<p>IDEA Quality of Life Neg Case Answers 1NC Discrimination Adv Status quo IDEA provisions and the Endrews rulings are sufficient to solve ableism in education Shah 17 (Paras Shah, Contributor to Huffington Post and J.D. Candidate at UC Irvine School of Law, “For Students With Disabilities, Supreme Court’s Decision Means We Can No Longer Be Ignored”, March 25, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/for-students-with- disabilities-supreme-courts-decision_us_58d59417e4b0f633072b379f) Since it passed over thirty-five years ago, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ( IDEA ) has required state and local s chools receiving federal funding to provide students with disabilities a free appropriate public education (FAPE). Currently , over 6 million students across the country with various types of disabilities benefit from the IEDA’s protections. But parents, school districts, and the lower federal courts have contested exactly what that actually requires. This week’s case, Endrew F. v. Douglas County Sch. Dist., comes down as appellate courts have split sharply over the level of FAPE learners with disabilities are entitled to from their schools. The disagreement largely stems from the Court’s previous decision in Board of Educ. v. Rowley, where the Court declined to establish a uniform standard for the adequacy of educational benefit under the Act. On the low end of the spectrum, the Tenth Circuit determined that IDEA requires schools to provide an education that is “merely more than de minimis,” or just above trivial. On the other end, the Third Circuit’s held that a FAPE must provide a “ substantial educational benefit.” The Court granted review in Endrew F. to clarify the level of educational benefit IDEA demands. The case arose after the parents of Endrew F., a student with autism, decided his school was not doing enough to educate their son. Each year from preschool to fourth grade, the school district renewed Endrew’s individual education goals without making substantial changes. This suggested the plan was failing to help make meaningful progress. Eventually, Endrew’s parents enrolled him in a private school, where he improved significantly through a new plan designed to address specific behaviors and goals. When his parents attempted the reenroll Endrew in public school again, the district offered a version of its previous plan. The school district argued this was sufficient because it provided Endrew “some” educational benefit. The Court’s unanimous decision rejected that view. As Chief Justice Roberts declared, IDEA requires “an educational program reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress appropriate in light of the child’s circumstances.” In other words, each child should have the opportunity to meet “challenging objectives.” For students with disabilities, the Court’s holding does more than signal a heightened standard of educational benefit—it clearly sets out that students with disabilities deserve meaningful opportunities to learn, grow, and thrive. The Tenth Circuit standard’s true harm was that it normalized failure. In effect, it announced to students that their education did not matter. In broad terms, it became inconsequential whether or not they made progress toward their goals simply because they had a disability. The Supreme Court rebukes that notion, and encourages students with disabilities to expect more of themselves and their schools . IDEA empowers students with disabilities to aim high with support from school administrators and input from parents. For me, the Act did just that. From preschool through twelfth grade, I received my right to accommodations such as enlarged papers, a seat in the front of the room, and support from vision and mobility specialists outside the classroom. At the same time, my parents, like Endrew’s, demanded that my disability should not stop me from becoming independent. Each year, they met with school officials to insist on adjustments to my learning plan as necessary. Their efforts paid off. I went on to attend the University of California, Berkeley and am now completing my first year of law school at UC Irvine School of Law. Although the Supreme Court’s decision marks progress, challenges remain. A key next step will be to monitor how the Court’s holding is implemented. State and local school districts should take the lead by showing their students that having a disability does not mean you cannot learn. Instead, it just means you see, walk, think, or act in a different way. Despite these challenges, the decision is reason to hope. For Endrew, myself, and the millions school children with disabilities who qualify for services under the law, it means we can no longer be ignored. QOL fails – there is no one definition of what quality of life standards are or how they can be measured – enforcement will be spotty. Transitional services fail – unequal enforcement and other structural factors block effectiveness Muthumbi 08 (Jane W. Muthumbi Program Research Specialist, NYS Developmental Disabilities Planning Council, “Enhancing transition outcomes for youth with disabilities: The partnerships for youth initiative”, July 3, 2008, http://www.pacific-gateway.org/enhancing %20transition%20outcomes%20for%20youth%20with.pdf, JR) Recent testing and other academic requirements implemented by the education system are likely to have a detrimental effect on student transition outcomes. Youth with disabilities lack supports to enable them to pass GED exams, contributing to a significant increase in the number of youth that cannot sit for the GED. In addition, lack of supports often undermines the ability of many GED enrollees, including out-of-school youth with significant learning disabilities to pass the exams, which potentially undermines their long-term transition outcomes and particularly their ability to obtain competitive employment. Employment-related services and supports provided to students with disabilities by schools are not only limited but also vary widely across schools. There is considerable variation across schools in the development of career assessments and portfolios for students with disabilities that are used by employers to better identify employee skills and interests, and to determine appropriate placement. Similarly, vocational programs available through schools vary widely. During the duration of the grant, one school district’s vocational program was retrenched as the staff oversee- ing the program were assigned new duties. In other school districts’ school-to-work programs, lack of essential employment-related supports such as job coaches or one-on-one supports limit students with disabilities’ ability to acquire work skills . In addition, school districts also lack capacity and expertise in job development, which limits their ability to connect youth with resources that are likely to increase their success in employment. Integration won’t resolve social stigma Green 09, Gill Green is a Professor of Medical Sociology at the University of Essex, UK, BSc, MA, PhD, 2009(“The end of Stigma?”, Gill Green, No Specific date, https://books.google.com/books? id=JUWxqdydadcC&pg=PT160&lpg=PT160&dq=integration+of+disabled+students+doesn %27t+help+stigma&source=bl&ots=esxMoTG4Qw&sig=WWmBIZoA8H2ZWCTAtnbZ2P1RaTQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjGvZSr9IbV AhUJxYMKHalTCesQ6AEIfzAO#v=onepage&q&f=false, OCR, Accessed 7/13/2017) In the textual data we gathered in our MS study some respondents alluded to the stigma of MS. They reported discrimination in the workplace, with one respondent saying, ‘I was fried as a public liability risk the day after my diagnosis’. Others reported that they felt discriminated against on the basis of their medical history or reported that for fear of any discrimination they ‘never disclosed fact that I had MS so had to lie about health’. Nondisclosure and shame led others to avoid social contact, with one respondent writing that they ‘[did] not have a social life, like to keep my disability problems inside - not good at showing my disability’. They also reported that other household members had been affected by courtesy stigma; one woman wrote that as a result of her symptoms her children were ‘teased at school’, and another that ‘some people [are] embarrassed in being with me when using [my] scooter’. And there were also occasionally reports of being rejected by former contacts, with one respondent writing, ‘A couple of my friends, one in particular who I've known for over 25 years, have turned away.’ Experiences of stigma and the need for stigma management strategies are confirmed in other studies. The process of managing stigma in social interactions can be so demanding that people with MS report that the process can make them ‘feel more ill’ and requires strategies to reaffirm their sense of self and identity (Grytten and Maseide, 2006). Thus a common tactic among people with MS is to conceal their condition to protect their sense of selfhood and their access to social participation and work (Grytten and Maseide, 2005). Thus stigma is clearly an important consideration for some people with MS. However, in the responses we received, whereas there were numerous references to limitations as a result of the physical consequences of MS, there were only occasional references to the social consequences resulting from others’ response to the illness. Restricted access and opportunities were mainly related to impairment rather than to stigma. One man, for example, whose vision was poor as a result of a number of episodes of optic neuritis (a common symptom of Copyrigf MS) had had to give up his work as a taxi driver on account of safety considerations rather than any stigma associated with his restricted vision. Although the area between what someone is able to do and what they are not is clouded by stereotypes about illness and disability, and people with long-term conditions may be unjustifiably restricted from certain activities, it nevertheless remains that there are some activities or occupations to which people with some conditions may be unsuited. Although much can and has been done to make the environment more accessible to disabled people, and there is still much more that could be done to enable people with a range of impairments to integrate into employment and other activities, there are some limits to participation. It is clear that ‘full integration of impaired people in social production can never constitute the future to which all disabled people can aspire ’ (Abberley, 2002: 135). Inclusion increases stigma and has dramatically negative psychological effects on students due to an increase bullying and decrease in peer acceptance – multiple studies prove DeRoche 10 (Christina DeRoche Department of Sociology McMaster University, “Students with Learning Disabilities: The Application of Goffman 's Stigma in the Inclusive Classroom”, Winter 2010, http://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=1111&context=ejie, JR) Although inclusion of children with learning disabilities (LD) within the general education classroom is practised by all school boards within Ontario, the repercussions of such actions on children with LD are still very contradictory (Cooney, Jahoda, Gumley, & Knott, 2006; Gibb, Tunbridge, Chua, & Frederickson, 2007; Martinez, 2006). Research on children with LD has elicited varying results concerning their self- perception, self-esteem, and peer relations. Thomson and McKenzie (2005) pointed out that overall any group of individuals (LD or not) will inherently view themselves as others view them. According to them, children with LD felt that they received negative reactions to their label. Thomson and McKenzie also found that half of the children in their study felt depressed as a result of having been labelled with a LD. The purpose of this study was to investigate how children with LDs interacted with their peers without LDs in the inclusive classroom. Ho (2004) found that the child with LD may take this new label of LD and understand that he or she is different or inferior to those who are “normal” in their peer groups. This difference causes what Murray and Greenburg (2006) described as peer alienation, which can lead to a number of social and emotional repercussions, including depression, loneliness, and anxiety. Maag and Reid (2006) also stated that children with LD are more likely to experience these social and emotional repercussions due to a lowered self-concept. One study conducted in Britain found that children diagnosed with a LD were twice as likely to have a depressive disorder, six times more likely to have a conduct disorder, and four times more likely to have an emotional disorder among other mental health problems (Emerson & Hatton, 2007). Even MacMaster, Donovan, and MacIntyre (2002) pointed out that being labelled with a LD poses a threat to these students. Despite their results in finding high self- esteem amongst their participants, they stated that students with LD may experience lower self-esteem once they begin to compare themselves to others without LD. 2 Students with LD experience a decline in approval by peers and a decline in peer status (Bakker, Denessen, Bosman, Krijger, & Bouts, 2007; Estell, et al., 2008; Reschly & Christenson, 2006). In one study, students with LD suffered from low peer status and were generally less accepted by their peers without LD (Wiener, 2004); this is directly related to social and emotional functioning and development (Estell et al., 2008). However, the findings on peer status tend to be very inconsistent as well (Nowicki, 2006). Some research shows that some children have very positive attitudes towards disabilities in general (McDougall, DeWit, King, Miller, & Killip, 2004). Nowicki (2006) studied peer attitudes towards children with LD and found that there was gender as well as age differences; young girls had the most negative attitudes towards disabilities. Kemp and Carter (2002) provided some insight into why students with LD may be experiencing lowered peer status and increased rates of loneliness and depression; they stated that isolation that students with LD experience may be due to some problematic development in their social skills. Thus, students with LD may be experiencing these social and emotional consequences because of their inability to socialize adequately (Martinez, 2006). Lastly , students with LD often have higher rates of becoming a victim to bullying or peer taunting. According to Nabuzoka and Smith (1993 ), students with LD were less popular amongst their peers and experienced more peer rejection as a result. Peer rejection often included teasing and bullying from their peers. As Murray and Greenburg (2006) elaborated, students with LD often experience more peer group alienation than those without LD. Perhaps students with LD exhibit behaviours which are not socially acceptable or they are socially targeted because of the LD stigma itself. Cooney et al. (2006) also support these findings: They found that inclusive students with LD reported higher rates of stigmatization from their peers without LD. Martlew and Hodson (1991) found that students with LD often exhibited behaviours that were introverted, such as keeping to themselves and not socializing at times that were deemed appropriate. Again, researchers have also found that students with LD often felt lonely and experienced depression as a result of being teased or victimized by their peers without LD (Maag & Reid, 2006; Martlew & Hodson, 1991). In terms of how extensive peer victimization is for students with LD, Mishna (2003) found that approximately 25-30% of students with a LD experience some form of victimization in comparison to 15% of students without a LD; this is a significant difference, and as Mishna pointed out, this victimization has far reaching effects including the aforementioned mental health effects. Thus, although the intention of inclusion is to expose students with a LD to diversity and more social experience , in an ironic twist they are experiencing more stigmatization and victimization (Luciano & Savage, 2007). As a result, students with a LD experience a number of emotional problems and poorer mental health including heightened levels of loneliness and social distress (Khamis, 2009; Paquette & Underwood, 1999). Attempts to reform IDEA result maintain a system of disability and racialized discrimination – IDEA will inevitably worsen inequality under the guise of attempting to reduce it Beratan 08 (Gregg D. Beratan Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK, “The song remains the same: transposition and the disproportionate representation of minority students in special education”, November 24, 2008, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13613320802478820?needAccess=true, JR) The institutional ablism built into IDEA’s LRE clause serves to legalise the discrimination that it was intended to alleviate . With this legal and accessible discrimination at its disposal, the special education system offers the general education system a means of maintaining the discrimination that Brown v. the Board of Education made illegal. The disproportionate identification of minority students as disabled becomes the means of transposing disability discrimination in place of racist discrimination. Understanding this makes it easier for us to recognise the explicit connection between the development of special education and white America’s interest in recouping its losses from the Brown decision. IDEA’s attempts to address the disproportionate representation of minority students in special education today presents us with a glimpse of how policy itself serves to maintain inequities within the education system, even when those inequities are seen as unacceptable, inaccessible and illegal. Mechanisms such as transposition enable alternate routes of access. Understandings of race and disability as being wholly detached from one another enable a sleight of hand within the policy that serves the dominant interest of maintaining the inequality. In the macro policy context in which IDEA was created, discrimination against disabled people is scrutinised far less, and is therefore much more accessible than discrimination based on race. In transposing ablist mechanisms to achieve racist outcomes, IDEA has created a powerful institutionalised inequity. Society’s acceptance of disability discrimination enables the acceptance of the otherwise unacceptable racial discrimination. Camouflaged in the language of good intentions, IDEA is protected against charges of either racism or ablism. Transposition is a context-specific mechanism that can occur in multiple ways at many levels of policy execution and interpretation. In other research (Beratan 2005), looking at the micro (school) level, we see that in a situation where ablist mechanisms had been made inaccessible to teachers, racism, sexism, and class-based discrimination (all of which received less scrutiny and were therefore more acceptable in the particular context) were utilised to achieve the same ends. In merging the outcomes of both institutional ablism and racism, IDEA has created a powerful institutionalised inequity. Society’s acceptance of disability discrimination enables the acceptance of the otherwise unacceptable racial discrimination. Camouflaged in the language of good intentions, IDEA is protected against charges of either racism or ablism. It is necessary for researchers in disability studies and Critical Race Theory to cross borders and engage with this interaction in order to address the inequities. As long as there is insularity between the fields, neither will be adequate to the task. Any gains in educational quality or disproportional representation will fail and license more inequalities – reforms in special education drive racial segregation Beratan 08 (Gregg D. Beratan Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK, “The song remains the same: transposition and the disproportionate representation of minority students in special education”, November 24, 2008, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13613320802478820?needAccess=true, JR) Institutional ablism alone is insufficient to understand the disproportionate identification of minority students under IDEA. An understanding of institutionalised racism must also be brought into the picture. The importance of the concept of institutional racism lies not only in its recognition that racism is more than just individual prejudice, but also in the understanding that individual intent is irrelevant, even if an institution attempts to eradicate racist outcomes. If it does not succeed, it is still institutionally racist. In relation to disproportionality, institutional ablism (as will be discussed shortly) is very much a factor; however, it is impossible to take institutional racism out of the equation. It is difficult to find a more clearly racist outcome than the disproportionate segregation of minority students from general education. If ablism alone were involved, one could expect to find similar levels of representation across racial and ethnic groups. The combination of institutional ablism and institutional racism serves to make both stronger than they would be on their own. In effect, society’s willingness to percieve discrimination against disabled people as being the result of individual deficiencies is used to make racism more palatable. As Reid and Knight (forthcoming) point out: To explain overrepresentation of minority students in special education, we first reveal US historical conditions that have made institutionalized racism, classism, and sexism seem natural and just through their conflation with disability, a form of oppression based on ablism. Much of the focus on institutional racism in education has been around the resegregation of public schools through a variety of covert mechanisms, including white flight (Johnson and Shapiro 2003), testing (Brown et al. 2003; Gillborn and Youdell 2000), ‘color-blind’ policies (Bonilla-Silva 2003) and pedagogy (Gillborn 1990; Sleeter 2004). However, the use of ablist segregation of special education allows for a legal, overt, and systematised means of achieving the same end . IDEA, legally and overtly, achieves the racially segregated system that the courts attempted to do away with in the Brown decision . The 2004 incarnation of IDEA expands upon the attempts of earlier versions to address disproportionality. Whereas the 1997 version of IDEA stopped at requiring local education agencies (LEAs) to report, review and, if necessary, revise policies, practices and procedures aimed at preventing the disproportionate representation of minority students in special education, the 2004 version of IDEA mandates LEAs …to reserve the maximum amount of funds under section 613(f) to provide comprehensive coordinated early intervening services to serve children in the local educational agency, particularly children in those groups that were significantly overidentified under paragraph (1).17 346 G.D. Beratan This full-funding trigger, located in section 618 d (B) of IDEA, is written in a way to suggest that it is intended to give more funds to LEAs for the purpose of fighting existing disproportionality. Although there is no reason to question this intention, an understanding of both institutional ablism and racism means that intentions are irrelevant and there is a need to focus on outcomes. While it is too soon to determine the consequences of this clause, there is enough evidence to speculate upon possibilities. Anything that triggers maximum funding for a school or local education agency is an incentive. In this case, rather than discouraging the disproportionate identification of minority students as disabled, the clause serves as a bounty that actively encourages overidentification as a means to higher funding levels. Greene and Forster (2002, 7) found that bounty funding systems in special education led to far greater growth in special education than lump sum funding systems (no incentives): The average special education enrollment rate for states that had lump-sum systems at any time during the study period grew from 11.1% in the 1991–92 school year to 12.4% in the 2000–01 school year, an increase of 1.3 percentage points. In the same period, the average special education enrollment rate for states that maintained bounty systems for the entire study period grew from 10.5% to 12.8%, an increase of 2.3 percentage points. Although Greene and Forster (2002) focused upon the effects of bounty systems on the identification of special education students, there is no reason to suggest that a bounty targeting minority students would have a different outcome. It could be argued that any incentive would be nullified by additional costs related to a student being identified as needing special education services. Greene and Forster (2002, 4) have also answered this claim by pointing out that there is actually a relative benefit tied to increased identification of students: Some services that a school would have provided to a particular child no matter what can be redefined as special education services if the child is placed in special education; these services are not truly special education costs because they would have been provided anyway. For example, if a school provides extra reading help to students who are falling behind in reading, the school must bear that cost itself. But if the same school redefines those students as learning disabled rather than slow readers, state and federal government will help pick up the tab for those services. This is financially advantageous for the school because it brings in new state and federal funding to cover ‘costs’ that the school would have had to pay for anyway. Furthermore, there are many fixed costs associated with special education that do not increase with every new child. For example, if a school hires a full-time special education reading teacher, it will pay the same cost whether that teacher handles three students a day or ten. However, the school will collect a lot more money for teaching ten special education students than it would for teaching three. The funding mechanisms in terms of both funding received and relative benefits becomes an institutionalised mechanism of inequity . Is this a form of institutional ablism or institutional racism? It is both. In this instance, the two are indistinguishable. Neither offers sufficient explanation on its own. Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (2003, 23) argues in her analysis of the intersections of race and sex that focusing on either construction as discrete from the other …creates a distorted analysis and sexism because the operative conceptions of race and sex become grounded in experiences that actually represent only a subset of a much more complex phenomenon. Race Ethnicity and Education 347 Disability and race are similarly conjoined in IDEA’s disproportionality clause. It is ablist, in that students’ opportunities and experiences are being limited by mechanisms and structures built around constructions of disability; but it is also institutionally racist in the way it targets students by their membership in racial and ethnic minority groups. The racist outcomes could not be achieved without the ablist mechanisms. Returning to a focus on outcomes, racism would seem to be the the primary operative. I put forward an argument similar to that identified in ongoing research by D. Kim Reid and Michelle G. Knight (see quotation above), that an ablist mechanism (in this case IDEA’s full-funding trigger) has been transposed to create the racist outcome of disproportionate representation of minority students in Special Education. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word ‘transpose’ as: ‘to write or perform (a musical composition) in a different key’ (p. 761); the main effect of this being that, while the sound changes, the song remains the same. In this case, racism was the original key, and it was replaced by the form of discrimination that was the least assailable: the legally accepted ablism of IDEA. The deficiency changes, but the inequality remains the same. The accessability of ablism as a means of maintaining racial discrimination is not merely a debatable matter of perception, but a legal distinction mandated by the supreme court. In City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Centre, Inc. (473 US 432, 1985). The United States Supreme Court held that mental retardation and other types of disability are not a suspect class and therefore are not entitled to a ‘strict’ or even ‘heightened’ scrutiny standard of review under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment; there must only be a rational basis for exclusion to occur. What this means is that it is legal to discriminate against disabled people, as long as there is a rational basis for the discrimination (Blanck et al. 2004; Colker and Tucker 2000; Minow 1990). When this is compared with racial discrimination that is held to a strict scrutiny standard, it is clear that discrimination against disabled people is far more acceptable and accessible in US society.18 This makes disability the perfect conduit for the transposition of racial discrimination . History would also seem to support this analysis. It is no coincidence that the initial push to recognise that disabled people have a right to education began in the early 1960s, as states were immersed in addressing the desegregation mandate of Brown v. the Board of Education. Many would identify, and have identified, this development as a natural attempt by disabled people to build on the civil rights gains made by African Americans (Ferri and Connor 2006). In fact, Attorney John W. Davis, while arguing for the state of South Carolina in Brown, made this connection: May it please the court, I think if the appellants’ construction of the Fourteenth Amendment should prevail here, there is no doubt in my mind that it would catch the Indian within its grasp just as much as the Negro. If it should prevail, I am unable to see why a state would have any further right to segregate its pupils on the ground of sex or on the ground of age or on the ground of mental capacity. (Friedman 2004, 51, emphasis added) While there is little question that much of the motivation for the activists fighting to extend the principles of desegregation to disabled people were inspired by the success of the civil rights movement in Brown, disabled people’s success in achieving this extension may be tied to Brown in a very different way, as I explain in the following section. Interest convergence: retrenchment and disability rights Ferri and Connor (2006) trace a shift from discourses of race to discourses of ability following the Brown decision. They argue that this shift has allowed the resegregation of schools that we see today (Bell 2004; Clotfelter 2004; Orfield and Eaton 1996). How and why did this happen? The answer may lie in two concepts that have been developed within the scholarship of Critical Race Theory; the concepts of ‘interest convergence’ and ‘retrenchment’. Retrenchment is a concept that was developed by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw (1995). It describes the process by which any civil rights gains are almost immediately nullified, either through the political process or through the execution of the very policy or court rulings that are meant to provide those gains. It is a process that has been documented extensively by critical race theorists such as Derrick Bell (1987, 1992, 2004) and Richard Delgado (2003). In his (2004) book, Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform, Derrick Bell argues that the permanence of racism in American life has led to the use of a myriad of methods to undermine and undo the progress represented by the stated intent of the Brown decision. The need for a retrenchment of the gains offered by Brown was a driving force behind the development of our system of special education. Special Education presented an opportunity for what Derrick Bell (1980, 2004, 2005) has termed ‘ interest convergence’ . As Bell (2005, 35) articulates it: [T]his principle of ‘interest convergence’ provides: the interest of blacks in achieving racial equality will be accommodated only when it converges with the interests of whites. In the case of special education, the need for retrenchment was the perceived white interest; and it converged , not with the black interest of racial equality, but with interests of disability activists and parents of children with disabilities who wanted the principles of Brown extended to disabled people . It is no coincidence that Congress first established a Federal Office of Special Education in 1966, 11 years after Brown, just as foot-dragging over desegregation was beginning to show segregationist approaches to ‘all deliberate speed’ for the obstructionism that it was. Ferri and Connor (2006) have argued that the gradualism represented by states’ approaches to Brown’s ‘all deliberate speed’ mandate enabled the shift from a discourse of race (under which segregation was prohibited) to one of ability (under which it was maintained): Unfortunately the various reactions to Brown demonstrate how gradualism has been used to subvert the original intent of the law. It is important to remember that although IDEA mandates a free and appropriate public education and stresses an environment as close to general education as possible, it does not mandate inclusion. This, in and of itself, allows a perpetual state of gradualism to exist. (Ferri and Connor 2006, 70) When seen as part of this overarching shift from discourses of race as deficit to discourses of deficit of ability, the development of special education can be seen as primarily serving the white interest of reformalising segregation; the disabled interest in a right to education becomes merely a useful conduit . This offers not only a glimpse of interest convergence at work, this time against the interest of minority students, but also another example of transposition. What becomes clear is that the Brown decision made the discourse of race legally unaccessible, and so the more readily accessed and unquestioned discourse of ability was used to maintain the segregation. We should not frame responses to racism in terms of moral imperatives that override any possible consequence of our action –desire for moral purity closes off race policy from public debate, and recreates racism. Christopher A. Bracey, Associate Professor of Law, Associate Professor of African & African American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis, September 2006, Southern California Law Review, 79 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1231, p. 1316-1318 The principal deficit of this approach is that it would serve only to concretize the existing conversational impasse and subvert the larger aspiration of seeking constructive solutions to pressing racial issues. It creates an incentive to view race matters in purely ideological terms and further subverts the possibility of reasoned policy debate. Speaking of race matters in purely ideological terms poses a serious impediment to racial conversation because, in advancing one's position, one essentially argues that a particular set of circumstances demands a particular outcome. In this [*1317] way, purely ideological race rhetoric functions much like philosopher Immanuel Kant described in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. 277 According to Kant, a moral imperative is categorical insofar as it is presented as objectively necessary, without reference to some purpose or outcome. The imperative is the end in and of itself . As Kant explained, the moral imperative "has to do not with the matter of the action and what is to result from it, but with the form and the principle from which the action itself follows; and the essentially [sic] good in the action consists in the disposition, let the result be what it may." 278 Because the moral imperative embodies that which is morally good, it necessarily makes a claim about justice. In short, an act is deemed morally just to the extent that it retains fidelity to the moral imperative. By contrast, a policy argument reflects a set of choices or priorities and asserts a claim about the impact of a particular set of decisions upon the world. 279 A policy argument does not embody a claim to justice. Indeed, the correctness of a policy choice is often tested against the backdrop of some agreed upon conception of justice. As the late Jerome Culp, Jr. explained: Neither side of a moral debate is likely to be persuaded by proof that the policy claims support or discredit their moral positions. Policy arguments can be disproved by empirical evidence and challenged by showing in some situations the policy does not work or has contrary results. To refute a moral claim, however, first requires some agreement on the moral framework. Only then can one discuss whether the moral policy advocated conforms to the agreed-upon framework. 