital such as buildings and industrial equipment, generates a stream of future
benefits…. One of the most important benefits of education is higher income from
participation in the labor market. This increase in income is the key to understanding
the link between investment in education and economic growth. People differ
enormously in effectiveness on the job. Substituting more effective for less effective
workers increases output per worker. More highly educated or better-trained people
are more productive than less educated or poorly trained people. However, education
and training are costly, so that substitution of people with more education and training
requires investment in human capital.”29 The authors summed up: “The most
important finding is that investment in human and nonhuman capital accounts for the
largest part of U.S. economic growth during the postwar period.”30
Strong academic achievement necessary to econ growth

Cooper 12 (Donna Cooper, Adam Hersh, and Ann O'Leary Center for American
Progress, August 21, 2012, 9:00 am The Competition that Really Matters¶ Comparing
U.S., Chinese, and Indian Investments in the Next-Generation Workforce¶
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2012/08/21/11983/the-
competition-that-really-matters/) Luxus
The U.S. economy is weakening relative to our global competitors. Recent economic
growth is 40 percent below any other growth period since World War II as other
economies around the globe draw in more investment, both foreign and domestic. In
contrast, despite still being the world’s leading recipient of direct foreign investment,
business investment overall in the United States between 2001 and 2007 was the
slowest in U.S. history.
Meanwhile, competition is on the rise. From 1980 to 2011 China increased its share of
world economic output from 2 percent to 14 percent. And India more than doubled its
output during that period, from 2.5 percent of global production to 5.7 percent. The
U.S. share of the world economy fell to 19 percent from 25 percent.
While increasing global competition is inevitable, lackluster U.S. performance need not
be. Indeed, rising growth and incomes in other countries present potential new
opportunities and markets for American workers and companies. But if the United
States means to continue to lead the world and to share our prosperity with it, U.S.
policymakers must deploy an American strategy that is responsive to modern
economic challenges—a strategy that makes it possible for every American family to
ensure that children entering adulthood are prepared to find a successful place in the
global economy.
What should the strategy be? Economists of all stripes point to a robust pipeline of
skilled workers as the essential ingredient of a strong and growing economy. Indeed,
the two countries most rapidly gaining on the United States in terms of economic
competitiveness—China and India—have ambitious national strategies of investing and
promoting improved educational outcomes for children to strengthen their positions as
contenders in the global economy.
The good news is that the successful history of the American middle class since World
War II offers crucial insights for how to grow the world’s best-skilled, most innovative,
and most dynamic workforce. Those insights, combined with best practices being
employed in other developed economies, offer the parameters for a winning American
economic strategy.
That’s what this report attempts to do. It takes stock of our own nation’s human capital
challenges, explores the competitive strategies underway in India and China, then uses
a comprehensive review of the economic literature to create a broad set of principles
for U.S. lawmakers and policy experts to tackle the greatest economic challenge in a
generation: How to ensure that all American children have the opportunity to become
high-skilled workers prepared to compete in a global economy.
This is obviously a sweeping and complex topic, which we document in detail in the
main pages of this report. But here is a brief summary of the report’s findings and
recommendations.
Slowing growth causes conflict. Trump escalates it
Foster 16 (Dennis Foster “Would President Trump go to war to divert attention from
problems at home?” December 19, 2016, Washington Post) Luxus
If the U.S. economy tanks, should we expect Donald Trump to engage in a diversionary
war? Since the age of Machiavelli, analysts have expected world leaders to launch
international conflicts to deflect popular attention away from problems at home. By
stirring up feelings of patriotism, leaders might escape the political costs of scandal,
unpopularity — or a poorly performing economy. One often-cited example of
diversionary war in modern times is Argentina’s 1982 invasion of the Falklands, which
several (though not all) political scientists attribute to the junta’s desire to divert the
people’s attention from a disastrous economy. In a 2014 article, Jonathan Keller and I
argued that whether U.S. presidents engage in diversionary conflicts depends in part
on their psychological traits — how they frame the world, process information and
develop plans of action. Certain traits predispose leaders to more belligerent behavior.
Do words translate into foreign policy action? One way to identify these traits is
content analyses of leaders’ rhetoric. The more leaders use certain types of verbal
constructs, the more likely they are to possess traits that lead them to use military
force. [Trump may put 5 former top military brass in his administration. That’s
unprecedented.] For one, conceptually simplistic leaders view the world in “black and
white” terms; they develop unsophisticated solutions to problems and are largely
insensitive to risks. Similarly, distrustful leaders tend to exaggerate threats and rely on
aggression to deal with threats. Distrustful leaders typically favor military action and are
confident in their ability to wield it effectively. Thus, when faced with politically
damaging problems that are hard to solve — such as a faltering economy — leaders
who are both distrustful and simplistic are less likely to put together complex, direct
responses. Instead, they develop simplistic but risky “solutions” that divert popular
attention from the problem, utilizing the tools with which they are most comfortable
and confident (military force). [Will Beijing cut Trump some slack after that phone call
with Taiwan?] Based on our analysis of the rhetoric of previous U.S. presidents, we
found that presidents whose language appeared more simplistic and distrustful, such
as Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and George W. Bush, were more likely to use
force abroad in times of rising inflation and unemployment. By contrast, John F.
Kennedy and Bill Clinton, whose rhetoric pegged them as more complex and trusting,
were less likely to do so. What about Donald Trump? Since Donald Trump’s election,
many commentators have expressed concern about how he will react to new
challenges and whether he might make quick recourse to military action. For example,
the Guardian’s George Monbiot has argued that political realities will stymie Trump’s
agenda, especially his promises regarding the economy. Then, rather than risk
disappointing his base, Trump might try to rally public opinion to his side via military
action. I sampled Trump’s campaign rhetoric, analyzing 71,446 words across 24 events
from January 2015 to December 2016. Using a program for measuring leadership traits
in rhetoric, I estimated what Trump’s words may tell us about his level of distrust and
conceptual complexity. The graph below shows Trump’s level of distrust compared to
previous presidents. These results are startling. Nearly 35 percent of Trump’s
references to outside groups paint them as harmful to himself, his allies and friends,
and causes that are important to him — a percentage almost twice the previous high.
The data suggest that Americans have elected a leader who, if his campaign rhetoric is
any indication, will be historically unparalleled among modern presidents in his active
suspicion of those unlike himself and his inner circle, and those who disagree with his
goals. As a candidate, Trump also scored second-lowest among presidents in
conceptual complexity. Compared to earlier presidents, he used more words and
phrases that indicate less willingness to see multiple dimensions or ambiguities in the
decision-making environment. These include words and phrases like “absolutely,”
“greatest” and “without a doubt.” A possible implication for military action I took these
data on Trump and plugged them into the statistical model that we developed to
predict major uses of force by the United States from 1953 to 2000. For a president of
average distrust and conceptual complexity, an economic downturn only weakly
predicts an increase in the use of force. But the model would predict that a president
with Trump’s numbers would respond to even a minor economic downturn with an
increase in the use of force. For example, were the misery index (aggregate inflation
and unemployment) equal to 12 — about where it stood in October 2011 — the model
predicts a president with Trump’s psychological traits would initiate more than one
major conflict per quarter.
That causes nuclear war
Tonnesson 15 (Stein Tonnesson “Deterrence, interdependence and Sino–US peace,”

