Domestic social issues are issues that extempers never want to discuss. Extempers dread walking into them and feel even worse after they have competed. Speaking on domestic social issues well is a fine balancing act between taking a moderate approach on issues, so as not to offend judges, and having a knowledge base that can cite specific examples of how approaches have worked in the past and could work better in the future.
This brief will be shorter than most, simply because the Thanksgiving holiday does not allow for any tournaments to occur this weekend. However, I would hope that most extempers would use the days off of school to get caught up on current events and knock out some heavy reading.
Why Education Policy Matters
In any speech, it is always good for an extemper to communicate some background of the issue they are discussing with their audience. Although, U.S. education was on the back burner this election season, overshadowed at first by the war in Iraq and healthcare and eventually by the economy, it is still an issue that clouds American politics. During the last presidential debate, John McCain and Barack Obama tussled over education reform in the final minutes, with many professionals frowning at McCain’s idea to allow military veterans to get teaching degrees without taking professional education courses.
Education policy in the United States is shrouded under a massive cloud of bureaucracy, made even worse according to some educators by President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law. This law sets targets that states must reach across different demographic groups that include race, class, and ability differences. Monitoring this testing data has caused states to create core content standards that dictate what their teachers can teach and there is evidence that some teachers are leaving the profession due to the loss of autonomy because they feel forced to “teach to a test.”
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 50 million students attend public school in the United States each year and nearly $500 billion is spent on educating them. Paying teachers, administrators, office staff is costly, as well as paying for the upkeep of buildings and satisfying the ever growing demands among educators for more technology in buildings. Since the 1980s, the U.S. has grown to be concerned about education performance as more dollars have not meant more success. The U.S. government is also making a big push, aided by No Child Left Behind, in the fields of math and science because they fear that in a few decades India and China have the potential to overtake us in those academic fields and weaken our national standing.
Extempers would be wise to keep in mind that education is as much a national security issue than protecting the nation’s borders or keeping the military intact. Due to the fact that America does not have an inherited dictatorship or monarchy form of government, the country must constantly cultivate a new generation of leaders. This job falls not only to parents, but increasingly to the public and private spheres of our education system. If America creates a generation that is ill-equipped to handle the problems the world will create, the country’s future does not look bright. Also, having sharp minds works to America’s economic advantage, which in a increasingly globalized environment, will become very important as far as economic innovation is concerned.
School Vouchers
School vouchers are a very controversial education initiative that was jumpstarted in the 1990s. The most notable location of a voucher system being used on a wide basis was Cleveland and experts still are arguing about the success and failures of that program. In the recent election cycle, Utah’s attempt to create a statewide voucher program was defeated by voters after a well funded and executed campaign by the NEA flooded the airwaves about how this voucher scheme would lead to a decline in the quality of public education in the state.
The concept behind vouchers is that the government will provide funds to parents of children in failing schools and allow them to go to other schools, mostly private schools that offer their children better education opportunities. The biggest contention with vouchers is that it takes public money that was directed for the public education system and transfers that money with the student to a private institution where the state has no significant degree of control. Opponents fear that vouchers is the gateway to the privatization of education where the government will not have any control over what is being taught and what standards all teachers are going to have to live up to. Opponents also fear the overcrowding of good schools by having a flood of children from poorly performing schools which would lead to larger class sizes and most likely a fall in the quality of instruction provided. Critics of vouchers also allege that the vouchers might be enough to pay for students tuition to private schools but they do not pay for transportation, clothing, and materials that those schools require. The last major contention by opponents of vouchers is that the solution to improving failing schools lies in giving them more money, not less, which is what would happen if the student left the school.
Proponents of vouchers argue that children, mostly of lower-class backgrounds, should not be locked into failing schools because teacher’s unions are squeamish about vouchers. Proponents allege that allowing vouchers will increase the levels of achievement in education as children will get better educated in private schools from better teachers and surrounded by better students and it is worth the sacrifice of a failing local school in order to accomplish that. Furthermore, proponents argue that many of these lower-income students in failing schools are minorities and giving them admission to private school systems will increase racial integration and promote diversity in these institutions.
As a whole, vouchers are the one education issue that will not die. Free market supporters, who wish to apply that model to education, continue to push vouchers as a less radical idea than a full privatization of the education system. These supporters represent a strong education lobby and although a statewide voucher scheme has never been enacted in the United States that is not to say that the issue will not appear on other state referendums in future elections.
The Future: Obama’s Stance
President-elect Obama has a powerful social agenda for “change” in the United States, and it will be interesting to see how his agenda influences education policy. Extempers should look to see who will be Obama’s Secretary of Education, as that is the most important message a President can send about how much they value education policy in their administration and how much change they desire.
In terms of merit pay, the act of paying teachers based on the performance of their students, Obama has given indications that he would favor it. Areas of the country like New York City have engineered these schemes in order to motivate teachers and to attract teachers to their areas. However, Obama does not favor merit based pay if it concerns just one test. Instead, Obama would like to see a merit based structure established that rewards teachers for doing professional development and trying to improve themselves. The only problem is that much of this is already a part of several states education plans, as teachers move up in “rank” and can acquire more pay based on how much education they have received.
Obama also favors charter schools, which have taken New Orleans, Nashville, and Los Angeles by storm. Charter schools received public funds but can educate children in different ways than the state government mandates. Charter schools are governed by a sponsoring organization, and that has opened it to criticism that without state supervision taxpayer money should not go to these schools. While the evidence has been conflicted in regards to charter schools, Obama favors continuing state-level experiments with charter schools, which makes him unlike other Democratic candidates which have opposed school experimentation so as not to offend teachers unions, a major supporter of the Democratic Party.
As far as No Child Left Behind is concerned, Obama has not come out and supported abolishing the legislation altogether. Obama believes, like many in the Democratic Party, that the government created a piece of legislation that helped U.S. education, but that the federal government did not adequately fund it under the Bush administration. No Child Left Behind will come up for renewal under an Obama administration and you can bet that this will become an issue. Therefore, extempers should follow the news and try to pick up on any signs that Obama might reverse course, which, of course, can be dictated by who he chooses as his Secretary of Education.
Overall, while education policy may be on the back burner of the U.S. scene for the early months of the Obama administration, it will still emerge as a hot social topic, helped by the oncoming debate over No Child Left Behind. Furthermore, continued statistical research over different education innovations such as private school, charter schools, vouchers, etc. may provide the urgency for the federal government to act more forcefully. And finally, any expansion of the education system, such as a universal preschool program, is bound to face conservative opposition over the increasing size of government and the cost such a system would impose on the federal budget.