1NC

1NC
 T
In the context of education, regulation means rulemaking by executive
agencies to implement and enforce congressional statutes. The plan is not
topical because it is not an agency action under Title 34 of the CFR.
Bon 8 Susan C. Bon, Professor of Education, Higher Education Program Coordinator, and Affiliate
Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina, former Ombudsman in the State Superintendents
Division of the Ohio Department of Education, holds a Ph.D. in Education Policy and Leadership and a
J.D. from The Ohio State University, 2008 (Regulation, Encyclopedia of Education Law (Volume 2),
Edited By Charles J. Russo, Published by SAGE Publications, Inc., ISBN 1412940796, p. 669-670)
Regulation
Although education is primarily an issue reserved for state and local control, federal involvement in
the form of funding, legislative enactments, and subsequent regulations has dramatically
increased. Thus, numerous regulations have emerged from federal departments and agencies such
as the U.S. Department of Education and the Office for Civil Rights. These regulations provide
guidance to state and local educational agencies regarding educators responsibilities and
students rights. For example, the rights of students with disabilities are protected under the
Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) and are further explained in the IDEA
regulations, which are issued by the Department of Education. Likewise, the educational rights of
English language learners (ELLs) are protected by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and are
enforced through regulations issued by the Office for Civil Rights. The legal background of
regulations and how they are created are discussed in this entry.
Legal Context
Governmental powers are vested by the U.S. Constitution in three separate branches: the executive,
legislative, and judicial. Following a strict concept of separation of powers, each of these three
governmental branches has the power and responsibility to act according to constitutional
guidelines. The legislative branch has the primary power to make laws and to provide for the
necessary policies and procedures to enact the laws. Regulations typically emerge as a direct
result of this exercise of lawmaking power by the legislative branch.
Federal or state legislatures may delegate rulemaking authority and regulatory powers to specific
agencies or departments in the executive branch of [end page 669] government. These governmental
agencies or departments may then fulfill these delegated powers and responsibilities by issuing,
or promulgating, regulations. During the 1930s, a surge of New Deal legislation emerged from
Congress that began to delegate greater authority for issuing detailed regulations to various federal
departments and agencies.
Regulations are issued by governmental agencies in order to accomplish the specific purposes of
federal, state, or local statutes. In other words, governmental agencies are granted the authority and
responsibility to promulgate reasonable rules and regulations in furtherance of the delegated
legislative powers. While governmental agencies may be granted specific authority to carry out
the terms of a given law, this authority is subject to various limitations upon such regulatory
functions.
These limitations include, for example, a limit upon the regulatory authority of governmental
agencies based upon constitutional rules and legal standards. Another limitation upon the
regulatory authority is the mandate requiring that regulations conform to or not exceed the
delegated powers inherent in the originating statute. Finally, governmental agencies are expected
to adopt regulations in order to provide a mechanism for understanding, interpreting, enforcing,
and overseeing the legislative purpose of a given statute or law.
How Regulations Are Made
Regulations typically emerge following consultation with the various individuals, industries, and
institutions that will be affected by the regulations. In fulfillment of these expectations, governmental
agencies publish a proposed regulation and then offer a period of time during which interested
and affected parties are given an opportunity to comment on the proposed regulation. Federal
agencies must adhere to the Administrative Procedure Act, which mandates the publication of
proposed and final regulations or rules in the Federal Register following the provision of notice
and the opportunity for interested persons to share their views via written or oral presentation.
At the federal level, the proposed regulation appears in the Federal Register, which is published 5 days a
week, while at the state level, the commentary process varies widely and may depend heavily upon which
state agency is proposing the regulation. During and following the public commentary period, a
proposed regulation may be altered significantly. The final regulation, however, is expected to
provide practical guidance to affected individuals and to the public agency responsible for
implementing the originating statute. Final regulations issued by federal agencies are published
in the Code of Federal Regulations and are arranged by subject. Regulations affecting education
can be found primarily in Title 34 (Education) of the C ode of F ederal R egulations.
Even though the definition of regulation is typically broad, this term does not encompass all
agency pronouncements. First, courts have determined that federal regulations have the full force
and effect of law only when they have been adopted by governmental agencies for the purpose
enforcing acts of Congress. Second, courts have repeatedly held that regulations must be filed and
published in order to be effective as a matter of law. In theory, however, regulations do not have the
effect of law because they are not the work of legislatures. Yet given the practice of judicial review of
administrative action, regulations are typically a significant factor influencing the outcome of
cases in which regulatory activity is involved.
Legislative efforts to reauthorize existing federal statutes and to adopt new laws are likely to
continue. With the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA),
currently reauthorized as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the legislative and executive
branches of government have demonstrated a heightened interest in state and local educational
issues. As a result of this interest, federal departments and agencies have issued and continue to
issue regulations that directly impact state and local educational agencies.

Funding must be done by Congress.

Saturno et. al, 16 - *Specialist on congress and Legislative Process, **Analyst on Congress and the
Legislative Process,**Specialist on Congress and the Legislative Process(*James V. Saturno, **Bill
Heniff, ***Megan S., The Congressional Appropriations Process: An Introduction, Congressional
Research Service, 30 November 2016, https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/8013e37d-4a09-46f0-b1e2-
c14915d498a6.pdf,//SL)
Congress annually considers several appropriations measures, which provide discretionary funding
for numerous activitiesfor example, national defense, education , and homeland securityas well as
general government operations. Congress has developed certain rules and practices for the
consideration of appropriations measures, referred to as the congressional appropriations process.
The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of this process.
Appropriations measures are under the jurisdiction of the House and Senate
Appropriations Committees. In recent years these measures have provided approximately 35% to 39%
of total federal spending. The remainder of federal spending comprises direct (or mandatory)
spending, controlled by House and Senate legislative committees, and net interest on the public
debt.

The plan isnt topical it includes action by the judicial system.

Voter for Precise Limits they justify courts affs, which were an entire
college topic explodes limits and makes prep impossible. Our interpretation
comes from the core statute governing education.

And, Ground they get extra-topical courts advantages and no-link out of
DAs like DOE Regulations. That kills neg research and ground.

Finally, extra T is a voter for fairness and limits.

 K
The affirmatives goal of equal educational opportunity reflects a narrow view
of education as a means to compete within the existing economic order that
legitimizes the inequalities made inevitable in a capitalist system.
Moak 16 Daniel Stephen Moak, Ph.D. Canditate in the Department of Political Science at the
University of Pennsylvania, B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy from Willamette University, 2016
(Supply-Side Education: Race, inequality, and the Rise of the Punitive Education State, Dissertation in
Pursuit of a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania, November 30th, Available
Online at http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1901/, Accessed 9-9-17)
To Reconstruct or Adjust? The Battle within Progressive Education, 1920s-1940s
Education is an economic issue -- if not the economic issue of our time...
Its an economic issue when countries that out-educate us today are going to out-compete
us tomorrow. For years, weve recognized that education is a prerequisite for prosperity.
And yet, weve tolerated a status quo where America lags behind other nations...
Meanwhile, when it comes to black students, African American students trail not only
almost every other developed nation abroad, but they badly trail their white classmates
here at home -- an achievement gap that is widening the income gap between black and
white, between rich and poor.
-Barack Obama, Remarks by the
President on
Education Reform at the National Urban League Centennial Conference,
July 29, 2010
There is agreement today across the political spectrum in the United States around the idea that
the education system is in crisis, and that educational reforms are key to solving myriad social
problems. The above quote from President Obama is indicative of the current consensus on the
problems and purpose of education. Both major political parties and important interest groups
have voiced concerns about the quality of schooling , the effectiveness of teachers , the
difficulty of the curriculum, the need for more accountability , and the comparative
effectiveness of the public education system in the United States. Underlying this diagnosis of
school deficiency is a remarkable consensus about the purpose of the education system . Elites
from across the political spectrum promote the idea that the public education system should be
centered around imparting skills that offer individuals the potential for future success within
the existing social and economic order . From the political right, this view of education is
defended as the most efficient way of ensuring that individual earnings are tied to the skills
the individual brings to marketplace, that there is a steady supply of skilled workers for the
labor market, and as the best means of preserving the nations international preeminence. The 51
political left embraces this understanding out of a belief that an education system ordered on these
principles provides the best means of economic mobility for the meritorious, and provides a
path to success even for individuals from traditionally disadvantaged groups.
This current political consensus on education understands the broader economic structure as set,
and therefore the proper focus of the education system is to ensure that all children have an
equal shot at success (or failure) in the existing social order. Although promoters of this vision
of education acknowledge that such a system entails winners and losers, the goal is to create an
educational system that ensures that winners and losers are determined on individual merit, not
on the circumstances of birth. Under this view, critiques of the education system have been
twofold. First, critics charge that the system broadly does not effectively prepare students for the
demands of the labor market. Second, the education system faces criticism for providing some
groups better preparation for future success than others.
What is striking about this vision of the purpose and function of education in American society is
its narrowness. The role of education is reduced to developing and then efficiently and equally
distributing the abilities of individuals to compete in the existing social and economic order. If
these educational conditions are met, subsequent inequalities that arise are viewed as essentially
justified . Absent from this vision of education is any notion that it is possible or desirable for
the public education system to challenge the existing structural order which guarantees that
even equitable educational opportunity ultimately results in inequality . In short, the current
educational consensus 53 has no broader social vision for challenging the extreme inequities that
can result from a capitalist economic system.