International Area Studies Review, Vol. 18, No. 3, p. 297-311, 2015) Luxus
Several recent works on China and Sino–US relations have made substantial
contributions to the current understanding of how and under what circumstances a
combination of nuclear deterrence and economic interdependence may reduce the risk
of war between major powers. At least four conclusions can be drawn from the review
above: first, those who say that interdependence may both inhibit and drive conflict are
right. Interdependence raises the cost of conflict for all sides but asymmetrical or
unbalanced dependencies and negative trade expectations may generate tensions
leading to trade wars among inter-dependent states that in turn increase the risk of
military conflict (Copeland, 2015: 1, 14, 437; Roach, 2014). The risk may increase if one
of the interdependent countries is governed by an inward-looking socio-economic
coalition (Solingen, 2015); second, the risk of war between China and the US should
not just be analysed bilaterally but include their allies and partners. Third party
countries could drag China or the US into confrontation; third, in this context it is of
some comfort that the three main economic powers in Northeast Asia (China, Japan
and South Korea) are all deeply integrated economically through production networks
within a global system of trade and finance (Ravenhill, 2014; Yoshimatsu, 2014: 576);
and fourth, decisions for war and peace are taken by very few people, who act on the
basis of their future expectations. International relations theory must be supplemented
by foreign policy analysis in order to assess the value attributed by national decision-
makers to economic development and their assessments of risks and opportunities. If
leaders on either side of the Atlantic begin to seriously fear or anticipate their own
nation’s decline then they may blame this on external dependence, appeal to anti-
foreign sentiments, contemplate the use of force to gain respect or credibility, adopt
protectionist policies, and ultimately refuse to be deterred by either nuclear arms or
prospects of socioeconomic calamities. Such a dangerous shift could happen abruptly,
i.e. under the instigation of actions by a third party – or against a third party. Yet as
long as there is both nuclear deterrence and interdependence, the tensions in East
Asia are unlikely to escalate to war. As Chan (2013) says, all states in the region are
aware that they cannot count on support from either China or the US if they make
provocative moves. The greatest risk is not that a territorial dispute leads to war under
present circumstances but that changes in the world economy alter those
circumstances in ways that render inter-state peace more precarious. If China and the
US fail to rebalance their financial and trading relations (Roach, 2014) then a trade war
could result, interrupting transnational production networks, provoking social distress,
and exacerbating nationalist emotions. This could have unforeseen consequences in
the field of security, with nuclear deterrence remaining the only factor to protect the
world from Armageddon, and unreliably so. Deterrence could lose its credibility: one of
the two great powers might gamble that the other yield in a cyber-war or conventional
limited war, or third party countries might engage in conflict with each other, with a
view to obliging Washington or Beijing to intervene.
Afro-Pessimism K
Schools were never meant to be equitable for black people and their liberal reform
misses the forest for the trees – the caste system created through slavery ensures that
absent a complete overthrow of the racial state, progress will be impossible
Pierce 16, Clayton Pierce is an assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies at Western Washington University,
10/11/16, “W.E.B. Du Bois and Caste Education: Racial Capitalist Schooling From Reconstruction to Jim Crow,”
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3102/0002831216677796 Luxus
Du Bois’s understanding of caste education also carries with it an insurrectionary model of education that
centers the standpoint of African American knowledge and experience (Alridge, 1999; Rabaka, 2007). For Du Bois,
emancipatory learning grows out of acts of resistance to the dominant dialectic articulation of caste
education—a system designed to extract economic value from the African American population and
enforce their political status as second-class, biologically inferior citizens (Watkins, 2001). Du Bois saw the emergence
of a public education system for ex-slaves during the transition from slave codes to Black codes of the
Jim Crow era as not necessarily preordained; hard work was required by the white world to ensure the
preservation and adaptability of caste control through new means. What Du Bois’s analysis reveals is a reconstitution of
a governing rationality administered through industrial/state actors and their need to produce a segmented and competing labor force beneficial to
industrial capital while also maintaining a citizenship model based on White supremacy. For Du Bois, the insurrectionary potential of
education was to be strategically managed by state/industrial actors as evidenced in the failure of
Reconstruction and the reestablishment of ‘‘slavery by another name’’ in the Jim Crow era (Blackmon, 2009).
Du Bois’s (1935/1998) painstaking research on the formation of a public school system in the South during Reconstruction in his Black
Reconstruction, as well as more recent work such as James Anderson’s (1988) The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935, shows that
one of the most effective strategies used to thwart a potentially insurrectionary educational model was
federal and state disinvestment of support for the basic educational, health, financial, work, and land
needs of the ex-slave population. Here again, the biopolitical nature of Du Bois’s caste education analytic emerges: The racial
capitalist state creates the social and political conditions for the dark world that shortens, assaults, and
exposes populations and individuals to countless forms of health risks (mob violence, environmental racism, poor
health care) and psychological terror. Schools play a particularly important role in exposing and enforcing
people to experience these life (bio) conditions while managing the crisis education represented as a
threat to the racial capitalist state. The good intentions and then collapse of the Freedman’s Bureau for Du Bois signaled an important
turning point in the reentrenchment of a caste system of control in the United States. Remarking on the original progressive intent of the
Freedmen’s Bureau to establish a public school system for exslaves ‘‘in a country which gave the laisser-faire economics their extremest trial’’
and which ‘‘struck the whole nation as unthinkable,’’ Du Bois (1911, p. 305) points to how the public guarantee of state-funded
public schools for ex-slaves quickly shifted to a privatized model of governance. ‘‘It soon began to occur to many
that the preliminary guardianship and training of the slave need not be done at public expense, but could be
done by the Negro himself and by his friends as private enterprise’’ (Du Bois, 1911, p. 306). Four primary conditions
led to this shift, according to Du Bois: the rapid advance of the house servant, the growth of private schools, the cost of the Freedman’s Bureau,
and the difficulty of reconstructing the political South without friendly votes. As Du Bois’s research on this transition period of caste
reconstruction demonstrates, a union between Northern philanthropists (industrialists) and the White Southern ruling class forged a caste
education system that met the needs of both groups: access to a large exploitable population of economic and socially vulnerable workers that
also upheld the racial exclusion of ex-slaves (and non-Whites generally) from full social and political participation. After the Freedmen’s
Bureau Reconstruction efforts to provide a public education system for African Americans were
destroyed, a caste system of control was established where ‘‘anywhere from twice to ten times as much
was spent on the white child as the Negro child, and even the poor white child did not receive an adequate
education’’ (Du Bois, 1935/1998, p. 663). Schools set up for ex-slaves in the South ‘‘were given few buildings and
little equipment’’ while no effort was made to compel Negro children to go to school. On the contrary, in the country they were
deliberately kept out of school by the requirements of contract labor which embraced the labor of wife and children as well as the laborer himself.
The course of study was limited. . . . The supervising officers paid little or no attention to Negro schools, and the education of the Negro for many
years after the overthrow of Reconstruction proceeded in spite of their school system, not because of it. (Du Bois, 1935/1998, p. 697) What
emerged from a time when the nation could have made real strides toward constructing a more democratic
society through quality and equal schooling for all, ‘‘abolition democracy,’’ was instead a caste system of
control rebuilt through ‘‘the doctrine of racial separation, which overthrew Reconstruction by uniting the
planter and the poor white’’ and which ‘‘was far exceeded by its astonishing economic results’’ (Du Bois,
1935/ 1998, p. 700).4 State and federal disinvestment and the takeover of African American education by private industry constituted a key veil
technology of caste education governance (Du Bois, 1935/1998).
Removing Standardized testing is a veil in the name of racial progress which reifies
the racial viewpoint that ignores broader systems of oppression
Seshadri-Crooks 2000 (Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, assistant professor of English at