280 Speaking about race matters in purely ideological or moral terms creates the impression that a particular racial policy is rooted in some theory of what is morally just. In this way, opposition to race preferences is made to appear "above the fray" of politics and less susceptible to public choice debate. In addition, it enables opponents to claim that race [*1318] preferences merely reflect the political whims of its proponents, unanchored by principle or a coherent theory of social justice. War turns structural violence – not the other way around Goldstein ‘1 Joshua S. Goldstein, Professor of International Relations at American University, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa, 2001, pp.411-412</p><p>I began this book hoping to contribute in some way to a deeper understanding of war – an understanding that would improve the chances of someday achieving real peace, by deleting war from our human repertoire. In following the thread of gender running through war, I found the deeper understanding I had hoped for – a multidisciplinary and multilevel engagement with the subject. Yet I became somewhat more pessimistic about how quickly or easily war may end. The war system emerges, from the evidence in this book, as relatively ubiquitous and robust. Efforts to change this system must overcome several dilemmas mentioned in this book. First, peace activists face a dilemma in thinking about causes of war and working for peace. Many peace scholars and activists support the approach, “if you want peace, work for justice.” Then, if one believes that sexism contributes to war, one can work for gender justice specifically (perhaps among others) in order to pursue peace. This approach brings strategic allies to the peace movement (women, labor, minorities), but rests on the assumption that injustices cause war. The evidence in this book suggests that causality runs at least as strongly the other way. War is not a product of capitalism, imperialism, gender, innate aggression, or any other single cause, although all of these influence wars’ outbreaks and outcomes. Rather, war has in part fueled and sustained these and other injustices. So, “if you want peace, work for peace.” Indeed, if you want justice (gender and others), work for peace. Causality does not run just upward through the levels of analysis, from types of individuals , societies, and governments up to war. It runs downward txoo. Enloe suggests that changes in attitudes towards war and the military may be the most important way to “reverse women’s oppression.” The dilemma is that peace work focused on justice brings to the peace movement energy, allies, and moral grounding, yet, in light of this book’s evidence , the emphasis on injustice as the main cause of war seems to be empirically inadequate. 1NC Framing Our first priority should be reducing existential risk — even if the probability is low. Anissimov 4 — Michael Anissimov, science and technology writer focusing specializing in futurism, founding director of the Immortality Institute—a non-profit organization focused on the abolition of nonconsensual death, member of the World Transhumanist Association, associate of the Institute for Accelerating Change, member of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology's Global Task Force, 2004 (“Immortalist Utilitarianism,” Accelerating Future, May, Available Online at http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/works/immethics.htm, Accessed 09-09-2011) The value of contributing to Aubrey de Grey's anti-aging project assumes that there continues to be a world around for people's lives to be extended. But if we nuke ourselves out of existence in 2010, then what? The probability of human extinction is the gateway function through which all efforts toward life extension must inevitably pass, including cryonics, biogerontology, and nanomedicine. They are all useless if we blow ourselves up. At this point one observes that there are many working toward life extension, but few focused on explicitly preventing apocalyptic global disaster. Such huge risks sound like fairy tales rather than real threats - because we have never seen them happen before, we underestimate the probability of their occurrence. An existential disaster has not yet occurred on this planet. The risks worth worrying about are not pollution, asteroid impact, or alien invasion - the ones you see dramaticized in movies - these events are all either very gradual or improbable. Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom warns us of existential risks, "...where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential." Bostrom continues, "Existential risks are distinct from global endurable risks. Examples of the latter kind include: threats to the biodiversity of Earth’s ecosphere, moderate global warming, global economic recessions (even major ones), and possibly stifling cultural or religious eras such as the “dark ages”, even if they encompass the whole global community, provided they are transitory." The four main risks we know about so far are summarized by the following, in ascending order of probability and severity over the course of the next 30 years: Biological. More specifically, a genetically engineered supervirus. Bostrom writes, "With the fabulous advances in genetic technology currently taking place, it may become possible for a tyrant, terrorist, or lunatic to create a doomsday virus, an organism that combines long latency with high virulence and mortality." There are several factors necessary for a virus to be a risk. The first is the presence of biologists with the knowledge necessary to genetically engineer a new virus of any sort. The second is access to the expensive machinery required for synthesis. Third is specific knowledge of viral genetic engineering. Fourth is a weaponization strategy and a delivery mechanism. These are nontrivial barriers, but are sure to fall in due time. Nuclear. A traditional nuclear war could still break out, although it would be unlikely to result in our ultimate demise, it could drastically curtail our potential and set us back thousands or even millions of years technologically and ethically. Bostrom mentions that the US and Russia still have huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Miniaturization technology, along with improve manufacturing technologies, could make it possible to mass produce nuclear weapons for easy delivery should an escalating arms race lead to that. As rogue nations begin to acquire the technology for nuclear strikes, powerful nations will feel increasingly edgy. Nanotechnological. The Transhumanist FAQ reads, "Molecular nanotechnology is an anticipated manufacturing technology that will make it possible to build complex three-dimensional structures to atomic specification using chemical reactions directed by nonbiological machinery." Because nanomachines could be self-replicating or at least auto-productive, the technology and its products could proliferate very rapidly. Because nanotechnology could theoretically be used to create any chemically stable object, the potential for abuse is massive. Nanotechnology could be used to manufacture large weapons or other oppressive apparatus in mere hours; the only limitations are raw materials, management, software, and heat dissipation. Human-indifferent superintelligence. In the near future, humanity will gain the technological capability to create forms of intelligence radically better than our own. Artificial Intelligences will be implemented on superfast transistors instead of slow biological neurons, and eventually gain the intellectual ability to fabricate new hardware and reprogram their source code. Such an intelligence could engage in recursive self- improvement - improving its own intelligence, then directing that intelligence towards further intelligence improvements. Such a process could lead far beyond our current level of intelligence in a relatively short time. We would be helpless to fight against such an intelligence if it did not value our continuation. So let's say I have another million dollars to spend. My last million dollars went to Aubrey de Grey's Methuselah Mouse Prize, for a grand total of billions of expected utiles. But wait - I forgot to factor in the probability that humanity will be destroyed before the positive effects of life extension are borne out. Even if my estimated probability of existential risk is very low , it is still rational to focus on addressing the risk because my whole enterprise would be ruined if disaster is not averted . If we value the prospect of all the future lives that could be enjoyed if we pass beyond the threshold of risk - possibly quadrillions or more, if we expand into the cosmos, then we will deeply value minimizing the probability of existential risk above all other considerations. If my million dollars can avert the chance of existential disaster by, say, 0.0001%, then the expected utility of this action relative to the expected utility of life extension advocacy is shocking. That's 0.0001% of the utility of quadrillions or more humans, transhumans, and posthumans leading fulfilling lives. I'll spare the reader from working out the math and utility curves - I'm sure you can imagine them. So, why is it that people tend to devote more resources to life extension than risk prevention? The follow includes my guesses, feel free to tell me if you disagree: They estimate the probability of any risk occurring to be extremely low. They estimate their potential influence over the likelihood of risk to be extremely low. They feel that positive PR towards any futurist goals will eventually result in higher awareness of risk. They fear social ostracization if they focus on "Doomsday scenarios" rather than traditional extension. Those are my guesses. Immortalists with objections are free to send in their arguments, and I will post them here if they are especially strong. As far as I can tell however, the predicted utility of lowering the likelihood of existential risk outclasses any life extension effort I can imagine. I cannot emphasize this enough. If a existential disaster occurs, not only will the possibilities of extreme life extension, sophisticated nanotechnology, intelligence enhancement, and space expansion never bear fruit, but everyone will be dead , never to come back . Because the we have so much to lose, existential risk is worth worrying about even if our estimated probability of occurrence is extremely low. It is not the funding of life extension research projects that immortalists should be focusing on. It should be projects that decrease the risk of existential risk. By default, once the probability of existential risk is minimized, life extension technologies can be developed and applied. There are powerful economic and social imperatives in that direction, but few towards risk management. Existential risk creates a "loafer problem" — we always expect someone else to take care of it. I assert that this is a dangerous strategy and should be discarded in favor of making prevention of such risks a central focus. Existential risk mitigation comes first—future generations Bostrom 12 — (Nick Bostrom, 3-6-2012, "We're Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction," Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/were-underestimating-the-risk-of-human-extinction/253821/, Accessed 5-13-2017, JWS) Ross Anderson: Some have argued that we ought to be directing our resources toward humanity's existing problems, rather than future existential risks, because many of the latter are highly improbable. You have responded by suggesting that existential risk mitigation may in fact be a dominant moral priority over the alleviation of present suffering. Can you explain why? Nick Bostrom: Well suppose you have a moral view that counts future people as being worth as much as present people. You might say that fundamentally it doesn't matter whether someone exists at the current time or at some future time , just as many people think that from a fundamental moral point of view, it doesn't matter where somebody is spatially--- somebody isn't automatically worth less because you move them to the moon or to Africa or something. A human life is a human life. If you have that moral point of view that future generations matter in proportion to their population numbers, then you get this very stark implication that existential risk mitigation has a much higher utility than pretty much anything else that you could do. There are so many people that could come into existence in the future if humanity survives this critical period of time---we might live for billions of years, our descendants might colonize billions of solar systems, and there could be billions and billions times more people than exist currently . Therefore, even a very small reduction in the probability of realizing this enormous good will tend to outweigh even immense benefits like eliminating poverty or curing malaria, which would be tremendous under ordinary standards. Predictions about existential risk are possible and necessary. Bostrom 9 — Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, and Director of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the University of Oxford, recipient of the 2009 Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the London School of Economics, 2009 (“The Future of Humanity,” Geopolitics, History and International Relations, Volume 9, Issue 2, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via ProQuest Research Library, Reprinted Online at http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/future.pdf, Accessed 07-06-2011, p. 2-4) We need realistic pictures of what the future might bring in order to make sound decisions. Increasingly, we need realistic pictures not only of our personal or local near-term futures, but also of remoter global futures . Because of our expanded technological powers, some human activities now have significant global impacts . The scale of human social organization has also grown, creating new opportunities for coordination and action, and there are many institutions and individuals who either do consider, or claim to consider, or ought to consider, possible long-term global impacts of their actions . Climate change , national and international security , economic development , nuclear waste disposal, biodiversity, natural resource conservation, population policy, and scientific and technological research funding are examples of policy areas that involve long time-horizons. Arguments in these areas often rely on implicit assumptions about the future of humanity . By making these assumptions explicit , and subjecting them to critical analysis , it might be possible to address some of the big challenges for humanity in a more well-considered and thoughtful manner. The fact that we “need” realistic pictures of the future does not entail that we can have them. Predictions about future technical and social developments are notoriously unreliable – to an extent that have lead some to propose that we do away with prediction altogether in our planning and preparation for the future. Yet while the methodological problems of such forecasting are certainly very significant, the extreme view that we can or should do away with prediction altogether is misguided. That view is expressed, to take one [end page 2] example, in a recent paper on the societal implications of nanotechnology by Michael Crow and Daniel Sarewitz, in which they argue that the issue of predictability is “irrelevant”: preparation for the future obviously does not require accurate prediction; rather, it requires a foundation of knowledge upon which to base action, a capacity to learn from experience, close attention to what is going on in the present, and healthy and resilient institutions that can effectively respond or adapt to change in a timely manner.2 Note that each of the elements Crow and Sarewitz mention as required for the preparation for the future relies in some way on accurate prediction. A capacity to learn from experience is not useful for preparing for the future unless we can correctly assume (predict) that the lessons we derive from the past will be applicable to future situations. Close attention to what is going on in the present is likewise futile unless we can assume that what is going on in the present will reveal stable trends or otherwise shed light on what is likely to happen next . It also requires non-trivial prediction to figure out what kind of institution will prove healthy, resilient, and effective in responding or adapting to future changes. The reality is that predictability is a matter of degree , and different aspects of the future are predictable with varying degrees of reliability and precision.3 It may often be a good idea to develop plans that are flexible and to pursue policies that are robust under a wide range of contingencies. In some cases, it also makes sense to adopt a reactive approach that relies on adapting quickly to changing circumstances rather than pursuing any detailed long-term plan or explicit agenda. Yet these coping strategies are only one part of the solution . Another part is to work to improve the accuracy of our beliefs about the future (including the accuracy of conditional predictions of the form “if x is done, y will result”). There might be traps that we are walking towards that we could only avoid falling into by means of foresight. There are also opportunities that we could reach much sooner if we could see them farther in advance. And in a strict sense, prediction is always necessary for meaningful decision-making.4 Predictability does not necessarily fall off with temporal distance. It may be highly unpredictable where a traveler will be one hour after the start of her journey, yet predictable that after five hours she will be at her destination. The very long-term future of humanity may be relatively easy to predict, being a matter amenable to study by the natural sciences, particularly cosmology (physical eschatology). And for there to be a degree of predictability, it is not necessary that it be possible to identify one specific scenario as what will definitely happen . If there is a t least some scenario that can be ruled out, that is also a degree of predictability . Even short of this, if there is some basis for assigning different probabilities [end page 3] (in the sense of credences, degrees of belief) to different propositions about logically possible future events, or some basis for criticizing some such probability distributions as less rationally defensible or reasonable than others, then again there is a degree of predictability. And this is surely the case with regard to many aspects of the future of humanity. While our knowledge is insufficient to narrow down the space of possibilities to one broadly outlined future for humanity, we do know of many relevant arguments and considerations which in combination impose significant constraints on what a plausible view of the future could look like . The future of humanity need not be a topic on which all assumptions are entirely arbitrary and anything goes. There is a vast gulf between knowing exactly what will happen and having absolutely no clue about what will happen. Our actual epistemic location is some offshore place in that gulf.5 2NC Squo Solves Squo solves – NCLB, Presidential Commissions, and IDEA provide educational rights for disabled students. Arceneaux 13 (Marcia C. Arceneaux – J.D., Ph.D. has worked in the area of special education since 1971. Today she works as an IDEA consultant and as a contract attorney for South Louisiana Legal Services (Child in Need of Care); PDF; 2013; Loyola Law Review Volume 59; “THE IMPACT OF THE SPECIAL EDUCATION SYSTEM ON THE BLACK-WHITE ACHIEVEMENT GAP: SIGNS OF HOPE FOR A UNIFIED SYSTEM OF EDUCATION”; http://law.loyno.edu/sites/law.loyno.edu/files/Arceneaux-FINAL.pdf; accessed 7/6/17) [DS] A. THE No CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT (NCLB), 2001 The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was enacted as the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act ( ESEA) , which addressed general education.36 A critical mandate of NCLB was to address and close the educational achievement gap that was so evident in our country. 37 Although there was much political debate over this initiative, implementation of the revolutionary law commenced.3 8 The use of scientific, researchbased initiatives in reading and math, universal assessments, early identification of deficits with intense interventions, and frequent progress monitoring through data collection (known as the Reading First Model), have indeed had a positive impact on addressing deficits early in a child's education. 3 9 Because NCLB was initially designed to address the needs of all students, most educators focused on the needs of the general education population, keeping students with disabilities as a separate subgroup for accountability purposes.4 0 In practice, these processes have had a revolutionary impact on students in special education as well. B. THE PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION ON EXCELLENCE IN SPECIAL EDUCATION REPORT , 2001 At the same time that NCLB was progressing with major reforms, an investigation of special education was initiated.4 ' Prominent individuals in the field were selected to participate in "The President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education" and tasked with submitting a report on their findings.4 2 Although there were some positive aspects of the system at the time, other findings documented major areas of concern.4 3 Clearly, there was disproportionality and over-identification of African-American students from impoverished backgrounds, particularly those falling into categories of mild/moderate mental disabilities, emotional disturbance, and self-contained classrooms.4 Additionally, the Commission found that dual systems of education” existed in America: general and special education.6 The Commission also reported in detail on the need for early intervention services (EIS) for all children to immediately address identified deficits within the first years of school, rather than the Wait to Fail Model that was in place. 46 The response to intervention (RTI) process, a scientific, research-based approach for early identification of student deficits using tiered interventions with progress monitoring, was a crucial recommendation. 47 This provided the ability to identify . genuine, specific learning disabilities , as opposed to only identifying failure based on lack of educational opportunities. The Commission's extensive report offered many recommendations that, in fact, largely supported the NCLB mandates of the time.4 8 With the implementation of these recommendations, a new and equitable system of education for all students started to emerge, along with "best practices" that had the capacity to close the achievement gap. C. THE INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES EDUCATION IMPROVEMENT ACT (IDEA), 2004 The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act ( IDEA) and the corresponding federal regulations provide the foundation and guiding principles for school systems educating students with disabilities.4 9 Generally referred to as the IDEA, this legislation supported and strengthened many initiatives of the existing NCLB and President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education Report.so The compliance monitoring of state data regarding the issues of disproportionality, as well as fundamental mandates and procedural safeguards of IDEA, have a direct correlation to improving student performance and outcomes." The IDEA affirmed the use of scientific, researchbased initiatives, one curriculum, EIS, and RTI procedures to identify needs and to guide focused instruction in both academic and behavioral areas.52 Of critical importance was the replacement of the Wait to Fail Model with data-based decisionmaking for all students, including students identified as being in need of specialized instruction.53 This removed a major catalyst for the achievement gap and replaced it with a data-driven, scientific, and research-based approach, designed to provide a "level playing field" for all of America's children . Endrews case is a significant gain for disabled students – it will increase the quality of special education Kamenetz and Turner 17 (Anya Kamenetz and Cory Turner, NPR, “The Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of A Special Education Student”, March 22, 2017, http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/03/22/521094752/the-supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-a-special- education-student, JR) School districts must give students with disabilities the chance to make meaningful, "appropriately ambitious" progress, the Supreme Court said Wednesday in an 8-0 ruling. The decision in Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District could have far-reaching implications for the 6.5 million students with disabilities in the United States. The case centered on a child with autism and attention deficit disorder whose parents removed him from public school in fifth grade. He went on to make better progress in a private school. His parents argued that the individualized education plan provided by the public school was inadequate, and they sued to compel the school district to pay his private school tuition. The Supreme Court today sided with the family, overturning a lower court ruling in the school district's favor. The federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act guarantees a "free appropriate public education" to all students with disabilities. Today's opinion held that "appropriate" goes further than what the lower courts had held. "It cannot be right that the IDEA generally contemplates grade-level advancement for children with disabilities who are fully integrated in the regular classroom, but is satisfied with barely more than de minimis progress for children who are not," read the opinion, signed by Chief Justice John Roberts. The case drew a dozen friend of the court briefs from advocates for students with disabilities who argued that it is time to increase rigor, expectations and accommodations for all. "A standard more meaningful than just above trivial is the norm today," wrote the National Association of State Directors of Special Education. The ruling seems likely to increase pressure from families and advocates in that direction . Schools are getting better for kids with disabilities - statistics prove. Katsiyannis et. al. 07 - Antonis Katsiyannis, Professor at Clemson University, Dalun Zhang, Professor at Texas A&M University, Joseph Ryan, Professor at Clemson University, Julie Jones, Professor at Clemson University, 2007("High-Stakes Testing and Students With Disabilities," published by Journal of Disability Policy Studies, Available online at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/10442073070180030401, Accessed 7/25/2017, AJ) Nonetheless, students with disabilities have been making impressive strides in improving their academic performance and other related outcomes (Center on Education Policy, 2004). Graduation rates with a standard diploma for students with disabilities age 14 and older have increased from 52.6% in 1995 –1996 to 56.2% in 1999– 2000. In addition, t he dropout rates decreased from 34.1% to 29.4% during the same time period (U.S. Department of Education, 2005). Also, according to the U.S. Department of Education (2005), findings from National Longitudinal Transition Study–2 (NTLS-2) indicate the number of students with disabilities finishing high school increased by 17%, postsecondary education participation of students with disabilities more than doubled to 32%, and the number of students with disabilities having paying jobs after being out of school for up to 2 years increased by 15% from 1987 to 2003. Although these trends are encouraging, the authors express concern these gains may be abated due to the increasing trend of states using retention as a consequence of poor performance on high-stakes testing. More than 70 years of research has demonstrated retention is less effective than social promotion for both the academic and social growth of students (Jimerson et al., 2002). In addition, retention has been identified as the single most powerful predictor of a student dropping out of school (Rumberger, 1995). Status quo solves–Supreme Court ruled higher standards for IDEA Camera 3/22/17 (Lauren Camera is an education reporter at U.S. News & World Report. She’s covered education policy and politics for nearly a decade and has written for Education Week, The Hechinger Report, Congressional Quarterly, Roll Call, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. She was a 2013 Spencer Education Fellow at Columbia University’s School of Journalism, where she conducted a reporting project about the impact of the Obama administration’s competitive education grant, Race to the Top. March 22, 2017 “Supreme Court Expands Rights for Students with Disabilities,” https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2017-03-22/supreme-court-expands-rights-for-students- with-disabilities Accessed July 30, 2017) In a unanimous decision with major implications for students with disabilities, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that schools must provide higher educational standards for children with special needs . The 8-0 ruling in the Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District case states that schools must do more than provide a “merely more than de minimis” education for students with disabilities and instead must provide them with an opportunity to make "appropriately ambitious" progress in line with the federal education law “When all is said and done,” wrote Chief Justice John G. Roberts, “a student offered an education program providing a ‘merely more than de minimis’ progress from year to year can hardly be said to have been offered an education at all.” He continued, citing a 1982 Supreme Court ruling on special education: “For children with disabilities, receiving an instruction that aims so low would be tantamount to ‘sitting idly … awaiting the time when they were old enough to drop out.’” There are roughly 6.4 million students with disabilities between ages 3 to 21, representing roughly 13 percent of all students, according to Institute for Education Statistics. Each year 300,000 of those students leave school and just 65 percent of students with disabilities complete high school. "School for students with disabilities today can be a disaster,” said Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, president of RespectAbility, a nonprofit that advocates for increased opportunities for people with disabilities. “Every child should have access to the education and skills they need to succeed . This Supreme Court decision can mean that students with disabilities can succeed , just like anyone else ." The case originated with an autistic boy in Colorado named Endrew, whose parents pulled him out of Douglas County School District public schools in 5th grade after they took issue with his individualized education plan. Under federal law, the I ndividuals with D isabilities E ducation A ct, schools must work with families to develop individualized learning plans for students with disabilities. While Endrew had been making progress in the public schools, his parents felt his plan for that year simply replicated goals from years past. As a result, they enrolled him in a private school where, they argued, Endrew made academic and social progress. Seeking tuition reimbursement, they filed a complaint with the state’s department of education in which they argued that Endrew had been denied a “free appropriate public education” – a requirement of states under IDEA. The school district won the suit, and when his parent filed a lawsuit in federal district court, the judge also sided with the school district, as did the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit after his parents appealed the ruling. In the Supreme Court case, Endrew and his family asked for clarification about the type of education benefits the federal law requires of schools, specifically, whether it requires “merely more than de minimis,” or something greater. “The IDEA demands more,” Roberts wrote in the opinion. “It requires an educational program reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress appropriate in light of the child’s circumstances.” Notably, the “merely more than de minimis” standard was set by the U.S Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, and used in a 2008 ruling by Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch in deciding a separate special education case. Opponents have skewered Gorsuch for that opinion, including both national teachers unions. “It is incomprehensible that Judge Gorsuch has gone out of his way to impose extra legal barriers for students with disabilities rather than helping them to overcome obstacles,” Lily Eskelsen García, president of the 3-million-member National Education Association, said prior to Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling. “In his court decisions, Judge Gorsuch endorsed the lowest of expectations for students with disabilities, which allowed public schools to provide our highest-needs students with the bare minimum educational benefit.” Democrats on the Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary, including Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, asked Gorsuch Wednesday morning to defend his ruling. Durbin asked Gorsuch why he attempted to "lower the bar" for students with disabilities in his ruling. "If anyone suggests I like an outcome where an autistic child happens to lose, that is a heartbreaking outcome to me," Gorsuch replied, arguing he was bound by circuit precedent to rule that way. “To suggest that we were in any way out of the mainstream or that I was doing anything unusual would be mistaken because it’s the standard used by many circuits up until, I guess, today,” he said later after a round of questions from Klobuchar. Endrews Solves – enough to help disabled students McKenna 3/27 (Laura McKenna is a contributing writer for The Atlantic based in New Jersey. “How a New Supreme Court Ruling Could Affect Special Education “MAR 23,2017https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/03/how-a-new-supreme-court-ruling-could-affect-special- education/520662/)#JSKI Advocates for children with disabilities say this case will help millions of students. For the 2013-14 school year, 6.5 million students—or 13 percent of the public-school population—received an Individual Education Plan (IEP). The court’s decision increases the education expectations for children with disabilities and re quires schools to consider each child’s individual strengths and weaknesses when writing an IEP; schools can no longer provide a “one-size-fits-all” IEP, Gary Mayerson, a civil-rights lawyer in New York City and a board member of Autism Speaks, explained in an interview. “Clearly this is the most monumental IDEA case decided by the high court in over 30 years,” he said. ¶ “The time of the decision couldn’t be better,” Mayerson said. “ IEP season is underway in full force . Every school will now have the opportunity and time to comply with the new standard of care.” The impact of this case will be felt by students immediately.¶ As a long-time advocate for children with special needs, Mayerson is very pleased by this decision. “We have been fighting and advocating for these standards for years,” he said. “It is gratifying that the court understands disabilities today better than they did 30 years ago. It is heartening to see the decision be unanimous, particularly in these partisan times.”¶ “I'm thrilled, because I think it really empowers parents.”¶ Mimi Corcoran, the president of the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD), agrees. “Today is a good day for children with disabilities. NCLD applauds this decision and will work with parents and educators to make it a reality,” she said in a statement.¶ “I’m excited about this decision,” Lindsay Jones, a vice president with the NCLD said. “The impact will be positive.” Jones said that the decision was thoughtful, and acknowledged that most special-education students attend regular public schools and aren’t in private settings. “The court clearly states that special-education children shouldn’t just be in the room . They must advance appropriately,” she said.