The affirmatives aim of social mobility reproduces the ideals of neoliberal

meritocracy takes out and turns the case.
Littler 13 Jo Littler, Reader in the Centre for Culture and Creative Industries and Director of
Research in the Department of Sociology at the City University of London, Ph.D. in Culture and
Communication from the University of Sussex, 2013 (Meritocracy As Plutocracy: The Marketising Of
Equality Under Neoliberalism, New Formations, Volume 80, November 12th, Available Online at
https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/sites/default/files/nf8081_05littler.pdf, Accessed 9-10-17, pg. 52-72)
OF LADDERS AND SNAKES
We are building an Aspiration Nation. A country where its not who you know, or where
youre from; but who you are and where youre determined to go. My dream for Britain
is that opportunity is not an accident of birth, but a birthright.
David Cameron, Conservative Party Spring Conference, March 2013
The UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne have repeatedly evoked
the image of Britain as an Aspiration Nation: as a country in which all people, no matter where
theyre from, have the opportunity to climb the ladder of social mobility .1 This is the language
of meritocracy: the idea that whatever our social position at birth, society ought to offer enough
opportunity and mobility for talent to combine with effort in order to rise to the top.
Meritocratic rhetoric is not confined to the UK. In the US, for instance, President Obamas 2013
inaugural address proclaimed that we are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest
poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else.2 Meritocracy has deep
and varied historical lineages; in the UK, it can be connected back to the Victorian self-help
tradition, and in the US to the emergence of the idea of aspirational consumerism as defining the
American Dream in the early twentieth century. Today, in many countries across the global
North, the idea that we should live in a meritocracy has become integral to contemporary
structures of feeling: assumed by both right-wing and leftwing political parties, heavily promoted
in educational discourse , and animating popular culture, meritocracy has become an idea as
uncontroversial and as homely as motherhood and apple pie.3 Why should issue be taken with
such an apparently innocuous concept, one whose potency lies in its investment in the
conception of social mobility, pitted against older forms of inherited privilege?
In this essay I argue that we should pay close attention to meritocracy because it has become a key
ideological means by which plutocracy - or government by a wealthy elite - perpetuates itself
through neoliberal culture . It is not, in other words, merely a coincidence that the common idea
that we live, or should live, in a meritocratic age co-exists with a pronounced lack of social
mobility and the continuation of vested hereditary economic interests.4 Meritocratic discourse, as
I show below, is currently being actively mobilised by members of a plutocracy to extend their
own interests and power. Contemporary meritocracy operates to marketise the very idea of
equality and can be understood in the light of Foucaults formulation of neoliberalism as a state
in which competitive markets are not conceptualised as the natural order of things (as they were
under classical liberalism), but as entities that need to be produced. 5 This helps explain some of the
tenacity of the power of meritocracy, despite its clear contradictions, and how it works as a
mechanism to both perpetuate, and create, social and cultural inequality.
This essay explores this argument by sketching partial but hopefully nonetheless revealing genealogies of
meritocratic discourse. Discussions of meritocracy have largely either taken place around
education or have been empirical analyses of whether or not the meritocratic nature of existing
social institutions can be verified.6 Reflecting on the cultural politics of its genealogy can add to our
understanding of meritocratic ideas and the worlds they have shaped. In this article I pursue this analysis
through three sections. The first brief section of this paper considers what might be wrong with the notion
of meritocracy. The second traces some key points in the travels of the concept within and around
academic social theory, moving from Alan Fox and Michael Youngs initial, disparaging use of the term
in the 1950s, to Daniel Bells approving adoption of the concept in the 1970s, and on to its take-up by
neoconservative think tanks in the 1980s. The third section considers the use of meritocracy as a plank of
neoliberal political rhetoric and public discourse. This focuses on the resonance of the term in relatively
recent British culture, from a Thatcherite anti-establishment version through to the explicit Blairite
adoption of the concept, and on to its contemporary life in coalition discourse as part of David Camerons
putative project to build an Aspiration Nation. For to understand how meritocracy is deployed by
neoliberalism we need to comprehend it both in terms of its relationship to broader contexts and in terms
of the specific ways in which it is being shaped at the present time.
WHATS WRONG WITH MERITOCRACY?
What is wrong with meritocracy? Given that the concept of meritocracy is today largely normalised as
wholly beneficial, it is worth highlighting some of the problems with the concept as it is generally
understood in the present.
To begin with, the logic of meritocracy assumes that talent or intelligence is inborn from birth:
it depends, in other words, on an essentialised conception of intellect and aptitude. It primarily
assumes an ability which is inborn and either given the chance or not to succeed. This notion of
intelligence is singular and linear. It is in opposition to conceptions of intelligence as multiple
and various, which can change and grow in numerous directions. Carried to its logical conclusion,
such a hermetic conception of intelligence as a sealed and singular entity shares, as Young
intimated in The Rise of the Meritocracy, the logic of eugenics .7 This elitist myth of inherent
difference accelerated in intensity in affluent nations during the 1950s, and in Britain, as Danny
Dorling points out, the state enthusiastically sponsored the division of children into types, with
the amount spent per head on grammar school children being much higher than on those at the
alternative secondary moderns.8 What Dorling terms apartheid schooling was challenged in
the 1960s and 1970s, but it was this 1950s rising tide of elitist stratification in both schools and
society that in part prompted Michael Youngs initial use of the term in 1958.
The second key problem with meritocracy is that it endorses a competitive, linear, hierarchical
system in which by definition people must be left behind . The top cannot exist without the
bottom . Not everyone can rise. Unrealised talent is therefore both the necessary and
structural condition of its existence . The forms taken by contemporary celebrity and the
reality/talent shows have exemplified this structure,9 publicly dramatising their assumptions
while offering the basis for key forms of public entertainment. Meritocracy offers a ladder
system of social mobility , promoting a socially corrosive ethic of competitive self-interest
which both legitimises inequality and damages community by requiring people to be in a
permanent state of competition with each other.10 The classic meritocratic trope of the ladder was
recently reinvigorated in the UK by David Camerons 2013 Conservative Party Conference pledge to
offer the ladder of opportunity for all to climb. As Raymond Williams argued in 1963, the ladder is a
perfect symbol of the bourgeois idea of society, because while it undoubtedly offers the
opportunity to climb, it is a device which can only be used individually; you go up the ladder
alone . Such an alternative to solidarity, pointed out Williams, has dazzled many working-
class leaders, and is objectionable in two respects: it weakens community and the task of
common betterment and sweetens the poison of hierarchy by offering growth through merit
rather than money or birth, whilst retaining a commitment to the very notion of hierarchy
itself .11
The third key problem with the ideology of meritocracy is in the hierarchical ranking of
professions and status it endorses. Certain professions are positioned at the top, but why they are
there - and whether they should be there - tends to be less discussed. Why do a singer or entrepreneur
become roles to aspire to above those of a vet or a nurse? Why, as income disparity widens, are
celebrity-based professions rising in ascribed status? Whilst one obvious answer is income, these
questions are not ones that the contemporary neoliberal logic of meritocracy foregrounds. There
is also a historical dimension to the answer, which relates to the shifting composition of social
mobility. Academic research on social mobility usually differentiates between absolute and relative
social mobility.12 Absolute social mobility refers to the movement in occupational classes from
one generation to the next. In the UK there was a high level of movement between 1945 and the mid
1980s due to the growth in professional employment in the public sector (especially in education and
health) and in service sector employment, which drew disproportionately on the newly-educated children
of manual workers: a phenomenon which has since reduced with the combined effects of public sector
spending cuts since the 1980s and shrinkage in the service economy. Measuring relative social
mobility involves comparing rates at which those from lower down move up, compared to how
many higher up fall down; and as Vikki Boliver and David Byrne recently argue, not only has
there been little if any sign of [people] becoming any more equal over time but with a
crumbling middle class, upward mobility increasingly necessitates downward mobility.13
Such patterns help explain both the mid-century cultural validation of professional occupations
and the expanding late twentieth-century focus on entrepreneurialism and celebrity. In a
landscape of extreme poverty and wealth, entrepreneurialism and celebrity rags-to-riches tales
become highlighted, or rendered luminous, to borrow Angela McRobbies term;14 they become
publicly visible opportunities to escape an otherwise entrenched position of social
subordination.
The notion of escape, however, introduces the fourth, interconnected, problem: meritocracys
validation of upper-middle class values as norms to aspire to and its rendering of working-
class cultures as abject. The language of meritocracy is about moving upwards in financial and
class terms, but whilst this may entail, for example, being better fed, it does not mean existing in a
better or happier culture. Middle-class suburbs are not usually better places for socialising or
connecting with a range of people than housing estates, for instance.15 Discourses of meritocracy,
however, assume that all movement must happen upwards , and in the process contributes to
the positioning of working-class cultures as the underclass , as abject zones and lives to flee
from. As Imogen Tyler has shown powerfully in her recent book Revolting Subjects, this is a tendency
that has exacerbated under neoliberalism.16
The fifth key problem with meritocracy, and the problem which moves us into the territory of
considering why it has such currency and power, is that it functions as an ideological myth to
obscure economic and social inequalities and the role it plays in curtailing social equality.
Recent social science research mapping social mobility has gestured in this direction; McNamee
and Miller for instance have argued that in America meritocracy is a description that is both
inaccurate and harmful, and that its use legitimises inequalities of power and privilege through
claims that are demonstrably false.17 As we will see later, one of the key components of this
ideological myth is how effort - which in a meritocratic system combines with talent to
produce merit - is over-valued, and social and economic location is not considered or ignored .
The emphasis on effort is the key element of meritocracy that has been expanded in recent
years.
Meritocracy might therefore be broadly characterised as a potent blend of an essentialised and
exclusionary notion of talent, competitive individualism and the need for social mobility . The
following sections analyse this particular cultural cocktail, and consider how the claims of meritocracy
have worked and circulated in terms of social theory, political narrative and public discourse.

Neoliberalism causes extinction its try-or-die.

Shoup 15 Laurence H. Shoup, writer and anti-war/civil rights activist, author of Wall Streets Think
Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics 1976-2014, holds a
Ph.D. in U.S. History from Northwestern University, 2015 (Dangerous Circumstances: The Council on
Foreign Relations Proposes a New Grand Strategy Towards China, Monthly Review, Volume 67, Issue 4,
September, Available Online at http://monthlyreview.org/2015/09/01/dangerous-circumstances/,
Accessed 06-13-2016)
Beyond the National Interest: What Are the Interests of Humanity and the Planet?
Humanity faces a dire situation, an ecological planetary emergency characterized not only by
rapid climate change, but also ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, degradation of
freshwater sources, chemical pollution, and disappearing forest cover. Science tells us that
if we stay on the present emissions path, in only a few decades there is a high probability of
runaway global warming, making civilized life problematic on a hotter and hotter planet. The
survival of billions of people, future generations, and the human species itself will all be
imperiled. The root source of the problem is not raised in the meetings of this or any other CFR
study group: the nature of the grow-or-die capitalist system and its supposed market magic,
which requires large-scale state support and vast amounts of fossil-fuel consumption to maintain
and expand itself through its endless chain of production, transportation, exchange, and capital
accumulation. Since we live on a finite earth, this system cannot and will not grow forever. To
avert a catastrophe, nothing short of an ecological, fully democratic socialist revolution against
the reign of capital will now do the job, and this requires the greatest revolutionary mass
movement in human history. We are now in the midst of an epochal crisis, and the freely
associated workers and farmers, together with the entire population, organized democratically in
assemblies and councils in workplaces and communities, need to demand and help to institute
the state planning, degrowth, reduced consumption (especially for the capitalist class in the
richer nations), and egalitarian policies that are now needed. Only with a new mode of
production and consumption can fossil-fuel mining and burning be brought down to the very
low level required for the preservation of our life-sustaining biosphere. Only with a new mode of
production can the impacts to our atmosphere, oceans, forests, land, and waterways be mitigated
and the natural world that we all depend upon restored. This new path is in the interest of the vast
majority of the people of the world and the fragile planet that we live on, and this is the global
interest that we must now relentlessly pursue.53

The alternative engages in radical militant intellectuality that challenges the

intellectual hegemony of capitalismconstructing new knowledge practices in
academic forums like debate is a prerequisite to emancipatory social change.
Sotiris 13 Panagiotis Sotiris, Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of
the Aegean, 2013 (Hegemony and mass critical intellectuality, International Socialism: A Quarterly
Journal of Socialist Theory, Issue 137, January 9th, Available Online at
http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=871&issue=137, Accessed 01-23-2013)
All these examples show us that there can be militant forms of intellectuality, both in the sense of
critical and politically engaged theoretical production oriented towards projects for emancipation
and in the sense of mass intellectuality and a change in common sense and mass ideological
practices. At the same time, we have to confront the whole process through which 1960s and 1970s
theoretical radicalism lost both its momentum and its political engagement. The well-known story about
radical academics becoming self-entrenched within the confines of academia and all the rituals of formal
academic research, losing touch with urgent social and political exigencies, although in most aspects a
distortion of reality, did indeed capture some of the problems of post-1970s radical theorising. Even
today, with an impressive wave of young Marxist or more generally radical academics (mainly in junior
positions) in place, one can still sense the gap separating theoretical and political activity or participation
in movements. The standardisation of academic research, the quantification of research assessment, both
individually and institutionally, the pressure for immediate results, papers and quantifiable research
outcomes surely contributes to this.
However, there have also been other forms. To give one example: The edu-factory network has been
more than instrumental in promoting both a radical anti-capitalist agenda regarding the
entrepreneurialisation of higher education and forms of coordination between activists and activist
networks.31 To give another example: all the international networks of economists helping movements
against globalisation, against Third World Debt, in favour of debt-auditing processes.32
Recently the notion of mass intellectuality has gained new interest, especially in the work of writers
working in a post-workerist direction such as M Lazzarato and Paolo Virno.33 According to this theme,
the importance of intellectual immaterial labour in post-Fordist capitalism makes mass intellectuality
even more important, as is evident in the intellectual (in the sense of non-manual) character of many work
processes and in the need for capital to exploit not just labour time but also collective knowledge, skills,
representations. This follows the workerists emphasis on the Fragment on Machines from the
Grundrisse where Marx refers to the General Intellect.34 For this tradition mass intellectuality is an
analytical concept, a description of the objective and subjective conditions for post-Fordism, and follows
the workerist tendency to ground insurrectionary tendencies in the ontology of labour. However, it is not a
concept that can account for the complexity of the division between intellectual and manual labour in
capitalist production, of the recurring tendency both of the incorporation of scientific knowledge and
technique in the production process and of the trivialisation of tasks, and of the forms of the
transformation of science into a productive force. It is also a one-sided reading of Marx that stresses the
importance of the Grundrisse but tends to leave aside Marxs more elaborate confrontation with questions
of science and technology, especially in the Economic Manuscript of 1861-63.35 In those notes a more
complex conception emerges of the relation of science to capitalist production, one that, instead of a
simple image of a collective intellectual capacity being put under the command of capital, stresses the
importance of technology and machinery on the transformation of science into a production force and the
processes of skilling and deskilling associated with this process. Moreover, the post-workerist emphasis
on immaterial intellectual labour as the hegemonic form,36 can easily lead to an underestimation of all
other forms of labour and misrepresent capitalist exploitation as mainly some form of blocking the
creative capability of the multitude.
By contrast, I am using intellectuality here much more in the sense that Gramsci uses it, as a strategic
concept describing a condition to be attained, the result of (counter)hegemonic apparatuses and projects,
the outcome of struggles and new forms of collective organisation. We have to see how this increased
importance of intellectual labour in modern capitalism (something that Gramsci also stressed)
creates conditions for collective practices and networks of militant intellectuality . In this sense
mass intellectuality is not something given in advance; it is a political stake of social and political
antagonism and of the collective practices of social movements.
In the light of the above, we can discuss some of the tasks facing us today. We need more examples of
critical intellectuality and of politically engaged theoretical production. We need radical
academics and researchers providing theoretical material to activists. We want activists and
militants to have a much more theoretical background acquired not only through formal academic
channels. We want radical social movements to become also theoretical sites, to develop their own
knowledge institutions, both in the sense of producing and of disseminating knowledge and critical
theory. The current protest cycle can only help this process. Social movements, especially when they are
politicised in a collective and non-hierarchical manner, are also knowledge processes. People
engaging in them have to know things, have to form arguments, and at the same time they
learn from the very collective experience of struggle. The presence of radical theorists and
researchers alongside militants surely helps, but this is not enough. We need to go beyond this relation of
externality between the movement and critical theory and build new institutions of knowledge
within the movement itself, new knowledge practices, and new forms of militant research.
Only in this way will it be possible to actually not only produce new readings of the conjuncture but
also discuss new projects and alternative social forms and arrangements, exactly what is more
needed in order to galvanise support for radical politics and social change . We also need a new
ethics of research and scientific engagement, stressing the importance of independence from corporate
interests, the work alongside the movement, the timely publication of results, especially regarding dangers
for society, the need for a critical popularisation of scientific findings, the acceptance of the questions and
needs of people from the movement as legitimate concerns.
Such a conception also offers a way out for that growing segment of highly trained scientific and
technical workforce, employed in corporations or the state, that in a period of radicalisation wants to
find an outlet not only for political activism, but also for its knowledge and expertise (a small
example being all those corporate economists who used intensive blogging in the period after the eruption
of the current economic crisis as a means to offer to the general public a critical perspective on economic
developments, based on their knowledge and expertise). The same goes for teachers in both primary
and secondary education, whose scientific training is usually used only for the reproduction of the
curriculum, whereas they could be at the forefront of community based and localised collective
forms of mass intellectuality .
Such a collective work will help us change the way people think and consequently act. The
emergence on a mass scale of new collective representations, mentalities, worldviews and
discursive practices, of new ways for working people to understand social reality and their
place within it and realise the collective potential to transform it, can never be simply a question of
effective propaganda. It must also be a collective effort to change common sense, putting into
practice the necessary dialectic of revolutionary theory on the one hand and the knowledge and
collective experience that working people get from their participation in struggle, in order to
achieve new forms of hegemony in the fight for radical social change. This is an indispensable
aspect of revolutionary politics today.
Above all we must think of radical left parties, political fronts and organisations as knowledge practices
and laboratories of new forms of mass critical intellectuality. In a period of economic and political crisis
but also of new possibilities to challenge capitalist rule, questions of political organisation gain new
relevance. Thinking of organisation simply in terms of practical or communicative skills for mobilisation,
or of electoral fronts and tactics is not enough. It would be better, in order to build todays parties and
united fronts, to revisit Gramscis (and Lenins) conception of the party as a democratic political and
theoretical process that produces knowledge of the conjuncture, organic intellectuals, new worldviews,
social and political alternatives, as a potential (counter)hegemonic apparatus. We need forms of
organisation that not only enable coordination and networking, democratic discussion and effective
campaigning, but also bring together different experiences, combine critical theory with the knowledge
coming from the different sites of struggle, and produce both concrete analyses but also mass ideological
practices and new forms of radical common sense.
Mass radical intellectuality is at the same time a prerequisite and an expression of a new
hegemony emerging. Contrary to the tendency of many people on the left to think simply in
terms of electoral dynamics, we need to start thinking in terms of hegemony and the
construction of an alternative .
 CP
The United States Congress should incrementally require K-12 public school
finance equity within and between states and progressively leverage increased
K-12 funding to induce states to:
implement and maintain K-12 public school finance systems that ensure
students can achieve state content and performance standards;
enhance funding to public K-12 schools with high concentrations of low-
income students; and
reduce the number of public K-12 schools with concentrated poverty.