Boston College, Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian analysis of race, 2000, p. 158) Luxus
In presenting my hypothesis to various interlocutors in formal and informal settings, I

have been asked how my theory of race as a symbolic system sustained by a regime of
visibility translates into social policy. How does it affect our thinking about
affirmative action, about anti-discrimination legislations, about those particularly
powerful modes of political mobilization that have aggregated around identity? It is
sophisticated and easy to be dismissive of “identity politics” because it seems naive
and essentialist. But the immeasurable weightiness of, say, the black power
movement or the women’s rights movement in pushing back the forces of exploitation
and resuscitating devalued cultures through the redefinition of identity must give us
pause. Identity politics works. However, the argument of this book is that it also
ultimately serves to reinforce the very system that is the source of the symptoms that
such politics confines itself to addressing. It is race itself that must be dismantled as a
regime of looking. We cannot aim at this goal by merely formulating new social
policies. In fact, my theory is anti-policy for two reasons: first, any attempt to address
race systematically through policy, and by that I mean state policy, will inevitably end
up reifying race. Second, the only effective intervention can be cultural, at the
“grassroots” level. Such intervention can and should work, sometimes in tandem and
at others in tension with state policy, but the project of dismantling the regime of race
cannot be given over to the state. Gramsci speaks of the necessity of transforming the
cultural into the political; where race is concerned, it is imperative that we turn what is
now “political,” an issue of group interests, into the ‘‘cultural,’ an issue of social
practice.
Their income inequality reform sanitizes racism