¶ Parents of special-needs children are ecstatic about this decision, according to Amanda Morin, a parent of two children with IEPs and a contributor for the parent website Understood.org. Morin said, “I’m thrilled, because I think it really empowers parents to feel confident when they go in the door [of an IEP meeting]. They can say that the law says that this program must be tailored so my child makes progress.” </p><p>Endrews case more than enough to solve the aff – it is a defining case for disability rights Diament 17 (Michelle Diament, Disability Scoop, “Supreme Court FAPE Ruling May Be A Watershed Moment”, April 7, 2017, https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2017/04/07/supreme-court-fape-watershed/23553/, JR) The U.S. Supreme Court’s decisio n affirming a high standard for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act mandate that children with disabilities be provided a free appropriate public education is likely to have significant implications for years to come. In a ruling last month, the high court found that public schools must provide students with disabilities more than a minimal benefit. “When all is said and done, a student offered an educational program providing ‘merely more than de minimis’ progress from year to year can hardly be said to have been offered an education at all,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the ruling. “The IDEA demands more.” Individualized education programs “must be appropriately ambitious in light of (a child’s) circumstances, just as advancement from grade to grade is appropriately ambitious for most children in the regular classroom,” the court determined. The decision marked the first time in over three decades that the Supreme Court weighed in on FAPE. It came in a case known as Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District that was brought by the parents of a Colorado boy with autism. The parents placed their son at a private school and sought reimbursement from the school district claiming that he had made little progress attending public school. The family’s claim was rejected by a lower court, however, because the boy had received “some” educational benefit. “I think it’s going to be a defining moment, the Brown v. Board of Education moment for the disability community,” Gary Mayerson, a New York City civil rights attorney who specializes in representing people with autism, said of the ruling. While the Supreme Court decision itself does not set a new standard, Mayerson said it clarifies Congress’ intent in the most recent update to IDEA, which came in 2004. Mayerson said he expects an initial burst of litigation following the ruling, but ultimately thinks that the decision will lead to fewer special education court cases. “At first there will be a flurry of lawsuits to clean up this mess since a lot of schools have been following the ‘some benefits’ standard,” Mayerson said. “Hopefully, once the dust settles, it should be easier for parents.” Before the ruling, various courts across the country had interpreted IDEA’s FAPE mandate differently. Accordingly, the impact of the Endrew F. decision could be more heavily felt in some regions than others. Significantly, the Supreme Court decision was unanimous, advocates for students with disabilities say, leaving little doubt about the court’s intent. “It was an 8-0 decision, which was really gratifying,” said Selene Almazan, legal director for the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates and a practicing special education attorney in Maryland. “This is a huge decision for students with disabilities and their families because it sets the bar high enough to challenge students so they can succeed in a meaningful way.” 2NC Stigma Defense/ Turn Turn - incorporation of students with learning disabilities creates more stigma – separation is good. Evins 15, Professor of Psychiatry, 2015(”The Effects of Inclusion Classrooms on Students with and Without Developmental Disabilities: Teachers’ Perspectives on the Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Development of All Students in Inclusion Classrooms”, University of Denver, 5-26, http://digitalcommons.du.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=capstone_masters, Accessed 7/6/2017) As children with disabilities are incorporated into mainstream classes, the students’ experiences should also be explored. Some past research aims to provide this perspective. In 2005, Broer, Doyle, and Giancreco interviewed students to learn about their perception of inclusion. This study mainly focused on the perspectives of students who had the support of paraprofessionals. They often felt stigmatized for having this type of support and believed that it prevented opportunities for peer interaction. Additional research focused on interviews of students and their perceptions of having students with disabilities within the general education classes. The overall perception was not unanimous, but some students without disabilities preferred that other students with a disability received specialized, rather than inclusive, education. Additionally, most students with disabilities relayed that the work was not appropriate and they needed more assistance through special education classes (Vaughn & Klingner, 1998). Students also see the positive and negative effects of inclusion, and their preference is not always clear. It is important to understand whether the positives outweigh the potential harm and to implement inclusive practices that are beneficial for all students.</p><p>Integration into classes with able bodied students kills teacher quality and causes more gaps in educational success Mader 17, staff writer for the atlantic, 2017(“How Teacher Training Hinders Special-Needs Students”, The Atlantic, March 1st, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/03/how-teacher-training-hinders-special-needs-students/518286/, Accessed 7/6/2017) BLOOMFIELD, N.J.—When Mary Fair became a teacher in 2012, her classes often contained a mix of special-education students and general-education students. Placing children with and without disabilities in the same classroom, instead of segregating them, was a growing national trend, spurred by lawsuits by special-education advocates. But in those early days, Fair had no idea how to handle her students with disabilities, whose educational challenges ranged from learning deficits to behavioral disturbance disorders. Calling out a child with a behavioral disability in front of the class usually backfired and made the situation worse . They saw it as “an attack and a disrespect issue,” Fair said. Over time, Fair figured out how to navigate these situations and talk students “down from the ledge.” She also learned how to keep students with disabilities on task and break down lessons into smaller, easier bits of information for those who were struggling. No one taught her these strategies. Although she earned a bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate in math instruction for both elementary and middle school, she never had to take a class about students with disabilities. She was left to figure it out on the job. The need for teachers who have both the knowledge and the ability to teach special-education students is more critical today than ever before. A national push to take students with disabilities out of isolation means most now spend the majority of their days in general-education classrooms, rather than in separate special-education classe s. That means general- education teachers are teaching more students with disabilities. But training programs are doing little to prepare teachers; Fair’s experience is typical. Many teacher-education programs offer just one class about students with disabilities to their general-education teacher s, “Special Ed 101,” as it’s called at one New Jersey college. It’s not enough to equip teachers for a roomful of children who can range from the gifted to students who read far below grade level due to a learning disability. A study in 2007 found that general-education teachers in a teacher-preparation program reported taking an average of 1.5 courses focusing on inclusion or special education, compared to about 11 courses for special-education teachers. Educators say little has changed since then. Inclusion Bad – reinforces stigma and will always fail Giese 17, Rachel Giese is a staff writer for Today’s Parents, 2017(“Is there a better way to integrate kids with special needs into classrooms?”, Parents Today, April 12, https://www.todaysparent.com/family/special-needs/is-there-a-better-way-to-integrate-kids-with-special- needs-into-classrooms/, Accessed 7/13/17) The mention of his teacher brings us to the subject at the top of the list of things Connor doesn’t like to talk about: school. Over the past nine years, he’s been in eight of them. When pressed to give his impression of all the schools he’s been to, he says some have been “OK” but many have been “evil.” This sounds like a middle-schooler exaggeration, but for Connor, school would seem evil. He has a complicated web of disabilities, including autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit disorder, tic disorder, anxiety and dysgraphia (difficulty with writing coherently). Connor is also intellectually gifted. Put plainly: The particular wiring of his brain can make it very hard for him to sit still, focus on his work, interpret social cues, regulate his emotions and behaviour, remain calm, stay quiet and write legibly. The typical public elementary school class—where upwards of 25 kids are required to keep up with the same lesson plans at the same pace, and remain orderly for long stretches of time while also making and maintaining peer-group friendships—is an impossible, often hostile place for kids like Connor. In the nine years he’s been at school, he has cursed, insulted his teachers, had explosive tantrums, bolted from his classroom and run down the hallway pulling posters from the walls. He’s also been yelled at, restrained and sent home. When he’s been over-stimulated and scared, he’s taken refuge under a school stairwell and locked himself in a cupboard. During one particularly tough year, anxiety caused him to pull and twist his hair so much that he created a bald spot. His classmates’ parents have complained about him to teachers and principals. Once, a group of parents requested he be removed from the school altogether. Connor’s mom, Jennifer, likens the experience to “being chased by villagers with torches and pitchforks.” Connor, you see, is that kid. You’ve seen kids like him: the one having an epic meltdown in the store, or whipping a plastic shovel at another child’s head in the sandbox, or swearing a blue streak on a city bus. The one other kids are frightened of and don’t want to play with. The one many teachers find a burden and some parents don’t want in their children’s class. Their concerns are valid—to a point. Conditions like autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can cause volatile and even violent behaviours. When schools lack expertise in special education and don’t provide appropriate accommodation and support, kids with these kinds of disabilities are disruptive. But when you’re the parent of that kid, the world looks different. Your child is the one who is vulnerable, who finds the noise and chaos of school hallways stressful, who finds the transitions from one activity to the next jarring, who heartbreakingly doesn’t get why other kids find him odd or difficult. The behaviour —the outbursts and the inattention—is often misunderstood as your child’s moral failing or the result of your terrible parenting. When I enter Connor’s house, he doesn’t say hello at first, despite his mom’s prompts. That could be interpreted as rudeness, but it isn’t. Instead of speaking, Connor serenades me on the piano with the theme from Star Wars as I walk into his family room. It’s a charming workaround for the discomfort of a new social situation: the arrival of an adult who’s there to interview you for a magazine. The Connor I meet is not a malicious troublemaker but a creative, furiously smart and often overwhelmed kid. Connor’s particular set of exceptionalities is unique, but his situation is increasingly common. Diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder, anxiety and ADHD are on the rise, and more and more education systems are emphasizing the integration of kids with disabilities in mainstream classrooms. The thinking is inclusion decreases stigma and isolation, and helps non- disabled kids learn to be more tolerant. Yet in practice, integration often happens without proper resources or teacher training, and with zero education for classmates about disabilities. The result: mounting incidents of kids with disabilities being suspended, expelled, and even referred to law enforcement. </p><p>The plan alone won’t stop stigma – administrative response and teacher awareness are key DeWitt 11 (Peter DeWitt is an author, presenter, and former K-5 public school principal. He is an independent consultant working with schools, state agencies, and education leaders, “The Stigma of Special Education”, August 11, 2011, http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/finding_common_ground/2011/08/the_stigma_of_special_education.html , JR) Changing the stigma starts from the top down. Administrators need to make sure they are setting a tone where they have a zero tolerance for students who make fun of one another because of an academic disability. We need to incorporate children's books that focus on differences into our daily instruction, and make sure we sponsor weeks like "No Name Calling Week," so that we set a tone of respect. In addition, we need to make sure we send our faculty research-based articles that have teaching techniques that can be used for all students . Any instructional technique that is good for a special education student is also good for a general education student. We also need to expose all of our students to other students with diverse learning needs, and perhaps even find a way to get them to work with those students so they understand that they may be different in some areas, but they are the same in others. Lastly, we need to make sure that as educators, we are treating all students with respec t because if we are not, other students sitting in the class know we are not and may follow our lead. 2NC Transitional Services Lack of teacher awareness kills transition services Muthumbi 08 (Jane W. Muthumbi Program Research Specialist, NYS Developmental Disabilities Planning Council, “Enhancing transition outcomes for youth with disabilities: The partnerships for youth initiative”, July 3, 2008, http://www.pacific-gateway.org/enhancing %20transition%20outcomes%20for%20youth%20with.pdf, JR) In addition, lack of awareness about other service systems that provide transition services to individuals with disabilities among teachers, including how to access transition services from the vocational rehabilitation, employment, developmental disabilities, or mental health systems, impedes their ability to link students with disabilities to services that are essential for their post-school transition outcomes. In addition, teachers are often unaware of these systems’ eligibility requirements, and in most cases, cannot readily identify students that may be eligible for services from these systems, which limits their ability to make appropriate referrals to these systems. Some teachers also lack knowledge of other services and supports such as SSI and Medicaid that may enhance transition into adulthood for youth with disabilities. 2NC Inclusion Bad Integration bad – students with disabilities learn best in small groups or one-on-one. Vaughn and Linan-Thompson 03 [Sharon Vaughn - Manuel J. Justiz Endowed Chair in Education and executive director of The Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk at The University of Texas at Austin. Sharon Vaughn was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Learning Disabilities and the Co-Editor of Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, Sylvia Linan-Thompson - Ph.D. in Special Education The University of Texas at Austin; M.S. in Early Childhood/Special Education University of Miami; B.S. in Education, The University of Texas at Austin, “What Is Special About Special Education for Students with Learning Disabilities?”, THE JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION VOL. 37/NO. 3/2003/PP. 140–147, 2003, http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ785943.pdf] In a meta-analysis of grouping practices and reading outcomes for students with disabilities, Elbaum et al. (1999) reported that effect sizes for students receiving instruction in both small groups and student pairs were considerably higher than those for students receiving whole-class instruction. Similarly, other analyses with general education students have indicated that small-group learning is associated with higher achievement gains than is whole-class grouping (Kulik & Kulik, 1987; Lou et al., 1996; Slavin, 1987). The optimal group size for young students who are struggling to learn to read has not been definitively established (Thurlow et al., 1993). In a study targeting both monolingual English speakers and English language learners, a teacher– student ratio of 1:1 was compared to ratios of 1:3 and 1:10 during supplemental reading instruction; the content and intensity of instruction were held constant (Vaughn, LinanThompson, Kouzekanani, et al., in press). Results indicated that students in the 1:1 and 1:3 conditions made similar gains in phoneme segmentation, fluency, and comprehension that were maintained at a 4-month follow-up and that were greater than for students in the 1:10 group . For many students, even small-group instruction may not be enough to provide the directed, intensive, specific instruction required; thus, one-on-one instruction may be necessary. Several studies offer support for the effectiveness of one-on-one instruction, particularly with students who have been identified as at risk or as having reading or learning disabilities (Bloom, 1984; Juel, 1991; Wasik & Slavin, 1993). A recent meta- analysis found that supplemental one-on-one reading interventions for students at risk for reading failure resulted in reading outcomes for participating students that exceeded outcomes of controls by an average of .41 standard deviations—a modest but, for these readers, quite notable amount. Interventions in which tutoring was provided by trained volunteers or college students were highly effective (Elbaum et al., 2000). Two recent studies of intensive, one- on-one interventions for students at risk for reading disabilities have yielded impressive results. Vellutino et al. (1996) provided up to two semesters of tutoring in letter identification, phoneme awareness, and word-reading skills in 20-minute daily sessions for struggling first-grade readers. This one-on-one tutoring helped the majority of students become average readers. Torgesen et al. (2001) were also able to demonstrate significant improvements in decoding skills of students with significant reading disabilities following 80 hours of instruction in phonological decoding strategies. The instruction was provided one-onone, in two 50-minute sessions per day. Results indicated that decoding accuracy reached national averages but that speed of decoding did not. These studies suggest that critical features of reading instruction , when combined with one-on-one tutoring in sessions of sufficient intensity, can make an impact on the acquisition of literacy skills for students with reading disabilities. Integration is bad – it harms the education of other students and can’t be adapted to fit the needs of disabled students. McCarty 06 [Kristine - As the Director of Undergraduate Studies, Kristine works with prospective, incoming, and current students in a variety of ways, including advising for the College of Business programs. Business students of all levels are advised by Kristine and her outstanding team of peer advisors, “Full Inclusion: The Benefits and Disadvantages of Inclusive Schooling An Overview”, Azusa Pacific University, March 11, 2006, http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED496074.pdf] Certain disadvantages can be found when looking at some inclusive programs. “Full inclusion is not the best placement for all students. The general education classroom is typically not individualized” (Bateman & Bateman, 2002, p. 3). Many full inclusionists feel that all students with special needs should be fully integrated in the general education setting even if that student may be disruptive to the other students. One large disadvantage is that if a student is so disruptive that the teacher cannot teach, it is not good for the students in the general setting because they are not learning at the pace they should be . Educators and parents of children in general education worry that full inclusion will lower the standard of learning for the class and make it less of a priority than socializing (Irmsher, 1995). Full Inclusion 9 Another disadvantage relates to special education services not being given to students that need it; such as occupational therapy, speech therapy, adapted P.E. and others. The general education teacher usually does not have the extensive training to help the student with disabilities like an education specialist may have . If a student is fully included all day they may lose the one-on-one time that they need to understand academic areas that they are lacking. Integration is counterproductive – it harms both special needs and non-disabled children. Lawrence 13 [Carissa - experienced teacher who has been writing education related articles since 2013. Lawrence holds a master's degree in early childhood education from the University of Florida, “Advantages & Disadvantages to Mainstreaming Special Education Children”, Our Everyday Life, 2013, http://oureverydaylife.com/advantages-disadvantages-mainstreaming-special-education-children- 25659.html] Disadvantages for Special Needs Children While mainstreaming is mostly thought to be a positive practice, those who argue against it have valid concerns. By definition, special education students who are mainstreamed are unlikely to receive the specialized services they need. Some view mainstreaming as a way for schools to save money by downsizing special education services. There is also the issue of the appropriateness of the education children with special needs may receive in a traditional classroom . Many regular classroom teachers have little to no training in special education teaching and assessment methods, and they may place unrealistic demands on special needs children as a result. Advantages for Non-Disabled Children Having children with special needs as classmates can be beneficial to typically developing children in many ways. Mainstreaming prepares non-disabled students for the real world by teaching them about diversity and helping them develop empathy. The practice of mainstreaming provides typically developing students with opportunities to form meaningful relationships with students with special needs. Non-disabled children can also benefit from mainstreaming when peer-tutoring models are put in place. Teaching or helping a child with special needs practice certain skills gives non- disabled students increased exposure to the subject. Disadvantages for Non-Disabled Children Mainstreaming can be seen as a practice that is unfair to typically developing students . In some mainstreamed classrooms, teachers tend to give more time and attention to children with special needs, leaving regular students who may be struggling with little to no help. In terms of socialization, mainstreaming could lead to children developing negative attitudes about peers with special needs, especially if they feel they are receiving more attention from the teacher and other students. Inclusion bad – causes students to fall behind due to lack of teacher preparedness and individualized attention Barton 16 (Kasey Barton, Thesis for MS in Special Education, St. John Fisher College, “Pull-out or Push in? Impact on Students with Special Needs Social, Emotional, and Academic Success”, April 2016, http://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=1336&context=education_ETD_masters, JR) According to IDEA, special education students are to be taught in the LRE, which leads one to examine whether the student should be pulled out of the classroom for special education services or remain in the general education setting. However, there could be a few disadvantages to inclusion such as some students requiring more support than the general education teacher is able to give or the students’ disruptive behavior may inhibit other students in the classroom from learning. In some instances, students can be unsafe and at times may harm other children in the classroom or they could require a quieter setting than what may be provided in the general education classroom. In various classrooms, teachers may not have the training or the skill to create quality differentiated lesson plans so that all students are receiving the same education and instruction leaving some to fall behind academically (Sailor & Roger, 2005). Rea et al. (2002, p. 204), also support the findings stating that “general education is unprepared to meet the unique needs of students with disabilities” and agree with Kauffman, saying that “inclusion is primarily a cost cutting effort.” General education teachers are required to take a limited number of classes in special education but that is generally not their focus and they may not have the ability, need or patience to work with one or more children with an IEP in a class of thirty. Such an expectation could be exhausting if a teacher is spending more time working on differentiating a lesson to meet all students’ needs versus creating a quality lesson that meets the general needs of the students. PULL-OUT’S IMPACT ON STUDENTS’ SOCIAL, EMOTIONAL, AND ACADEMIC SUCCESS 6 If there is only one teacher in the classroom, it can be difficult for the student with special needs to receive needed one-on-one help or attention. According to Kauffman, there is no problem meeting special needs outside of the classroom (O’Neil, 1994), which many students require in order to gain the most of their instruction. Many students, such as those with Attention Deficit Disorder or Autism, require a quiet and controlled setting. Numerous classrooms are moving towards a collaborative environment that can lead to loud noises and controlled chaos. The teacher is then required to work the room helping each student, not just those on IEP’s, possibly leading students to get left behind. 2NC Inclusion Fails Inclusion Fails – Non Disabled Students inevitable stigma and disabled students don’t like it Evins 15, Professor of Psychiatry, 2015(”The Effects of Inclusion Classrooms on Students with and Without Developmental Disabilities: Teachers’ Perspectives on the Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Development of All Students in Inclusion Classrooms”, University of Denver, 5-26, http://digitalcommons.du.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=capstone_masters, Accessed 7/6/2017) As children with disabilities are incorporated into mainstream classes, the students’ experiences should also be explored. Some past research aims to provide this perspective. In 2005, Broer, Doyle, and Giancreco interviewed students to learn about their perception of inclusion. This study mainly focused on the perspectives of students who had the support of paraprofessionals. They often felt stigmatized for having this type of support and believed that it prevented opportunities for peer interaction. Additional research focused on interviews of students and their perceptions of having students with disabilities within the general education classes. The overall perception was not unanimous, but some students without disabilities preferred that other students with a disability received specialized, rather than inclusive, education. Additionally, most students with disabilities relayed that the work was not appropriate and they needed more assistance through special education classes (Vaughn & Klingner, 1998). Students also see the positive and negative effects of inclusion, and their preference is not always clear. It is important to understand whether the positives outweigh the potential harm and to implement inclusive practices that are beneficial for all students.</p><p>Teachers aren’t prepared for inclusion Mader 17, staff writer for the atlantic, 2017(“How Teacher Training Hinders Special-Needs Students”, The Atlantic, March 1st, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/03/how-teacher-training-hinders-special-needs-students/518286/, Accessed 7/6/2017) BLOOMFIELD, N.J.—When Mary Fair became a teacher in 2012, her classes often contained a mix of special-education students and general-education students. Placing children with and without disabilities in the same classroom, instead of segregating them, was a growing national trend, spurred by lawsuits by special-education advocates. But in those early days, Fair had no idea how to handle her students with disabilities, whose educational challenges ranged from learning deficits to behavioral disturbance disorders. Calling out a child with a behavioral disability in front of the class usually backfired and made the situation worse . They saw it as “an attack and a disrespect issue,” Fair said. Over time, Fair figured out how to navigate these situations and talk students “down from the ledge.” She also learned how to keep students with disabilities on task and break down lessons into smaller, easier bits of information for those who were struggling. No one taught her these strategies. Although she earned a bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate in math instruction for both elementary and middle school, she never had to take a class about students with disabilities. She was left to figure it out on the job. The need for teachers who have both the knowledge and the ability to teach special-education students is more critical today than ever before. A national push to take students with disabilities out of isolation means most now spend the majority of their days in general-education classrooms, rather than in separate special-education classe s. That means general- education teachers are teaching more students with disabilities. But training programs are doing little to prepare teachers; Fair’s experience is typical. Many teacher-education programs offer just one class about students with disabilities to their general-education teacher s, “Special Ed 101,” as it’s called at one New Jersey college. It’s not enough to equip teachers for a roomful of children who can range from the gifted to students who read far below grade level due to a learning disability. A study in 2007 found that general-education teachers in a teacher-preparation program reported taking an average of 1.5 courses focusing on inclusion or special education, compared to about 11 courses for special-education teachers. Educators say little has changed since then. Inclusive classrooms fail – lack of teacher adaptation and tons of structural difficulties that prevent solvency Obiakor et al 12 (Festus E. Obiakor, Ph.D., The City College of New York, CUNY, Dept. of Educational Leadership and Special Education, Mateba Harris University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Kagendo Mutua University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa Anthony Rotatori Saint Xavier University Bob Algozzine University of North Carolina-Charlotte, “Making Inclusion Work in General Education Classrooms”, August 2012, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/480383/pdf, JR) Of course, there are occasions where placement in general or special education does not result in improved academic or social outcomes for students with or without disabilities. This is particularly true when few or no adjustments are made to meet individual needs (Obiakor, 2008; Williams & Obiakor, 2009). Conversely, there are occasions when students with disabilities make greater progress in general education than in special education. To a large measure, placement does not define practice and it is important to consider the following suggestions when making decisions about where to educate students with disabilities and their peers (Obiakor, 2001, 2007): INCLUSION 481 • Race and culture can matter in the education of any student, but placements must be based on needs, not on students’ racial or cultural identities. • Language differences should never be misconstrued as a lack of intelligence. • Empathy is an important ingredient of a good educational menu. • Education in least restrictive environments is preferred, but practices are more important than placements. • Individual differences are not deficits and they must be valued in efforts to improve problems all students bring to the classroom. • All students are best served when their due process rights are respected. • Appropriate inclusion reduces biased exclusion of students in classroom activities . • Prejudicial placements have devastating effects on all students. 2NC Reform Turn Schools reinforce societal norms of racism and ableism –calls for reform to special education have resulted in re-segregation and guarantee that status quo discrimination is maintained Ferri and Connor 05 (BETH A. FERRI, Ph.D., is associate professor in Teaching and Leadership, Cultural Foundations of Education, and Disability Studies at Syracuse University, where she also coordinates the master’s program in Secondary Inclusive Education. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Women’s Studies program at Syracuse University and DAVID J. CONNOR, M.Ed., is a doctoral candidate in the Learning Dis/ Abilities program, and adjunct instructor at Teachers College, Columbia University, “Tools of Exclusion: Race, Disability, and (Re)segregated Education”, March 2005, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249400367_Tools_of_Exclusion_Race_Disability_and_Resegregated_Education, JR) Schools uphold and reinforce the dominant beliefs of society. As such, they are examples of racism and ableism in practice, although they are rarely portrayed in this way. The power manifested within them is masked by purported neutrality. Foucault underscored how technologies of power are accepted ‘‘only as a condition that it masks a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms’’ (1990, p. 86). The ‘‘undesirability’’ of Black children and/ or children with disabilities in schools is indicative of the values of our larger society, which seeks to deny access by containing individuals in markedly asymmetrical positions of power. However, this legacy is coming under increased scrutiny, reflected in recent research sponsored by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University (see Losen, & Orfield, 2002). Of course, technologies of exclusion, including ability testing, tracking, labeling, and special education, have played a major part in the resegregation of our schools . By engaging critically with how desegregation and inclusion were framed in these different but connected histories, we gain a deeper understanding about the resistance to integrated schooling for all students and about the unchanging nature of public education. Moreover, we have come to see how linear, evolutionary notions of progress enable people to avoid, delay, and refuse change more than they encourage its gradual acceptance. From our current vantage point, 50 years since Brown and nearly 30 years since P.L. 94.142 (IDEA), perhaps the lesson is to be alert to individual and institutional reactions to change. Looking at these histories simultaneously shows how easily racism and ableism function as twin tools of exclusion and how inclusion and desegregation are intimately connected. As powerful laws are established, which threaten the status quo, those whose own power has been displaced seek to regain their former status. In contrast, those once overtly marginalized continue to find their access inhibited in new ways . In other words, the status quo is maintained, although it may emerge in different ways, as in the case of overrepresentation of students of color in special education or academic tracking. Under the guise of gradualism, unquestioned discourses of exclusion are allowed to thrive or transmogrify. This leads us to conclude that until the population becomes 470 Teachers College Record committed to sharing power on a more equal basis, true diversity within our democracy can only remain an ideal out of reach. Inclusion will fail due to tons of legal loopholes– gradual reforms are avoided and nullified – even if it works the result will have little positive impact on disabled students Ferri and Connor 05 (BETH A. FERRI, Ph.D., is associate professor in Teaching and Leadership, Cultural Foundations of Education, and Disability Studies at Syracuse University, where she also coordinates the master’s program in Secondary Inclusive Education. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Women’s Studies program at Syracuse University and DAVID J. CONNOR, M.Ed., is a doctoral candidate in the Learning Dis/ Abilities program, and adjunct instructor at Teachers College, Columbia University, “Tools of Exclusion: Race, Disability, and (Re)segregated Education”, March 2005, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249400367_Tools_of_Exclusion_Race_Disability_and_Resegregated_Education, JR) As in the case of school desegregation, the movement from segregated placements toward more inclusive ones for students with disabilities has involved a long and often difficult struggle. Although by 1975 children and youth with disabilities were ensured a free and appropriate public education by law, they were not guaranteed a placement in a general education classroom. As we noted above, increasingly, as parents and advocates of students with disabilities became more dissatisfied with segregated schools and then segregated classes within public schools, they began to argue that the least restrictive environment clause in what we now know as IDEA should be understood to mean that students with disabilities should be educated in the general education classroom. As with the vague terminology in Brown II requiring schools to proceed with ‘‘ all deliberate speed,’’ IDEA’s mandate for the ‘‘least restrictive environment’’ invited a range of interpretations and much space in the press (and in the courts) was taken up with debates about the interpretation of language in both decisions. Despite the lack of progress made by students with disabilities in segregated placements, critics of inclusion were also quick to cite a lack of research on the efficacy of inclusive placements. Many also cautioned against rushing into widespread implementation of inclusion and argued for a more gradual approach. This stance, of course, ignored the fact that 20 years had elapsed between the passage of PL 94-142 (now IDEA) in 1975 and any serious push for full inclusion of students with disabilities. Thus, although civil rights had been encoded within the law, the same legal system allowed detractors to contest and delay integration in both instances. Advocates linked inclusion to the larger civil rights movement and argued that including students with disabilities in general classes was long overdue, despite the lack of awareness of inclusion as a disability rights issue. According to Head, Head, Hall, & Hall (1996): More than 30 years ago, the civil rights movement ushered our nation into a more enlightened era. Thanks to those who struggled for justice then, few people question the moral imperative of integrationFthat is, except, when it comes to children with disabilities (p. C8). Professional and parent advocates both stressed the moral, ethical, and philosophical basis of inclusion. Among the important advocates for inclusion were parents who argued that their children were not progressing adequately in segregated special-education placements. As one parent of a disabled child writes in a letter to the editor of the The Washington Post, ‘‘I am the parent of a son who has Autism. . .. Given that segregated alternatives have failed to achieve decent quality of life for people with disabilities. . .