Gradual Overhaul solves the case.

Robinson 16 Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, Professor of Law and Austin Owen Research Scholar at
the University of Richmond School of Law, Researcher at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for
Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, former Associate Professor at the Emory School of Law, former
General Attorney in the Office of the General Counsel at the United States Department of Education,
holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, 2016 (No Quick Fix for Equity and Excellence: The Virtues of
Incremental Shifts in Education Federalism, Stanford Law & Policy Review (27 Stan. L. & Pol'y Rev
201), Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)
In light of the need for additional concerted action to spark state reform of school finance
systems, some scholars and advocates are beginning to call for the federal government to
leverage its influence on states to ensure that they implement equitable school funding systems.
In his 2015 book, Jack Jennings, the founder and former CEO of the Center on Education Policy who
served for more than a quarter century as a staff director and general counsel for the U.S. House of
Representatives Committee on Education and Labor, identified the need for federal reform that
promotes both equitable and adequate funding as essential for continued progress in education.
n20 In addition, the Equity and Excellence Commission recommended "bold action" on school
funding reform that would, among other things, require states to implement funding systems that
provide all students the resources they need to meet state standards; incentivize states to increase
funding for low-performing, low-income and minority students; and create federal monitoring of
these new investments to ensure that they are improving student outcomes. n21
David Sciarra and Danielle Farrie, who are leading the New Jersey funding litigation, have made
similar calls. Sciarra and Farrie, an attorney and scholar of education finance, respectively, recently
contended that federal funding should be linked to state finance reform that is closely tied to
state education standards. n22 Michael Rebell, scholar and successful litigator of the New York
funding litigation, has also called for federal intervention to promote equitable funding systems.
n23 Education law scholar Derek Black has proposed reforms to Title I of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act that would incentivize states to adopt progressive funding systems
that provide greater funding to [*205] districts with substantial high-need populations and that
reward fiscal effort. n24 A recent paper by Diana Epstein, a Senior Education Policy Analyst at the
Center for American Progress, argues that given state reluctance to provide greater aid to
districts with more students with greater needs, the federal government should incentivize states
to revise their funding systems to accomplish such reforms. n25 These calls for federal
influence to promote equitable and adequate school funding systems build upon the scholarship
calling for federal action that promotes greater equality of educational opportunity. n26
In this Article, I join these calls for the federal government to lead states to reform their school
funding systems. In doing so, I build upon my recent scholarship that calls for additional federal
leadership insisting that states prioritize equity and excellence in education. n27 I recommend
that we restructure education federalism by requiring the federal government to serve as the
ultimate guarantor of equal access to an excellent education . n28 My theory of education
federalism embraces federal policymaking strengths in education, such as federal research,
technical, and financial assistance, that support state and local reforms to promote equity and
excellence. n29 This theory would retain state and local control over education where states
and localities possess superior policymaking strengths, including preserving states as
laboratories of reform that determine how to achieve equity and excellence. It also would
[*206] promote new forms of state and local control over education by enhancing state and
local capacity for reform . n30
This Article provides a practical application of my theory for reconstructing education federalism in ways
that would support equal access to an excellent education. My analysis serves two goals. First, I present
research regarding some of the central school funding system shortcomings that may not be widely
understood. The shortcomings that I analyze are: the provision of less revenue to districts with substantial
concentrations of students with greater needs; the failure to tailor funding to the objective of the education
system; substandard funding amounts; and insufficient oversight of school funding. Second, scholars have
increasingly begun to call for a federal role in education funding by proposing a single-step reform. In
contrast, I contend that the United States should incrementally increase federal influence over
school funding to prompt states to maintain equitable funding systems.
Foonotes in this card:
n20. Jennings, supra note 3 at 179-83, 206-17.
n21. U.S. Dep't of Educ., Equity & Excellence Comm'n, supra note 2, at 19.
n22. See David Sciarra & Danielle Farrie, From Rodriguez to Abbott: New Jersey's Standards-Linked
School Funding Reform, in The Enduring Legacy of Rodriguez: Creating New Pathways to Equal
Educational Opportunity, supra note 2, at 119, 139.
n23. Michael A. Rebell, Rodriguez: Past, Present, and Future, in The Enduring Legacy of Rodriguez:
Creating New Pathways to Equal Educational Opportunity, supra note 2, at 65, 72-75.
n24. Derek W. Black, Leveraging Federal Funding for Equity and Integration, in The Enduring Legacy of
Rodriguez: Creating New Pathways to Equal Educational Opportunity, supra note 2, at 227, 242.
n25. Diana Epstein, Ctr. for Am. Progress, Measuring Inequity in School Funding 2 (2011),
https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2011/08/pdf /funding_equity.pdf.
n26. See, e.g., Michael A. Rebell & Jessica R. Wolff, Moving Every Child Ahead: From NCLB Hype to
Meaningful Educational Opportunity 69-81 (2008) (arguing that Congress should enact legislation to
guarantee all children meaningful educational opportunity); Goodwin Liu, Education, Equality, and
National Citizenship, 116 Yale L.J. 330, 399-406 (2006) (contending that Congress should enact
legislation that remedies any impediments to all children receiving the educational prerequisites for
national citizenship); Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, The Case for a Collaborative Enforcement Model for a
Federal Right to Education, 40 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1652, 1711-26 (2007) (proposing a collaborative
enforcement model for a federal right to education); Robinson, supra note 2, at 214-223 (proposing a
reconstruction of education federalism that would build upon federal policymaking strengths to ensure
equal access to an excellent education). Cf. Linda Darling Hammond, Inequality and School Resources:
What It Will Take to Close the Opportunity Gap, in Closing the Opportunity Gap: What America Must
Do to Give Every Child an Even Chance 77, 80-97 (Prudence L. Carter & Kevin G. Welner eds., 2013)
(identifying educational opportunity gaps and proposing funding equitable education to close these gaps).
n27. Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, Disrupting Education Federalism, 92 Wash. U. L. Rev. 959, 985-88
(2015).
n28. See id. at 1002-05.
n29. See id. at 985-86, 994-1000, 1003, 1015.
n30. See id. at 1014-15.
 DA
The travel ban will fall now but it will require institutional legitimacy to
overrule past precedent
Spiro 17 Peter Spiro, Charles Weiner Professor of Law at Temple University Law School, former
law clerk to Justice David H. Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court, specializes in international, immigration,
and constitutional law, B.A. from Harvard College and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of
Law, 2017.(How the Courts Could See Their Way to Striking Down the Trump Travel Ban, Lawfare,
February 2nd, Available Online at https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-courts-could-see-their-way-striking-
down-trump-travel-ban, Accessed 09-03-2017)
It is true that these were Cold War cases, decided in a historical context in which the Supreme Court
could hardly afford to spend down institutional capital in the face of other controversial agendas
(domestic civil rights among them). But as recently as 2015, the Court in Kerry v. Din upheld the
denial of an immigrant visa to the spouse of a US citizen on unspecified terrorist-related grounds,
an important interest denied with no meaningful process. The Supreme Court has never struck down
a provision of the immigration law outright. This line of cases, now stretching back more than a century,
adds up to the plenary power doctrine.
But just because it hasnt happened in the past doesnt mean it cant happen in the future. There
are unprecedented facets of the travel ban and its context that could embolden the courts to push
back in novel ways.
The atmospherics are consequential. First is the spectacularly sloppy way in which the ban was adopted.
There isnt even the pretense of the order having been properly vetted within the executive
branch. That will offend judicial sensibilitiesalready evidenced by the district court orders over the
weekendwhich start with procedural regularity. Although that wont show up in any opinions, judges
will approach the order with skepticism rather than obeisance.
Second, and relatedly, is the fact that the order serves no counterterror purpose. Refugees are the
most vetted of immigrantsno terrorist would take the refugee route into the United States, and in fact
none have (leaving aside the minor exception of two Iraqi refugees who faced terrorism charges in 2011
for conduct that occurred prior to entering the US). Not a single terrorist attack has been undertaken in the
United States by any national of the seven listed countries. On the contrary, the travel ban will
undermine national security interests by further alienating the Islamic world. Many experts have
testified to this fact and there dont appear to be any credible experts who support the ban. The
State Department dissent memo received an unprecedented number of signatures, reportedly a thousand.
Why is this important for purposes of judicial scrutiny? It could help shift the courts away from
their historically cautious approach to anything implicating national security values. That is at
the heart of jurisdictional barriers to considering foreign relations controversies, which is in
turn at the heart of plenary power. Judges fret that they have an incomplete understanding of foreign
relations. Whats more, if they get it wrong, they see a dramatic downside risk. Judges are unlikely to
have that feeling here. Any educated observer can see the folly of Trumps move. They wont worry
about getting it wrong, or about a downside risk, at least not as a matter of national security.
This element can be plugged into the doctrinal analysis. Even the plenary power cases allow for some
level of judicial scrutiny. The Supreme Court has set the bar pretty low. Is the measure a fantasy
or pretense (Harisiades)? Is it facially legitimate and bona fide (Kleindienst v. Mandel)? Well, in this
case, maybe not. The courts could find the travel ban lacking even under these extremely
deferential standards. Other cases supply more favorable language. In the 2001 decision in Zadvydas v.
Davis, the Court found the immigration power subject to important constitutional limitations on the
way to interpreting the Immigration Act to bar the indefinite detention of deportees whose home countries
refused to accept repatriation. A case unrelated to the travel ban now before the Court addressing a
gender-discriminatory element of the nationality law could add to the quiver (the Justices will surely
understand the broader implications of their ruling in Lynch v. Morales-Santana). The courts might also
squeeze a non-discrimination provision of the immigration act (not really intended for these purposes) to
roll back the ban, as David Bier credibly argues here.
Finally, there are the crowds. An op-ed I wrote for the New York Times in December 2015, back when
both a Trump presidency and the possibility of a Muslim ban seemed blissfully hypothetical, has mostly
been cited for rehearsing the doctrinal edifice of plenary power. But I tried to end on a more hopeful
notethat the courts often follow the People in announcing constitutional norms. I didnt quite believe at
the time I wrote this that the broader public actually would demand more searching scrutiny of
immigration law. I do now. The fact of visible, spontaneous demonstrations against the executive
ordercoupled with broad opposition among elitescould help show the courts the way to
pivot away from plenary power. It will take less courage and institutional fortitude.
So, I am cautiously optimistic that the courts will stand up to Trump and his ill-considered travel
ban. The analogy herein terms of atmospherics, not doctrineare the Guantanamo cases from the
2000s. No one would have expected the Court to push back in the face of overwhelmingly deferential
precedents implicating military hostilities. But by the time the cases reached the Court, the Bush
Administration has lost a great deal of credibility, and the circumstances were such that the Court could
feel confident that demanding some process for Guantanamo detainees would not cross counterterror
purposes. How those decisions have translated on the ground is a question for debate, and there would be
similar complexities to reversing the Trump order. But the courts should start putting the Constitution to
work in the immigration context as in others.

Ruling on equal protection grounds saps capitalrequires subjective ruling

Rosen 5 Mark D. Rosen, University Distinguished Professor and Professor of Law at Chicago-Kent
College of Law, Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School in 2005-06, received the
2006 Outstanding Scholarly Paper Award from the Association of American Law Schools, B.A. in
economics and political science from Yale College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, 2005 (The
Surprisingly Strong Case for Tailoring Constitutional Principles, University of Pennsylvania Law
Review, Volume 153, May, Available Online at
http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/penn_law_review/vol153/iss5/2/, Accessed 09-12-2017, p.1631-1632)
Regardless of the quantum of the costs, the question arises as to how they are to be balanced
against the potential benefits of Tailoring identified in Part IV. The answer is that choosing
between them is an eminently political process that is not reducible to a purely rational
process, but instead is a process that simultaneously reflects and helps constitute the very
character of our national political community. This is so because none of the potential benefits of
Tailoring is commensurable with the costs of Tailoring. For example, it is not possible to translate both
the benefit of accommodating the needs of certain minority communities (a benefit according to
Kymlicka and Taylor)482 and the costs of increasing discretion and complicating
administrability into numbers that can be compared on a common scale. Trading off among
incommensurable goods hence is not a process that can be undertaken by a perfectly rational
machine executing an algorithm, but involves subjective value choices that reflect and shape the
character of the decision maker.483 Choosing between One-Size-Fits-All and Tailoring thus
reflects a doubly subjective, political process: deciding which if any of the potential benefits
of Tailoring are to constitute actual benefits for purposes of constitutional doctrine, and then
determining how such benefits are to be traded off against the costs relating to judicial discretion
and administrability.
Travel ban overruling key to constrain presidential powers
Hay 17 Mark Hay, freelance writer for New Yorker Online, Roads and Kingdoms, Slate, VICE, and
others, former Editor in chief of Awaaz: the Voice of South Asia and Columbia Political Review, Master
of Philosophy and Islamic Studies from the University of Oxford, B.A. in religion and political science-
international relations from Columbia University, 2017 (Trump's Travel Ban Is Far from Dead, Vice
News, June 2nd, Available Online at https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjq55n/trumps-travel-ban-is-far-
from-dead, Accessed 09-04-2017)
But no matter which way it rules, by tackling the travel ban the Supreme Court will be forced to
make a huge judgment on the powers of the presidency in immigration, which as Law points out is
a sector where the executive branch has a lot of leeway. Either the ban will be allowed to go
into effect, and in the process the courts will reaffirm that Trump and his successors can
pursue whatever twisted immigration agendas they like so long as they hide them under sound
legal language. Or the ban will fall, meaning the presidency will forever face a new
constraint on its executive powers.
"The precedent set by this case for the judiciary's proper role in reviewing the president's national
security and immigration authority will transcend this debate, this order, and this constitutional
moment," the Department of Justice wrote in its petition for review to the Supreme Court. They meant
this as an caution to the Supreme Court, but it is nonetheless a rare Trumpian truth.