Ward Univ. of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign, ‘07 (Robert Anthony-; Neoliberal
Silences, Race, & The Hope of CRT; A paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American
Research Association; April Draft; http://www.urban.illinois.edu/apa-
pw/APA07/Neoliberal%20Silences_Robert%20Ward.pdf) Luxus
Neoliberalism fosters an economic theory of democracy. The idea is that democracy is commodified at the
price of political liberalism, subordinating the state to the market. Highlighting the parallel between
economic and political markets. Neoliberal policy in the development of charter schools does not create an
“equal playing field”, in contrast, by undoing the memory of past discrimination, and unseating our historical
consciousness of institutional discrimination it seeks to overlook civic values in the interest of developing
commercial interests. The need through actualizing the academic function of education to place individuals in
the division of labor and integrate them into the workforce (distributive and economic functions of education)
takes precedent for charters and is disconnected from concepts of the social, justice, or civic responsibility. As
such, colorblindness negates relationships between racial difference and power. The danger in such
an ideological approach to educational policy and other implications is that the “rhetoric of color-blindness
is commonly used as a pretext to continue to justify hierarchical racial divisions (Parker, 2003, 150).”
Though market ideology virtually ignores notions of race, the history of racialization and
discrimination in both the national and New Orleans context are implicit in every facet of the restructuring
process. Through a shift in focus from individual actors or governing bodies determining school structures
to the market as the primary delineator, power is “uncoupled from matters of ethics and social
responsibility (Giroux, 2004, 59).” Thus, social responsibility is shifted from the state and those
governing bodies onto the poor and oppressed groups and historical discriminatory policies and
treatments forgotten. Under the neoliberal approach to education through charter schools, market
ideology replaces longstanding social contracts that sought equality and opportunities that public schools were
hoped to one day fulfill. The chartering of public education is representative of a much larger effort that is
deeply ingrained in America’s racial consciousness, in whiteness, and in the new left’s attempts to
position class over the legacy of racialization in America. Market ideology is the triumph of capital
over politics as well as morality. It is the triumph of economic logic over all other domains of human
existence, and therefore represents the end of history (Giroux 2004). The promotion of a new relationship
between government and knowledge: the development of new forms of social accounting and expertise (via
technological advances) to promote notions of government at a distance. The notion of educational reform for
“equal educational opportunity” finds little material import and is purely ideological at best. Major criticism
levied on both reform movements since the mid 1950’s and research such as the landmarks studies of the
Coleman Report and the work of Jencks, and Bowles and Gintis are extensive in scope. Of particular interest are
that reforms and research to this end were all results based with a primary focus on individualism, competition,
and meritocracy. Also, the ideological stance of “equal educational opportunity” concentrates too heavily on
site based reform, choosing to view schools as autonomous instead of as closely tied to the wider society of
racial segregation mechanisms, the labor market, and the state itself. Finally, the too little consideration in
reform language considers the question of what education is and seeks to accomplish, besides being viewed as
purely functional (Burbules & Sherman 1979). This is to say that without reform addressing past
discrimination by way of race and class then reform initiatives are not only still inequitable and
unequal but still in fact discriminatory. Particularly through reform initiatives using market ideology, but also
in discussions of educational equity in general, too little attention is paid to the fact that American public
education “depends heavily on local property taxes, and inequalities in tax revenues among school districts
produce inequalities in educational resources, facilities, programs, and opportunities (Walters, 2001, 44).”
Whereas the federal response is for local and state governance to turn to market ideology to solve the questions
of equal educational opportunities, particularly in urban districts, what ends up occurring is that the market
ideology approach to education veils how racial histories accrue political, economic, and cultural weight
to the power of whiteness. This occurs simply by virtue of refusal to acknowledge it. As a final point
from the establishment of common schools in the early 19th century to the market approach to education in
the present day, “racial inequality in educational funding and other forms of educational opportunity were
explicit policies of the state throughout the country (Anderson, 2001, 35).” What the market approach to
educational reform offers to Whites and the power structures driving these reforms is the belief that
the concept of institutional racism have no merit. It legitimates the idea that America has achieve a
“level playing field” and as such privileges in education and economic opportunities that Whites enjoy are
due to individual “determination, a strong work ethic, high moral values, and a sound investment in
education (Giroux, 2004).” This ideological standpoint leaves Whites and the elite free and clear,
absolving them from feeling any sense of responsibility to rebuild the physical infrastructure of American
schools. This task proves critical for sustaining a high-quality learning environment for those students who have
been cheated from such opportunities. This leaves millions of students in need of decent facilities and
educational opportunities, especially in urban areas, and in a strange twist of fate, only themselves to
blame for the conditions in which they exist (Anderson, 2005, 133).”
Their politics of diversity continue self-congratulatory politics that guarantee