[inclusion] is justified and worth our best efforts’’ Ruppmann, 1991, p. A16). Yet even when school systems have shifted to more inclusive practices because of legal requirements, the results were often characterized as cosmetic or ‘‘shallow’’ (Nealon, 1991, p. 1). Such disenchantment with special education and the lack of inclusive placements has grown in recent years as many school districts demonstrate continued apathy toward including students with disabilities in general education classrooms. Moreover, decisions about inclusion, which continue to be made on a case-by-case basis, demonstrate a lack of commitment to inclusion and reveal the assumption that segregated placements are preferable for students with disabilities. As one judge determined, a ‘‘teenager [with a disability] would be isolated socially and academically’’ in a general education class (‘‘Transfer of Disabled,’’ 1988, p. 6). The judge concluded that a segregated school was the least restrictive environment for this student. The belief that reformism works for disabled students is the same logic that propped up failed gradualism for Brown v. Board Ferri and Connor 05 (BETH A. FERRI, Ph.D., is associate professor in Teaching and Leadership, Cultural Foundations of Education, and Disability Studies at Syracuse University, where she also coordinates the master’s program in Secondary Inclusive Education. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Women’s Studies program at Syracuse University and DAVID J. CONNOR, M.Ed., is a doctoral candidate in the Learning Dis/ Abilities program, and adjunct instructor at Teachers College, Columbia University, “Tools of Exclusion: Race, Disability, and (Re)segregated Education”, March 2005, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249400367_Tools_of_Exclusion_Race_Disability_and_Resegregated_Education, JR) In our analysis of school desegregation and inclusion, we draw connections, including parallels and juxtapositions, between the two discourses around the topic of change at the local level in response to two federal mandates of Brown and IDEA. Thus, we are examining resistance to or acceptance of change in terms of the racial make up of schools and change in terms of degree of special education inclusion in schools. We are particularly interested in the suggested pace of implementing changes. Still, resisting the impulse to collapse one history or voice into another, we aim to forge connections across the dialogues concerning school desegregation and those concerning inclusion without erasing differences (Tanaka, 1997). By attending to the discourses of racial segregation and exclusion of students with disabilities, we call attention to the discursive construction of student subjects deemed unworthy of integration or inclusion. Moreover, b y questioning the taken-for-granted notions of the ‘‘normal,’’ ‘‘regular,’’ ‘‘general,’’ and ‘‘average’’ student, we highlight the interplay of racism and ableism and question the efficacy of gradualism as a means of reform 2NC Racism = Moral Imperative Ideological discussions of race ignore consequences of policy choices. This subverts meaningful policy debate, which recreates racism. Christopher A. Bracey, Associate Professor of Law, Associate Professor of African & African American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis, September 2006, Southern California Law Review, 79 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1231, p. 1318 Second, reducing conversation on race matters to an ideological contest allows opponents to elide inquiry into whether the results of a particular preference policy are desirable. Policy positions masquerading as principled i deological stances create the impression that a racial policy is not simply a choice among available alternatives , but the embodiment of some higher moral principle. Thus, the "principle" becomes an end in itself, without reference to outcomes . Consider the prevailing view of colorblindness in constitutional discourse. Colorblindness has come to be understood as the embodiment of what is morally just, independent of its actual effect upon the lives of racial minorities. This explains Justice Thomas's belief in the "moral and constitutional equivalence" between Jim Crow laws and race preferences, and his tragic assertion that "Government cannot make us equal [but] can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law." 281 For Thomas, there is no meaningful difference between laws designed to entrench racial subordination and those designed to alleviate conditions of oppression. Critics may point out that colorblindness in practice has the effect of entrenching existing racial disparities in health, wealth, and society. But in framing the debate in purely ideological terms, opponents are able to avoid the contentious issue of outcomes and make viability determinations based exclusively on whether racially progressive measures exude fidelity to the ideological principle of colorblindness. Meaningful policy debate is replaced by ideological exchange, which further exacerbates hostilities and deepens the cycle of resentment. 2NC Framing Predictions about existential risk are possible and necessary. Bostrom 9 — Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, and Director of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the University of Oxford, recipient of the 2009 Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the London School of Economics, 2009 (“The Future of Humanity,” Geopolitics, History and International Relations, Volume 9, Issue 2, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via ProQuest Research Library, Reprinted Online at http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/future.pdf, Accessed 07-06-2011, p. 2-4) We need realistic pictures of what the future might bring in order to make sound decisions. Increasingly, we need realistic pictures not only of our personal or local near-term futures, but also of remoter global futures . Because of our expanded technological powers, some human activities now have significant global impacts . The scale of human social organization has also grown, creating new opportunities for coordination and action, and there are many institutions and individuals who either do consider, or claim to consider, or ought to consider, possible long-term global impacts of their actions . Climate change , national and international security , economic development , nuclear waste disposal, biodiversity, natural resource conservation, population policy, and scientific and technological research funding are examples of policy areas that involve long time-horizons. Arguments in these areas often rely on implicit assumptions about the future of humanity . By making these assumptions explicit , and subjecting them to critical analysis , it might be possible to address some of the big challenges for humanity in a more well-considered and thoughtful manner. The fact that we “need” realistic pictures of the future does not entail that we can have them. Predictions about future technical and social developments are notoriously unreliable – to an extent that have lead some to propose that we do away with prediction altogether in our planning and preparation for the future. Yet while the methodological problems of such forecasting are certainly very significant, the extreme view that we can or should do away with prediction altogether is misguided. That view is expressed, to take one [end page 2] example, in a recent paper on the societal implications of nanotechnology by Michael Crow and Daniel Sarewitz, in which they argue that the issue of predictability is “irrelevant”: preparation for the future obviously does not require accurate prediction; rather, it requires a foundation of knowledge upon which to base action, a capacity to learn from experience, close attention to what is going on in the present, and healthy and resilient institutions that can effectively respond or adapt to change in a timely manner.2 Note that each of the elements Crow and Sarewitz mention as required for the preparation for the future relies in some way on accurate prediction. A capacity to learn from experience is not useful for preparing for the future unless we can correctly assume (predict) that the lessons we derive from the past will be applicable to future situations. Close attention to what is going on in the present is likewise futile unless we can assume that what is going on in the present will reveal stable trends or otherwise shed light on what is likely to happen next . It also requires non-trivial prediction to figure out what kind of institution will prove healthy, resilient, and effective in responding or adapting to future changes. The reality is that predictability is a matter of degree , and different aspects of the future are predictable with varying degrees of reliability and precision.3 It may often be a good idea to develop plans that are flexible and to pursue policies that are robust under a wide range of contingencies. In some cases, it also makes sense to adopt a reactive approach that relies on adapting quickly to changing circumstances rather than pursuing any detailed long-term plan or explicit agenda. Yet these coping strategies are only one part of the solution . Another part is to work to improve the accuracy of our beliefs about the future (including the accuracy of conditional predictions of the form “if x is done, y will result”). There might be traps that we are walking towards that we could only avoid falling into by means of foresight. There are also opportunities that we could reach much sooner if we could see them farther in advance. And in a strict sense, prediction is always necessary for meaningful decision-making.4 Predictability does not necessarily fall off with temporal distance. It may be highly unpredictable where a traveler will be one hour after the start of her journey, yet predictable that after five hours she will be at her destination. The very long-term future of humanity may be relatively easy to predict, being a matter amenable to study by the natural sciences, particularly cosmology (physical eschatology). And for there to be a degree of predictability, it is not necessary that it be possible to identify one specific scenario as what will definitely happen . If there is a t least some scenario that can be ruled out, that is also a degree of predictability . Even short of this, if there is some basis for assigning different probabilities [end page 3] (in the sense of credences, degrees of belief) to different propositions about logically possible future events, or some basis for criticizing some such probability distributions as less rationally defensible or reasonable than others, then again there is a degree of predictability. And this is surely the case with regard to many aspects of the future of humanity. While our knowledge is insufficient to narrow down the space of possibilities to one broadly outlined future for humanity, we do know of many relevant arguments and considerations which in combination impose significant constraints on what a plausible view of the future could look like . The future of humanity need not be a topic on which all assumptions are entirely arbitrary and anything goes. There is a vast gulf between knowing exactly what will happen and having absolutely no clue about what will happen. Our actual epistemic location is some offshore place in that gulf.5 Reducing existential risk by even a tiny amount outweighs every other impact — math. Bostrom 11 — Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, and Director of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the University of Oxford, recipient of the 2009 Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the London School of Economics, 2011 (“The Concept of Existential Risk,” Draft of a Paper published on ExistentialRisk.com, Available Online at http://www.existentialrisk.com/concept.html, Accessed 07-04-2011) Holding probability constant, risks become more serious as we move toward the upper-right region of figure 2. For any fixed probability, existential risks are thus more serious than other risk categories. But just how much more serious might not be intuitively obvious. One might think we could get a grip on how bad an existential catastrophe would be by considering some of the worst historical disasters we can think of—such as the two world wars, the Spanish flu pandemic, or the Holocaust—and then imagining something just a bit worse. Yet if we look at global population statistics over time, we find that these horrible events of the past century fail to register (figure 3). [Graphic Omitted] Figure 3: World population over the last century. Calamities such as the Spanish flu pandemic, the two world wars, and the Holocaust scarcely register. (If one stares hard at the graph, one can perhaps just barely make out a slight temporary reduction in the rate of growth of the world population during these events.) But even this reflection fails to bring out the seriousness of existential risk. What makes existential catastrophes especially bad is not that they would show up robustly on a plot like the one in figure 3, causing a precipitous drop in world population or average quality of life. Instead, their significance lies primarily in the fact that they would destroy the future. The philosopher Derek Parfit made a similar point with the following thought experiment: I believe that if we destroy mankind, as we now can, this outcome will be much worse than most people think. Compare three outcomes: (1) Peace. (2) A nuclear war that kills 99% of the world’s existing population. (3) A nuclear war that kills 100%. (2) would be worse than (1), and (3) would be worse than (2). Which is the greater of these two differences? Most people believe that the greater difference is between (1) and (2). I believe that the difference between (2) and (3) is very much greater. … The Earth will remain habitable for at least another billion years . Civilization began only a few thousand years ago . If we do not destroy mankind, these few thousand years may be only a tiny fraction of the whole of civilized human history . The difference between (2) and (3) may thus be the difference between this tiny fraction and all of the rest of this history . If we compare this possible history to a day, what has occurred so far is only a fraction of a second. (10: 453-454) To calculate the loss associated with an existential catastrophe, we must consider how much value would come to exist in its absence. It turns out that the ultimate potential for Earth -originating intelligent life is literally astronomical. One gets a large number even if one confines one’s consideration to the potential for biological human beings living on Earth. If we suppose with Parfit that our planet will remain habitable for at least another billion years, and we assume that at least one billion people could live on it sustainably, then the potential exist for at least 10 18 human lives . These lives could also be considerably better than the average contemporary human life , which is so often marred by disease, poverty, injustice , and various biological limitations that could be partly overcome through continuing technological and moral progress. However, the relevant figure is not how many people could live on Earth but how many descendants we could have in total. One lower bound of the number of biological human life-years in the future accessible universe (based on current cosmological estimates) is 10 34 years.[10] Another estimate, which assumes that future minds will be mainly implemented in computational hardware instead of biological neuronal wetware, produces a lower bound of 1054 human-brain-emulation subjective life-years (or 1071 basic computational operations).(4)[11] If we make the less conservative assumption that future civilizations could eventually press close to the absolute bounds of known physics (using some as yet unimagined technology), we get radically higher estimates of the amount of computation and memory storage that is achievable and thus of the number of years of subjective experience that could be realized.[12] Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates , which entirely ignore s the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10 18 human lives . This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percent age point is at least ten times the value of a billion human lives . The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 1054 human-brain-emulation subjective life- years (or 1052 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1% chance of being correct , we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percent age point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any “ordinary” good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential risk—positive or negative—is almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.[13] Alt Cause – Testing Alt cause – high-stakes testing ensures ableism in schools. Katsiyannis et. al. 07 - Antonis Katsiyannis, Professor at Clemson University, Dalun Zhang, Professor at Texas A&M University, Joseph Ryan, Professor at Clemson University, Julie Jones, Professor at Clemson University, 2007("High-Stakes Testing and Students With Disabilities," published by Journal of Disability Policy Studies, Available online at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/10442073070180030401, Accessed 7/25/2017, AJ) High-stakes testing in light of NCLB and the increased emphasis on accountability are likely to challenge both educational institutions and the students affected by them. Indeed, 17 of the states with exit exams plan to use these tests to comply with the high school testing requirements of NCLB (Center on Education Policy, 2004). On the positive side, there has been increased (a) participation of students with special needs in high-stakes testing, (b) levels of performance by special needs students in high- stakes testing, and (c) participation of special educators in training on standards and assessment (Center for Education Policy, 2004; Johnson, Thurlow, Cosio, & Bremer, 2005). On the negative side, students with disabilities are particularly vulnerable given the consequences of failing such exams. Negative consequences in high-stakes testing include (a) th e challenge of students with disabilities to achieve “ proficient levels, ” (b) students with disabilities who fail make schools look less effective, and (c) students are stressed by taking tests and by not accessing or reaching state standards (Johnson et al., 2005). O’Neill (2003) posited that including graduation rates as one of the factors in determining performance under the NCLB adequate yearly progress requirements may result in more schools labeled as in need of remediation and consequently increasing the tendency by states to discontinue such tests. Also, commitment to raising standards could exacerbate individual accountability with potentially more students dropping out or leaving school without a diploma. Other related effects may be increased litigation and a backlash because of the increased pressure to perform. In summary, however, according to Ysseldyke et al. (2004), there is currently little empirical evidence on the consequences of high-stakes tests for individual students, especially for those with disabilities, and preliminary or limited data on participation and performance require further validation. New IDEA Framework Fails New frameworks for IDEA have empirically failed and states failed to comply. Resmovits 14 [Joy - Senior Education Reporter for The Huffington Post, “These States Are Failing To Follow Disability Law, U.S. Says”, The Huffington Post, June 24, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/24/idea-compliance-2014_n_5524196.html] U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday focuses his quest to improve classroom performance on the 6.5 million students with disabilities, including many who perform poorly on standardized tests. Duncan, who has spent his years in the Obama administration using accountability measures in existing laws to drive improvements in student performance, on Tuesday joins Michael Yudin, assistant secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, to announce a new framework for measuring states’ compliance with the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, the federal law that supports special education and services for children with disabilities . The law originally was known as the Education of Handicapped Children Act of 1975. After years of holding states accountable under the law for such things as timely evaluations of students and due process hearings, the Education Department plans to look at results. For the first time, the government will define compliance with the law not just in terms of what states do for students with disabilities, but with how those students perform . Focusing on inputs has worked on improving that type of compliance, according to information the Department released Tuesday. For example, in 2006, 84.8 percent of initial evaluations of students with disabilities were completed on time. By 2010, that number had increased to 96.9 percent. At the same time, national average math proficiency hardly budged from 33.2 percent in 2005-2006 to 35.2 percent in 2009-2010 — representing a dip from 38.7 percent in the previous year. “ Basic compliance does not transform students’ lives ,” Duncan said on a Tuesday call with reporters. “It’s not enough for a state to be compliant if students can’t read or do math” at sufficient levels by the time they graduate from high school, he added. According to this new results- driven accountability framework, states will be responsible for students with disabilities’ participation in state tests, gaps in proficiency between students with disabilities and their peers, and performance on the National Assessment of Education Progress , or NAEP, the only national standardized test. This marks the first time the NAEP, which is often described as a low-stakes test, has been used for school accountability. The U.S. may deem states to be meeting requirements, needing assistance, needing intervention, or needing substantial intervention. Consequences range from extra help to financial penalties. If a state needs assistance two years in a row, the law mandates that the Education Department “take actions such as requiring the state to obtain technical assistance or identifying the state as a high-risk grant recipient,” according to a government press release. If a state needs intervention for three straight years, the Education Department may require “corrective action plans” and can withhold “a portion of the state’s funding,” the department said . States receive $11.5 billion in Individuals With Disabilities Education Act funding to improve the education of students with disabilities. But withholding funds would be a last resort, Duncan said on a Tuesday call. “While we obviously have the option of withholding funds, that’s clearly not our first priority,” Duncan said. “This is not about playing gotcha.” Yudin said that withholding state administrative funds would be one way to hold states accountable without decreasing the resources that students get in school. The new framework will mean most states are failing to comply with the law. Last year, 41 states and territories were deemed compliant. But under the standards that will be announced Tuesday that consider results, only 18 states will be in compliance. Fewer than 10 percent of eighth graders with individualized educational programs required for students with disabilities are proficient in reading, Yudin said in a statement. “We can and must do better.” Alt cause – high-stakes testing ensures ableism in schools. Katsiyannis et. al. 07 - Antonis Katsiyannis, Professor at Clemson University, Dalun Zhang, Professor at Texas A&M University, Joseph Ryan, Professor at Clemson University, Julie Jones, Professor at Clemson University, 2007("High-Stakes Testing and Students With Disabilities," published by Journal of Disability Policy Studies, Available online at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/10442073070180030401, Accessed 7/25/2017, AJ) High-stakes testing in light of NCLB and the increased emphasis on accountability are likely to challenge both educational institutions and the students affected by them. Indeed, 17 of the states with exit exams plan to use these tests to comply with the high school testing requirements of NCLB (Center on Education Policy, 2004). On the positive side, there has been increased (a) participation of students with special needs in high-stakes testing, (b) levels of performance by special needs students in high- stakes testing, and (c) participation of special educators in training on standards and assessment (Center for Education Policy, 2004; Johnson, Thurlow, Cosio, & Bremer, 2005). On the negative side, students with disabilities are particularly vulnerable given the consequences of failing such exams. Negative consequences in high-stakes testing include (a) th e challenge of students with disabilities to achieve “ proficient levels, ” (b) students with disabilities who fail make schools look less effective, and (c) students are stressed by taking tests and by not accessing or reaching state standards (Johnson et al., 2005). O’Neill (2003) posited that including graduation rates as one of the factors in determining performance under the NCLB adequate yearly progress requirements may result in more schools labeled as in need of remediation and consequently increasing the tendency by states to discontinue such tests. Also, commitment to raising standards could exacerbate individual accountability with potentially more students dropping out or leaving school without a diploma. Other related effects may be increased litigation and a backlash because of the increased pressure to perform. In summary, however, according to Ysseldyke et al. (2004), there is currently little empirical evidence on the consequences of high-stakes tests for individual students, especially for those with disabilities, and preliminary or limited data on participation and performance require further validation. A2: Disproportionate Representation (Note: These defend a system of reformism that contradicts the turn argument and shouldn’t be read if those are read. ) Current IDEA provisions solve disproportional representation Strassfeld 17 (Natasha M. Strassfeld, Assistant Professor of Special Education, New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development., “The Future of IDEA: Monitoring Disproportionate Representation of Minority Students in Special Education and Intentional Discrimination Claims”, 2017, http://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=4721&context=caselrev, JR) In 2014, the Department of Education submitted a Request for Information to address significant disproportionality20 under section 618(d) of IDEA, which included a specific request to the public to submit comments for recommendations for how to best address significant disproportionality based on race and ethnicity in the identification of children for special education, placements, and disciplinary actions.21 After an impassioned public comment period, the final Department of Education regulations to guide state s and LEAs regarding special education practices were released in December 2016.22 These new and revised regulations address the effects of disproportionate identification, both over- and under-identification, of racial or ethnic minority students who receive special education and related services and are intended to promote equity within IDEA enforcement.23 The regulations are further intended to increase state accountability for the effects, if any, of being placed in more restrictive environments or in settings that lack academic rigor.24 Specifically, the new regulations under IDEA require that states and LEAs take steps to determine the presence of significant disproportionality, and to address and to remedy disproportionate placement, if found.25 The regulations also establish a standard methodology that states must use to determine whether significant disproportionality occurred within the state and in LEAs. In addition, each state must now address significant disproportionality by incidence, duration, and type of disciplinary action (including suspensions and expulsions).26 Finally, states must clarify their existing requirements for the review and revision of relevant policies, practices, and procedures when significant disproportionality is found. LEAs must then identify and correct the factors that contributed to significant disproportionality via comprehensive CEIs. Discrimination suits solve in the squo TRACE 16 (Your source for comprehensive, independent and¶ nonpartisan information about federal¶ enforcement, staffing and spending 10/27/16 “Americans with Disabilities Act Lawsuits Up 28 Percent in FY 2016” http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/civil/444/) #JSKI The latest available data from the federal courts show that fiscal year 2016 set a new record for litigation under the Americans with Disabilities Act. During the twelve months ending September 30, a total of 9,373 new suits were filed. This is up 28 percent over the previous year and more than double the number filed just five years ago. See Table 1.¶ Table 1. Civil ADA Suits Filed¶ Number FY 2016 9,373¶ Number FY 2015 7,330¶ Percent Change from 1 year ago 27.9%¶ Percent Change from 5 years ago 105.7%¶ While ADA suits involving discrimination in employment grew by 6.6 percent last year, ADA suits in non-employment areas jumped by 36.3 percent between FY 2015 and FY 2016. These suits involved alleged discrimination against people with disabilities in public accommodations, transportation, communications, and governmental activities. Plan won’t solve disproportionate representation– states won’t know how to enforce standard Strassfeld 17 (Natasha M. Strassfeld, Assistant Professor of Special Education, New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development., “The Future of IDEA: Monitoring Disproportionate Representation of Minority Students in Special Education and Intentional Discrimination Claims”, 2017, http://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=4721&context=caselrev, JR) Since the 1997 amendments to the IDEA, Congress has made a concerted effort to maintain a balance of federal and state oversight of special education programs by including specific provisions for the U.S. Department of Education and the Office of Special Education Programs to monitor and enforce equitable practices for placing students, particularly racial and ethnic minority students, into special education.87 Research conducted since the most recent reauthorization, however, strongly suggests that states vary widely in how they interpret and enforce the federal provisions.88 This is mostly due to changes in the methods used to measure disproportionate representation at the district level and state variation regarding what constitutes significant disproportionality. School Choice CP 1NC CP Text: The United States federal government should reauthorize the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act with new provisions that - Allow states to use IDEA Part D research and innovation dollars to develop choice-based options for education of disabled students - Allow federal Part B funds to follow disabled students to the school of their choice. - Give parents, schools, and teachers appropriate services and programs for students with disabilities in charter and private schools of student’s choice. </p><p>The CP solves – choice creates the most accessible education for disabled students Kafer 03 (Krista Kafer, Senior Education Policy Analyst at Heritage Foundation, April 29th, "Parental Choice in Education for Special Needs Students" Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/education/report/parental-choice-education-special-needs-students)#JSKI ¶ During floor consideration of H.R. 1350, the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Congress should heed the Administration's recommendation to provide disabled children greater educational options.¶ Members now have the opportunity to consider an amendment that will permit states to establish new, innovative special education programs. Under the proposal, states could voluntarily use IDEA Part D research and innovation dollars to research and develop new education systems that provide families of disabled children with a greater range of options. Under such a system parents and students could customize an education plan that will best help the student succeed. ¶ In states that already have such a program in place, the proposal allows federal Part B funds to be used along side of their state funds to follow the child to the their selected school . ¶ " If there has ever been an opportunity to make a good, rational, and compassionate argument for money following students, it is in the area of special education , Representative Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said recently. "More than any other, special needs students need customized, personalized service."¶ The proposal would allow states that wish to participate the opportunity to design innovative programs that empower parents with greater choices in the education of their children. A state could, for example, enable students with disabilities to transfer to other public schools within (intradistrict choice) or outside (interdistrict choice) of their home districts. Another state could allow parents and students direct access to services such as speech or occupational therapy. ¶ Under Florida's McKay Scholarship program, for example, state funding for disabled students is under the control of the parent who may use it at any public, public charter, or private school in the state. ¶ Parents who are dissatisfied with their child's academic progress may transfer their children to another public, public charter or private school of choice. The program's continued growth is evidence of parental satisfaction. [See related testimonials below.]¶ The McKay Program¶ Named for then-Florida Senate President John McKay, who has a disabled child, the program was enacted as a pilot project by the Florida legislature in 1999 and was expanded statewide in 2001. To be eligible, a student must be enrolled in a Florida public school and have an Individualized Education Plan. If a student transfers to another public school within the district, transportation is provided. Otherwise, parents must provide transportation.[1] ¶ During the 2002-2003 school year, nearly 9,000 of the 374,834 eligible students used McKay Scholarships, roughly double the number participating in the previous year. Participating students transferred to other public schools within or outside of their home district or to one of 547 private schools. The scholarship is equal to the tuition of the receiving school or the amount the state spends to educate a child with that particular disability. These costs range from $4,500 to $21,000, and the average scholarship is $5,547. The program is revenue neutral.[2]¶ The Administration Recommends Parents Receive Meaningful Options¶ In July 2002, a presidential commission recommended expanding educational options for students served under IDEA, stating,"The Commission views parental empowerment as essential to excellence in special education. Increasing parental empowerment coupled with public accountability for results will create better results for children and schools ."[3] The commission reasoned that "parental and student choice is an important accountability mechanism and IDEA should include options for parents to choose their child's educational setting."