Unchecked presidential powers cause nuclear war Accidents and miscalc

Adler 11 David Gray Adler, Director of the Andrus Center for Public Policy and Cecil Andrus
Professor of Public Affairs at Boise State University, former James A. McClure Professor and Director of
the James A. and Louise McClure Center for Public Policy Research at the University of Idaho, former
Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Constitutional Studies at Idaho State
University, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Utah, 2011 (Presidential Ascendancy in Foreign Affairs
and the Subversion of the Constitution, Paper Presented to the German-American Conference on
Comparisons of Parliamentary and Coordinated Power (Presidential) Systems, March, Available Online
at http://www.civiced.org/pdfs/GermanAmericanConf2011/Adler.pdf, Accessed 08-13-2015, p. 19-21)
Conclusions
The ascendancy of the president in the area of war and peace finds no foundation in the
Constitution. It reflects, rather, the tendency among presidentsRepublicans and Democrats,
conservatives and liberals aliketo aggrandize and abuse power. Usurpation of the war power,
particularly in an era that exalts the concept of a personal or Imperial Presidency at the expense of a
constitutionally confined presidency, lays bare the paramountcy of a presidents personal characteristics.
Indeed, it is precisely in the realm of a personal presidency that a decidedly executive perspective, subject
to the full measure of the presidents talents, strengths and temperament, as well as his judgment,
knowledge and self-restraint, will be brought to the policy anvil. The historical portrait may not be pretty.
Consider, for example, the arrogance and self-righteousness of Woodrow Wilson, the inclination toward
dramatic posturing by Theodore Roosevelt, the inattentiveness of Ronald Reagan, as well as the
indiscipline of Bill Clinton and the stunning, yet nave certainties of George W. Bush. Then, [end page
19] too, there is the question of the presidents ambition, political agenda, personal distractions and desire
for fame and glory.
A considerable literature urges executive supremacy, and extols the supposed virtues of
presidential assertion, domination and control; yet this body of work often ignores the
dimensions of executive flaws, foibles, and frailties. The electoral process is not infallible; an
elected president may lack the wisdom, temperament and judgment, not to mention
perception, expertise and emotional intelligence to produce success in matters of war and
peace. Those qualities which, to be sure, are attributes of the occupant and not of the office, cannot be
conferred by election. 104 Champions of a unilateral executive war power have ignored and,
perhaps, forgotten the institutional safeguards of separation of powers, checks and balances
and collective decision making urged by the Framers as protection from the flaws of unilateral
judgment and the temptations of power. Among those who have lost their memory of the virtues and
values of those institutional safeguards, apparently, are those many members of Congress and dozens of
judges over the years, who have acquiesced in the face of presidential usurpation in the realm of national
security. Perhaps seduced by the allure of swift, bold military action under the banner of nationalism,
patriotism and ideological and political certainty, these representatives, some elected and others
appointed, have forgotten their institutional duties and responsibilities. It is not probable, but certain, that
the Imperial Presidency would be brought to heel if the other branches duly exercised their powers and
responsibilities, but they have lost their way. No less a personage than the late Senator Sam Ervin
questioned, in the course of hearings in 1973 on the unchecked executive practice of impoundment,
whether the Congress of the United States will remain a viable institution or whether the current trend
toward the executive use of legislative power is to continue unabated until we have arrived at a
presidential form of government. Senator Ervin justly criticized executive aggrandizement of legislative
authority, but he also found Congress culpable for the rise of presidential dominance: The executive
branch has been able to seize power so brazenly only because the Congress has lacked the courage and
foresight to maintain its constitutional position. 105 What was true of impoundment, is true of the war
power. Only Congress itself, to borrow from Justice Robert H. Jackson, can prevent power from
slipping through its fingers.106
The siren song of unilateral presidential war making ignores the tragedies of Korea, Vietnam
and Iraq, and the cost to America of its precious blood and treasure as well as denied and stolen.
The American constitutional system is grounded in the conviction, as James Iredell explained it,
that there is nothing more fallible than human judgment. 107 It is sometimes observed that the
intentions of the Framers are outdated and irrelevant. But before we too readily acquiesce in that verdict,
we might do well to recall the policy considerations that underlay the decision to vest the war power in
Congress and not the president. Painfully aware of the horror and destructive consequences of
warfare, the Framers wisely determined that before the very fate of the nation were put to risk
that there ought to be some discussion, some deliberation by Congress, the peoples
representatives. The Founders did not, as James Wilson explained it, want one man to hurry us into
war.108 As things stand in the United States today, however, the president has been exercising
that power. The accretion of dangerous power, Justice Frankfurter has reminded us, occurs when
power is freed from institutional restraints, checks and safeguards. The eminently sound rationales that
convinced the Framers to vest the war power [end page 20] exclusively in Congress, however, have
been ignored and abandoned in recent decades. There is a cost in that, too. It was the artist, Goya,
who in one of his etchings, graphically portrayed the consequences of ignoring reason with the
inscription: The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.109 There is no comfort to be found in a
practice which permits unilateral executive war making, particularly in the age of nuclear
weapons, when war might lead to the incineration of the planet. When it comes to the
constitutional design for war making, it is clear that the Framers policy concerns are even more
compelling today than they were two centuries ago.
 1NC Inequality Advantage
Weigh Consequences deontology is irresponsible in the policy sphere.
Goodin 95 Robert E. Goodin, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Social & Political Theory
in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, holds a D.Phil. in Politics
from Oxford University, 1995 (Utilitarianism as a public philosophy, Utilitarianism as a Public
Philosophy, Published by Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521462630, p. 8-10)
The strength of utilitarianism, the problem to which it is a truly compelling solution, is as a guide to
public rather than private conduct. There, virtually all its vices - all the things that make us wince in
recommending it as a code of personal morality - loom instead as considerable virtues .
Consider first the raft of criticisms couched in terms of the impersonality of utilitarianism. Like all
universalist philosophies, utilitarianism asks us to take "the view from nowhere.19 There is no
obvious place within utilitarian theories for people's idiosyncratic perspectives, histories, attachments,
loyalties or personal commitments.
That rings untrue to certain essential qualities of personal life. The essence of the communitarian
challenge is that everyone comes from somewhere. There are no free-floating individuals, of the sort with
which liberals generally, and utilitarians paradigmatically, populate their moral theories."20 People have,
and upon reflection we think they should have, principled commitments and personal attachments of
various sorts.21[end page 8]
As an account of the peculiar role responsibilities of public officials (and, by extension, of ordinary
individuals in their public capacities as citizens) that vice becomes a virtue, though. Those agents, too,
have to come from somewhere, bringing with them a whole raft of baggage of personal attachments,
commitments, principles and prejudices. In their public capacities, however, we think it only right
and proper that they should stow that baggage as best they can .
Complete neutrality might be an impossible ideal. That is another matter.22 But it seems
indisputable that that is an ideal which people in their public capacities should strive to realize
as best they are able. That is part (indeed, a central part ) of what it is to be a public official at
all. It is the essence of public service as such that public servants should serve the public at
large. Public servants must not play favorites.
Or consider, again, criticisms revolving around the theme that utilitarianism is a coldly calculating
doctrine.23 In personal affairs that is an unattractive feature. There, we would like to suppose that
certain sorts of actions proceed immediately from the heart, without much reflection much less any real
calculation of consequences. Among intimates it would be extremely hurtful to think of every kind
gesture as being contrived to produce some particular effect.
The case of public officials is, once again, precisely the opposite. There, it is the height of
irresponsibility to proceed careless of the consequences. Public officials are, above all else,
obliged to take care : not to go off half cocked, not to let their hearts rule their heads. In Hare's telling
example, the very worst thing that might be said of the Suez misadventure was not that the British and
French did some perfectly awful things (which is true, too) but that they did so utterly unthinkingly.
Related to the critique of utilitarianism as a calculating doctrine is the critique of utilitarianism as a
consequentialist doctrine. According to utilitarianism, the effects of an action are everything. There are no
actions which are, in and of themselves, morally right or wrong, good or bad. The only things that are
good or bad are the effects that actions produce.25
That proposition runs counter to certain ethical intuitions which, at [end page 9] least in certain quarters,
are rooted deeply. Those who harbor a Ten Commandments view of the nature of morality see a moral
code as being essentially a list of "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots" - a list of things that are right or
wrong in and of themselves, quite regardless of any consequences that might come from doing them.26
That may or may not be a good way to run one's private affairs. 27 Even those who think it is, however,
tend to concede that it is no way to run public affairs. It is in the nature of public officials' role
responsibilities that they are morally obliged to "dirty their hands" make hard choices, do
things that are wrong (or would ordinarily be wrong, or would be wrong for ordinary private
individuals) in the service of some greater public good .28 It would be simply irresponsible of
public officials (in any broadly secular society, at least) to adhere mindlessly to moral precepts read
off some sacred list, literally "whatever the consequences."29 Doing right though the heavens
may fall is not (nowadays, anyway) a particularly attractive posture for public officials to adopt.

Right to Education Fails many other policies also key.

Darby and Levy 11 Derrick Darby, Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Kansas, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh, and Richard E.
Levy, J.B. Smith Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Kansas School of
Law, holds a J.D. from the University of Chicago School of Law, 2011 (Slaying The Inequality Villain
In School Finance: Is The Right To Education The Silver Bullet?, Kansas Journal of Law & Public
Policy (20 Kan. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 351), Summer, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-
Nexis)
C. Implications
Whether school finance litigation relies on adequacy or equity and whether one chooses to understand the
philosophical demands of a right to education in terms of adequacy or equality, attending to the
empirical evidence suggests that it will take much more than improved resources to address the
complex problem of educational inequality. Indeed, once we expand our horizons to consider the
full and complex array of factors that affect educational achievement, it is clear that the right to
an education cannot alone bear the burden of alleviating educational inequality, especially if the
right is understood in terms of educational funding. To illustrate, assuming that adequacy theorists
are correct about the negative impact of segregation on unequal group-based educational outcomes,
societal efforts may have to reach well beyond schools, perhaps to mandate greater integration
in places where people live, work, worship, and play. It is unlikely that simply bringing young
and middle school age children together in school for a few hours a day, five days a week, will
be enough to overcome many of the negative effects of voluntary segregation in other parts of
society. Of course, such a proposal would be met with serious resistance and criticism. Still, it may
be difficult for proponents of greater integration to avoid moving in this direction.
If we consider additional factors, such as the health and cognitive effects of poverty, teacher
perceptions of student ability, or teacher expectations or student expectations of discrimination in
the labor market as factors shaping educational outcomes, then it is also clear that merely
recognizing a right to education will not suffice. We would have to combine this right with a
larger effort to reduce poverty, greater enforcement of existing anti-discrimination laws, or the
development of new approaches to targeting subtle and not so subtle forms of discrimination
throughout society . Hence, a serious appreciation of the complexity of the empirical debate
regarding the factors that shape educational outcomes seems to demand a more cautious
assessment about the prospect of recognizing a right to education as the silver bullet to slay the
educational inequality villain.
Although we may someday have a better empirical understanding of the factors affecting educational
success, it is clear that scholars have yet to settle this matter. For practical purposes, then, what matters
most is that we are more circumspect when we draw conclusions about weighty matters pertaining to the
demands of equality and justice. In the present case, the variety of competing explanations of unequal
educational outcomes forces us to curb our enthusiasm for the prospects that recognizing a right
to education will suffice to eradicate educational inequalities. Many factors affect educational
outcomes - some related to resources, others related to the educational system and the manner in
which education is delivered, and many that are unrelated to the educational system. Pending a
final settlement of these matters, which is highly improbable, it will be all the more difficult for courts,
lawyers, and [*377] policymakers to sort out the problem of educational inequality. n121

Funding Not Key test scores, graduation rates, and staffing.

Robinson and Scafidi 16 Gerard Robinson, Resident Fellow in Education Policy Studies at the
American Enterprise Institute, former Commissioner of Education for the State of Florida, former
Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Virginia, holds an M.Ed. from Harvard University, and
Benjamin Scafidi, Professor of Economics, Finance, and Quantitative Analysis and Director of the
Education Economics Center at Kennesaw State University, Senior Fellow at the Georgia Public Policy
Foundation, former Chair of Georgias Charter Schools Commission, Director of Education Policy for the
Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Virginia, 2016
(More Money, Same Problems, U.S. News & World Report, September 20th, Available Online at
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-09-20/more-money-wont-fix-failing-public-schools,
Accessed 07-06-2017)
Schools need extra money to help struggling students, or so goes the long-standing thinking of
traditional education reformers who believe a lack of resources teachers, counselors, social workers,
technology, books, school supplies is the problem. We agree that, at some level, resources matter to
education. That said, a look back at the progress we've made under reformers' traditional response
to fixing low-performing schools simply showering them with more money makes it clear
that this approach has been a costly failure.
Since World War II, inflation-adjusted spending per student in American public schools has
increased by 663 percent. Where did all of that money go? One place it went was to hire more
personnel. Between 1950 and 2009, American public schools experienced a 96 percent increase in
student population. During that time, public schools increased their staff by 386 percent four
times the increase in students. The number of teachers increased by 252 percent, over 2.5
times the increase in students. The number of administrators and other staff increased by over
seven times the increase in students.
One could argue that those extra staff were needed to educate students with special needs, who were
excluded by most public schools prior to 1970. Or maybe these extra staff were utilized to provide equal
opportunity to African-American students who had been traditionally discriminated against during the Jim
Crow era.
This staffing surge still exists today. From 1992 to 2014 the most recent year of available data
American public schools saw a 19 percent increase in their student population and a staffing
increase of 36 percent.
This decades-long staffing surge in American public schools has been tremendously expensive
for taxpayers, yet it has not led to significant changes in student achievement. For example, public
school national math scores have been flat (and national reading scores declined slightly) for 17-
year-olds since 1992.
In addition, public high school graduation rates experienced a long and slow decline between
1970 and 2000. Today, graduation rates are slightly above where they were in 1970.
We think it is time to reform our thinking about public schools. One avenue we should consider is
the important role of parents. According to a 2005 meta-analysis by William H. Jeynes, students living
with involved parents had an academic advantage of higher grades and test scores than those living with
less-involved parents. And according to Strong Families, Strong Schools, studies of families show that the
family's influence on a student is more important to his or her success than family income or level of
education.
Currently two states Georgia and Massachusetts are looking at ways to fix public schools beyond
more bucks and bureaucracy.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal is pushing a constitutional amendment that would allow the state to take
control of persistently failing public schools. Voters in November will decide whether to transfer control
of and funding for these schools to a state entity the Opportunity School District that will either
manage failing public schools directly or convert them to charter public schools governed by a local board
of parents and other citizens. The amendment is likely to pass, despite fierce opposition from the public
school establishment.
Massachusetts has one of the oldest charter school laws in the nation and is home to the highest-
performing charter schools today. Low-income students in Boston charter schools generate learning
growth equivalent to 31 days in math and 59 days in reading. With results like these, we might expect
people to cheer. But this is not the case. Several groups, including the teachers' union, oppose the state's
Charter School Expansion Initiative, a November ballot initiative, arguing that charters "create separate
and unequal conditions for success by failing to serve as many high-need students as their host districts."
It is long past time to try something new to improve American schools. To give all students an
opportunity to succeed, public education needs innovative approaches for the delivery of
teaching and learning be it through the options up for a vote in Georgia and Massachusetts, or by
empowering parents with more choices in public schools. Money, while important, cannot solve our
nation's public school challenges alone: It will take new and creative approaches that involve
parents and communities, too.