policy failure.
Yancy 12 (George Yancy; Prof at Duquesne University; “How Can You Teach Me if
You Don’t Know Me? Embedded Racism and White Opacity”; Philosophy of Education
Archive) Luxus
So, I decided to talk about diversity in a way that would create risk, something that
Odysseus failed to do. In other words, diversity, within the context of white North
America, requires something more radical than Odysseus was willing to do. Hence, I
think that it is important that I deploy one central pedagogical value that I hold dear,
one that will shape the spirit of this talk: parrhesia (or fearless speech). Fearless or
courageous speech involves genuine risk and vulnerability. Fearless or courageous
speech, however, also involves fearless or courageous listening, which is a form of
listening that does not leave us intact, unmoved, and dogmatic. One must be willing to
listen to what is often most difficult and painful to hear about oneself and our society.
So, I decided to talk about what I see as part of the problem for genuine diversity to
take place: namely, the problem of whiteness. My talk then is not designed to leave us
feeling “good” about ourselves; it is not designed to make us feel that my presence
here — the fact that you see before you a Black philosopher talking about diversity —
is a sign of your progress, and your liberal political sensibilities, your openness to
dialogue. After all, if whiteness is the problem, then it is important that we avoid
reinforcing the centrality of that problem. So, my contention is that instances of
diversity where whiteness remains the center of privilege, invisibility, and power are not
genuine instances of diversity at all. If diversity-talk is to be more robust, and if
diversity at the level of lived experience is to be more fruitful and vivacious, then it is
necessary that we engage in the process of un-concealing whiteness, revealing its
subtle dynamism and structure. After all, without this pre-conditional critical work of
naming whiteness, of critically engaging whiteness, “diversity” might simply function to
serve the hidden values of whites as a group; diversity might function as a way of
feeding white moral narcissism; and, diversity might function as a way of making
whites comfortable, giving them a false sense of post-racial and post-racist arrival.
What we really want to do, then, is to make whiteness “unsafe” as a normative
category. Therefore, it is important to put whiteness at risk. Otherwise, whiteness can
maintain its stability precisely through the rhetoric of self-congratulatory processes as
it constructs its own safe vision of diversity. What is necessary is a discussion about
diversity that raises the stakes, like walking from Jerusalem to Jericho, where
something is “lost,” where we disorient ourselves, were we “dwell near” others in a
transformative way, where we do not simply walk by and notice that which is different
from us, but where we “dwell near” differences, where we tarry with differences. So,
before we can talk about happy stories of diversity, we must, as Sara Ahmed would
say, hear unhappy stories about racism,1 specifically the way in which the Black body
constitutes not a site of difference as the human other, but difference as the
problematic other, the other who is only allowed a voice so long as that voice does not
disrupt whiteness as usual. The title of this essay — “How Can You Teach Me if You
Don’t Know Me?” — suggests the idea that to know me as an embodied Black person
it is necessary that I am actually heard, that is, that I am not occluded by white voices
from speaking from my own embodied experiences. Indeed, it is also important that
my voice is not simply rearticulated through a prism of white discourse that can and
often does obfuscate the voices of people of color. Another way of thinking about the
critique of whiteness as implied within the title of this essay is to ask: How can you
critically engage the theme of diversity if you don’t know yourself? This question gives
the problem back to whites, signifying their own cognitive and emotive distortion vis-à-
vis themselves. Indeed, the heart of this question posed to whites involves a powerful
act of transposition: How does it feel to be a white problem? Rethinking the term
“nigger” through the process of reversal, James Baldwin asks, “But if I am not the
‘nigger’ and if it is true that your invention reveals you, then who is the nigger?”
Baldwin goes on to say, “I give you your problem back. You’re the nigger, baby, it isn’t
me.” As long as whites see themselves as normative, and I am different qua “nigger,”
diversity will function as a cover, a political maneuver, a mere empty gesture. Baldwin’s
point forces us to ask: Will the real “nigger” please stand up?
The 1AC is constitutive of the politics of hope that changes to standardized tests
are a step in the right directions when every other method to education has the
same problem.
Warren 15 (Calvin K., Assistant Professor of American Studies at George Washington

University, “Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope,” CR: The New Centennial Review,
Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2015) Luxus
To speak of the “Politics of Hope” is to denaturalize or demystify a certain usage of

hope. Here I want to make a distinction between “hope” (the spiritual concept) and
“the politics of hope”(political hope). The relationship between the spiritual concept of
hope and its use as a political instrument is the focus of the black nihilist critique.2
Following Kant and other postmetaphysical philosophers, the critical field questions
(and in some circles completely denounces) a certain spiritual predisposition to the
world—that “unknowable” noumenon that limits Reason but provides the condition of
possibility for its organization of the world of perception, phenomenon. The problem
with the critical questioning of the spiritual is that it often appropriates spiritual
concepts and then, insidiously, translates the min to the “scientific” or the knowable,
as a way to both capitalize on the mystic power of the spiritual and to preserve the
spiritual under the guise of “enlightened understanding.” We find this deceptive
translation and capitalization of spiritual substance within the sphere of the Political—
that organization of social existence through political institutions, mandates, logics,
and grammars—as a way to govern and discipline beings. If we think of hope as a
spiritual concept—a concept that always escapes confinement within scientific
discourse—then we can suggest that hope constitutes a “spiritual currency” that we
are given as an inheritance to invest in various aspects of existence. The issue,
however, is that there is often a compulsory investment of this spiritual substance in
the Political. This is the forced destination of hope—it must end up in the Political and
cannot exist outside of it (or any existence of hope “outside” the political subverts,
compromises, and destroys hope itself. Like placing a fish out of water. It is as if hope
only has intelligibility and efficacy within and through the Political). Put differently, the
politics of hope posits that one must have a politics to have hope; politics is the natural
habitat of hope itself. To reject hope in a nihilistic way, then, is really to reject the
politics of hope, or certain circumscribed and compulsory forms of expressing,
practicing, and conceiving of hope. In the essay “A Fidelity to Politics: Shame and the
African American Vote in the 2004 Election,” Grant Farred (2006) exposes a kernel of
irrationality at the center of African American political participation. Traditionally,
political participation is motivated by self-interested expectancy; this political calculus
assumes that political participation, particularly voting, is an investment with an
assurance of a return or political dividend. The structure of the Political—the circular
movement between self-interest, action, and reward— is sustained through what
Farred calls the “electoral unconscious.” It “historicizes the subject in relation to the
political in that it determines the horizon of what is possible it maps, through its
delimitation or its (relative) lack of limits, what the constituency and its members
imagine they can, or, would like to expect from the political” (217). In this way, the
electoral unconscious, as the realm of political fantasy, mirrors the Lacanian notion of
fantasy; it maps the coordinates of the political subject and teaches it how exactly to
desire the Political. For Farred, there is a peculiar logic (“another scene”) operating as
the motivation for African American participation in the Political. Unlike the traditional
political calculus, where action and reward determine civic engagement, African
American participation does not follow this rational calculus—because if it did, there
would actually be no rational reason for African Americans to vote, given the historicity
of voting as an ineffective practice in gaining tangible “objects” for achieving redress,
equality, and political subjectivity. African Americans, according to Farred, havean
“irrational fidelity” to a practice that, historically, has yielded no concrete
transformations of antiblackness. This group is governed not by the “electoral
unconscious” but by the “historical conscious,” which is the “intense [and incessant]
understanding of how the franchise has been achieved, of its precarious preciseness
as well as their (growing) contemporary liminality, their status as marginalized political
subjects” (217). African Americans are a faithful voting block not because of voting’s
political efficaciousness but as a way to contend with a painful (and shame-full) history
of exclusion and disenfranchisement. Political participation becomes an act of
historical commemoration and obligation; one votes because someone bled and died
for the opportunity to participate, and “duty” and “indebtedness” motivate this partial
political subject.
Reliance on legality as a metric of progress fuels a violent temporal narrative that

materializes the permanency of whiteness
Warren 15 (Calvin K., Assistant Professor of American Studies at George Washington