[4] ¶ Secretary Rod Paige recently reiterated the Administration's support for parental choice in the Principles for Reauthorizing Individuals with Disabilities Education Act: ¶ IDEA currently empowers parents of children with disabilities to participate in the selection of schools and services for their children and where those services will be provided. … IDEA should expand opportunities to help parents, schools, and teachers choose appropriate services and programs for children with disabilities , including the charter and private schools of their choice . States should then measure and report academic achievement results for all students benefiting from IDEA funds, regardless of what schools they choose to attend .[5] ¶ Conclusion¶ The Administration should insist that Congress follow the recommendations of the bipartisan Commission on Excellence in Special Education and provide the parents of special-needs children with a variety of educational options. Though many parents are satisfied with the services their child currently receives, those who are frustrated with the quality of service provided in their child's schools or dissatisfied with their child's academic progress should be able to access alternative services, including alternative public schools, charter schools, private schools, and tutoring services.¶ Parental Support for the McKay Scholarship Program*¶ When Dylan was at the public school, the teacher was writing full-page letters every day telling me what Dylan could not do. He would come home with a full day's schoolwork, plus homework, because he couldn't read the instructions. Homework became a four-hour ordeal of fighting and tears…. After he failed so many times, and he has no self-esteem and no desire to try, then he's labeled as something else and no one wants to deal with him. [At his new school] he does very well. He has learned a lot of coping mechanisms that he wasn't taught at the public school…. After just eight weeks in the private school he earned his very first, ever, perfect score on a spelling test. The skills and abilities he has attained just amaze me. I always knew he could do it; he just needed the right way to unlock that busy brain of his.¶ By Susan, whose son Dylan attends a school specializing in dyslexia, using a McKay Scholarship.[6]¶ Kenya is a very happy child. She likes to smile. But, she is very demanding. She's mentally and physically profoundly handicapped and she can't walk. She can't talk. The public school system has been some help, but not enough. I felt Kenya was not making enough progress in public schools…. When I learned about the McKay Scholarships, I chose one of the schools that fit her needs. The McKay Scholarship gives parents a choice-a choice in their child's future. You have an opportunity to make some decisions about the services your child will receive…. She will receive much more in the private school system: psychological services, speech therapy, and more aggressive physical and occupational therapy.¶ By Selma, whose daughter Kenya uses a McKay Scholarship to attend a school that specializes in serving children with disabilities.[7]¶ After countless meetings with the public school district, which left us financially and emotionally drained and with very little hope of obtaining a reasonable education for our son, we chose to utilize the McKay Scholarship program. We are delighted to report that we see our son progressing, happy, accepted and respected for the first time in eight years. We are now working with dedicated professionals who share the same goal that our son reaches his full potential. The days of hearing words like "we don't have to"… are a matter of history. Our private school experience is "what can we do for you?"… We can now rely on the teacher or principal to respond to our concerns directly and swiftly. What a refreshing change! Solvency - Vouchers Voucher programs solve best -- ensuring that LD Students have access to education that best suits them. Almazan and Marshall 16 (Selene Almazan, the Executive Director of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates and Denise Marshall, member of COPAA who was on the Board of Directors from 2003-2014 and is the Co-Chair of the Amicus and Conference Committees, “School Vouchers and Students with Disabilities: Examining Impactin theName of Choice”, June 2016, https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/copaa.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/2016_Conference/COPAA_Voucher_paper_final_R6.pdf) #JSKI The weakness of public school education of children with disabilities in many school districts has led many f amilies to seek alternatives, including the use of vouchers to access the individualized supports, services, therapies and instruction their children</p><p> require to thrive. School choice ¶ i nvolving a voucher for payment can , therefore, be very appealing. The fact that the fundamental civil rights of the child are relinquished to access the voucher often is not understood until it is too late.¶ A parent’s need to choose, and perhaps have a sense of control over the school their child attends in this climate, has created both new opportunities and new challenges with regard to the education of students with disabilities. Intense dissatisfaction with public schools, coupled with this desire to “choose” a school or an educational approach other than the traditional route has fueled the wave of state‐funded voucher programs in many states . Recognizing the challenges public schools have faced in educating this population, a number of states have adopted voucher programs designed to provide students with a fixed dollar amount per year to attend the school of their choice. Programs differ in design throughout the country. To date, funds used to pay for voucher programs are state‐ level funds (with the exception of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program first authorized in 2004); however, legislation has been introduced in Congress in recent¶ years to allow for the use of Federal dollars to fund voucher programs.¶ There is data, opinion and passion on both sides of the debate. COPAA members mirror the larger debate, with both critics and supporters of school voucher programs. COPAA is at the forefront of ensuring that students with disabilities and their families know their legal rights and have the support they need to access their right to a free, appropriate public education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE) through their well‐written Individualized Education Program (IEP). It is because of the role we play, and our belief that every child with a disability has the right to high‐quality education and an equal opportunity to achieve his or her {Their} full </p><p> individual potential, that we seek thoughtful consideration of vouchers. ¶ COPAA members were surveyed to discover their opinion about the quality of vouchers in their state; pros and cons of giving families an additional option/opportunity to address the unique needs of their child. The range of opinions is broad. For example, the survey responses indicate that in Florida, in order to accept the voucher, there can be no outstanding complaint [by the family] against the district, making it impossible to pursue any sort of compensatory remedy for past, present or future claims.¶ Denying IDEA protections in the name of choice is actually a bar to compensatory services and a way for the state to skirt accountability for individual access to a free and appropriate public education. Under a voucher the protection may or may not be free (as many have to supplement the cost with personal funds), and no longer appropriate. A Wisconsin member, on the other hand, u rged protections of the rights of families to determine for themselves and </p><p> to choose their own educational options for ¶ their children with disabilities, even when the choice is, as it so often is, simply the “least worse choice.” The concerns outlined in this paper are tied directly to COPAA member responses.¶ Recognizing the variance in perception and experience about state vouchers [and their treatment of IDEA rights], we do not purport to say that vouchers in their totality are good or bad, helpful or not for students with disabilities. What we do know emphatically is:¶  all civil rights need to be upheld in </p><p> the state‐approved construct; ¶  increased access to quality education is necessary; ¶ </p><p> the options must be affordable to all; ¶  the options must be accessible to all; and, ¶  private schools of choice must be held to the same accountability requirements to which public schools are held. Vouchers are comparatively better at improving education. KTF 12 — The Koret Task Force on K–12 Education, a group of senior education scholars brought together by the Hoover Institution, 2012 (“Choice and Federalism: Defining the Federal Role in Education,” Report by The Koret Task Force on K–12 Education, Available Online at http://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/choice-and-federalism.pdf, Accessed 06-15-2017, p. 31-34) Restructuring compensatory funding in ESEA and IDEA The largest federal K–12 education programs administered by the US Department of Education, Title I of the ESEA and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), are designed to disburse funds to states and school districts for the education of high-need students. Rather than the complicated and intrusive federal schemes under which funds are presently disbursed under Title I of ESEA (for economically disadvantaged students) and IDEA (for students with disabilities), funds should be attached to individual students to be transferred to the schools and educational services used by those students. Individual schools would receive federal funds based on student counts, with a weighting formula to adjust for factors such as the increased burden of educating high concentrations of high-need students and for regional differences in the costs of service s.12 There is nothing radical or untested about our proposal for weighted student funding, sometimes called backpack funding because the funds are attached to individual students who carry that resource to whichever school they attend. A 2009 report identified fourteen school districts that had implemented some form of weighted student funding.13 Many more are considering moving toward it, most recently Philadelphia. In general, the experience with backpack funding is that more funds go to the schools that serve needy students than under traditional distribution schemes, which is exactly what is intended. [end page 31] Some would argue that Title I of ESEA is a form of weighted student funding in that districts receive funding in proportion to the number of students they serve from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.14 From its beginning, however , Title I funding has been directed to school districts rather than to individual schools. Although funding is supposed to favor high-poverty districts and the highest poverty schools within those districts, the funding formula distorts that intent. The most recent national evaluation of Title I found that the lowest poverty schools received 37 percent more per enrolled low-income student than the highest poverty schools.15 Given the intent of the law, that disparity should flow in the opposite direction. Twenty-seven percent of Title I funds received by school districts do not find their way into instructional expenditures at all, being used for administration, transportation, student services, and the like. If the American people and Congress want the roughly $15 billion in funds that are appropriated annually under Title I to get to the schools that serve economically disadvantaged students, they need to attach the funding to students rather than dispersing it to districts through complex and politically motivated formulas. The same is true of the roughly $12 billion in IDEA funding. A school that enrolls a high-need student should be able to count on a supplemental deposit of a known amount to its operating budget. As some of the authors of this report have demonstrated empirically, beyond a threshold level it is how money is spent rather than per pupil [end page 32] expenditure itself that is most directly related to student achievement.16 Huge differences exist among school districts in how productively they invest their funds. For example, the Wisconsin school systems of Oshkosh and Eau Claire are about the same size, serve similar student populations, and get largely similar results on state exams—but Eau Claire spends over $1,000 more per student than Oshkosh.17 In a larger frame, the United States spends more per student on its education system than almost any other developed country in the world without world-leading results.18 Our proposals regarding how federal funds should be dispensed to support the education of high-need students are not an endorsement of views on education finance that have found their expression in so-called adequacy legal actions. The theory of action of equity/adequacy lawsuits is that the quality of education is proportional to the level of expenditure and that, thus, poorer school districts should receive a court-mandated state supplement of funds to assure an adequate education for their students. School resources, however, are not the dominant factor in whether students “beat the odds.” Increasing productivity in education is extremely important . Schemes for providing compensatory funding for the education of high-need students need to enhance the productivity of the institutions that serve those students. Simply handing out more money to school districts will not raise student achievement substantially for students with special needs. Our proposal creates the necessary link between compensatory [end page 33] funding for high-need students and increasing the productivity of the education providers who serve those students. It does so through the competitive mechanisms detailed subsequently in this report. Weighted funding of individual students is a critical design feature of our model. It creates conditions under which federal cash transfers for high-need students support choice and competition and thereby increase the quality of schooling and the achievement of students. Only way to ensure civil rights and the best Possible education to all students Almazan and Marshall 16 (Selene Almazan, the Executive Director of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates and Denise Marshall, member of COPAA who was on the Board of Directors from 2003-2014 and is the Co-Chair of the Amicus and Conference Committees, “School Vouchers and Students with Disabilities: Examining Impactin theName of Choice”, June 2016, https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/copaa.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/2016_Conference/COPAA_Voucher_paper_final_R6.pdf) #JSKI The level of accountability required varies considerably under each state. The range </p><p> varies from: ¶ no accountability required, ¶ written progress report required, ¶ to state </p><p> and district assessments ¶ required. ¶ Ohio students, for example, must take standardized assessments and be reported, unless the requirement is waived through the IEP process. However, the two voucher programs in Ohio have very little state oversight. When schools can’t educate students and parents are unhappy, students are then sent back</p><p> in to public schools and the students are further behind .20 ¶ Rights under IDEA ¶ As with other construct variables, whether or not the state requires parents and students to relinquish rights under IDEA as a condition of accepting the voucher varies considerably . Colorado and Nevada voucher laws are silent. Arizona doesn't specifically state that rights are terminated, however it does say that the state department will not monitor schools to ensure procedural or substantive rights are upheld. Parents in Arizona who feel rights are being violated have to file a complaint with the U.S. Office of Civil Rights (OCR). In Florida when parents opt to apply for the McKay Scholarship specifically for a child with a disability, their child’s rights under IDEA are then revoked. Laws in Georgia and Oklahoma also revoke IDEA rights. Louisiana requires that the student IEP be followed, and in Ohio parents and </p><p> students retain all ¶ rights except the right to due process for denial of FAPE. ¶ Many states, including the District of Columbia despite being silent on this issue in the law, consider opting to use a voucher the same as parental placement in a private school. For a student eligible under the IDEA, and under the parentally placed provision, such an action is a withdrawal and a relinquishment of rights under the IDEA and FAPE including special education and related services in connection with the private placement. Vouchers , however , represent a school choice initiative that authorizes use of government resources to allow parents to send their child to a school other than the one to which the child would be assigned under the public school program in the family’s home community . Often , the reason for the voucher is the acknowledged failure of the public school to adequately provide an education. ¶ Schools funded with a pubic voucher, as all other publicly funded schools, must follow U.S. civil rights laws and federal statutory laws 21 including:¶ Title I of the ESEA22¶ Title VI23 (race, color, national origin)¶ Title IX24 (gender)¶ Section 50425 and Title II of the ADA¶ (disability)26¶ IDEA27¶ General Education Provisions Act28 and¶ The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.29 More parent involvement – and easier to find the best fit for student Salisbury 03 (David Salisbury is director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute. alisbury worked extensively on school choice, home schooling, and testing and accountability. He promoted reform policies and private initiatives that strengthen the independent education system. Prior to joining Cato as the director of the Center for Educational Freedom, Salisbury was president of the Sutherland Institute, a free-market think tank in Salt Lake City, Utah, and executive director of Children First Utah, a nonprofit group that provided scholarship funds for children to attend the private school. He was a visiting scholar at the James Madison Institute for Public Policy Studies in Tallahassee, Florida, and a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lima in Lima, Peru and at the National University of San Augustin, in Arequipa, Peru. For 13 years, Salisbury served on the graduate faculty in the Department of Educational Research in the College of Education at Florida State University. He is author of the book Five Technologies for Educational Change and co-editor of Educational Freedom in Urban America: Brown v. Board After Half a Century and editor of What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries. His op-eds have appeared in such publications as USA Today, Forbes, the New York Post, and the American Spectator. Salisbury has also appeared on NPR’s Justice Talking, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, CNN’s Money & Markets, and other media. He holds a Ph.D. from Brigham Young University. “Lessons from Florida¶ School Choice Gives Increased Opportunities to Children with Special Needs” March 20, 2003 https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp81.pdf )#JSKI Increased Parental Involvement ¶ Greater parental involvement is another benefit of competition between public and private schools. Knowing that parents have other options motivates public school lead- ers to publicize their schools’ achievements and provide quality programs for children so that their parents will want to continue to enroll their children there . Parents of chil- dren with disabilities are motivated to become more informed about their public schools as well as about private options that are available. ¶ In Florida, new websites and other infor- mation sources have emerged to provide par- ents with evaluative information about public and private schools. One example is GreatSchools.net, a nonprofit organization that provides in-depth school profiles of both public and private schools on its website. Each state’s section has a list of school districts and various “tools” for parents, including links to compare schools, “ match school needs” in three steps, a nd a “my school list.” Parents can sign up to receive two newsletters, “Great News” and “My School Stats,” a customized school report . Greatschools.net encourages school principals to add information to their schools’ profiles. This increased availability of comparative information about schools, both public and private, creates a healthy educa- tional atmosphere for schools and allows par- ents to become more aware of the options available to them. Solvency - Vouchers - Florida Note: Last 2nd and 3rd card explain why its good for public Schools  </p><p>Florida proves that Vouchers benfit students and gives parents choice Salisbury 03 (David Salisbury is director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute. alisbury worked extensively on school choice, home schooling, and testing and accountability. He promoted reform policies and private initiatives that strengthen the independent education system. Prior to joining Cato as the director of the Center for Educational Freedom, Salisbury was president of the Sutherland Institute, a free-market think tank in Salt Lake City, Utah, and executive director of Children First Utah, a nonprofit group that provided scholarship funds for children to attend the private school. He was a visiting scholar at the James Madison Institute for Public Policy Studies in Tallahassee, Florida, and a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lima in Lima, Peru and at the National University of San Augustin, in Arequipa, Peru. For 13 years, Salisbury served on the graduate faculty in the Department of Educational Research in the College of Education at Florida State University. He is author of the book Five Technologies for Educational Change and co-editor of Educational Freedom in Urban America: Brown v. Board After Half a Century and editor of What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries. His op-eds have appeared in such publications as USA Today, Forbes, the New York Post, and the American Spectator. Salisbury has also appeared on NPR’s Justice Talking, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, CNN’s Money & Markets, and other media. He holds a Ph.D. from Brigham Young University. “Lessons from Florida¶ School Choice Gives Increased Opportunities to Children with Special Needs” March 20, 2003 https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp81.pdf )#JSKI The evidence suggests that those critics were wrong in their predictions. Even as the critics issued their warnings, more than 100,000 chil- dren with disabilities were being served by private schools , paid for by either public or private funds.3 According to the Directory for Exceptional Children, there are more than 2,500 private schools and clinics throughout the U nited S tates serving special needs children.4 Many schools specialize in helping difficult-to-educate children and utilize innovative, scientifically based pro- grams that are more effective a t helping children with disabilities than are those used in many public school s.5 F lorida’s McKay Scholarship Program for Students with Disabilities provides additional evidence that private schools will not only accept difficult-to-educate children but will go out of their way to provide effective programs to help children with physical, behavioral, emo- tional, or learning disabilities . ¶ Through the McKay Scholarship Program, the state of Florida provides a choice of any private or public school to par- ents of children who are identified as dis- abled under a variety of categories, including those who are mentally handicapped, speech and language impaired, deaf or hard of hear- ing, visually impaired, dual sensory impaired, physically impaired, emotionally handi-¶ capped, specific learning disabled, hospital- ized or homebound, or autistic.6 Before the program’s enactment, enrollment decisions for these children were made primarily by school officials—not parents. Parents now have a much greater role in deciding which school, public or private, is best for their child. More than 8,000 of Florida’s 380,000 eligible students now use McKay scholar- ships to attend private rather than public schools. Even with the McKay voucher pubic schools are still getting sufficient funding – help public schools because they can invest less in Special Ed Salisbury 03 (David Salisbury is director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute. alisbury worked extensively on school choice, home schooling, and testing and accountability. He promoted reform policies and private initiatives that strengthen the independent education system. Prior to joining Cato as the director of the Center for Educational Freedom, Salisbury was president of the Sutherland Institute, a free-market think tank in Salt Lake City, Utah, and executive director of Children First Utah, a nonprofit group that provided scholarship funds for children to attend the private school. He was a visiting scholar at the James Madison Institute for Public Policy Studies in Tallahassee, Florida, and a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lima in Lima, Peru and at the National University of San Augustin, in Arequipa, Peru. For 13 years, Salisbury served on the graduate faculty in the Department of Educational Research in the College of Education at Florida State University. He is author of the book Five Technologies for Educational Change and co-editor of Educational Freedom in Urban America: Brown v. Board After Half a Century and editor of What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries. His op-eds have appeared in such publications as USA Today, Forbes, the New York Post, and the American Spectator. Salisbury has also appeared on NPR’s Justice Talking, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, CNN’s Money & Markets, and other media. He holds a Ph.D. from Brigham Young University. “Lessons from Florida¶ School Choice Gives Increased Opportunities to Children with Special Needs” March 20, 2003 https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp81.pdf )#JSKI The McKay Scholarship Program was¶ designed to be revenue neutral. McKay stu- dents take to their new schools only those funds that would be spent on their education in the public school . At the same time, public schools experience a decreased enrollment burden proportionate to the loss of students and funds. Of course, public schools have fixed costs that are not reduced by slight declines in student enrollment. For example, the cost of buildings, maintenance, teachers, and administration is not reduced apprecia- bly by the departure of a few students using McKay scholarships. On the other hand, McKay scholarships come out of state funds, which constitute approximately 51 percent of total education revenues. When a student uses a McKay scholarship to attend a private school, the local funds that were being used to educate that student remain in the public schools. Since local funding constitutes approximately 41 percent of total education funding in the stat e, this should be a suffi- cient amount of revenue to cover a school’s fixed costs. 29¶ In addition to local funds, all federal funds received by the state for special educa- tion programs (approximately 9 percent of all special education funding) are retained by the Florida Department of Education. Some of these funds are passed on to local districtsto be used for special education programs.30 Also, in recognition of the higher operating costs in smaller districts or districts experi- encing decreasing enrollment, the state’s funding formula includes a “declining enroll- ment supplement” and a “sparsity supple- ment” that are designed to augment funding for such districts.31¶ Given that not all revenues appropriated are included in the calculation of the McKay scholarship amount , t he fiscal impact of the McKay program on public schools is slightly positive . According to the Florida Department of Education, funding elements not included in the McKay scholarship amount provide rev- enue of roughly $560 per student above the average McKay scholarship .32 That is the aver- age amount of additional revenue that stays with the district when a student leaves the public school using a McKay scholarship. Those funds can be used to cover necessary fixed costs or to enhance special and regular education programs for the students who remain in public schools.</p><p>This means smaller class sized and more resources for Public Schools Salisbury 03 (David Salisbury is director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute. alisbury worked extensively on school choice, home schooling, and testing and accountability. He promoted reform policies and private initiatives that strengthen the independent education system. Prior to joining Cato as the director of the Center for Educational Freedom, Salisbury was president of the Sutherland Institute, a free-market think tank in Salt Lake City, Utah, and executive director of Children First Utah, a nonprofit group that provided scholarship funds for children to attend the private school. He was a visiting scholar at the James Madison Institute for Public Policy Studies in Tallahassee, Florida, and a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lima in Lima, Peru and at the National University of San Augustin, in Arequipa, Peru. For 13 years, Salisbury served on the graduate faculty in the Department of Educational Research in the College of Education at Florida State University. He is author of the book Five Technologies for Educational Change and co-editor of Educational Freedom in Urban America: Brown v. Board After Half a Century and editor of What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries. His op-eds have appeared in such publications as USA Today, Forbes, the New York Post, and the American Spectator. Salisbury has also appeared on NPR’s Justice Talking, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, CNN’s Money & Markets, and other media. He holds a Ph.D. from Brigham Young University. “Lessons from Florida¶ School Choice Gives Increased Opportunities to Children with Special Needs” March 20, 2003 https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp81.pdf )#JSKI </p><p>Effect on Class Size¶ Florida voters recently passed a class size reduction initiative that placed a cap on class sizes in Florida public schools. With con- struction costs to build new public school classrooms running between $15,000 and $35,000 per seat, the initiative is expected to cost as much as $27 billion in capital expen- ditures alone.33 The state legislature will thus be forced to find ways to relieve the enroll- ment burden on public schools. Florida Senate President Jim King has acknowledged that lawmakers will consider expanding tuition vouchers to help meet class size reduction goals.34 Every time a student uses a McKay scholarship to attend a private school, class size is reduced in the public school. School choice programs allow the state to transfer some of its enrollment bur- den to the private sector, relieving pressure on public school classrooms and budgets. ¶ Participation in the McKay Scholarship Program has more than doubled each year and is expected to grow at a similar rate for at least ¶ the next few years.35 As the McKay program expands, the fiscal impact on public schools should continue to be positive. Moving more student enrollment to the private sector will allow local school districts to focus their resources on fewer students, reducing class size, or enhancing educational programs. Solvency - Private Schools Private Schools lead to better education for students Smetana 9 (Kevin Smetana, Times Staff Writer¶ Thursday, October 8, 2009 4:30am “Students with learning disabilities, ADD overcome obstacles in one-room school”)#JSKI Most of the students at the Academic Achievement Center in Seffner have both, but that doesn't stop them from tackling advanced subjects. The biology book they read from on this particular day is a college text. It's not the only high-level material in their curriculum.¶ "The language is a little difficult for some of the kids, but I really feel kids go as far as you push them ," said Stark, the school's director and teacher. "And you really need to push these kids. I've seen some tremendous changes in our students as a result."¶ The Academic Achievement Center is an old-fashioned, one-room schoolhouse that sits beside a quaint country road. Since opening in 1971, students have traveled from as far as Pinellas and Pasco counties. This year, 13 students, in Grades 4 through 12, share the building, and in some cases, the lesson plans.¶ Stark and the school's one other teacher cater to each child's needs and create individualized curriculums. They also teach to the group as a whole.¶ "We get very involved with our students," said Stark, 65. "Being as small as we are and having students from different grades and ages, we're a lot like an extended family."¶ Karen Younger, a single mom from Plant City, has three sons who attend the Academic Achievement Center. Her boys, ages 10, 12 and 14, all have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, she said.¶ The family's home life was tough before Younger's sons, one-by-one, started switching to the school a few years ago . Since then, she has seen a vast improvement in their academics, as well as their behavior. ¶ " The way that they are able to learn here, where they weren't in public school, it makes my day when I see how far they've com e," Younger said. "Here, they're progressing ." ¶ For most of the day, all 13 students occupy the classroom. They each have their own reading and math assignments. Science and social science are taught in a group, and Stark divides the kids into age brackets for language lessons.¶ Despite the disparity in age, students often read the same novels. Stark's e xpectations of the kids with group lessons vary based o n each student's ability level . With the college biology reading, for example, he expects the older kids to learn the concepts and the younger ones to grasp the terminology. ¶ "That's not what you get in a typical school," said Mary Brownell, a special education professor at the University of Florida. "But I don't think what you get in a typical school is always good for students with learning disabilities."¶ Brownell added that making sure students with learning disabilities and ADD are given explicit instructions and a chance to succeed is more important than the classroom's structure.¶ Twelve-year-old Justin Mobley, one of Karen Younger's sons, said being in the same room with everyone is "cool, because you get to see what bigger kids do."¶ Justin, in his first full year at the school, echoed what his mom and brothers said, that compared to public schools, he's under far less stress at the Academic Achievement Center. ¶ " They show yuu what you've done wrong instead of just telling you that you got it wrong ," Justin said. ¶ Some students stick around at the center through their senior year, earning a high school diploma. Others eventually return to public school. Last year, Stark said he had two graduates, one of whom went on to Hillsborough Community College.¶ Stark is open with his students about his own ADD and learning disabilities, which he discovered in the 1970s after he had been teaching at the school for several years.¶ "I think it's important for us to be open about those things, and our kids need to learn to function in spite of their disabilities, " said Stark, who holds a doctorate degree in biology from the University of South Florida. " They need to know that it's possible ."¶ Although st udents seem to be in an atmosphere more conducive to their needs at the private school, they're actually under a more stringent grading scale than that of the Hillsborough public school system. For example, it takes a 90 percent to earn an "A" in public school compared to a 94 percent at the Academic Achievement Center. At the same time, Stark admits his grading is subjective.¶ Students have failed in the past, Stark said, but he sometimes makes exceptions if he sees enough improvement.¶ "A lot of our kids start out with very poor self-esteem, and they have already failed," he said. "Their learning differences weren't taken into account, and our job is partially to get past the emotional baggage that they're carrying around with them.