No Inequality-Based Mortality Gap its already closed.

Currie and Schwandt 16 Janet Currie, Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public
Affairs and Director of the Center for Health and Well Being at Princeton University, Director of the
Program on Children at the National Bureau of Economic Research, holds a Ph.D. in Economics from
Princeton University, and Hannes Schwandt, Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the
University of Zurich, holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain), 2016 (Falling
inequality in mortality in the US, VoxEU.orgthe Centre for Economic Policy Researchs policy portal,
July 2nd, Available Online at http://voxeu.org/article/mortality-inequality-good-news-county-level-
approach, Accessed 06-19-2017)
Overall, our results show that the health of the next generation in the poorest areas of the US has
improved tremendously and that the race gap has largely closed. It is surprising how little
attention has been paid to this health success story in either the academic or the public
discussion.
Likely drivers for the strong decline in mortality inequality are social policies that helped the
most disadvantaged families. One of the most important may be expansions of public health
insurance to poor pregnant women and children that took place in the late 1980s and 1990s. Other
important factors include reductions in smoking prevalence, expansions of food and nutrition
programs, and reductions in pollution. Overall, these findings show that even in times of great
economic inequality, inequality in health outcomes is not inevitable but is strongly mediated
by policy.
Distribution Outweighs Education there arent enough good jobs to solve
poverty and inequality and jobs require connections.
Bruenig 12 Matt Bruenig, Freelance Writer specializing in Poverty and Political Theory, has
written for The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The American
Prospect, In These Times, Jacobin, and Dissent, 2012 (Education reform will not fix poverty or
inequality, Matt Bruenigs blog, March 12th, Available Online at
http://mattbruenig.com/2012/03/12/education-reform-will-not-fix-poverty-or-inequality/, Accessed 07-04-
2017)
As regular readers know by now, I am fairly skeptical of the Education Reform Movement. I am not
convinced that the reforms advocated by this well-funded movement will actually work because I suspect
that the real problem is economic inequality, not bad schools or bad teachers. But even if one
believed that the policies pushed by the reformers would be successful, a question then arises: successful
at what?
Education reformers observe that a large achievement gap exists between poor and wealthy
students, and try to find ways to eliminate that gap through reforms. But why? What is the point of
eliminating the achievement gap? Reformers give many reasons, some of which are undeniably
legitimate. Quality education is a freestanding good, and our present economic and educational system
denies that good to multitudes of students. Eliminating ignorance is an intrinsic good worth striving for
even if nothing else results from it.
However, education reformers do not view reducing the achievement gap as good simply because
knowledge and learning are good; they also view it as a way of reducing poverty and economic
inequality. It is not just the education reformers who think this either. Almost every milquetoast liberal
effort to reduce poverty centers around trying to funnel more poor people into college. The reasoning for
this proceeds as follows: people with college degrees make significantly more money; therefore if
everyone had a college degree, everyone would make significantly more money.
This analysis does not actually make sense. It is true that if you take any given poor person and
push them through college, that specific poor person will probably escape poverty as a result.
However, taking all poor people and putting them all through college will not result in all of them
escaping poverty. Anyone can escape poverty, but not everyone can .The reason you cannot
scale up college as a poverty-reducer is that high-paying jobs are scarce, positional goods. In the
present economy, only so many people can capture good jobs, not because only so many people
have the credentials to do so, but because only so many good jobs exist. The number and quality of
jobs are decided by market forces, not the number of college graduates. You could educate every
single person in the United States to the point where they held a joint PhD-JD-MD-MBA, but that
does not mean we would suddenly become a society of doctors, lawyers, managers, and
professors. The market defines how many people can hold those positions: we cannot keep
adding management jobs and law jobs if there is not market demand for more.
Ultimately, someone has to clean toilets, prepare food, and build infrastructure. In fact, as Doug
Henwood pointed out in the latest LBO newsletter, only 5 of the top 20 growing professions even require
a college degree. Putting more people through college wont change that, and will thus have little
impact on the total amount of inequality or poverty in the United States. Although better educating
the population wont create high-paying jobs out of thin air, it may marginally increase the productivity of
workers in general. But as we have seen over the past 4 decades, increased productivity does not
necessarily translate into more income for working people.
 1NC Progressive 14th Amendment Advantage
Obergefell Thumps the status quo solves or the plan doesnt.
Yoshino 15 Kenji Yoshino, Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at New
York University School of Law, holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, 2015 (A New Birth Of Freedom?:
Obergefell v. Hodges, Harvard Law Review (129 Harv. L. Rev. 147), November, Available Online to
Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)
[*147] The decision in Obergefell v. Hodges n1 achieved canonical status even as Justice
Kennedy read the result from the bench. A bare majority held that the Fourteenth Amendment
required every state to perform and to recognize marriages between individuals of the same sex. n2 The
majority opinion ended with these ringing words about the plaintiffs: "Their hope is not to be condemned
to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in
the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right." n3
While Obergefell's most immediate effect was to legalize same-sex marriage across the land, its
long-term impact could extend far beyond this context. To see this point, consider how much more
narrowly the opinion could have been written. It could have invoked the equal protection and due
process guarantees without specifying a formal level of review, and then observed that none of the
state justifications survived even a deferential form of scrutiny. The Court had adopted this strategy in
prior gay rights cases. n4
Instead, the Court issued a sweeping statement that could be compared to Loving v. Virginia,
n5 the 1967 case that invalidated bans on interracial [*148] marriage. n6 Like Loving, Obergefell held
that the marriage bans at issue not only violated the Due Process Clause but also violated the
Equal Protection Clause. n7 Yet Obergefell differed from Loving in two important respects. Where
Loving emphasized equality over liberty, n8 Obergefell made liberty the figure and equality the
ground. n9 Obergefell also placed a far stronger emphasis on the intertwined nature of liberty and
equality. n10
In doing so, Obergefell became something even more than a landmark civil rights decision. It
became a game changer for substantive due process jurisprudence . This Comment will discuss
how Obergefell opened new ground in that great debate.

Dignity Doctrine Bad the plans precedent will be used to support

conservative decisions.
Rosen 15 Jeffrey Rosen, President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Constitution Center,
Professor of Law at The George Washington University, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings
Institution, Contributing Editor for the Atlantic, holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, 2015 (The Dangers
of a Constitutional 'Right to Dignity', The Atlantic, April 29th, Available Online at
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-dangerous-doctrine-of-dignity/391796/,
Accessed 07-30-2017)
There is no doubt that Justice Kennedy accurately and movingly describes the indignity and stigma that
bans on same sex marriage impose on the right of LGBT citizens to define their own identities and to
claim the benefits of equal citizenship. But constitutionalizing that injury with broad abstractions
like dignity may lead to results in the future that liberals come to regret. Already, the European
Court of Justices recognition of a sweeping Right to be Forgotten on the Internet has lead to the most
dramatic clash between European traditions of protecting dignity and American traditions of protecting
free speech in a generation.
And down the line, the right to dignitynow celebrated by liberals for what it means to gay rights
could ultimately produce other decisions in unrelated cases that they would not be so quick to
celebrate. In the McDonald case, striking down gun possession laws under the Second
Amendment, Justice Scalia recognized a dignitary interest attached to the right to bear arms.
[T]he conceptual core of the liberty clause ... pertains to ... [an individuals] [s]elf-determination, ...
dignity [or] respect, he wrote.
The word dignity eludes narrow definition, or for that matter, any generally agreed upon definition.
The Court itself has not provided a clear definition of dignity. One scholar, William A. Parent,
declares, [D]ignity is to possess the right not to be arbitrarily and therefore unjustly disparaged as a
person. In another article on the Jurisprudence of Dignity, Leslie Meltzer Henry writes that there is no
single definition, but that dignity includes various conceptions including institutional status, equality,
liberty, individual integrity, and collective virtue. She concludes, dignitys conceptions and functions are
dynamic and context-driven.
If dignity is defined so elastically, then conservatives judges might invoke it to strike down not
only gun-control laws, but also other progressive legislation. Libertarian groups invoked the
sweet-mystery-of-life my language in Casey to argue that the Obamacare healthcare mandate
unconstitutionally violated the dignity and autonomy of Americans by forcing them to buy health
insurance. In the future, cigarette smokers might argue that anti-smoking bans violate their
ability to create an individual identity. And conservative Christian wedding photographers could
claim that anti-discrimination laws compelling them to photograph gay weddings violate their
dignity and ability to define themselves as conservative Christians. What courts would do when
confronted with the clashing dignitary rights of the religious wedding photographer and the gay couple, or
the hunter and the victim of gun violence, is anyones guess, because dignity is such an abstract
concept that its boundaries are difficult to discern.
In suggesting that the expansion of the right to dignity is something that liberals may come to regret, Im
not arguing that same-sex marriage bans can or should easily be upheld in light of the Supreme Court
precedents on the books. In the same-sex marriage arguments, the liberal justices seemed drawn to the
idea that marriage is a fundamental right that must be expanded to all citizens on equal terms. A decision
along those linesalthough broader in some respects than a ruling based on dignitymight be easier to
confine to cases involving marriage. And given Justice Kennedys previous opinions for the Court ruling
out of bounds moral disapproval and the preservation of tradition for its own sake, its hard to think of
any other plausible reasons for upholding the marriage bans that dont rely on what the Court has defined
as animus. Still, if the Court strikes down same-sex marriage bans on the grounds that they violate a right
to dignity, liberals may have second thoughts about empowering judges to decide whose dignity
trumps when the interests of citizens with very different conceptions of dignity clash.

No Progressive Spillover the Supreme Court wont apply the dignity

precedent to other contexts because of judicial ideology.
Hutchinson 17 Darren Lenard Hutchinson, Professor of Law and Stephen C. OConnell Chair at
the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida, former Professor at the Washington College of
Law at American University, holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, 2017 (Undignified: The Supreme
Court, Racial Justice, and Dignity Claims, Florida Law Review, Volume 69, Number 1, January,
Available Online via SSRN at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2745610, Accessed
07-30-2017, p. 6-8)
Despite several reasons for optimism, this Article contends that dignity-based litigation in federal
courts would not contribute meaningfully to the attainment of substantive racial equalityat
least not in the near future. Several factors support a more cautious stance towards the possibility
of achieving substantive racial equality through dignity- based litigation.
First, the concept of dignity remains undertheorized, amorphous, and indeterminate in judicial
opinions. Because Court doctrine does not offer a precise meaning of dignity, judges possess a
great degree of discretion to interpret and define its meaning prospectively. The [end page 6]
ambiguity of dignity as a doctrinal concept complicates its litigation value for victims of racial
injustice.
Second, in a series of cases, the Court has utilized dignity arguments to strike down racial
equality measures. Specifically, the Court has invoked the dignity of whites and the states to
justify invalidation of affirmative action policies and civil rights legislation.
Third, even when the Court has protected human dignity as a constitutional value, it has failed to
extend solicitude to some of the most vulnerable social groups. In abortion cases, for example, the
Court has disregarded the significant burdens that waiting periods, informed consent, and other legal
constraints impose upon poor women and juveniles.
Fourth, Court precedent that portrays dignity in liberal terms contradictorily preserves social
inequality because the Court has carefully tailored these rulings to limit their reach. In
particular, while the Court has utilized dignity to invalidate legislation that discriminates on the
basis of sexual orientation, its rulings do not imply broad disruption of heteronormative state
action. Precedent related to sexual orientation has limited reach because the Court has declined
to consider whether LGBT persons constitute a suspect class. Furthermore, while the Court has
linked reproductive rights and dignity, it has also lowered the standard of review for antiabortion
regulations from strict scrutiny to undue burden. Application of undue burden has led to judicial [end
page 7] validation of types of regulations that had failed under Roe v. Wade's strict scrutiny test.
Fifth, judicial ideologynot lack of a good theoryexplains why the Court has interpreted the
Equal Protection Clause in a manner that impedes substantive racial equality. The Courts racial
equality precedent enacts the primary views that whites hold regarding race relations in the United States.
The Courts embrace of majoritarian viewpoints has led to the formation of an equal protection
doctrine that legitimizes racial hierarchy.
For all of the foregoing reasons, legal scholars should reconsider their optimistic assertions
regarding the potential use of dignity-based litigation as a means of attaining substantive racial
justice. In the near future, it is unlikely that the Supreme Court will reinterpret the Equal
Protection Clause and employ antisubordination theory or similar approaches that legal scholars
have advocated. In the long term, however, changes in the composition of the Court, along with
continued politicization of racial inequality by antiracist social movements, could lead to doctrinal
innovation.