University, “Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope,” CR: The New Centennial Review,
Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2015)
The politics of hope, then, constitutes what Lauren Berlant would call “cruel optimism”
for blacks (Berlant 2011). It bundles certain promises about redress, equality, freedom,
justice, and progress into a political object that always lies beyond reach. The objective
of the Political is to keep blacks in a relation to this political object—in an unending
pursuit of it. This pursuit, however, is detrimental because it strengthens the very anti-
black system that would pulverize black being. The pursuit of the object certainly has
an “irrational” aspect to it, as Farred details, but it is not mere means without
expectation; instead, it is a means that undermines the attainment of the impossible
object desired. In other words, the pursuit marks a cruel attachment to the means of
subjugation and the continued widening of the gap between historical reality and
fantastical ideal. Black nihilism is a “demythifying” practice, in the Nietzschean vein,
that uncovers the subjugating strategies of political hope and de-idealizes its
fantastical object. Once we denude political hope of its axiological and ethical veneer,
we see that it operates through certain strategies: 1) positing itself as the only
alternative to the problem of anti-blackness, 2) shielding this alternative from rigorous
historical/philosophical critique by placing it in an unknown future, 3) delimiting the
field of action to include only activity recognized and legitimated by the Political, and 4)
demonizing critiques or different philosophical perspectives. The politics of hope
masks a particular cruelty under the auspices of “happiness” and “life.” It terrifies with
the dread of “no alternative.” “Life” itself needs the security of the alternative, and,
through this logic, life becomes untenable without it. Political hope promises to provide
this alternative—a discursive and political organization beyond extant structures of
violence and destruction. The construction of the binary “alternative/no-alternative”
ensures the hegemony and dominance of political hope within the onto-existential
horizon. The terror of the “no alternative”—the ultimate space of decay, suffering, and
death—depends on two additional binaries: “problem/solution” and “action/inaction.”
According to this politics, all problems have solutions, and hope provides the
accessibility and realization of these solutions. The solution establishes itself as the
elimination of “the problem”; the solution, in fact, transcends the problem and realizes
Hegel’s aufheben in its constant attempt to sublate the dirtiness of the “problem” with
the pristine being of the solution. No problem is outside the reach of hope’s solution—
every problem is connected to the kernel of its own eradication. The politics of hope
must actively refuse the possibility that the “solution” is, in fact, another problem in
disguised form; the idea of a “solution” is nothing more than the repetition and
disavowal of the problem itself. The solution relies on what we might call the “trick of
time” to fortify itself from the deconstruction of its binary. Because the temporality of
hope is a time “not-yet-realized,” a future tense unmoored from present-tense
justifications and pragmatist evidence, the politics of hope cleverly shields its
“solutions” from critiques of impossibility or repetition. Each insistence that these
solutions stand up against the lessons of history or the rigors of analysis is met with
the rationale that these solutions are not subject to history or analysis because they do
not reside within the horizon of the “past” or “present.” Put differently, we can never
ascertain the efficacy of the proposed solutions because they escape the temporality
of the moment, always retreating to a “not-yet” and “could-be” temporality. This “trick”
of time offers a promise of possibility that can only be realized in an indefinite future,
and this promise is a bond of uncertainty that can never be redeemed, only imagined.
In this sense, the politics of hope is an instance of the psychoanalytic notion of desire:
its sole purpose is to reproduce its very condition of possibility, never to satiate or
bring fulfillment. This politics secures its hegemony through time by claiming the future
as its unassailable property and excluding (and devaluing) any other conception of time
that challenges this temporal ordering. The politics of hope, then, depends on the
incessant (re)production and proliferation of problems to justify its existence. Solutions
cannot really exist within the politics of hope, just the illusion of a different order in a
future tense. The “trick” of time and political solution converge on the site of “action.”
In critiquing the politics of hope, one encounters the rejoinder of the dangers of
inaction. “But we can’t just do nothing! We have to do something.” The field of
permissible action is delimited and an unrelenting binary between action/inaction
silences critical engagement with political hope. These exclusionary operations
rigorously reinforce the binary between action and inaction and discredit certain forms
of engagement, critique, and protest. Legitimate action takes place in the political—the
political not only claims futurity but also action as its property. To “do something”
means that this doing must translate into recognizable political activity; “something” is
a stand-in for the word “politics”—one must “do politics” to address any problem. A
refusal to “do politics” is equivalent to “doing nothing”—this nothingness is
constructed as the antithesis of life, possibility, time, ethics, and morality (a “zero-
state” as Julia Kristeva [1982] might call it). Black nihilism rejects this “trick of time”
and the lure of emancipatory solutions. To refuse to “do politics” and to reject the
fantastical object of politics is the only “hope” for blackness in an anti-black world.
Voting negative is to adopt nihilism as the centerpiece to politics – this rupture in

the terrain of liberalism's will-to-action finds itself outside the struggle for
political representation – In other words, to "hope for the end of political hope".
This is the only metaphysically coherent response to the constant slaughter of
black bodies
Warren 15 (Calvin K Warren, Assistant Professor of American Studies at George