¶ "And another failure doesn't help that. Vouchers Better for Disabled Students Voucher programs are better for disabled students – prefer empirical analysis Buck 12 (Stuart Buck – Director of Research, Laura and John Arnold Foundation. J.D. cur laude, Harvard Law School; 2012; Journal of Law and Education; “Special Education Vouchers Are Beneficial: A Response to Hensel”; http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page? handle=hein.journals/jle41&div=40&collection=journals; accessed 7/4/17) [DS] B. Global Concerns about Special Education Vouchers? Hensel added that there are "global" concerns with special education voucher programs-concerns that apply even if private schools are doing a satisfactory job serving special education voucher students.59 First, Hensel contended that most of the students served by special education voucher systems tend to be the less disabled and that when they depart the public school system, the more severely disabled children remaining behind face a smaller pool of funding to meet their more heightened needs.6° Ironically, Hensel laments the prospect of even a portion of federal funds following students to private schools, 61 even after criticizing special education vouchers for their "modest amount of funding."62 However, if giving vouchers to special education students somehow harmed the remaining public school students, one would expect there to be empirical evidence of that harm. The evidence is the opposite . In a 2008 study, Greene and Winters examined whether the academic achievement of special education students was affected by their number of options to leave their public school with a voucher.63 In Florida, as more private schools that accept McKay funding opened near each public school, the standardized test scores of disabled students who remained in public schools significantly increased.' The addition of about seven private schools eligible for McKay funding within five miles of a public school improved the academic achievement of special education students remaining in that traditional public school by about .05 of a standard deviation.65 Improvement in test results suggests that public schools were serving those students better when they faced more competition from the McKay program.66 Vouchers do not drain public schools of their ability to serve disabled students ; instead, schools are pushed to serve those students better . Next, Hensel argues that with special education vouchers, too many of the less disabled special education students may end up going to private schools, leaving the more disabled students behind in "segregated" environments rather than embedded in a more enriching classroom environment with the other students.67 But if an autistic child can be mainstreamed into a regular classroom already, it is hard to see why that mainstreaming depends on the continued presence of another student with, for example, mild dyslexia. Further, Greene and Forster found in Florida "that students with more severe disabilities are not underrepresented in the McKay program" which would make " segregation" of the more disabled students unlikely.68 In any event, Hensel's own highest estimate is that "in some grades as many as 12% of the eligible special needs students could ultimately exit into private schools. ' 69 For the foreseeable future, the vast majority of special education students will be educated in public schools, and it is hard to see how any meaningful segregation within the public school system would result from the numbers of special education students that have departed or would likely depart public schools with vouchers. As for the students entering private schools, their parents presumably perceive some advantage that outweighs any alleged "segregation." If they are wrong, they remain free to re- enter the public school system. Next, Hensel argued that wealth and race may play a problematic role in who gets and uses vouchers.7 " The evidence here is so diverse that it does not point to any definitive involvement of wealth and race.7 " By Hensel's own account, the Florida special education voucher program does a good job serving poor people but the voucher recipients in Georgia and Ohio tend not to be quite as poor.72 This pattern does not show that wealth discrimination necessarily inheres in special education vouchers, and one would not expect to see all voucher systems serve a perfect mirror image of the rest of the population. Hensel also noted that both Florida and Georgia do well at serving minority students,73 but she turned this fact on its head by noting that most of these students attend religious schools and are thereby "most at risk" of being harmed by vouchers.74 Vouchers cannot win in this analysis : if they do not serve enough minority students, then they are a privilege for whites, but if vouchers do serve enough minorities, then the minorities are somehow being harmed. Finally, Hensel claimed that a special education voucher program could possibly lead to "enhanced tension with school administrators and general education," namely, over the question of which students are determined to be eligible for special education services, and therefore for vouchers." However, it is hard to see how this parent-school tension could be any greater than what already exists . In the current system, parents who are dissatisfied with special education services and are unwilling to accept the situation are forced into expensive lawsuits that few will win. According to Mayes and Zirkel's empirical analysis of this type of case, "school districts won the clear majority (62.5%) of the decisions"7 6 These lawsuits often lead to enormous tension. The New York Times reported that in one Tennessee county, "school officials spent $2.2 million on lawyers and expert witnesses to avoid having to reimburse Maureen and Philip Deal the $60,000 annual cost of providing their autistic son, Zachary, with one-on-one behavioral training," while "[i]n Calaveras County, Calif., the Bret Harte Union High School District fought so hard to block the claims of a student that Judge Oliver W. Wanger of the United States District Court took 83 pages to berate the district's 'hard-line position' and its law firm for 'willfully and vexatiously' dragging out the case so long that the former student is now 24.*"" Special education vouchers, far from increasing the tension between schools and parents, offer an outlet that could ameliorate existing tension. M. CONCLUSION Contrary to Hensel's article, special education vouchers are nothing fearsome. Private placement already exists under federal law, and several times as many students avail themselves of that right as compared to the recipients of special education vouchers. All that special education vouchers do is add another legal arrow to the disabled student's quiver . School choice through voucher programs helps disabled students with academic and social growth Waters 15 (Laura Waters – writes about New Jersey and New York education policy and politics. She taught writing to low-income students of color at SUNY Binghamton through an Educational Opportunity Program, Article; 5/19/15; Education Post; “How School Choice Empowered My Disabled Son”; http://educationpost.org/how-school-choice-empowered-my-disabled-son/; accessed 7-5-17) [DS] Next month, my son Jonah and 300 of his classmates will proudly march up the steps to a stage set up in Trenton’s Sun Bank Arena, in central New Jersey. There will be valedictory speeches and class gifts, beach balls and air horns, sentimental tears and unrestrained glee. In other words, this will be a typical high school graduation. But Jonah won’t receive a diploma or head off, like almost all of his peers, to college, a career or the military. His future is uncertain; his chances for complete independence are grim. Nonetheless, his family, friends, and teachers will erupt with cheers when he, in cap and gown, will likely dance across that stage and high-five anyone within range. Let me explain. Jonah has multiple disabilities stemming from a genetic mutation called Fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited cause of intellectual disabilitie s. Fragile X syndrome affects one in 4,000 males, who are typically more impaired because they have only one X chromosome, and one in 6,000 females. One in 259 females, like me, is a Fragile X carrier. Our other three children lucked out in this genetic roll of the dice and we never knew their good fortune until Jonah received his diagnosis. Jonah was lucky, too, because this hiccup in the tail end of the X chromosome can result in profound disabilities. He’s relatively high functioning, although still afflicted with ADHD, sensory integration disorder, developmental delays, social anxiety and autistic-like behavior . MAKING A CHOICE We’re grateful for Jonah’s successes—actually, most of the time we’re just grateful for Jonah—and as graduation rolls around, we’re especially aware of how much school choice has enhanced Jonah’s academic and social growth. There’s a double irony here: one general and one personal. First, we’re beneficiaries of school choice because a genetic glitch—bad luck, as it were—rendered our child incapable of learning like typical children and his disabilities qualify him for special education services guaranteed by law and paid for by local, state and federal funding. Second, I write regularly about the urgency of school choice for families who lack the financial means to avail themselves of its most common form in New Jersey, moving to a better district. Yet my family is entitled to exercise a different form of school choice, unimpeded by the politics that stymie choice for non-disabled children. Making choices for Jonah started back when he was 3 years old and automatically placed in a countywide preschool for handicapped children. His teacher there told us he’d never talk. With the support of the case manager assigned by our local school district, we found a privately run school for children with communication disorders and comorbid conditions. By age 4, Jonah was talking. By age 5, he was identifying letters, numbers and sight words. By age 7, he was reading and doing rudimentary math. Without that right to school choice , Jonah might have been relegated to a system that placed an unwarranted ceiling on his potential or, to use a loaded phrase, stifled his growth through the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” When Jonah turned 13, we worked with our Child Study Team—teachers, therapists, case manager, us— to make a different choice because we decided that he would benefit from a less restrictive environment. After considering many options, we chose a self- contained class in our local middle school, once we negotiated a series of modifications, conditions and opportunities for inclusion. THE RIGHT CHOICE I don’t want to sugarcoat this: the past six years were rewarding, but tough. We spent many hours meeting with school personnel (and, once, a lawyer), writing letters, challenging district procedures, monitoring adherence to his Individualized Education Plan. Nothing was perfect . Everyone made concessions. But it was the right choice for Jonah. Now, at age 19, our young man spends half his day in our local high school, primarily in reading and financial literacy classes, and the other half of the day in a job-training program run by a nonprofit organization. He’ll do this, or some variation of this, for another two years, at district expense, until he ages out of New Jersey’s special education program and receives his diploma. Jonah’s ramp to that stage at the Sun Bank Arena has been paved by wonderful teachers, creative case managers, and data-junkie parents. And, most important, the freedom embodied in school choice . Our son’s story isn’t typical, but there’s a lesson here about the potential academic and social gains realized when children, disabled or not, have choices about where they go to school . Voucher and school choice combinations boost test scores and provide services for disabled students U-Ark 12 (Kenneth Campbell is the president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, in Washington. Paul Diperna is the research director for the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, in Indianapolis. Robert C. Enlow is the president and chief executive officer of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Greg Forster is a senior fellow at the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Jay P. Greene is the department head and holder of the 21st-century endowed chair in education reform at the University of Arkansas, at Fayetteville, and a fellow in education policy at the George W. Bush Institute, in Dallas. Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar and the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington, as well as a blogger for Education Week. Matthew Ladner is a senior adviser for policy and research at the Foundation for Excellence in Education, in Tallahassee, Fla. Michael J. Petrilli is the executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, in Washington. Patrick J. Wolf is a professor and holder of the 21st-century endowed chair in school choice at the University of Arkansas, at Fayetteville; PDF; 2012; “What Research Says About School Choice”; http://www.uark.edu/ua/der/People/Greene/What_Research_Says_School_Choice.pdf; accessed 7/11/17) [DS] None of these studies has found a negative impact. Usually the improvements are spread across the whole participating population; sometimes they are identified in particular demographic groups making up the majority of participants. All of these studies have been conducted in low-income, heavily minority urban populations. Attrition issues, such as student mobility, limit the time length of random-assignment studies, so long-term impacts are largely unexplored so far. Other research questions regarding voucher program participants have included student safety , parent satisfaction , racial integration , services for students with disabilities, and outcomes related to civic participation and values. Results from these studies are consistently positive . Among charter schools, some high-quality studies show that charters have positive effects on academic outcomes. In other contexts, the findings are more mixed. In general, charters seem most likely to have positive effects on student achievement at the elementary level, in math, if the school is part of a well-established charter network such as the KIPP schools (Knowledge Is Power Program) if the student has been enrolled for a while, if the student is disadvantaged, and if the school is in an urban area. In addition to effects on participating students, another major topic of research has been the impact of school choice on academic outcomes in the public school system. By the nature of the case, this question cannot be studied with random assignment or comparable methods. Researchers studying programs in Florida, Milwaukee, Maine, Ohio, San Antonio, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., have developed a number of alternative methods for approaching it. Among voucher programs, these studies consistently find that vouchers are associated with improved test scores in the affected public schools. The size of the effect in these studies varies from modest to large. No study has found a negative impact. Fewer studies have examined the competitive effects of charter schools on achievement in traditional public schools, and the studies that do exist vary greatly in quality. The more rigorous studies generally show that charter competition is associated with modest increases in achievement in nearby public schools. Because these studies are unable to use random assignment or comparable methods, researchers disagree as to what extent the observed positive outcomes are driven by choice as opposed to other factors. Some believe the evidence allows us to say with confidence that choice is improving academic outcomes at public schools; others would prefer a more cautious estimation of how much we know at this point. However, it seems clear that school choice poses no threat to academic outcomes in the public school system. Opponents predicted school choice would harm public schools, but that harm has not materialized. A third area of study has been the fiscal impact of school choice. Even under conservative assumptions about such questions as state and local budget sensitivity to enrollment changes, the net impact of school choice on public finances is usually positive and has never been found to be negative. Public vouchers protect students under IEP and provide more control over their educational path Samuels 17 (Christina A. Samuels – Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University BS, Journalism Assistant Editor Editorial Projects in Education; Article; 3/21/17; EdWeek; “Parents See Benefits in Spec. Ed. Vouchers, But No Silver Bullet”; http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/03/22/parents-see-benefits-in-spec-ed-vouchers.html; accessed 7/11/17) [DS] While the senators were lecturing, Tera Myers was fuming. Myers, the mother of an adult son with Down syndrome, had traveled to Washington to support Betsy DeVos, then the nominee for U.S. secretary of education, during her confirmation hearing. DeVos , a staunch supporter of school choice programs such as vouchers, faced pointed questioning from skeptical lawmakers at the January hearing. Several of them said that such options leave students with disabilities behind. Myers, who lives in Mansfield, Ohio, said she felt the questions were deeply unfair . Not only had a voucher program helped Myers provide the best education for her son, she said, but the choice options had pushed school districts in her area to improve their offerings as well. "No one, from my perspective, is saying, 'I don't like public school,' " Myers said. "I believe, just from my experience, the competition has created better public schools and better private schools." But in Port St. Lucie, Fla., Lynn Ambert watched the same hearing live on C-SPAN with far more skepticism. Her 9-year-old son is eligible for a voucher under Florida's program, and she wanted to use it. However, no private school in her area will accept Ayden, who has autism and behavioral disabilities. Even the schools that advertised on their websites that they offered behavioral programs turned her away. "School vouchers are great—in theory," Ambert said. "But implementation is where they lack, because they don't accept everybody." Federal Backing School choice options , such as charter schools, vouchers, and educational savings accounts, have powerful support in Washington right now, including in the White House. In a recently released budget blueprint, the Trump administration has called for $1.4 billion in school choice funding; DeVos has also indicated her approval of choice for students with disabilities. But for such students, some of those options come with trade-offs, including the loss of specific protections under the four-decade-old Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. While politicians debate how the federal government should back school choice, many states have forged their own paths by offering school choice programs aimed specifically at students with disabilities. Many parents who accept those options say that the powers and protections that are outlined in the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act existed for them only in theory. Battling a school district over their child's education was something they didn't have the time, money, or knowledge to take on. "Are you going to spend your time arguing with politics, or are you going to teach your child?" said Lynn McMurray, a Prescott, Ariz., mother who is home schooling three of her children using Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account, which provides state funds to parents that they can use to pay for tuition, school supplies, online programs, or therapy. Mixed Feelings But even parents who are happy with their school choice say they realize that they are benefiting both from having good private school options available to them and financial resources to supplement a voucher, if necessary. Cynthia Greaux of Royal Palm Beach, Fla., uses Florida's McKay Scholarship to pay part of the tuition costs for her two children, Tyler, 14 and Chloe, 8. Both have dyslexia. McKay is the oldest and largest voucher program in the country specifically for students with disabilities; more than 31,000 children in Florida use that program to pay for public or private school. Greaux said she knows that not all parents can pay thousands of dollars for expensive neuropsychological assessments, as well as the balance of private school tuition for one child, let alone two. She noted that her public school district offers a multitude of choices—from arts-focused programs to certificates for budding web designers. Why not, Greaux asked, a special program for children with dyslexia? "I don't feel like my kids' needs were all that special," she said. But her son, who was doing well in public school through one reading program, was switched to another that didn't work for him. "By putting the right services at the [public] schools, you could solve a lot of problems. ... I find it mind-boggling that they can't staff for such a common learning disability." The umbrella term "school choice" encompasses a variety of options, including magnet schools, public charter schools, and other programs that help pay for private school tuition or for services for home-schooling parents. The view from the White House has been to support them all. In a February address to a joint session of Congress, President Donald Trump urged lawmakers to pass a school choice bill aimed at "disadvantaged youth." "These families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious, or home school that is right for them," Trump said. The president did not specifically mention students with disabilities. But DeVos, whose seeming unfamiliarity with special education policy prompted stiff opposition from some disability advocates before her confirmation, has said that students in special education need a full spectrum of options . "In far too many cases, the parents of students with disabilities in the public schools are currently not satisfied with the services their children are receiving," DeVos wrote before her confirmation in response to one of more than 100 questions from Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state. Murray is the top Democrat on the Senate education committee. "But too often, the only way that parents can obtain what is best for their child is through legal recourse. This can take months and sometimes years," DeVos wrote. "Children don't have years to wait for courts to decide." Students' Rights As long as students with disabilities choose to remain within the public school system, however, they have an array of protections. For example, a student's individualized educational program, or IEP, must be drafted with parent input. It's also harder to suspend long-term or expel a student with a disability than a student without one. Except in certain serious cases, schools must go through a process to determine if a student's misbehavior is a manifestation of his or her disability. For students with disabilities enrolled in private school, those rights do not exist. Nor do students in private school retain an individual right to special education services, though local districts are supposed to provide "equitable services" to private school students within district boundaries. The loss of protections, along with a lack of viable private school options, could be reasons why private schools are used less often by students with disabilities who are covered under the IDEA. While about 10 percent of all school-aged children are enrolled in private school, just over 1 percent of students with disabilities covered under that law are placed by their parents in private school. (Charter schools are public schools, but independently run.) But Myers said that the private school her son used, through the support of Ohio's Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship Program, offered her far more control than the public school system did. "I found due process to be a hindrance to me. I didn't have the money for it, I didn't have the time for it," Myers said. "At the public school, I was at their mercy." In contrast, at her son's private school, she was able to negotiate an appropriate education for her son. And if she didn't like what the school was doing, she had the option not to pay the school and to find another educational option, she said. Myers eventually took a position at her son's private school, Mansfield Christian School, and worked with several nearby districts that had families considering the Peterson scholarship. Her once-rocky relationship with her local school district has improved dramatically, she said, and she has strong partnerships with others. "Sometimes, it takes that alternative method to fix the system as it is," she said. For McMurray, in Arizona, her three youngest children have an array of special needs that just weren't being met in a private or public school setting, both of which she tried, she said. For example, her daughter Alicia, 17, has Kabuki syndrome, a rare disorder that causes developmental delays. In public school, "their expectations were way too low. They would say, 'Well, what do you want us to do?' I want you to challenge her. You having her sit at a table, that means she's shut up, quiet, and out of your way, but you're a teacher—teach her." In private school, the class sizes were low, but her children were still failing tests. The public dollars, along with the one-on- one attention she is able to provide them as a home-schooling parent, has helped the children blossom, she said. "I think every parent in the United States of America should have this choice," McMurray said. At the same time, she added, "it's not for everybody. You have to be disciplined. You can't just say, maybe I'll teach them today but not tomorrow. You have to keep with it." But for some parents, home schooling is not an option—and neither is private school, even with a voucher. Ambert, the Port St. Lucie parent, had a difficult experience with her local district. Her son's school was not equipped to deal with his behavioral challenges, restraining him so often that he came home from school with bruises and was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He is now receiving instruction at home from the public school district. Ambert is currently trying to decide what the best options are for her son. An expanded voucher program, she said, is not what she needs. What she wants is a public school option that can properly educate children like her son, who have autism but can learn at grade level. Even if she could find a private school, "who's not to say they're not going to kick him out within two weeks? ... I just want somewhere that I know that he can't be asked to leave," Ambert said.</p><p>Vouchers help disabled students and competition boosts overall test scores Trilling 16 (David Trilling – Columbia University - School of International and Public Affairs Master's degree, International Affairs, Tufts University Bachelor’s Degree, Anthropology and Philosophy, Staff writer, JournalistsResource.org Harvard Kennedy School; Article; 9/14/16; “School vouchers and student achievement: Reviewing the research”; https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/education/school-vouchers-choice-student- achievement; accessed 7/11/17) [DS] Today more than half of U.S. states offer some sort of school choice program; 15 states and the District of Columbia offer vouchers. Maine and Vermont have offered vouchers since the late 19th century to students living in rural areas, far from public schools. The first modern voucher program started in 1990, when Wisconsin targeted students from low-income families in Milwaukee. In 2001, Florida became the first state to offer vouchers to students with disabilities. In cases where spaces in private schools are too few, vouchers are often distributed by lottery. Research on the academic impact of vouchers — often determined using test scores or high school graduation rates — is decidedly mixed; there is no scholarly consensus that they boost student achievement, though many researchers encourage further study and increased emphasis on how voucher programs are designed. Amid vigorous campaigning by advocacy groups for and against vouchers, the benefits are deeply contested. Arguments and research overview Teachers unions argue that vouchers siphon money from underfunded school districts and create a two-tiered education system. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) opposes vouchers, reasoning that they benefit a limited few. “Vouchers take critical resources away from our neighborhood public schools, the very schools that are attended by the vast majority of African American students. Furthermore, private and parochial schools are not required to observe federal nondiscrimination laws even if they receive federal funds through voucher programs,” the NAACP said in its 2015-2016 list of legislative priorities. Others, such as the National Education Association, a three-million-strong group of educators, say that applying public funds to parochial school tuition blurs the line between church and state, violating the Constitution. On the other hand, fiscal conservatives like vouchers because they save government funds. Competition , moreover, could be good for innovation , they argue. Though a sweeping 2015 review by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found little evidence that vouchers improve educational outcomes, it did declare that “ competition induced by vouchers leads public schools to improve .” “Vouchers have been neither the rousing success imagined by proponents nor the abject failure predicted by opponents,” say the authors of the NBER paper, which was led by Dennis Epple of Carnegie Mellon University. The programs show “no consistent, robust pattern.” Amid such a heated debate, journalists should be mindful of who is presenting voucher research. Studies can be massaged to bolster the claims of one side or the other. Education policy researchers Christopher Lubienski and T. Jameson Brewer of the University of Illinois single out Ed Choice — the advocacy group founded by Milton Friedman — and warn that it over-emphasizes research that is not as strong as it suggests. Some of the findings that Ed Choice presents as bolstering the case for vouchers leave out caveats explicitly flagged by the authors themselves. “Advocacy based on this research is misguided and should be based on potentially stronger claims,” Lubienski and Brewer write in a 2016 study for the Peabody Journal of Education. “[T]he empirical results are relatively modest at best, and sometimes negative, not to mention incoherent and contested.” Four impact studies Milwaukee Joshua Cowen of the University of Kentucky and his colleagues tracked students in Milwaukee — the first city in the country to introduce its own voucher program — over five years. They found a relationship between voucher-receiving students and high school graduation, even if the students did not stay in the voucher program throughout high school: “They were also more likely […] to continue beyond the first year of college.” However, the authors expressed concern that the private schools that receive the vouchers “implicitly or explicitly select the better students” — sometimes known as “cream skimming.” Private schools “can ‘counsel out’ or even expel students that public schools cannot.” At the time of the study, private schools were not required to publish test scores, allowing them to focus more on graduation and college preparation. The authors say that factor could skew results compared with public schools, where test preparation is prioritized. Washington, D.C. In Washington D.C ., Patrick J. Wolf of the University of Arkansas and colleagues looked at a program that targeted poor, minority communities. They found voucher students were 21 percent more likely to graduate high school , suggesting “that private schools provide students with an educational climate that encourages school completion either through the intervention and expectations of school faculty or by having similarly motivated and achieving peers.” They also discovered a positive impact on reading scores for students who stayed in the private schools for four years, but no change in math scores. Wolf and colleagues called the program “ one of the most effective urban dropout prevention programs yet witnessed. Vouchers Improve Public Schools Vouchers push public schools to better assist students with disabilities — empirics. EdChoice 15 - Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice ("Can school choice help students with special needs?", 8-7-2015, Available Online from https://www.edchoice.org/school_choice_faqs/can-school-choice-help-students-with-special-needs/, Accessed on 7-6- 2017) Just as is the case with vouchers in general, a special-education voucher that allows students with disabilities to leave can motivate public schools to serve their remaining students better. One study examined whether the academic achievement of students with special needs was affected by the number of options they had, if they left their public school with a voucher. In Florida, as more private schools that accept McKay funding opened near each public school, the standardized test scores of students with disabilities who remained in public schools increased significantly . The addition of about seven public schools with McKay funding within five miles of a public school improved the academic achievement of students with special needs by about .05 of a standard deviation. Virtually all Florida students with disabilities in public schools take the state-mandated test, so improvement in test results suggests that schools were serving those students better when they faced more competition from the McKay program. Vouchers do not drain public schools of their ability to serve disabled students ; instead, schools are pushed to serve those students better . In fact, results from a 2011 study on the McKay program suggest that the voucher program tends to have a positive impact on the math and reading performances of students in public schools. Parental Choice Key Parents having more influence significantly benefits LD students Almazan and Marshall 16 (Selene Almazan, the Executive Director of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates and Denise Marshall, member of COPAA who was on the Board of Directors from 2003-2014 and is the Co-Chair of the Amicus and Conference Committees, “School Vouchers and Students with Disabilities: Examining Impactin theName of Choice”, June 2016, https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/copaa.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/2016_Conference/COPAA_Voucher_paper_final_R6.pdf) #JSKI</p><p>Increased Parental Satisfaction¶ “ I would rather my child, and the children of my clients, have t he opportunity to attend th e small private school which uses evidenced‐based practices in a small classroom setting to educate different learners . The bloated, bureaucratic public school needs a huge overhaul, and my child does not have time </p><p> to wait.” ¶ One of the great beliefs surrounding vouchers is the perception that </p><p> families are more satisfied with services and outcomes from private school . While there was some indication of this in our survey response, evidence is unclear whether increased parental satisfaction is a myth or an actual benefit to families through a voucher. </p><p>COPAA members indicated that it’s worth the exploration, as “what we’re doing now doesn’t seem to be working.” There is evidence suggesting a high level of parental satisfaction with school voucher programs .31 Families who have childrenwho are already floundering in traditional schools are eager to have their children experience some success. Parents report their children are happier and they are spending less time in trouble, even if the students aren't learning any more than in public schools .a Vouchers help Parents make the best choice for there child Almazan and Marshall 16 (Selene Almazan, the Executive Director of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates and Denise Marshall, member of COPAA who was on the Board of Directors from 2003-2014 and is the Co-Chair of the Amicus and Conference Committees, “School Vouchers and Students with Disabilities: Examining Impactin theName of Choice”, June 2016, https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/copaa.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/2016_Conference/COPAA_Voucher_paper_final_R6.pdf) #JSKI Denying rights under IDEA, as a condition of accepting a scholarship, counters both the theoretical purpose of vouchers and the stated intent of the IDEA – both of which</p><p> state as the purpose to assure the student ́s specific individualized needs ¶ are met in a placement that will best serve the educational needs of the¶ one existed in their state, the majority said yes or maybe, and only 21% said “No.” COPAA members appear to mirror the larger public debate of whether vouchers are a good idea or not, with both critics and¶ </p><p>Would You Participate or Recommend Your Clients Participate in a Voucher Program?¶ No, 21%¶ Maybe, 43¶ Yes, 36%¶ ¶ child. IDEA ¶ </p><p> meaningful ¶ participation, ¶ vouchers, but vouchers in ¶ theory go a step further in ¶ </p><p> enabling families to make ¶ independent private choices ¶ to direct their resources to ¶ </p><p> appropriate schools. This ¶ promise of “choice” is hollow ¶ for many families, however, who cannot afford the cost above the allowable voucher funds, cannot provide transportation, or may have to give up all procedural safeguards and rights to benefit from the voucher. Solves District Failures Vouchers provide students better education – district shortcomings are prevalent. Almazan and Marshall 16 (Selene Almazan, the Executive Director of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates and Denise Marshall, member of COPAA who was on the Board of Directors from 2003-2014 and is the Co-Chair of the Amicus and Conference Committees, “School Vouchers and Students with Disabilities: Examining Impactin theName of Choice”, June 2016, https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/copaa.