No Internal Link the Supreme Court will remain conservative for the next
25 years.
Keck 16 Thomas M. Keck, Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics and
Professor of Political Science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse
University, holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University, 2016 (Republicans Own The
Supreme Court For Another Generation, The Huffington Post, November 23rd, Available Online at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/republicans-own-the-supreme-court-for-another-
generation_us_5835eca8e4b01ba68ac40219, Accessed 07-30-2017)
Defying all historical norms, this electoral success has not produced a Democratic majority on the
Supreme Court. Indeed, Democratic appointees have not held a majority on the Court since 1970,
and Donald Trumps election makes it likely that this half-century of Republican control will
continue on the Court for years to come .
Because Republican senators refused to consider President Obamas nomination of Merrick Garland
to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, President-elect Trump has one vacancy to fill immediately.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Anthony Kennedy are all aged 78 or older, and
Clarence Thomas, though only 68, has served for 25 years and might be tempted to retire while
President Trump can name his successor. If Trump successfully replaces Scalia and any two of
these other four justices, his three appointees will join with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice
Samuel Alito to form a Republican majority that will last at least until one of these justices
retires. Roberts and Alito, each appointed by President George W. Bush, are 61 and 66 years old,
respectively, so that moment may not come until 2030 or so . In other words, no matter how
Democrats do in the next three presidential elections, control of the Supreme Court may
remain out of reach.
2NC
K
 Link Debate
This culminates in a neoliberal knowledge economy which causes learner
commodification people become disposable tools serving economic
imperatives that turns the case.
Patrick 13 Fiona Patrick, Lecturer of Interdisciplinary Learning Education Technology and Society
and Deputy Director at the School of Education in the University of Glasgow, 2013 (Neoliberalism, the
Knowledge Economy, and the Learner: Challenging the Inevitability of the Commodified Self as an
Outcome of Education, ISRN Education, Volume 2013, April 3rd, Available Online at
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2013/108705/, Accessed 9-8-17)
3.2. The Learner as Commodified Subject
Staddon and Standish [42] consider the changes in higher education in the United Kingdom as
constituting a profound shift towards a competitive system within which students are placed within a
paradigm of customer orientation [42, page 631]. A utilitarian conception of knowledge dominates
a system in which quality of learning is judged by the cost-effectiveness of the delivery and by
student perceptions of the quality of their learning experiences [42]. However, taken as part of the
knowledge economy rhetoric and practice, it is not just knowledge within higher education that
is reduced to utilitarian value, but the student as embodiment of that knowledge. The student as a
person is commodified within the system. Overall, neoliberal concepts of (human) capital
require selves which are endlessly adaptable to the levels of change and insecurity, to the
personal and social instability generated by a globalised economy [43, page 353].
Of course, educational practices have never been neutral and have always acted upon students as
selves with the aim of shaping intellect, emotions, habits, and so forth. However, neoliberal
discourse tends to deride notions of the individual good as an aim of education: students are
consumers and disciplinary knowledge is what is consumed. Even pedagogies which
seemingly offer the learner autonomy and choice are not without issue. For example, Vassallo [44]
highlights the growth of self-regulated learning in school and university contexts. Seemingly allied to
the idea of learner empowerment, self-regulated learning can instead be thought of as being
entangled in the politics of control, conformity, obedience and oppression [44, page 2]. The term
self-directed learning is indicative of a shift in language use, from education to learning, from
teaching to facilitation [16]. This shift has arisen from a range of influences, according to Biesta [16]:
from constructivist and socio-cultural theories of learning, from postmodernisms positioning of
the end of education, and from the rise of neoliberalism [pages 56-57]. Within the new language of
education, the teacher is there to meet the needs of the learner [16], but these needs are narrowly defined
as learning needs within a model that reduces learning to a series of teaching inputs designed to meet
prespecified outcomes.
The economic rationalism underlying neoliberal educational policy tends to act upon individuals
through use of specific discourses aimed (wittingly or unwittingly) at governing the self [5]. In this
way, learners become commodified. Having said this, care must be taken not to refer to
commodification as a relentless force imposing an external will upon the unwilling victim [45,
page 200]. In theory, individuals still have agency to accept, reject, mediate, or ignore neoliberal policies
and practices. In practice, the extent to which individuals can exert choice over whether to accept
or resist such policies may be limited by a range of factors (social, economic, and cultural).
Where individuals learn or work within a system that has embraced neoliberal educational ideals,
a sense of isolation and helplessness may occur in the face of policy and management practices
which predicate economic rationalism over the needs and talents of individuals.
Taking a Foucauldian perspective, the subject of the neoliberal project can be seen as the
entrepreneurial self [43, page 355]. Foucauldian constructs of the subjectivity of the self have
been the focus of much academic writing in the past ten years, almost to saturation point. Yet it
would be a pity to overlook what he has to say on the ways in which power is enacted, and how it acts
upon, individuals, for his concepts in this respect still have much to offer [23]. In particular, Foucaults
work supports understanding of how individual subjectivity is constituted by discourses of power [46].
Bonnett argues that neoliberal educational practice is concerned with shaping the selves of
learners in accordance with what are perceived to be current economic imperatives, rather than,
say with what arises from their sense of their own existence [46, page 358]. Foucault suggests that
our problem as individuals is to discover that the self is nothing else than the historical
correlation of the technology built into our history [13, page 222]. The issue then becomes how to
change these technologies [13], in which case, one of the main political problems would be
the politics of ourselves [13, page 223]. It is tempting to concur with the Foucauldian perspective
that power is inescapable, and that the best that remains to us is to develop the will not to be
governed like that, in this way [14, page 75]. Ball and Olmedo [47] point out that concurring
with this view does not mean accepting that the individual cannot offer resistance to
subjectification. Indeed, power is not always a negative force according to Foucault [23]. Reading
the subtleties of his conception of power enables us to see that there is room in the Foucauldian
perspective for individual empowerment: as Ball and Olmedo state, to define ourselves according
to our own judgements to develop a particular technology of the self according to our own
principles, an aesthetics of the self [47, page92, original emphasis]. It is this thought that opens
possibilities for individuals to reclaim themselves.
 Framework
Policy fixes cannot resolve structural problems in the free market system
their framework and solvency claims actively exclude anti-capitalist
discoursesensures serial policy failure and turns case
Wolff 8 Rick Wolff, Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 2008
(Policies to "Avoid" Economic Crises, MR Zinea publication of The Monthly Review, November 6th,
Available Online at http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wolff061108.html, Accessed 11-19-2008)
The whole idea of policy is bizarre. The "right policy" represents an absurd claim that
this or that law or regulation can somehow undo the many different factors that
cumulatively produced this crisis. Policies are "magic potions" offered to populations
urgently demanding solutions to real problems. Whether cynically advocated for ulterior
motives or actually believed by the politicians, promoters, and professors themselves,
policy is the secular cousin of religion.
These days, the conservative policy amounts, as usual, to "let the private economy solve the
problems" and "minimize state intervention because it only makes matters worse."
Conservatives protect the freedoms of private enterprise, market transactions, and the
wealthy from state regulations and controls and from taxes. The liberals' policy, also as
usual, wants the state to limit corporate behavior, control and shape market transactions,
and tilt the tax system more toward benefiting middle and lower income groups.
Both policies can no more overcome this economic crisis than they overcame past crises.
Historically, both conservative and liberal policies fail at least as often as they succeed.
Which outcome happens depends on all the factors shaping them and not on the policy a
government pursues. Yet, both sides endlessly claim otherwise in desperate efforts at self-
justification. Each side trots out its basic philosophy dressed up as "a policy to achieve
solutions." Conservatives and liberals keep debating. Today's crisis simply provides an
urgent sort of context for the old debate to continue. Each side hopes to win converts by
suggesting that its approach will "solve the economic crisis" while the other's approach will
make it worse. Thus the liberals displaced the conservatives in the depths of the Great
Depression, the reverse happened in the recession of the 1970s, and the liberals may now
regain dominance. In no instance were adopted policies successful in solving the crises in
any enduring way. The unevenness and instability of capitalism as a system soon brought
another crisis crashing down on our economy and society.
The basic conservative message holds that the current economic crisis is NOT connected to
the underlying economic system. The crisis does NOT emerge from the structure of the
corporate system of production. It is NOT connected to the fact that corporate boards of
directors, responsible to the minority that owns most of their shares, make all the key
economic decisions while the enterprise's employees and the vast majority of the citizenry
have to live with the consequences. The very undemocratic nature of the capitalist system
of production is NOT related to crisis in the conservative view. The basic liberal message
likewise disconnects today's crisis from the capitalist production system. Rather, each side
insists that all crises would have been and would now be "avoidable" if only the right policy
were in place.
Conservatives and liberals share more than a careful avoidance of connecting the crisis to
the underlying capitalist system. They are also complicit in blocking those who do argue
for that connection from making their case in politics, the media, or the schools. While
conservative and liberal policies do little to solve crises, the debate between them has
largely succeeded in excluding anti-capitalist analyses of economic crises from public
discussion. Perhaps that exclusion rather than solving crises is the function of those
endlessly rehashed policy debates between liberals and conservatives.