Washington University, “Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope,” CR: The New
Centennial Review, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2015) Luxus
V. Conclusion
Throughout this essay, I have argued that the Politics of hope preserve metaphysical
structures that sustain black suffering. This preservation amounts to an exploitation of
hope—when the Political colonizes the spiritual principle of hope and puts it in the
service of extending the “will to power” of an anti-black organization of existence. The
Politics of hope, then, is bound up with metaphysical violence, and this violence
masquerades as a “solution” to the problem of anti-blackness. Temporal linearity,
perfection, betterment, struggle, work, and utopian futurity are conceptual instruments
of the Political that will never obviate black suffering or anti-black violence; these
concepts only serve to reproduce the conditions that render existence unbearable for
blacks. Political theologians and black optimists avoid the immediacy of black
suffering, the horror of anti-black pulverization, and place relief in a “not-yet-but-is
(maybe)-to-come-social order” that, itself, can do little more but admonish blacks to
survive to keep struggling. Political hope becomes a vicious and abusive cycle of
struggle—it mirrors the Lacanian drive, and we encircle an object (black freedom,
justice, relief, redress, equality, etc.) that is inaccessible because it doesn’t really exist.
The political theologian and black optimist, then, propose a collective Jouissance as an
answer to black suffering—finding the joy in struggle, the victory in toil, and the
satisfaction in inefficacious action. We continue to “struggle” and “work” as black
youth are slaughtered daily, black bodies are incarcerated as forms of capital, black
infant mortality rates are soaring, and hunger is disabling the bodies, minds, and spirits
of desperate black youth. In short, these conditions are deep metaphysical problems—
the sadistic pleasure of metaphysical domination—and “work” and “struggle” avoid the
terrifying fact that the world depends on black death to sustain itself. Black nihilism
attempts to break this “drive”—to stop it in its tracks, as it were—and to end the cycle
of insanity that political hope perpetuates. The question that remains is a question
often put to the black nihilist: what is the point? This compulsory geometrical
structuring of thought—all knowledge must submit to, and is reducible to, a point—it is
an epistemic flicker of certainty, determination, and, to put it bluntly, life. “The point”
exists for life; it enlivens, enables, and sustains knowledge. Thought outside of this
mandatory point is illegible and useless. To write outside of the “episteme of life” and
its grammar will require a position outside of this point, a position somewhere in the
infinite horizon of thought (perhaps this is what Heidegger wanted to do with his
reconfiguration of thought). Writing in this way is inherently subversive and refuses the
geometry of thought. Nevertheless, the [End Page 243] nihilist is forced to enunciate
his refusal through a “point,” a point that is contradictory and paradoxical all at once.
To say that the point of this essay is that “the point” is fraudulent—its promise of clarity
and life are inadequate—will not satisfy the hunger of disciplining the nihilist and
insisting that one undermine the very ground upon which one stands. Black nihilistic
hermeneutics resists “the point” but is subjected to it to have one’s voice heard within
the marketplace of ideas. The “point” of this essay is that political hope is pointless.
Black suffering is an essential part of the world, and placing hope in the very structure
that sustains metaphysical violence, the Political, will never resolve anything. This is
why the black nihilist speaks of “exploited hope,” and the black nihilist attempts to
wrest hope from the clutches of the Political. Can we think of hope outside the
Political? Must “salvation” translate into a political grammar or a political program? The
nihilist, then, hopes for the end of political hope and its metaphysical violence. Nihilism
is not antithetical to hope; it does not extinguish hope but reconfigures it. Hope is the
foundation of the black nihilistic hermeneutic. In “Blackness and Nothingness,” Fred
Moten (2013) conceptualizes blackness as a “pathogen” to metaphysics, something
that has the ability to unravel, to disable, and to destroy anti-blackness. If we read
Vattimo through Moten’s brilliant analysis, we can suggest that blackness is the limit
that Heidegger and Nietzsche were really after. It is a “blackened” world that will
ultimately end metaphysics, but putting an end to metaphysics will also put an end to
the world itself—this is the nihilism that the black nihilist must theorize through. This is
a far cry from what we call “anarchy,” however. The black nihilist has as little faith in
the metaphysical reorganization of society through anarchy than he does in traditional
forms of political existence. The black nihilist offers political apostasy as the spiritual
practice of denouncing metaphysical violence, black suffering, and the idol of anti-
blackness. The act of renouncing will not change political structures or offer a political
program; instead, it is the act of retrieving the spiritual concept of hope from the
captivity of the Political. Ultimately, it is impossible to end metaphysics without ending
blackness, and the black nihilist will never be able to withdraw from the Political
completely without a certain death-drive or being-toward-death. This is the essence of
black suffering: the lack of reprieve from metaphysics, the tormenting complicity in the
reproduction of violence, and the lack of a coherent grammar to articulate these
dilemmas.After contemplating these issues for some time in my office, I decided to
take a train home. As I awaited my train in the station, an older black woman asked me
about the train schedule and when I would expect the next train headed toward
Dupont Circle. When I told her the trains were running slowly, she began to talk about
the government shutdown. “They don’t care anything about us, you know,” she said.
“We elect these people into office, we vote for them, and they watch black people
suffer and have no intentions of doing anything about it.” I shook my head in
agreement and listened intently. “I’m going to stop voting, and supporting this process;
why should I keep doing this and our people continue to suffer,” she said. I looked at
her and said, “I don’t know ma’am; I just don’t understand it myself.” She then laughed
and thanked me for listening to her—as if our conversation were somewhat cathartic.
“You know, people think you’re crazy when you say things like this,” she said giving
me a wink. “Yes they do,” I said. “But I am a free woman,” she emphasized “and I
won’t go back.” Shocked, I smiled at her, and she winked at me; at that moment I
realized that her wisdom and courage penetrated my mind and demanded answers.
I’ve thought about this conversation for some time, and it is for this reason I had to
write this essay. To the brave woman at the train station, I must say you are not crazy
at all but thinking outside of metaphysical time, space, and violence.
Ultimately, we must hope for the end of political hope.
Topicality Definitions
A standardized test must meet the following requirements
Glossary of education reform 15 (The Glossary of Education reform “Standardized