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/2016_Conference/COPAA_Voucher_paper_final_R6.pdf) #JSKI</p><p>Catalyst to Avoid or Counteract IDEA Due Process¶ “Vouchers may prevent a significant amount of anguish, frustration, anger, and litigation, by giving the parents an alternative </p><p> education placement.” ¶ School vouchers have t he potential to benefit individual students in certain circumstances, such as when a school district fails to provide FAPE and the student’s parents are unable to compel the district to comply with the IDEA . In instances in which a child is not provided with adequate services , a child is being unlawfully restrained and/or secluded or the parents are engaged in a bitter dispute with the school district, school vouchers could provide a desperately needed option where none currently exist. The voucher program can also serve as a catalyst to due process settlements for private placements, since the district reimbursement amount is less on a voucher than a litigated private placement would cost. Maine currently utilizes "superintendent agreements" to allow certain students (often with disabilities ) to be served in districts other than where a student resides , and the state DOE has the last word on whether such a transfer would be in the student's interest. So, although there is no technical "voucher," the program allows much the same level of flexibility and school choice for parents of children with unique needs. Solves Discrimination Vouchers solve discrimination Almazan and Marshall 16 (Selene Almazan, the Executive Director of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates and Denise Marshall, member of COPAA who was on the Board of Directors from 2003-2014 and is the Co-Chair of the Amicus and Conference Committees, “School Vouchers and Students with Disabilities: Examining Impactin theName of Choice”, June 2016, https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/copaa.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/2016_Conference/COPAA_Voucher_paper_final_R6.pdf) #JSKI To advocates familiar with IDEA, the varying rates in voucher or savings account levels¶ seem to conflict with one of IDEA’s most basic tenants ‐‐ that IEP teams can only lawfully determine each student’s placement in the least restrictive environment based on that individual student’s unique disability related needs as set forth in her IEP, not based on a diagnosis, a specific disability label, or because the student requires needed modifications in the general education curriculum.10 However, as discussed in the legal section, school districts do assign different rates for vouchers based on disability classification.¶ Some states that offer special education¶ vouchers distinguish the voucher amounts¶ depending on the disability of the student .¶ Ohio’s Jon Peterson Special Needs¶ Scholarship Program provides students with¶ disabilities with a range of maximum¶ scholarships based on the </p><p> student’s¶ disability. 11 Ohio also has an Autism¶ Scholarship Program, providing public¶ funding for students with autism to attend¶ their non‐district school.¶ disabilities are otherwise eligible for the Jon Peterson Scholarship, with the amount depending on their disability category.13 Voucher amounts are determined through a complex funding formula that considers the average cost to educate a “typical student in a typical classroom” plus the estimated additional costs of providing special education and related services based on the child’s disability.14 This past year, Louisiana implemented a “School Choice Program for Certain Students with Exceptionalities.”15 This program provides vouchers for students with the following disabilities: autism , developmental delay, mental disability, other health impairment, specific learning disability , traumatic brain injury.16¶ The determination of whether there is discrimination in basing funding on disability classification may fall on the purpose for the discrimination. Solves Inclusion CP Solves inclusion </p><p>Salisbury 03 (David Salisbury is director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute. alisbury worked extensively on school choice, home schooling, and testing and accountability. He promoted reform policies and private initiatives that strengthen the independent education system. Prior to joining Cato as the director of the Center for Educational Freedom, Salisbury was president of the Sutherland Institute, a free-market think tank in Salt Lake City, Utah, and executive director of Children First Utah, a nonprofit group that provided scholarship funds for children to attend the private school. He was a visiting scholar at the James Madison Institute for Public Policy Studies in Tallahassee, Florida, and a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lima in Lima, Peru and at the National University of San Augustin, in Arequipa, Peru. For 13 years, Salisbury served on the graduate faculty in the Department of Educational Research in the College of Education at Florida State University. He is author of the book Five Technologies for Educational Change and co-editor of Educational Freedom in Urban America: Brown v. Board After Half a Century and editor of What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries. His op-eds have appeared in such publications as USA Today, Forbes, the New York Post, and the American Spectator. Salisbury has also appeared on NPR’s Justice Talking, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, CNN’s Money & Markets, and other media. He holds a Ph.D. from Brigham Young University. “Lessons from Florida¶ School Choice Gives Increased Opportunities to Children with Special Needs” March 20, 2003 https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp81.pdf )#JSKI What about “Inclusion”?¶ One of the trends in special education has been that of “inclusion.” This means provid- ing instruction to children with disabilities in regular classrooms in the presence of their nondisabled peers whenever possible . Inclusion appears to be the prevailing practice in private schools as well. Only a small percent of McKay scholarship students are in special- ized schoo ls (see Table 1). The vast majority of them are in regular private school class- rooms. Presumably, parents who place their children in private schools feel that the envi- ronment provided by the school is appropri- ate for their children . Solves Accountability CP Solves Accountability – increases educational outcomes Salisbury 03 (David Salisbury is director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute. alisbury worked extensively on school choice, home schooling, and testing and accountability. He promoted reform policies and private initiatives that strengthen the independent education system. Prior to joining Cato as the director of the Center for Educational Freedom, Salisbury was president of the Sutherland Institute, a free-market think tank in Salt Lake City, Utah, and executive director of Children First Utah, a nonprofit group that provided scholarship funds for children to attend the private school. He was a visiting scholar at the James Madison Institute for Public Policy Studies in Tallahassee, Florida, and a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lima in Lima, Peru and at the National University of San Augustin, in Arequipa, Peru. For 13 years, Salisbury served on the graduate faculty in the Department of Educational Research in the College of Education at Florida State University. He is author of the book Five Technologies for Educational Change and co-editor of Educational Freedom in Urban America: Brown v. Board After Half a Century and editor of What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries. His op-eds have appeared in such publications as USA Today, Forbes, the New York Post, and the American Spectator. Salisbury has also appeared on NPR’s Justice Talking, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, CNN’s Money & Markets, and other media. He holds a Ph.D. from Brigham Young University. “Lessons from Florida¶ School Choice Gives Increased Opportunities to Children with Special Needs” March 20, 2003 https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp81.pdf )#JSKI </p><p>What about “Accountability”?¶ One of the major claims made by critics of the McKay Scholarship Program is that pri- vate schools are unaccountable to the public, even through they admit students who receive state-funded scholarships. By “unac- countable,” critics mean that the private¶ schools are not required to report results to any government agency. Reporting to a gov- ernment agency, however, is only one kind of accountability. Another, vastly superior, method is direct accountability to con- sumers . Because McKay scholarship parents are free to withdraw their children at any time and take their scholarship funds to another school , private schools must meet the expectation of parents or risk losing cus- tomers and damaging their reputation in the community. That is a higher standard of accountability than public schools have had to meet in the past. Making public and pri- vate schools directly accountable to parents is the most effective way to ensure a high level of quality for special education . ¶ Parents have better information and bet- ter incentives to make optimal decisions about their child’s education than do local or state education officials. Parents know more about their children’s abilities and needs than does the typical professional, who must make judgments about each child after only a brief diagnosis. Parents may lack the exper- tise of special educators, but they have an incentive to seek out the very best informa- tion and advice. Only parents are willing to spend weeks, months, and years researching educational alternatives for a single child. Accordingly, reforms based on parental judg- ment and choice should result in better edu- cational outcomes for disabled children . Reform States Fix Vouchers Reform States Will Avoid IDEA’s Worst Problems Gryphon and Salisbury 02(Marie Gryphon Marie Gryphon is a freelance writer and a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at Harvard University. She was a Senior Fellow with the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy between 2007 and 2010, working on legal system reform. As a former legal and policy analyst with the Cato Institute from 2002 to 2006, she worked on issues related to education policy. Her articles have appeared in Business Week, the Washington Post, the Investors Business Daily, Barron’s, Forbes, National Law Journal, and elsewhere. As an attorney in private practice, she worked on ERISA, securities, class action, commercial contract, legal malpractice, and constitutional law cases. She holds a J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law. David alisbury worked extensively on school choice, home schooling, and testing and accountability. He promoted reform policies and private initiatives that strengthen the independent education system. Prior to joining Cato as the director of the Center for Educational Freedom, Salisbury was president of the Sutherland Institute, a free-market think tank in Salt Lake City, Utah, and executive director of Children First Utah, a nonprofit group that provided scholarship funds for children to attend the private school. He was a visiting scholar at the James Madison Institute for Public Policy Studies in Tallahassee, Florida, and a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lima in Lima, Peru and at the National University of San Augustin, in Arequipa, Peru. For 13 years, Salisbury served on the graduate faculty in the Department of Educational Research in the College of Education at Florida State University. He is author of the book Five Technologies for Educational Change and co-editor of Educational Freedom in Urban America: Brown v. Board After Half a Century and editor of What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries. His op-eds have appeared in such publications as USA Today, Forbes, the New York Post, and the American Spectator. Salisbury has also appeared on NPR’s Justice Talking, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, CNN’s Money & Markets, and other media. He holds a Ph.D. from Brigham Young University.¶ “Escaping IDEAFreeing Parents, Teachers, and Students through Deregulation and Choice” July 10, 2002 https://object.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa444.pdf) #JSKI Reform states, whether they have unilater- ally reformed or opted-in to a federally authorized deregulatory plan, will save tens of millions of dollars that are now devoted to procedural compliance, legal posturing, and litigation. If even half of the annual $6.7 bil- lion devoted to “assessment, evaluation and IEP related expenditures ” were eliminated, $ 3 .35 billion could be saved nationally on those items alone. States and parents would also save millions more on IDEA attorneys’ fees and other legal expenses . Those current- ly wasted sums could be devoted instead to educational expenses, improving both special education and general education. ¶ Although disputes will continue to crop up over a given child’s disability category, “the majority of cases [under current IDEA law] have focused on the individual child and the adequacy of the program proposed by the school district to meet that child’s needs .”111 Accordingly, IDEA-related disputes in reform states should become far more rare . In addi- tion, the issue of whether a disability has been correctly diagnosed is far simpler than that of whether a specific educational pro- gram conceived by a school district is “appro- priate” for a given child. The disputes that remain to be resolved through binding arbi- tration will thus be far shorter, simpler, and cheaper than present litigation. ¶ The educational choices available in reform states should also be effective in increasing the quality of education available to most disabled children. Choices are partic- ularly beneficial to special education stu- dents because of the variety of disabilities they struggle with and because of significant recent and ongoing advances in special edu- cation. Public institutions by their nature often change too slowly to keep pace with rapidly evolving techniques and technologies in special education,112 and in many areas of special education, even experts lack consen- sus about which pedagogical techniques are most effective.113¶ Parents have better information and bet- ter incentives to make optimal decisions for their children than do school districts.114 As Kotler observes, “Parents better understand their child’s abilities and potential than a professional who typically makes judgments based on a very brief acquaintance with the child.”115 Although parents often lack the professional expertise of special educators, they have an incentive to seek out the very best sources of information and advice. A public school district will never be similarly motivated to spend weeks and months researching educational alternatives for a sin- gle child. Accordingly, choice-based reform should result in better educational outcomes for disabled children. ¶ Parental choice in reform states will also relieve parents of their current Hobson’s choice: accept an objectionable plan created by ¶ the school district or face the financial and personal costs of a potentially years-long hear- ing and appeals process.116 Similarly, the elim- ination of the IEP and due process regimens will free special educators from the meetings and paperwork that have come to dominate their days, allowing them to focus once again on teaching children.¶ Reform states will alleviate the problem of overidentification of children as having dis- abilities, a phenomenon that has contributed to IDEA’s increasing costs. Although the 1997 amendments to IDEA may prove effec- tive in reducing financial incentives for states to over-identify minor disabilities, many states still distribute funds to school districts on the basis of numbers of disabled children. By tying an agreed level of funding directly to each disabled child, and giving each family control over how those funds are spent, reform states will eliminate the remaining tendencies of school districts to compete for extra funds through overdiagnosis.117¶ Also important will be the increased equi- ty with which special education resources will be distributed in reform states. IDEA parents will not be sorted, as they now are, into separate camps of winners and losers on the basis of their personal educational attain- ment, financial resources, or litigious natur e. Each parent will receive the same defined monetary contribution, depending on type of disability, to be spent on the educational resources the parent believes will be most helpful to his or her disabled child. Reform states will see a shift in resources away from procedural compliance costs, litigation costs, and a small number of savvy or lucky parents and toward lower-income children with dis- abilitieswhoarecurrentlyunderserved.</p><p>This Lead to more trust with Patents and educators Gryphon and Salisbury 02 (Marie Gryphon Marie Gryphon is a freelance writer and a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at Harvard University. She was a Senior Fellow with the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy between 2007 and 2010, working on legal system reform. As a former legal and policy analyst with the Cato Institute from 2002 to 2006, she worked on issues related to education policy. Her articles have appeared in Business Week, the Washington Post, the Investors Business Daily, Barron’s, Forbes, National Law Journal, and elsewhere. As an attorney in private practice, she worked on ERISA, securities, class action, commercial contract, legal malpractice, and constitutional law cases. She holds a J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law. David alisbury worked extensively on school choice, home schooling, and testing and accountability. He promoted reform policies and private initiatives that strengthen the independent education system. Prior to joining Cato as the director of the Center for Educational Freedom, Salisbury was president of the Sutherland Institute, a free-market think tank in Salt Lake City, Utah, and executive director of Children First Utah, a nonprofit group that provided scholarship funds for children to attend the private school. He was a visiting scholar at the James Madison Institute for Public Policy Studies in Tallahassee, Florida, and a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lima in Lima, Peru and at the National University of San Augustin, in Arequipa, Peru. For 13 years, Salisbury served on the graduate faculty in the Department of Educational Research in the College of Education at Florida State University. He is author of the book Five Technologies for Educational Change and co-editor of Educational Freedom in Urban America: Brown v. Board After Half a Century and editor of What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries. His op-eds have appeared in such publications as USA Today, Forbes, the New York Post, and the American Spectator. Salisbury has also appeared on NPR’s Justice Talking, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, CNN’s Money & Markets, and other media. He holds a Ph.D. from Brigham Young University.¶ “Escaping IDEAFreeing Parents, Teachers, and Students through Deregulation and Choice” July 10, 2002 https://object.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa444.pdf) #JSKI Perhaps most critical, replacement of the dispute resolution model of IDEA with parental choice in reform states will restore trust between parents and educators, whose interests are no longer misaligned. With the size of a child’s benefit no longer in question, teachers can collaborate with parents to determine how the child’s allotment might best be spent . If the two cannot agree, the parent is welcome to find another teacher or school with which to work. As with other consensual fiduciary relationships—banker and investor, attorney and client—the new teacher-parent relationship will be built on trust , honesty, and results. Successful special educators and schools will be those that serve parents and children well. A2: Too expensive Vouchers are cheap and net beneficial Salisbury 5 (David Salisbury is director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute and coeditor of What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries “Saving Money and Improving Education¶ How School Choice Can Help States Reduce Education Costs¶ by David Salisbury” October 4, 2005 https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/saving-money-improving-education-how-school-choice- can-help-states-reduce-education-costs)#JSKI</p><p>Opponents of vouchers or tuition tax cred- its routinely claim that school choice would harm public schools because public schools would lose federal funds as a result of declining enrollment. But, on average , federal funds con- stitute only about 8 percent of total education funds .117 Also, most federal funds are targeted to the most difficult to educate students , including those with learning disabilities and those who live in low-income neighborhoods . It has been shown that federal funding does not typically cover the incremental costs of educating a special needs student compared with a non- special-needs student . Therefore, when such students transfer to private schools, the public school system benefits because the forgone federal dollars are more than offset by the reduced cost of educating those stu- dents.118 Also, federal programs all come with a significant amount of red tape and often impose unnecessary and costly regulations on schools and school districts. In many cases, the loss of federal funds would be offset by decreased administrative costs and increased local flexibility. A2: Vouchers Strip IDEA Rights Voucher programs must waive protections to provide adequate services for students with disabilities Malkus 17 (Nat Malkus, US News Contributor, “A Disability Misstep for DeVos”, January 24, 2017, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2017-01-24/betsy-devos-isnt-indifferent-to-students-with-disabilities, JR) There are straightforward reasons why voucher programs require participating families to waive their rights under the I ndividuals with D isabilities E ducation A ct. These programs give parents a choice between receiving services through public schools or using government funds for private service providers. The two sectors have different mechanisms to ensure satisfactory services. Public schools' services must satisfy the law, not necessarily parents (though they often satisfy both). Private providers must satisfy parents, because unsatisfied parents will leave them to find better private options or return their children to public schools. If private providers were also subject to redress in the courts under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, potential legal battles would discourage many from participating, and therefore limit parents' access to the options these programs are supposed to deliver. DeVos believes in state programs that trust parents to choose among private options when legal mandates fail them. IDEA does not let parents be involved with education Gryphon and Salisbury 02 (Marie Gryphon Marie Gryphon is a freelance writer and a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at Harvard University. She was a Senior Fellow with the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy between 2007 and 2010, working on legal system reform. As a former legal and policy analyst with the Cato Institute from 2002 to 2006, she worked on issues related to education policy. Her articles have appeared in Business Week, the Washington Post, the Investors Business Daily, Barron’s, Forbes, National Law Journal, and elsewhere. As an attorney in private practice, she worked on ERISA, securities, class action, commercial contract, legal malpractice, and constitutional law cases. She holds a J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law. David alisbury worked extensively on school choice, home schooling, and testing and accountability. He promoted reform policies and private initiatives that strengthen the independent education system. Prior to joining Cato as the director of the Center for Educational Freedom, Salisbury was president of the Sutherland Institute, a free-market think tank in Salt Lake City, Utah, and executive director of Children First Utah, a nonprofit group that provided scholarship funds for children to attend the private school. He was a visiting scholar at the James Madison Institute for Public Policy Studies in Tallahassee, Florida, and a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lima in Lima, Peru and at the National University of San Augustin, in Arequipa, Peru. For 13 years, Salisbury served on the graduate faculty in the Department of Educational Research in the College of Education at Florida State University. He is author of the book Five Technologies for Educational Change and co-editor of Educational Freedom in Urban America: Brown v. Board After Half a Century and editor of What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries. His op-eds have appeared in such publications as USA Today, Forbes, the New York Post, and the American Spectator. Salisbury has also appeared on NPR’s Justice Talking, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, CNN’s Money & Markets, and other media. He holds a Ph.D. from Brigham Young University.¶ “Escaping IDEAFreeing Parents, Teachers, and Students through Deregulation and Choice” July 10, 2002 https://object.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa444.pdf) #JSKI Over the last eleven years we have seen what a legacy has been created. I can’t imagine how it must feel to be part of the creation of this sad, sad mess— where children are pariahs, their fam- ilies are the enemy, “special” means “can’t be done,” and education has long been forgotten . . . for the record , the culture of the Special Education Administration is a closed-mouth, non- collaborative, non-responsive, anti-family fortress . . . .102 ¶ The roadblock to meaningful reform so far has been a reluctance to rethink the Byzantine procedural structure that forms the very heart of the act . The only way to resolve the prob- lems of skyrocketing transactional costs, adversarial relationships between parents and teachers, and inequity is to replace IDEA’s dis- pute resolution model with genuine private choice for parents of disabled children. The battle between parents and educators must end with a decisive victory for parents, in the form of portable benefits. One state, Florida, has already has already moved in that direction. Under legislation passed in 1999 and expanded in 2000 and 2001, children with physical or mental disabil- ities are eligible for tuition scholarships that can be used to attend any public or private school of the family’s choice. Last year, just over 4,000 disabled children chose to use scholarships to attend a private school rather than their neighborhood public school.103 (See Appendix for a listing of some private schools that serve children with disabilities.) In order for voucher programs to be successful we must get rid of IDEA Gryphon and Salisbury 02 (Marie Gryphon Marie Gryphon is a freelance writer and a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at Harvard University. She was a Senior Fellow with the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy between 2007 and 2010, working on legal system reform. As a former legal and policy analyst with the Cato Institute from 2002 to 2006, she worked on issues related to education policy. Her articles have appeared in Business Week, the Washington Post, the Investors Business Daily, Barron’s, Forbes, National Law Journal, and elsewhere. As an attorney in private practice, she worked on ERISA, securities, class action, commercial contract, legal malpractice, and constitutional law cases. She holds a J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law. David alisbury worked extensively on school choice, home schooling, and testing and accountability. He promoted reform policies and private initiatives that strengthen the independent education system. Prior to joining Cato as the director of the Center for Educational Freedom, Salisbury was president of the Sutherland Institute, a free-market think tank in Salt Lake City, Utah, and executive director of Children First Utah, a nonprofit group that provided scholarship funds for children to attend the private school. He was a visiting scholar at the James Madison Institute for Public Policy Studies in Tallahassee, Florida, and a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lima in Lima, Peru and at the National University of San Augustin, in Arequipa, Peru. For 13 years, Salisbury served on the graduate faculty in the Department of Educational Research in the College of Education at Florida State University. He is author of the book Five Technologies for Educational Change and co-editor of Educational Freedom in Urban America: Brown v. Board After Half a Century and editor of What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries. His op-eds have appeared in such publications as USA Today, Forbes, the New York Post, and the American Spectator. Salisbury has also appeared on NPR’s Justice Talking, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, CNN’s Money & Markets, and other media. He holds a Ph.D. from Brigham Young University.¶ “Escaping IDEAFreeing Parents, Teachers, and Students through Deregulation and Choice” July 10, 2002 https://object.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa444.pdf) #JSKI Even then , a parent’s aggressive and savvy performance in the IEP fight will pay off—the amount of a McKay scholarship is determined by “the base student allocation in the Florida Education Finance Program multiplied by the appropriate cost factor for the educational program that would have been provided for the student in the district school to which he or she was assigned, multiplied by the district cost differential .”106 Accordingly, the parent who most effectively pressures the state for the most expensive ser- vices during the IEP process will be rewarded with a large scholarship amount under the ¶ Florida program, while similarly disabled chil- dren may receive less.¶ Because financial incentives still require schools and parents to fight through the IEP and due process procedures in Florida, inequities and waste persist in the state’s special education program. R ep. Rick Keller (R-Fla.) commented on the continuing burden IDEA places on the innovative Florida program, ¶ No matter which school I visit in Orlando, the message from the teachers is always the same—our bloated government regulations are burying them in paperwork, wasting precious hours that could be spent helping disabled children learn .107 ¶ For state-level choice-based reforms such as Florida’s program to live up to their poten- tial, they must be freed from IDEA’s burden- some processes. Degreulation of IDEA would give schools more money and lead to better education for students Gryphon and Salisbury 02 (Marie Gryphon Marie Gryphon is a freelance writer and a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at Harvard University. She was a Senior Fellow with the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy between 2007 and 2010, working on legal system reform. As a former legal and policy analyst with the Cato Institute from 2002 to 2006, she worked on issues related to education policy. Her articles have appeared in Business Week, the Washington Post, the Investors Business Daily, Barron’s, Forbes, National Law Journal, and elsewhere. As an attorney in private practice, she worked on ERISA, securities, class action, commercial contract, legal malpractice, and constitutional law cases. She holds a J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law. David alisbury worked extensively on school choice, home schooling, and testing and accountability. He promoted reform policies and private initiatives that strengthen the independent education system. Prior to joining Cato as the director of the Center for Educational Freedom, Salisbury was president of the Sutherland Institute, a free-market think tank in Salt Lake City, Utah, and executive director of Children First Utah, a nonprofit group that provided scholarship funds for children to attend the private school. He was a visiting scholar at the James Madison Institute for Public Policy Studies in Tallahassee, Florida, and a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lima in Lima, Peru and at the National University of San Augustin, in Arequipa, Peru. For 13 years, Salisbury served on the graduate faculty in the Department of Educational Research in the College of Education at Florida State University. He is author of the book Five Technologies for Educational Change and co-editor of Educational Freedom in Urban America: Brown v. Board After Half a Century and editor of What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries. His op-eds have appeared in such publications as USA Today, Forbes, the New York Post, and the American Spectator. Salisbury has also appeared on NPR’s Justice Talking, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, CNN’s Money & Markets, and other media. He holds a Ph.D. from Brigham Young University.¶ “Escaping IDEAFreeing Parents, Teachers, and Students through Deregulation and Choice” July 10, 2002 https://object.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa444.pdf) #JSKI Alternatively, Congress Could Create a Choice-Based Reform Option for States ¶ Although ideally all responsibility for spe- cial education should lie with the states, state lawmakers may find it politically impossible to turn down federal funds to pursue inde- pendent reform strategies, even if they deter- mine it would be good public policy to do so. Alternatively, Congress could amend IDEA to allow states to opt into a reformed special education system, which would eliminate the failed dispute resolution model entirely in favor of a state-administered, largely state- funded system based on parental choice .¶ A state would opt into the program by cre- ating a matrix of disability categories and monetary contributions designed to represent the total average cost of both general and spe- cial services required to educate a child in each category of disability. The state would then create a menu of special education services no less comprehensive than those currently avail- able in each school district and their estimated cost per child per hour or per semester, as appropriate. The matrix and menu would be submitted to the U.S. D epartment o f E ducatio n and approved for a five-year period ¶ if reasonably calculated to provide the state’s disabled children with adequate resources to obtain an appropriate education. ¶ Parents in “reform states” would be allowed to select from the menu of available special services offered by public schools, up to the amount of the child’s defined mone- tary contribution under the matrix, with the advice of special educators or anyone else the parents felt was appropriate. Or the parent could t ake his or her child’s total education- al allowance to a private school of choice. ¶ Because parental choice would replace negotiation as the method of determining a child’s educational plan, reform states would be exempt from all of the IEP and due process requirements of IDEA and would no longer be subject to civil suit for failure to provide an “appropriate” education. The sole remaining potential dispute would be the accuracy of the child’s diagnosis and, accord- ingly, the size of his or her monetary contri- bution. Reform states would be required to create rules for genuinely independent bind- ing arbitration of disputes related to the diagnosis of a child covered by IDEA. ¶ The end result for a state opting into reform would be a state-administered, largely state-funded portable benefits plan. ¶ A2: Public School Funding Tradeoff</p><p>Special Ed vouchers improve public schools </p><p>SCAFIDI 15 (, PH.D. Dr. Ben Scafidi, professor and director of the Education Economics Center at Kennesaw State University, measures U.S. public school employment growth versus student growth, as well as teacher salary fluctuations and student outcomes for the past 65 years. The results go against the grain of a common educational philosophy: that politicians should give public schools more money so they can pay teachers more and reduce class sizes.Can school choice help students with special needs?” Aug. 7, 2015 https://www.edchoice.org/school_choice_faqs/can-school-choice-help-students-with-special-needs/)#JSKI</p><p>FACT: Special-education vouchers encourage public schools to improve.