Critique is priorwe must challenge neoliberal mindsets and constrictions on

knowledge production before considering the role of policies. Decolonization
of the mind is a prerequisite to developing alternatives.
Hilgers 13 Mathieu Hilgers, Laboratory for Contemporary Anthropology, Universit Libre de
Bruxelles, and Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2013
(Embodying neoliberalism: thoughts and responses to critics, Social Anthropology, Vol. 21, No. 1,
February 2013, p. 75-89, Accessed Online through Emory Libraries)
The implementation of neoliberalism goes far beyond the mere appearance of its policies. It
cannot be reduced to the application of a programme or to institutional changes. This implementation
is deployed within a triangle constituted by policies, institutions and dispositions. This last component has
remained at the margins of our debate. If we wish to grasp the depth of the changes that
neoliberalism causes, we cannot neglect its effects on systems of dispositions. To analyse this
impact, it is necessary to describe the symbolic operations that give rise to government-enabling
representations as well as to categories that support neoliberalism and are propagated by it. This
task requires accounting for the historicity of the spaces in which policies are put into action, the
intentional constructions but also involuntary historical formations in which they become entangled, and
the transactions, negotiations, associations, working misunderstandings and chains of translation that give
them their flexibility and support their deployment.
Neoliberalism is embodied in the agents and representations through which it is put into
action. Through a historical process, the dispositions that it generates become, as Bourdieu would
say, durable and transposable, as well as increasingly autonomous from their initial conditions of
production. As such, when these conditions disappear or transform, or when policies are modified or
abandoned, some of them spread into other social spaces and contexts and take on new meanings.
Therein lies the importance of broadening the notion of implementation, so that we may
appreciate the role of culture in the dynamics of neoliberal expansion. It is precisely (but not
only) because of the embodiment of neoliberalism emphasized in this paper that at the moment we
are nowhere near the end of the neoliberal era. Thus I arrive, by a different path, at the same
observation that Kalb (2012) formulated in this debate: today it is capitalism that is in crisis, not
neoliberalism.
In some parts of the world, information that helps people to stabilize their perceptions, practices and
activities is mainly produced within a neoliberal context, forms and procedures. The figures,
statistics, norms, audits and discourses that I evoke in this paper are fashioned by a constellation of
institutions; they condition, train and shape a mental and practical space. They impact the way in which
one conceives and carries out research . Indeed, academia is not outside of this neoliberal world; on
the contrary, it is a centre of development and support for neoliberalism. While many academics
are critical of neoliberalism, this does not mean that they have a permanent deconstructionist relation to
the world and to themselves. In many parts of academia, a neoliberal way of functioning has become
common sense. If neoliberalism is so present in our mind and in the way in which academia is
designed and works today, it appears more than necessary for researchers to consider how this
shapes their relation to production of knowledge.
If we wish to avoid the eviction of critical perspectives in this time of crisis, if we hope to have
some chance to think within but beyond the neoliberal age, if we want to develop alternatives and
different horizons, one of the first things to do is to decolonize our mind by objectifying our
own neoliberal dispositions. The reflexive return to the tools of analysis is thus not an epistemological
scruple but an indispensable pre-condition of scientific knowledge of the object (Bourdieu 1984: 94), if
we are to prevent the object and its definition from being dictated to the researcher by non-scientific
logics, such as the necessity of being visible and marketable in the academy. To achieve a break with
neoliberal common sense, anthropologists could follow Bourdieu (2003) in his will to engage in a
participant objectivation.14 It is clearly this kind of objectivation even if not phrased in such terms
that has led some researchers to call for a radical change in the academy, supported by new
arguments and put into practice through the initiation of a slow science movement.15 In some places,
academia is still a space of critiques and alternatives.
 A2: Floating PICs Bad
We should be analyzing the relationship between the plan and the advantages,
not just the plan alone. Policy stories, like the 1ac institutionalize a particular
understanding of both problems and solutions. Their advantage choices
crowd out different policy practices and concepts.
Ole SENDING Research Fellow @ Norweigan Inst. of Intl Affairs 4 [Global Institutions &
Development eds. Morten Boas and Desmond McNeil p. 58-59]=
Granted that the objectification and definition of a given phenomenon is open to a variety of normative and political considerations, it becomes
In order to
interesting to explore how scientific knowledge constitutes a symbolic resource used by politically motivated actors.
justify and legitimize certain courses of action , and to render these possible and effective, scientific knowledge forms
an important component both for efforts of persuading and mobilizing different groups, and for formulating and establishing
policy practices. This can he grasped through the concept of poli1y stories. A policy story can be defined as follows: A set of
factual, causal claims, normative principles and a desired objective, all of which are construct ed as
a more or less coherent argument a story which points to a problem to be addressed and the desirability and adequacy of adopting a specific
policy approach to resolve it.
This conceptualization incorporates how politically motivated actors integrate scientifically produced imowledge in the form of facts, concepts or
theories in order to i) convince others that a certain phenomenon is a problem, (ii) demonstrate that this problem is best understood in a certain
way as shown by the facts presented, and (iii) link these factual claims to normative principles giving moral force to the argument that it should
be resolved. This perspective thus subjects the factual dimensions of political processes to the interests and normative commitments of actors, in
the sense that knowledge is used to justify and legitimize calls for adopting certain policies to resolve what is seen to be a problem that 'ought' to
be resolved. The formulation is partly inspired by Rein and Schuss (1991. 265), who refer to problem-setting
stories that 'link
causal accounts of policy problems to particular proposals for action and facilitate the normative
leap from "is" to 'ought"'. We depart from Rein and Schon's conception somewhat by emphasizing more strongly the factual claims
(the characteristics of a phenomenon and normative principles (the morally' grounded principles used to legitimize the policy formulation invoked
by actors as they define a problem and argue for a specific policy approach. The concept of policy stories seeks to capture how actors integrate
knowledge claims into their politically charged arguments so as to 'frame' the issue under discussion. Because of the interlocking of the factual
and normative dimension of policy making, a policy story, can be seen to create space for political agency. That is: a policy story serves by
creating an argument grounded in a body of scientifically produced knowledge, to persuade and mobilize different groups as it represents a
complete package: an authoritative problem-definition and a concomitant policy solution that is legitimized in both factual and normative terms.
A policy story- that wins acceptance at the discursive level can be seen to define the terms of
the debate for the establishment of policy and to de- legitimize competing conceptualizations
and policy approaches. Through the political agency performed through a policy story it may
come to dominate the policy field as it forms the central cognitive-normative organising device
for specific formulation and establishment of policy within different organizations. In this way, the policy story' may
over time attain a 'taken for granted' char- acter as it comes to structure, and reflect, policy practice. This process of stabilization is best described
as a process of institutionalization. Following Scott, we can define institutionalization as a 'process by which a given set of units and a pattern of
activities come so be normatively' and cognitively held in place, and practically taken for granted as lawful' Scott at al. 1994: 10). This latter
feature is critical to the argument presented here. In the change from an argument for a specific policy approach to the establishment of that
policy in practice, the policy story comes to define the cognitive-normative outlook of a policy regime. This can he defined as an interlock
between the knowledge which underwrites the policy story, and the establishment in practice of the policy advocated in a policy story: That is:
the knowledge that once formed part of an argument for a policy is now an integral part of
the very rationality and identity' of the organization involved with managing this policy in practice. As
such it becomes pact of the bundle of routines, rules, priorities and rationality of the organizations in the policy field see Douglas 1986; March
and Olsen 1989: Scott and Meyer. 1994).
 A2: Transition Wars
Transition wars are small scale wars caused by Neoliberalism outweigh.
Solty 12 Ingar Solty, Adjunct Professor of Political Science at York University, Politics Editor of
Das Argument, co-founder and Board member of the North-Atlantic Left Dialogue, 2012 (After
neoliberalism: left versus right projects of leadership in the global crisis, Global Crises and the Crisis of
Global Leadership, Published by Cambridge University Press, ISBN: 1107674964, pgs. 213-215)
The alternative to a failure of utilizing this crisis for a renewal of capitalism and hegemony appears
to be an increasing slide into some form of barbarism. Again, barbarism should also be understood
as a cipher , inasmuch as it means an acceleration of trends already present within neoliberal
capitalism. This includes the rise of authoritarian forms of rule as well as the forceful
management of the growing contradictions of global capitalism through new imperial
endeavours, motivated both by geo-economic and geopolitical considerations and the likely
growth of blowbacks and neoliberal boomerangs from the global South. In other words, this
development should be understood as a radicalization of the new imperialism that emerged precisely in
response to the crises produced by neoliberalism and particularly the attempt of the United States to use
force as a means to avoid or deter hegemonic decline.
The strengthening of elements of authoritarian capitalism would suggest growing inter-imperial
rivalries, especially between the United States and China but possibly also between the United
States and a German-led European Union. This scenario would also involve a potential
fragmentation of the world market (e.g. through protectionism against German exports in the
European Union, and possibly also in the United States, and against Chinese exports, especially in the
United States but potentially also in Europe), a growing geoeconomic conflict over the worlds
resources, particularly fossil fuels, and the necessary internal authoritarianism to complement and
reinforce such inter-imperial rivalries. Nonetheless, this historic moment is open, and a third
alternative does exist . This can be seen partly in the emergence of the BRIC states (Brazil, Russia,
India, China) and their attempts at developing not only growing economic, political and ideological
independence from the global North but also social and political alternatives to the status quo. At the
same time, these semi-peripheral big players are in ideological struggles with, for example, those states of
the Latin American ALBA coalition (the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America), which
includes Venezuela and Bolivia, that seems to be moving more or less in the direction of an alternative to
capitalism, or what it calls twenty-first-century socialism a move that is complemented by new
regional military alliance structures.
 A2: Neoliberalism Inevitable
Reject the narrative of inevitability. Neoliberalism is not inevitable, but their
argument cedes the political and devalues life.
Gills 2k Barry K. Gills, Professor in the Politics Department at the University of Newcastle, holds a
Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science, 2000
(Overturning Globalization: Rethinking the Politics of Resistance, Globalization and Social Change,
Edited by Johannes Dragsbaek Schmidt and Jacques Hersh, Published by Routledge, ISBN 0415241715,
p. 229-230)
Thus, we must begin our analysis of new practices of resistance by challenging the myth of
globalization, i.e. recognizing that neoliberal economic globalization is an idea cast in the mythological
mode of thought. That is, globalization when wielded as a power concept over society, is an
abstraction, deliberately cast in the ideal to endow it with emotive powers drawing on a sense of
compulsion, fear, and an imperative of speed (Douglas 1997:165-77; Gills 2000). As such,
globalization is deployed to invoke a drastic reorganization of social practices, and by being
mythological, it is made more powerful. By advocating an inescapable technologically determined
necessity for the reorganization of social practices and realignment of social values, globalization (as)
discourse devalidates its critics as unrealistic. When the emperor is exposed as naked, however,
we see that this is an ideology and a political project, which seeks to deceive society in the
name of economic and competitive necessity. It is conservative elites in particular who attempt to
use this ideology to cajole society into sacrificing the social gains of the past century (and those not yet
established for the future) on the high altar of a mindless course (Galbraith 1997:5-9).
Therefore, we must also begin our critique by challenging the idea that neoliberal economic
globalization is either historically obvious or inevitable. Globalization is a contested concept,
not a received theory, and we challenge the assumption by its enthusiasts that there is a single
determinant economic logic external to society, to the state, or to political processes. We must insist
methodologically upon the socially contested and historically open nature of all forms of
political economy, globalization included. Having made this historicist turn, we must operationalize
it by putting people as agents back into the center of analysis of the processes of globalization,
understood as large-scale social and economic change. Globalization, if it is understood as an
historically over-determined reality, has to be firmly rejected, demystified, and eventually
overturned via active political resistance.
Thus, when we say we need to change the terms of the globalization debate and alter its political
direction, we mean precisely rejecting the ideological and reclaiming the political
(Amoore et al. 1997). We must come to understand globalization as the non-determinate product
of social and political forces, i.e. of conscious human decisions, and not as the inevitable,
automatic outcome of a technologically determined market-oriented law of progress. We must
likewise reject the errors of definition and over-generalization of neoliberal economic globalization
discourse 3 in its quest to assert the natural law of the market and an overarching global logic of
capital above and beyond all other social values or alternatives to the market. [end page 229]
Globalization must not come to mean the Death of Politics or the Death of Social Ideals. On the
contrary, we must insist that societies and social forces have the inherent right to protect themselves and
to choose meaningful ways of politically constituting their actions to this end. This includes the right of
society and social forces within it to protection from the destructive vagaries of the unregulated or self-
regulated market. Other social rights vis--vis globalization that could be enumerated would include the
right of individuals, families and communities to employment, welfare, social stability and social justice;
the right of labor, in both the informal and the formal sectors of the economy, to resist unemployment,
austerity measures, reduced life chances, increased insecurity, atomization, alienation, dislocation and
immiseration; the right of the poor, dispossessed and marginalized, wherever they exist, to resist the
imposition of poverty and the intensification of social polarisation; the right to reclaim and deploy
governmental or state power at all levels, from local, regional, national, to international and global,
whether through state intervention, a mixed economy, redistribution, reform or radical change; the right to
establish social solidarities and autonomous forms of social organization outside the state or the market;
and finally the right to imagine post-globalization and realize alternative modes of human development.
The neoliberal idea of globalization does indeed represent a teleology of capital, implying a necessary
and historically inevitable victory of the market and capital over labor, over the state, and over every
aspect of social existence. As such it is ahistorical, but above all it is apolitical, with the objective to
inculcate the mythological notion (not an objective truth) that the political process is a mere
reflection, a mere transmission mechanism from capital logic to society.
To begin to resist we must first reject this pernicious logic of inevitabilism inherent in
neoliberal globalization and thus recover and mobilize the many political and social
alternatives that certainly do exist and are yet to be invented . With Albert Camus, we must
assert the right to rebel, as essential as the right to life itself .
1NR
Inequality Advantage
 Extend: Weigh Consequences
Even if deontology is good for individuals, policymakers are in a unique
position where consequences matter.
Nye 86 Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Ford Foundation Professor of Security Affairs at Harvard University,
Director of the Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University, former Deputy to the Undersecretary of State For Security
Assistance, 1986 (Nuclear Ethics, Published by Free Press, ISBN 0029230918, p. 32-34)
The third approach stresses the common nature of humanity. States and boundaries exist, but their
existence does not endow them with moral significance. Ought does not follow from is. David Luban
has written, "The rights of security and subsistence... are necessary for the enjoyment of any other rights
at all. No one can do without them. Basic rights, therefore, are universal. They are not respecters of
political boundaries, and require a universalist politics to implement them; even when this means
breaching the wall of state sovereignty." 53 Many citizens hold multiple loyalties to several communities
at the same time. They may wish their governments to follow policies that give expression to the rights
and duties engendered by other communities in addition to those structured at the national level.
While the cosmopolitan approach has the virtue of accepting transnational realities and avoids the
sanctification of the nation-state, an unsophisticated cosmopolitanism also has serious drawbacks.
First, if morality is about choice, then to underestimate the significance of states and boundaries
is to fail to take into account the main features of the real setting in which choices must be
made. To pursue individual justice at the cost of survival or to launch human rights crusades
that cannot hope to be fulfilled, yet interfere with prudential concerns about order, may lead to
immoral consequences. And if such actions, for example the promotion of human rights in Eastern
Europe, were to lead to crises and an unintended nuclear war, the consequences might be the
ultimate immorality. Applying ethics to foreign policy is more than merely constructing
philosophical arguments; it must be relevant to the international domain in which moral choice is
to be exercised.
The other problem with an unsophisticated cosmopolitan approach is ethical; it discards the
moral dimension of national politics. As Stanley Hoffmann has written, "States may be no more
than collections of individuals and borders may be mere facts. But a moral significance is
attached to them." 54 People wish to live in historic communities and autonomously to express
their own political choices. A pure cosmopolitan view that ignores those rights of self-
determination fails to do justice to the difficult job of balancing rights in the international realm.
One of the reasons that states have nuclear weapons is that peoples wish to defend their
sovereign autonomy as independent moral communities at this stage in human history.
 Extend: Still Inequality
Better social mobility isnt valuable in an unjust economy.
Bruenig 11 Matt Bruenig, Freelance Writer specializing in Poverty and Political Theory, has
written for The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The American
Prospect, In These Times, Jacobin, and Dissent, 2011 (Social mobility does not make an economy just,
Matt Bruenigs blog, October 22nd, Available Online at http://mattbruenig.com/2011/10/22/social-
mobility-does-not-make-an-economy-just/, Accessed 07-04-2017)
But these usual responses to the right-wing line all kind of buy into the notion that social mobility is a
chiefly important thing. While more social mobility and more opportunity is all things equal
better than less mobility and opportunity, they should hardly be conceded as the most important
things.
If the distribution of economic products is manifestly unjust, social mobility and equal
opportunity cannot possibly make up for that fact.
Consider for example a hypothetical society in which one person owned almost everything and
had a life of great opulence, but everyone else lived in totally subjugated misery. If everyone had
an equal shot at being the one person who lived well and exploited everyone else, would that
make such an economy just? I dont think so and I dont think anyone else would seriously say so
either. The US economy is not as stratified as that, but it is similar in some respects. We have a
class of managers, executives, and bankers who live very well while a great number of others
struggle. Even if it was the case (and it is not) that everyone had an equal opportunity to be one of
the select few who lived well, that would not make the widespread misery of others justifiable.
High social mobility in an unjust economy does not decrease misery; it just changes the
distribution of it. Instead of all the misery of deprivation and insecurity falling on those born to
poor parents, social mobility allows for it to equally fall on children born of poor and rich
parents. Is this a better world? Not really .
Poverty and inequality reduction is a freestanding good and is necessary for the construction of a just
economy. Although the right-wings social mobility fairy tale is a farce and easy to attack as such, we
should not forget that mobility is just one component of a just economy, and arguably not even the
most important.
 Extend: Funding Not Key Baker Bad
There is no correlation between funding and outcomes comprehensive
study proves.
Coulson 14 Andrew J. Coulson, Director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato
Institute, former Senior Fellow in Education Policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, 2014
(State Education Trends: Academic Performance and Spending over the Past 40 Years, Cato Institute
Policy Analysis Number 746, March 18th, Available Online at
https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa746.pdf, Accessed 07-06-2017, p. 57)
Conclusion
Academic performance and preparation for college success are widely shared goals, and so it is useful for
the public and policymakers to know how they have varied over time at the state level. The present paper
estimates these trends by adjusting state average SAT scores for variation in student participation rates
and demographic factors known to be associated with those scores.
In general, the findings are not encouraging. Adjusted state SAT scores have declined by an average
of 3 percent. This echoes the picture of stagnating achievement among American 17-year-olds
painted by the Long Term Trends portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a
series of tests administered to a nationally representative sample of students since 1970. That
disappointing record comes despite a more-than-doubling in inflation-adjusted per pupil public-
school spending over the same period (the average state spending increase was 120 percent).
Consistent with those patterns, there has been essentially no correlation between what states have
spent on education and their measured academic outcomes. In other words, Americas educational
productivity appears to have collapsed, at least as measured by the NAEP and the SAT.
That is remarkably unusual. In virtually every other field, productivity has risen over this period
thanks to the adoption of countless technological advancesadvances that, in many cases, would
seem ideally suited to facilitating learning. And yet, surrounded by this torrent of progress, education
has remained anchored to the riverbed, watching the rest of the world rush past it.
Not only have dramatic spending increases been unaccompanied by improvements in
performance, the same is true of the occasional spending declines experienced by some states. At
one time or another over the past four decades, Alaska, California, Florida, and New York all
experienced multi-year periods over which real spending fell substantially (20 percent or more of
their 1972 expenditure levels). And yet, none of these states experienced noticeable declines in
adjusted SAT scoreseither contemporaneously or lagged by a few years. Indeed, their score
trends seem entirely disconnected from their rising and falling levels of spending.
Two generations seems a long time for a field to stand outside of history, particularly when those
generations have witnessed so many reforms aimed at improving education. Perhaps its time to ask if
there are inherent features in our approach to schooling that prevent it from enjoying the progress
typical in other fields.