Tests” LAST UPDATED: 11.12.15 https://www.edglossary.org/standardized-test/)
Luxus
A standardized test is any form of test that (1) requires all test takers to answer the
same questions, or a selection of questions from common bank of questions, in the
same way, and that (2) is scored in a “standard” or consistent manner, which makes it
possible to compare the relative performance of individual students or groups of
students. While different types of tests and assessments may be “standardized” in this
way, the term is primarily associated with large-scale tests administered to
large populations of students, such as a multiple-choice test given to all the eighth-
grade public-school students in a particular state, for example.
The major Standardized tests are the ACT and SAT. Anything else is not Topical
Federal Student Aid (Federal Student Aid, An office of the US department of

education “If you’re applying to college or graduate school, you may need to take
certain tests.” No Date https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/prepare-for-college/tests) Luxus
Tests for Undergraduate Programs
Most colleges require you to take one of the most common tests, the SAT or the ACT.
Check with the colleges you plan to apply to for their testing requirements.
Most community colleges have open enrollment and don’t require standardized test
scores. However, they will usually require placement tests. SAT or ACT scores may
exempt you from placement tests. If you want to enroll in a selective program at a
community college (nursing, computer science, law enforcement), then standardized
test scores may be required. Later, if you transfer from a community college to a
university or another school, test scores may be required.
SAT
The SAT measures your ability rather than knowledge. The 3 ¾-hour test contains
three sections: writing, critical reading, and math. Most of the questions are multiple-
choice.
Some colleges may also require you to take an SAT Subject Test. SAT Subject Tests
measure your knowledge in specific subjects within five general categories: English,
mathematics, history, science, and languages. Specific subjects range from English
literature to biology to Modern Hebrew. SAT Subject Tests are primarily multiple-
choice, and each lasts one hour.
Both the SAT and SAT Subject Tests are offered several times a year at locations
across the country. The College Board provides detailed information about the SAT
and SAT Subject Tests, including information about preparing to take the test, what to
take with you on test day, and understanding your scores.
ACT
Like the SAT, the ACT is accepted by almost all colleges and universities. But instead
of measuring how you think, the ACT measures what you’ve learned in school.
The ACT consists of four multiple-choice tests: English, reading, mathematics, and
science. If your college requires a writing test, you can take the ACT Plus Writing,
which includes a writing test in addition to the other four tests. These tests are offered
several times a year at locations (usually high schools and colleges) across the country.
Check out detailed information about the ACT, including preparing to take the test,
what to take with you on test day, and understanding your scores.

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Luxus Debate

Lincoln Douglas Debate Briefs

Resolved: In the United States, colleges and universities ought not

Published by Luxus Debate or any of its affiliate members.

As a reminder of common brief practices, it is our recommendation that this is

Good luck and we hope for a great start to the season!

The biases of the original test render it ineffective

Rosales 18 (John Rosales “The Racist Beginnings of Standardized Testing” National

Biased Testing from the Start

Rosales 18 (John Rosales “The Racist Beginnings of Standardized Testing” National

The science behind standardized testing is based on eugenic theories of education

Rosales 18 (John Rosales “The Racist Beginnings of Standardized Testing” National

In How the SAT Creates Built-in-Headwinds, Jay Rosner, a national admissions-test

Standardized tests perpetuate a cyclical racial gap

Standardized tests disadvantage minorities in a number of ways:

AAPF (The African American Policy Forum “Standardized Testing” No Date,

Standardized tests often measure knowledge of literature, language, or concepts that

Removing standardized testing is a key step in removing racial boundaries and

Lash 15 (Johnathan Lash, President, Hampshire College, “Results of Removing

The removal of standardized testing empirically boosts diversity in Colleges.

Students like Ian Haimowitz, a sophomore at George Washington University, a test-

Singer 19 (Steven Singer “ Standardized Testing is a Tool of White Supremacy”

Strong academic achievement necessary to econ growth and competetiveness.

Competitiveness key to US leadership and sustained hegemony

US hegemony solves great power wars – acquiescence is not an option

Standardized tests provide too much of a benefit to be removed entirely. The

Wexler 18 (Natalie Wexler, “What To Do About Standardized Tests” Forbes,

The counterplan solves cultural bias and school impact

Wexler 18 (Natalie Wexler, “What To Do About Standardized Tests” Forbes,

Wright 19 (Brandon L. Wright, Editorial Director of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute,

Strong academic achievement necessary to econ growth

Slowing growth causes conflict. Trump escalates it

That causes nuclear war

Tonnesson 15 (Stein Tonnesson “Deterrence, interdependence and Sino–US peace,”

Seshadri-Crooks 2000 (Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, assistant professor of English at

In presenting my hypothesis to various interlocutors in formal and informal settings, I

Their income inequality reform sanitizes racism

Their politics of diversity continue self-congratulatory politics that guarantee

Warren 15 (Calvin K., Assistant Professor of American Studies at George Washington

To speak of the “Politics of Hope” is to denaturalize or demystify a certain usage of

Reliance on legality as a metric of progress fuels a violent temporal narrative that

Warren 15 (Calvin K., Assistant Professor of American Studies at George Washington

Voting negative is to adopt nihilism as the centerpiece to politics – this rupture in

Warren 15 (Calvin K Warren, Assistant Professor of American Studies at George

A standardized test must meet the following requirements

Glossary of education reform 15 (The Glossary of Education reform “Standardized

Federal Student Aid (Federal Student Aid, An office of the US department of

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