Baker is wrong serious academics dont take him seriously.

Mehlhorn 15 Dmitri Mehlhorn, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Education Policy at Johns
Hopkins University, Senior Fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, holds a J.D. from Yale Law School
and an M.P.P. in Education Policy from Harvard University, 2015 (You Cant Spin School Funding,
Dropout Nationan online education journal, November 5th, Available Online at
http://dropoutnation.net/2015/11/05/you-cant-spin-school-funding/, Accessed 07-04-2017)
The conclusions of Professor Bruce Baker: Even more than Jackson and his team., Ben relies heavily on
articles published by Bruce Baker of Rutgers Universitys Graduate School of Education. This
reliance is common among reform skeptics, as Baker reaches the most anti-reform conclusions to be
found within mainstream academia. Particularly cited by Ben is Bakers 2012 editorial published by
the Albert Shanker Institute in which he writes that by the early 2000s, the cloud of uncertainty
conjured by Hanushek in 1986 had largely lifted in the aftermath of the various, more rigorous
studies that followed. Baker justifies this claim largely by citing Northwestern Universitys Larry
Hedges, who re-reviewed Hanusheks studies quality control measures. Reading Bakers paper
by itself, it is understandable why Ben finds a clear academic consensus that money matters.
The problem is that Baker omits so much that his conclusion borders on outright mendacity .
For instance, Baker chooses not to mention that Hanushek wrote several peer-reviewed rebuttals
to Hedges work. One of Hanusheks responses could have been written with Ben in mind: Hedges,
Laine, and Greenwald commit the larger error of asking the wrong question. This problem tends to get
lost in their statistical manipulations and their zeal to overturn prevailing conclusions about the
effectiveness of pure resource policies in promoting student achievement.
A later paper from Hanushek goes into great detail about how Hedges and company
misinterpret the implications of their analysis [and,] through a series of analytical choices,
systematically bias their results toward the conclusions they are seeking. While Hanusheks
rebuttal is devastating, the more important point is that Baker simply pretends it does not exist
he paints a story of academic consensus that is entirely false .
In assessing Baker, it is worth noting that serious education researchers tend to not even mention
Baker. Jackson and his team, for instance, write an entire paper that money matters, and dont
once mention Bakers 2012 editorial. Rather, they refer to studies from 1995 and 1996 (which
Baker ignores) that school spending doesnt lead to better results.
The reason Baker gets so little play in serious education academia is because he writes
editorials, not studies. His analyses are designed to achieve his intended results, and he does
this by making subjective and one-sided decisions about what to include and what to ignore.
[This is a point Dropout Nation Editor RiShawn Biddle hit upon four years ago.] This is expected for
expert witnesses at trials, but it is disturbing for someone who pretends to be an academic, and is
not transparent that he gets paid for reports by parties with a direct financial stake in his
outcomes.
This problem was underscored in a 2011 tape-recorded conversation in which Baker said he
would play with data, manipulate the questions he asked, and pull things in and out of his
models to tell the most compelling story in exchange for a substantial research grant. This
telephone conversation, including Bakers own partially exculpatory comments, appears in full at about
the 3-minute mark of this video clip. [Baker offers a rather lengthy explanation and defense of what
happened.]
None of this automatically invalidates Bakers conclusions, but most of his research suffers the
same kinds of glaring deficiencies I just mentioned regarding his 2012 Shanker Institute paper. Some
day, someone may decide to write a point-by-point review of Bakers editorials, but for now the
main point is to take his sweeping anti-reform conclusions with a heaping of salt .
14th Amendment Advantage
 Extend: Obergefell Thumps
If Obergefell didnt spur a progressive doctrinal shift, neither will the plan.
Tribe 15 Laurence H. Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional
Law at Harvard Law School, holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, 2015 (Equal Dignity: Speaking Its
Name, Harvard Law Review (129 Harv. L. Rev. F. 16), November, Available Online to Subscribing
Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)
But by dispensing with Glucksberg, Justice Kennedy has not left the courts completely without guidance
when identifying fundamental rights. Justice Kennedy's opinion also sets forth a foundational principle
that gives form and substance to the Poe dissent's common law spirit. Yoshino calls this core component
of Obergefell the "antisubordination principle," n11 but although I certainly agree that antisubordination
plays an important role in the doctrinal achievement of Obergefell, I would characterize the decision's
core in different, more expansive terms. I argue that Obergefell's chief jurisprudential achievement is
to have tightly wound the double helix of Due Process and Equal Protection into a doctrine of
equal dignity and to have located that doctrine in a tradition of constitutional interpretation as
an exercise in public education. Equal dignity, a concept with a robust doctrinal pedigree, does not
simply look back to purposeful past subordination, but rather lays the groundwork for an ongoing
constitutional dialogue about fundamental rights and the meaning of equality. Obergefell is an
important landmark, but it will not be -- and should not be -- the last word.
 Extend: No Progressive Spillover
The Supreme Court is too conservative the plans precedent is not
sufficient.
Hutchinson 17 Darren Lenard Hutchinson, Professor of Law and Stephen C. OConnell Chair at
the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida, former Professor at the Washington College of
Law at American University, holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, 2017 (Undignified: The Supreme
Court, Racial Justice, and Dignity Claims, Florida Law Review, Volume 69, Number 1, January,
Available Online via SSRN at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2745610, Accessed
07-30-2017, p. 61-62)
Conclusion
The Roberts Court has decided several cases that invoke the concept of dignity to advance
reproductive rights and privacy. Furthermore, humanitarian and human rights law, foreign
constitutions, and some state constitutions recognize dignity as an important value. The increasing
appearance of dignity-based arguments in Supreme Court rulings has moved some scholars to
argue that dignity claims could advance racial justice. The Obergefell decision, which makes
strong use of the concept of dignity, will likely generate more scholarship advocating dignity- based
framing of racial-justice claims.
Although dignity-based claims look promising on the surface, a closer examination of Court
doctrine reveals limitations . For example, the Court has invoked the dignity of whites and states
to justify invalidation of race- based remedies and civil rights measures. Furthermore, the Courts
restrained equal protection analysis does not result from the lack of a good theory; instead, it
reflects the conservative ideology of a majority of the Court. These Justices have created
doctrines that mirror white majoritarian perspectives regarding race. Dignity-based claims
cannot alter the Courts ideological balance .
Constitutional law, however, evolves as a result of political, social, and economic processes. Political
activism by racial-justice advocates can motivate politicians and the media to endorse racially egalitarian
policies. If these forces intersect, then racial-justice advocates, like social movement actors of the past,
will have a better probability of achieving desired outcomes in federal courts. Such developments,
however, will likely occur over the long-term, rather than immediately.
Legal scholars must analyze the broader social and political context in which constitutional law develops
before they advocate strategies for [end page 61] social movement lawyers. Dignity-based claims can
lead to the development of antisubordination race-equality doctrines only if the social conditions
necessary for evolution in constitutional interpretation exist. In the absence of a more promising
social and political climate, dignity-based claims, standing alone, will not cause a substantial
shift in Court doctrine concerning race .
 Extend: No Progressive Spillover
The Supreme Court is too conservative the plans precedent is not
sufficient.
Hutchinson 17 Darren Lenard Hutchinson, Professor of Law and Stephen C. OConnell Chair at
the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida, former Professor at the Washington College of
Law at American University, holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, 2017 (Undignified: The Supreme
Court, Racial Justice, and Dignity Claims, Florida Law Review, Volume 69, Number 1, January,
Available Online via SSRN at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2745610, Accessed
07-30-2017, p. 61-62)
Conclusion
The Roberts Court has decided several cases that invoke the concept of dignity to advance
reproductive rights and privacy. Furthermore, humanitarian and human rights law, foreign
constitutions, and some state constitutions recognize dignity as an important value. The increasing
appearance of dignity-based arguments in Supreme Court rulings has moved some scholars to
argue that dignity claims could advance racial justice. The Obergefell decision, which makes
strong use of the concept of dignity, will likely generate more scholarship advocating dignity- based
framing of racial-justice claims.
Although dignity-based claims look promising on the surface, a closer examination of Court
doctrine reveals limitations . For example, the Court has invoked the dignity of whites and states
to justify invalidation of race- based remedies and civil rights measures. Furthermore, the Courts
restrained equal protection analysis does not result from the lack of a good theory; instead, it
reflects the conservative ideology of a majority of the Court. These Justices have created
doctrines that mirror white majoritarian perspectives regarding race. Dignity-based claims
cannot alter the Courts ideological balance .
Constitutional law, however, evolves as a result of political, social, and economic processes. Political
activism by racial-justice advocates can motivate politicians and the media to endorse racially egalitarian
policies. If these forces intersect, then racial-justice advocates, like social movement actors of the past,
will have a better probability of achieving desired outcomes in federal courts. Such developments,
however, will likely occur over the long-term, rather than immediately.
Legal scholars must analyze the broader social and political context in which constitutional law develops
before they advocate strategies for [end page 61] social movement lawyers. Dignity-based claims can
lead to the development of antisubordination race-equality doctrines only if the social conditions
necessary for evolution in constitutional interpretation exist. In the absence of a more promising
social and political climate, dignity-based claims, standing alone, will not cause a substantial
shift in Court doctrine concerning race .
 Extend: Dignity Doctrine Bad
Dignity undermines all other rights its too amorphous to be constrained.
Greenfield 15 Scott H. Greenfield, Attorney and Counsellor At Law at Hull McGuire, PC, holds a
J.D. from New York Law School, 2015 (The Dangerous Dilemma of Dignity, Simple Justice: A
Criminal Defense Blog, July 5th, Available Online at https://blog.simplejustice.us/2015/07/05/the-
dangerous-dilemma-of-dignity/, Accessed 07-30-2017)
While Turleys approach is soft and subtle, I will tread on it with the full weight of my criminal defense
lawyer combat boots in the hope of stomping the crap out of it. Dignity is dangerous. As a concept,
its just another rhetorical trick that, wrapped up in a pretty bow, would allow anyone to
manufacture a right to do whatever they want to do. Even worse, it would allow someone to shut
down what others do because it harshes their feelz of dignity .
Were often confronted with the clash of rights, but at minimum we have a paper that tells us
which are superior to others called the Constitution. For example, the First Amendment provides
for free speech. Thats an express right, inviolate because the Constitution says so. Some will argue
that their right to dignity means that your right to free speech doesnt extend to hate speech,
defined as speech that makes hurts their feelz. That makes them feel undignified.
So if they have a right to dignity, it comes at the expense of your right to free speech . But
thats not where it ends.
Other groups outside the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community could invoke this
precedent, since the reasoning does not concern a protected sexual-orientation class but rather a
citizens right to dignity. Could employees challenge workplace dress codes as intruding upon
their right to define and express their identity? Could those subject to college admissions
preferences raise claims that race or gender classifications deny their individual effort to define
and express their identity? Kennedys approach has only deepened the uncertainty over how
courts will handle such cases.
As dignity is elusive and malleable, as Turley puts it, or meaningless, as I would say, pretty much
anything could become captive to a dignity argument. Its ripples would eventually be felt in
almost every aspect of our lives, with people demanding their right to dignity from being subject
to your right to dignity. Or your right to anything else .
Turley uses the example of a gay couple being denied a wedding cake with a homosexual theme, coming
at the expense of the dignity of a Christian baker whose dignity would be compromised by being
compelled to bake it. Already, the ACLU has announced that religious freedom has fallen out of favor,
even though the free exercise clause is an express right in the First Amendment. Its picking which rights
are worthy of its concern, and religion didnt make the cut.
Notwithstanding the dolts who argue that the Constitution means what it says, we struggle now with the
hard rights, the ones reasonably susceptible to definition. Is Pastafarian really a religion? But consider
what would become of our efforts to function if a right as amorphous and meaningless as
dignity was enshrined in the emanations and penumbras of the Constitution?
Take it to the logical extreme and it would likely end up as a transient tyranny of the
majority :
Nevertheless, pressure is rising to criminalize forms of hate speech or speech that is viewed as
discriminatory or degrading to certain groups. Universities increasingly warn students and faculty
not just against comments deemed racist but also against an ever-expanding list of
microaggressions, such as the use of melting pot and other terms considered insensitive.
All in the name of dignity, with the insistence of voices claiming that they speak for the majority of our
butthurt nation of delicate souls.
 Obergefell would be a tragic irony if it succeeded in finally closing the door on morality and
speech codes only to introduce an equally ill-defined dignity code. Both involve majoritarian
values, enforced by the government, regarding what is acceptable and protectable. Substituting
compulsory morality with compulsory liberalism simply shifts the burden of coercive state power
from one group to another.
Its not that dignity is a bad word or an evil concept, but that it is so vague as to become a
bludgeon of the majority to justify the evisceration of the rights of everyone who isnt on board
the Official Dignity Train.
Just as the joy of same sex marriage is going to eventually give way to the misery of same sex divorce,
the elevation of dignity to a right is going to give way to the criminalization of the exercise of
other rights that the overly sensitive decide are affronts to dignity. And even if you are on the
good side now, bear in mind that the whims of the majority shift quickly, and you may well find
yourself in the undignified position of being on the wrong side later .