¶ Just as is the case with vouchers in general, a special-education voucher that allows students with disabilities to leave can motivate public schools to serve their remaining students bette r. ¶ One study examined whether the academic achievement of students with special needs was affected by the number of options they had, if they left their public school with a voucher . In Florida, as more private schools that accept McKay funding opened near each public school, the standardized test scores of students with disabilities who remained in public schools increased significantly . The addition of about seven public schools with McKay funding within five miles of a public school improved the academic achievement of students with special needs by about .05 of a standard deviation . ¶ Virtually all Florida students with disabilities in public schools take the state-mandated test, so improvement in test results suggests that schools were serving those students better when they faced more competition from the McKay program . Vouchers do not drain public schools of their ability to serve disabled students; instead, schools are pushed to serve those students better .7 In fact, results from a 2011 study on the McKay program suggest that the voucher program tends to have a positive impact on the math and reading performances of students in public schools.8</p><p>Even with Vouchers public schools will be sufficiently funded Salisbury 03 (David Salisbury is director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute. alisbury worked extensively on school choice, home schooling, and testing and accountability. He promoted reform policies and private initiatives that strengthen the independent education system. Prior to joining Cato as the director of the Center for Educational Freedom, Salisbury was president of the Sutherland Institute, a free-market think tank in Salt Lake City, Utah, and executive director of Children First Utah, a nonprofit group that provided scholarship funds for children to attend the private school. He was a visiting scholar at the James Madison Institute for Public Policy Studies in Tallahassee, Florida, and a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lima in Lima, Peru and at the National University of San Augustin, in Arequipa, Peru. For 13 years, Salisbury served on the graduate faculty in the Department of Educational Research in the College of Education at Florida State University. He is author of the book Five Technologies for Educational Change and co-editor of Educational Freedom in Urban America: Brown v. Board After Half a Century and editor of What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries. His op-eds have appeared in such publications as USA Today, Forbes, the New York Post, and the American Spectator. Salisbury has also appeared on NPR’s Justice Talking, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, CNN’s Money & Markets, and other media. He holds a Ph.D. from Brigham Young University. “Lessons from Florida¶ School Choice Gives Increased Opportunities to Children with Special Needs” March 20, 2003 https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp81.pdf )#JSKI The McKay Scholarship Program was¶ designed to be revenue neutral. McKay stu- dents take to their new schools only those funds that would be s pent on their education in the public school . At the same time, public schools experience a decreased enrollment burden proportionate to the loss of students and fund s. Of course, public schools have fixed costs that are not reduced by slight declines in student enrollment. For example, the cost of buildings, maintenance, teachers, and administration is not reduced apprecia- bly by the departure of a few students using McKay scholarships. On the other hand, McKay scholarships come out of state funds, which constitute approximately 51 percent of total education revenues . When a student uses a McKay scholarship to attend a private school, the local funds that were being used to educate that student remain in the public schools . Since local funding constitutes approximately 41 percent of total education funding in the state , this should be a suffi- cient amount of revenue to cover a school’s fixed costs.29¶ In addition to local funds, all federal funds received by the state for special educa- tion programs (approximately 9 percent of all special education funding ) are retained by the Florida Department of Education. Some of these funds are passed on to local districts to be used for special education programs.30 Also, in recognition of the higher operating costs in smaller districts or districts experi- encing decreasing enrollment, the state’s funding formula includes a “declining enroll- ment supplement” and a “sparsity supple- ment” that are designed to augment funding for such districts.31¶ Given that not all revenues appropriated are included in the calculation of the McKay scholarship amount, the fiscal impact of the McKay program on public schools is slightly positive . According to the Florida Department of Education, funding elements not included in the McKay scholarship amount provide rev- enue of roughly $560 per student above the average McKay scholarship.32 That is the aver- age amount of additional revenue that stays with the district when a student leaves the public school using a McKay scholarship. Those funds can be used to cover necessary fixed costs or to enhance special and regular education programs for the students who remain in public schools. A2: Hensel Hensel is wrong - voucher programs are better for disabled students Buck 12 (Stuart Buck – Director of Research, Laura and John Arnold Foundation. J.D. cur laude, Harvard Law School; 2012; Journal of Law and Education; “Special Education Vouchers Are Beneficial: A Response to Hensel”; http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page? handle=hein.journals/jle41&div=40&collection=journals; accessed 7/4/17) [DS] B. Global Concerns about Special Education Vouchers? Hensel added that there are "global" concerns with special education voucher programs-concerns that apply even if private schools are doing a satisfactory job serving special education voucher students.59 First, Hensel contended that most of the students served by special education voucher systems tend to be the less disabled and that when they depart the public school system, the more severely disabled children remaining behind face a smaller pool of funding to meet their more heightened needs.6° Ironically, Hensel laments the prospect of even a portion of federal funds following students to private schools, 61 even after criticizing special education vouchers for their "modest amount of funding."62 However, if giving vouchers to special education students somehow harmed the remaining public school students, one would expect there to be empirical evidence of that harm. The evidence is the opposite . In a 2008 study, Greene and Winters examined whether the academic achievement of special education students was affected by their number of options to leave their public school with a voucher.63 In Florida, as more private schools that accept McKay funding opened near each public school, the standardized test scores of disabled students who remained in public schools significantly increased.' The addition of about seven private schools eligible for McKay funding within five miles of a public school improved the academic achievement of special education students remaining in that traditional public school by about .05 of a standard deviation.65 Improvement in test results suggests that public schools were serving those students better when they faced more competition from the McKay program.66 Vouchers do not drain public schools of their ability to serve disabled students ; instead, schools are pushed to serve those students better . Next, Hensel argues that with special education vouchers, too many of the less disabled special education students may end up going to private schools, leaving the more disabled students behind in "segregated" environments rather than embedded in a more enriching classroom environment with the other students.67 But if an autistic child can be mainstreamed into a regular classroom already, it is hard to see why that mainstreaming depends on the continued presence of another student with, for example, mild dyslexia. Further, Greene and Forster found in Florida "that students with more severe disabilities are not underrepresented in the McKay program" which would make " segregation" of the more disabled students unlikely.68 In any event, Hensel's own highest estimate is that "in some grades as many as 12% of the eligible special needs students could ultimately exit into private schools. ' 69 For the foreseeable future, the vast majority of special education students will be educated in public schools, and it is hard to see how any meaningful segregation within the public school system would result from the numbers of special education students that have departed or would likely depart public schools with vouchers. As for the students entering private schools, their parents presumably perceive some advantage that outweighs any alleged "segregation." If they are wrong, they remain free to re- enter the public school system. Next, Hensel argued that wealth and race may play a problematic role in who gets and uses vouchers.7 " The evidence here is so diverse that it does not point to any definitive involvement of wealth and race.7 " By Hensel's own account, the Florida special education voucher program does a good job serving poor people but the voucher recipients in Georgia and Ohio tend not to be quite as poor.72 This pattern does not show that wealth discrimination necessarily inheres in special education vouchers, and one would not expect to see all voucher systems serve a perfect mirror image of the rest of the population. Hensel also noted that both Florida and Georgia do well at serving minority students,73 but she turned this fact on its head by noting that most of these students attend religious schools and are thereby "most at risk" of being harmed by vouchers.74 Vouchers cannot win in this analysis : if they do not serve enough minority students, then they are a privilege for whites, but if vouchers do serve enough minorities, then the minorities are somehow being harmed. Finally, Hensel claimed that a special education voucher program could possibly lead to "enhanced tension with school administrators and general education," namely, over the question of which students are determined to be eligible for special education services, and therefore for vouchers." However, it is hard to see how this parent-school tension could be any greater than what already exists . In the current system, parents who are dissatisfied with special education services and are unwilling to accept the situation are forced into expensive lawsuits that few will win. According to Mayes and Zirkel's empirical analysis of this type of case, "school districts won the clear majority (62.5%) of the decisions"7 6 These lawsuits often lead to enormous tension. The New York Times reported that in one Tennessee county, "school officials spent $2.2 million on lawyers and expert witnesses to avoid having to reimburse Maureen and Philip Deal the $60,000 annual cost of providing their autistic son, Zachary, with one-on-one behavioral training," while "[i]n Calaveras County, Calif., the Bret Harte Union High School District fought so hard to block the claims of a student that Judge Oliver W. Wanger of the United States District Court took 83 pages to berate the district's 'hard-line position' and its law firm for 'willfully and vexatiously' dragging out the case so long that the former student is now 24.*"" Special education vouchers, far from increasing the tension between schools and parents, offer an outlet that could ameliorate existing tension. M. CONCLUSION Contrary to Hensel's article, special education vouchers are nothing fearsome. Private placement already exists under federal law, and several times as many students avail themselves of that right as compared to the recipients of special education vouchers. All that special education vouchers do is add another legal arrow to the disabled student's quiver . States CP 1NC CP Text: The fifty state governments of the United States should adopt and enforce a Quality of Life framework for students with disabilities that aligns with present requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. States are the best actor for students with disabilities – federal action will always fail Kiley 17 (Kathleen Kiley has been a journalist for 20 years. She began her career on Wall Street, writing for Investment Dealers’ Digest, reporting on mergers and acquisitions. She has written for national business magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times. She has mostly recently worked with a Fortune 500 healthcare company on building an Intranet site to keep global marketers informed on industry trends. Prior to becoming a journalist, she was a business analyst for Dun & Bradstreet. “Minority Students With Disabilities Fast-Tracked to Prison: Activist Leroy Moore, Jr. Talks Solutions” Jan 06, 2017¶ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-kiley/minority-students-with-disabilities_b_8912862.html)#JSKI Civil rights issues deal with unfair discrimination on the basis of characteristics such as race, class and disability. Filtering students with disabilities into the prison pipeline and otherwise using school policies to discriminate against them is a violation of basic civil rights. At the federal level, legislation such as the C ivil Ri ghts A cts and IDEA provide limited protections, but they are not enough to secure equal treatment in schools specifically , or in society in general. While local schools and districts are fighting to secure these rights more fully, more needs to be done at the state and federal level to ensure that rights are secured through out the system, not just school by school. ¶ States must look to systematically address the role of racism and discrimination in solving chronic inequities in the special needs system. I’m not the only one saying this. There are many others, including Jane Dunhamn, the founder of the National Black Disability Coalition (NBDC), and the parent of a successful daughter with cerebral palsy. Today NBDC is working on getting Black Disability Studies into colleges and universities, as well as its National Campaign for Minority Disability Legislation. She argues that addressin g these inequities would require “reinventing and disrupting policy and practice.” She also says that mainstream disability-rights organizations and government agencies must actively work on these issues. The disability community must have a meaningful conversation about race, racism and discrimination . Dunhamn’s policy work has had a major effect on Black and poor people with disabilities. Solves DR States are key to address disproportional representation in special education Posny 07 (Alexa Posny Director Office of Special Education Programs, “proportionality of Racial and Ethnic Groups in Special Education”, April 24, 2007, https://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/idea/memosdcltrs/osep07- 09disproportionalityofracialandethnicgroupsinspecialeducation.pdf, JR) The disproportionate representation of minority students in special education is an important issue for States to address . The Department believes that States and LEAs are making a concerted effort to reduce racial and ethnic disproportionality in identification, placement, and disciplinary actions . This memorandum references the key provisions under Part B of IDEA regarding the responsibilities of States and LEAs in addressing disproportionality . It is critical for States to understand the differences in the requirements between the monitoring priority indicators that address disproportionality that is the result of inappropriate identification [20 U .S .C. 1416(a)(3)(C) ; 34 CFR §300 .600(d)(3)] and the separate and distinct obligation to collect and examine numerical data to determine if significant disproportionality is occurring . [20 U.S .C. §1418(d); 34 CFR §300 .646(b)] See the attached chart that clearly presents these two distinct requirements . Queer Disabled Futurism K Notes On Stanley & Language I did a little more reading on this question than I really need to. The reason being that this is genuinely fascinating — “LGBTQ+” folks have spent a lot of time trying to define the words to describe themselves and discussing whether to reclaim certain terms.</p><p>During our lifetimes, “que*r” was not primarily a slur, rather a reclaimed term used as a point of pride... However it used to be a slur Wortham 16 — Jenna Wortham, 7-12-2016 ("When Everyone Can Be ‘Queer,’ Is Anyone?", New York Times, Accessed Online at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/magazine/when-everyone-can-be-queer-is-anyone.html?_r=0, Accessed on 7-19-2017, ES) The word became linked to sexual behavior in the early 1900s, as a derogatory term for men deemed effeminate and others who upended traditional gender roles and appearances. As homosexuality was classified as a mental illness and made punishable by law, the word snowballed into a full-blown slur, heard everywhere from the playground (“smear the queer”) to intellectual duels (William F. Buckley Jr. to Gore Vidal: “Now listen, you queer”). This halo of negativity began to dim somewhat in the 1970s, when the word was reclaimed by activists and academics. Not only did its deliberate looseness make it a welcome alternative to the rigidity of “gay” and “lesbian,” it also turned the alienating force of the slur into a point of pride. (Though it is still considered offensive by some.) A manifesto distributed at New York City’s Pride parade in 1990 by Queer Nation, a prominent and controversial gay-rights group, put it this way: “When a lot of lesbians and gay men wake up in the morning, we feel angry and disgusted, not gay. So we’ve chosen to call ourselves queer. Using ‘queer’ is a way of reminding us how we are perceived by the rest of the world.” It was a radical word for a radical time. Protesters and advocacy groups — particularly communities of color — took it up to gather support for the fight against the AIDS crisis and for gay rights. “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it ” became a popular chant. Academics saw queerness as possessing revolutionary potential. Eve Sedgwick, a professor at Duke who is considered one of the founders of queer theory, described queerness as an “open mesh of possibilities.” David Halperin, a founder of an academic journal on queer studies, describes queerness as a practice, one that is an “exhilarating personal experiment, performed on ourselves by ourselves.” Writing in 1995, Halperin bemoaned the dilution of what he felt was a subversive word. “There is now a right way to be queer ... to invert the norms of straight society,” he scoffed, referring to clothes, haircuts, piercings, even diets tailored to gay and lesbian buyers. “How can queer modes of consumption count as resistant cultural practices?” Eight years later, the hit makeover show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” debuted on Bravo, literalizing Halperin’s concerns. Each episode culminated in a lavish shopping trip that distilled gay culture down to clothes and hair products — and it was all done in the service of straight men.</p><p>Another term used by Stanley is “f*g” — and there are different perspectives on this — but most of my research agrees with this perspective that it isn’t okay to reclaim f*g *note — the context of this article is a straight musician trying to reclaim the term — that’s obviously not okay Tharrett 14 — Matthew Tharrett, 5-20-2014 ("No, Everyone, It’s Not Okay To “Reclaim” The Word “Faggot”", Queerty*, Accessed Online at https://www.queerty.com/no-everyone-its-not-okay-to-reclaim-the-word-faggot-20140520, Accessed on 7-19-2017, ES) The problem at the root of this whole “reclaiming” business is simple: You’re not allowed to tell people what they are allowed to be offended by. You cannot call someone a “faggot” and impose your meaning of that word onto them — if that person is offended by the word, there is no amount of “reappropriation” that will make it acceptable. You have offended them, and whether you think their reaction is valid or “oversensitive” is irrelevant. We’re not talking about a group of people who dislike the word “panties” here, we’re talking about an entire community that has suffered at the hands of bullies using homophobic epithets for centuries. Odd Future’s use of the word “faggot” is just as offensive as Harvey Fierstein using it to slight Johnny Weir, the same as the term “she-mail” is offensive to the trans community. No, you’re not allowed to appropriate “faggot” to mean something positive. It’s not a positive word. The next time you call someone “faggot” in an endearing way, remember that it’s the last word LGBT victims all over the world heard moments before they were murdered.</p><p>However, that doesn’t mean you don’t use the term. Tharrett would clearly agree that there is a distinction between trying to have gay men reclaim the term “f*g” and saying the term as descriptive of the slur used against gay men — as proven by the fact that Tharrett does use the word “f*g”. I also had a hard time finding a reason why it’s “okay” to reclaim the q-slur but not “f*g” — I’m probably going to keep doing research about this just because I’m curious. </p><p>(I have not written the terms referenced above because there is some discussion of whether people who don’t claim a term (e.g. I am not gay, therefore I would never claim the term “f*g”) should use it. I think it is likely considered “okay” to quote Stanley and reference Stanley’s work which includes slurs even if you are not “q*eer”. However — there isn’t a very defined consensus on this. </p><p>Overall — I don’t foresee that being an issue. The work itself has no issue.</p><p>However — it could be argued that there is an individual ethical issue with reading Stanley’s work if you are not LGBT or LGBT+ (note: there may be some who would argue people who fall into the “QIAA+” portion of the acronym are not “okay” to use the terms in this card… e.g. while asexual people are not “straight”, plenty of people (myself included) would argue they are not “q*eer”). I’m not a super huge adherent to this theory — I think you can cite authors who are making the point in their own ways. I don’t think that anti-q*eer violence operates on the same level as anti-black violence such that a “straight” person using the term “q*eer” when quoting Stanley is similar to a non- black person using the n-word, even when quoting a black author. I also think that there’s a difference between using a term and claiming a term. For example — if you read Wortham’s full article you realize Wortham is fundamentally a criticism of the label/identity of the term “q*eer” being expanded past LGBT individuals to include, for example, gender non- conforming cis people. However, I don’t exactly think Wortham would say that you cannot utter the term “q*eer” but rather that you cannot describe yourself as q*eer. </p><p>I’d also like to add, on a side note, that you cannot lose on this argument in a debate (although yes, if you don’t think your social location and your theorization of how this language should be used means you get to speak, then do not read this argument). If anyone ever asks you your sexual orientation or gender identity (in or out of debate) that is messed up. ) 1NC Futurism opposes queer-disabled populations, the only alternative is to reject the future. Kafer 13,Allison Kafer is an Associate Professor of Feminist Studies at Southwestern, MA, PhD, Claremont Graduate University, BA at Wake Forest University, 2013( “Feminist, Queer, Crip,” pg. 28-31, google books, 5-16, Accessed 7/14/2017) No Future for Crips Lee Edelman has famously argued that queers and queer theory would be better off refusing the future altogether. (“Fuck the Future,” as Carla Freccero puts it.)“ Building on Lauren Berlant’s work on the figure of the child in American politics, Edelman argues tfhat futurity —an investment in and attention to the future or futures—is almost always figured in reproductive terms : we cannot “conceive of a future without the figure of the Child. " As a result, the Child serves as "the telos of the social order," the one for whom we all act, “the fantasmatic beneficiary of every political intervention.“ I-Ie offers as an example abortion rhetoric, noting that both pro-choice and antiabortion activists frame their fight as on behalf of the children." Patrick McCreery traces a similar parallel among both opponents and supporters of gay marriage: depending on ones stance, gay mar- riage either destroys children's well-being or enhances it, but both sides agree that the future of children is what is at stake in the debate and therefore what should guide our decisions.“ For those in both fights, then, the struggle becomes no longer about rights or justice or desire or autonomy but about the future of “our” children. Both of these examples show the slipperiness of arguments based on the Child and reproductive futu- rity; one can mobilize the same rhetoric toward mutually opposing goals. What Edelman draws out is the coercive nature of such frames: it is not only that we can use the “future of our children” frame but that we should or must use it; politics itself is and can only be centered around the Child , foreclosing all other possibilities for action. Reading from a queer crip perspective, I can easily see the ways in which “ the future ," especially as figured through the “Child,” is used to buttress able- bodied/able- minded heteronormativity. First, the proliferation of prenatal testing, much of which presumes that all positive diagnoses will be “solved” through selective abortion, is a clear manifestation of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness. As we will see in the following chapters, pregnant women with disabilities and pregnant women whose fetuses have tested “positive” for various conditions are understood as threats to the future: they have failed to guarantee a better future by bringing the right kind of Child into the present." Thus the idealization of the Child as the frontier of politics, the framing that troubles Edelman, should concern crip readers as well; discourses of reproduction, generation, and inheritance are shot through with anxiety about disability. These sites of reproductive futurity demand a Child that both resembles the parents and exceeds them; “we” all want “our” children to be rnore healthy, more active, stronger and smarter than we are, and we are supposed to do everything in our power to make that happen. The Child through whom legacies are passed down is, without doubt, able-bodied/able-minded. Second, a politics based in futurity leads easily to an ethics of endless deferral. "We're held in thrall by a future continually deferred by time itself,” Edelman notes, and this deferment serves to consolidate the status quo.“ Focusing always on the better future, we divert our attention from the here and now; “ We are rendered doc-ile ,” in other words, “ through our unwitting obedience to the future. "“ This phrasing is telling: “held in thrall,” “rendered docile,” “unwitting obedience”—each phrase signals stagnation and acquiescence, an inability to move in any direction because of a permanently forward-looking gaze. This deferral, this firm focus on the future, is often expressed in terms of cure and rehabilitation, and is thereby bound up in nor- malizing approaches to the mind/body. Disability activists have long railed against a politics of endless deferral that pours economic and cultural resources into “curing” future disabled people (by preventing them from ever coming into existence) while ignoring the needs and experiences of disabled people in the present.” This kind of focus on futurity does disabled people no favors, yet it is one of the most common ways of framing disability: we must cure Ierry’s kids now so that there will be no more Ierry’s kids in the future. Moreover, everything from sterilization to institu- tionalization, from bone- lengthening surgeries to growth attenuation, has been jus- tified on the grounds that such acts will lead to better futures for the disabled person andlor for their communities. Within these discourses, disability cannot appear as anything other than failure. Third, eugenic histories certainly bear the mark of reproductive futurity. Even keeping only to the United States, and only to the past one hundred years or so, exam- ples abound of how concerns about the future of the “race” and the future of the nation (futures often depicted as intertwined) have been wrapped up in fears and anxieties about disability. Tens of thousands of people diagnosed with various “defects” were targeted by eugenic professionals and policies for the first half of the twentieth cen- tury, classified. and managed in order to contain the alleged risks they posed to public health. The category of “defectives” included not only people with disabilities but also people from “suspect” racial, ethnic, and religious groups as well as poor people, sex- ual “delinquents,” and immigrants from the “wrong” countries. All were united under flexible concepts of degeneracy, defect, and disability, with "feeble-minded” serving as one of the most eifective, and expansive, classifications of all. People placed into one or more of these categories might be tracked by family records oflices, institutionalized and segregated from the public, sterilized against their will, barred from entering the country, or, in extreme cases, euthanized. Schools and universities included the study of eugenics in their curriculum, both disseminating and reifying these concepts of degeneration and defect. In many states, sterilization came to be seen as a necessary means of protecting the health of the race and the nation from further degeneration; as Oliver Wendell Holmes asserted in the infamous 1927 Buck v. Bell decision uphold- ing Virginia's compulsory sterilization policies, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough."‘»' While many overtly eugenic policies began to wane in the 1930s and 1940s, eugenic ideologies and practices did not fully disappear but rather flourished well into the Cold War and beyond." Virginia’s sterilization law was not repealed until 1974, and coerced or forced sterilization of women of color, poor women, indigenous women, and disabled women persisted throughout most of the twentieth century; even today, under cer- tain circumstances, disabled people can be sterilized without their consent, and poor women, immigrant women, and women of color continue to have their reproductive futures curtailed by the courts and the legislature.” Institutionalization remains a common response to disabled people, particularly those with "severe" disabilities; despite the Supreme Court’s 1999 decision in Olmstead, which aflirmed the right of disabled people to live in their home communities, many states continue to prioritize funding for institutions over funding community-based care.“ State governments across the country are responding to budget crises with cuts to health care and dis- ability services, especially in-home attendant care; given that many disabled people require such services in order to live independently, disability rights activists and health advocates note that even more disabled people, especially disabled people of color and low-income disabled people, are being forced into nursing homes or out onto the street. These trends do not bode well for the futures of disabled people, even as they are touted as necessary for preserving the future health of the state and the nation. Indeed, at one time or another, each of these practices— sterilization, segregation, exclusion, institutionalization — has been justified by concerns about “the future” and particularly future children. For example, Mary Storer Kostir, an assistant at the Ohio Bureau of luvenile Research, argued in a 1916 publication that "physically rigorous but mentally feeble persons are a social menace. . . . Their children threaten to overwhelm the civilization of the future. . . . [We] must also consider our children, and not burden the future with an incubus of mental deficiency?” In making her case for segregat- ing those labeled “feeble-minded,” Kostir weighs the futures of “our” children against those other children, the ones who are mentally deficient, threatening, and burden- some. A 1933 pamphlet by the Human Betterment Foundation similarly warns against the “burden” of "feeble-minded” children, noting that the failure to practice “eugenic sterilization” produces effects that are “disastrous . . . in future generations.“ In these kinds of eugenic discourses, children serve as the sign of the future; the kind of future that awaits us will be determined by the kind of children we bear. Illness, “defect,” “deviance,” and disability are positioned as fundamentally damaging to the fabric of the community : polluting the gene pool , or weakening the nation , or destroying a fam- ily’s quality of life, or draining public services (or, often, some combination of the four). To put it bluntly, disabled people were—and often are—figured as threats to futurity. Whole books have been written about each of these practices, and this brief, sweeping history cannot begin to do justice to the material or, especially, to the bodies invoked by this material. Such broad summaries all too easily erase differences among people with disabilities, differences not only of race, class, sexuality, gender, and his- tory but also of impairment; there are many bodies falling through the cracks of this overview. And yet, it is imperative to establish a pattern , to demonstrate that we have long felt and acted on the belief that disability destroys the future, or that a future with disability must be avoided at all costs. It is this pattern, these histories, that makes the question of the future so vexed. I can see clearly how futurity has been the cause of much violence against disabled people, such that “fuck the future” can seem the only viable crip response.</p><p>Queer populations succumb to unmarked graves. Stanley 11 Eric Stanley is Prof. President’s Postdoctoral fellow in the departments of Communication and Critical Gender Studies at the University of California, San Diego, 2011 (“Near Life, Queer Death: Overkill and Ontological Capture”, Accessed 7/17/2017) ***Language in this card is not endorsed*** What if it feels good to kill or mutilate homos? —Anonymous, restroom wall, University of California, Santa Cruz, ca. 2006–2008 A feeling of inferiority? No, a feeling of nonexistence. —Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks “Dirty faggot!” Or simply, “Look, a Gay!” These words launch a bottle from a passing car window, the target my awaiting body. In other moments they articulate the sterilizing glares and violent fantasies that desire, and threaten to enact, my corporal undoing. Besieged, I feel in the fleshiness of the everyday like a kind of near life or a death-in- waiting . Catastrophically, this imminent threat constitutes for the queer that which is the sign of vitality itself. What then becomes of the possibility of queer life, if queerness is produced always and only through the negativity of forced death and at the threshold of obliteration? Or as Achille Mbembe has provocatively asked, in the making of a kind of corporality that is constituted in the social as empty of meaning beyond the anonymity of bone, “But what does it mean to do violence to what is nothing ?”1 In another time and place, “ ‘Dirty nigger!’ Or simply, ‘Look, a Negro!’ ” (“Sale nègre! ou simplement: Tiens, un nègre!”) opened Frantz Fanon’s chapter 5 of Black Skin, White Masks, “The Lived Experience of the Black” (“L’expérience vécue du Noir”), infamously mistranslated as “The Fact of Blackness.”2 I start with “Dirty faggot!” against a logic of flattened substitution and toward a political commitment to non-mimetic friction. After all, the racialized phenomenology of blackness under colonization that Fanon illustrates may be productive to read against and with a continuum of antiqueer violence in the United States. The scopic and the work of the visual must figure with such a reading of race, gender, and sexuality. It is argued, and rightfully so, that the instability of queerness obscures it from the epidermalization that anchors (most) bodies of color in the fields of the visual. When thinking about the difference between anti-Semitism and racism, which for Fanon was a question of the visuality of oppression, he similarly suggests, “the Jew can be unknown in his Jewishness.”3 Here it may be useful to reread Fanon through an understanding of passing and the visual that reminds us that Jews can sometimes not be unknown in their Jewishness. Similarly I ask why antiqueer violence, more often than not, is correctly levied against queers. In other words, the productive discourse that wishes to suggest that queer bodies are no different might miss moments of signification where queer bodies do in fact signify differently. This is not to suggest that there is an always locatable, transhistorical queer body, but the fiercely flexible semiotics of queerness might help us build a way of knowing antiqueer violence that can provisionally withstand the weight of generality. 4 Indeed, not all who might identify under the name queer experience the same relationship to violence. For sure, the overwhelming numbers of trans/queer people who are murdered in the United States are of color. 5 Similarly, trans/gender nonconforming people, people living with HIV/AIDS and/or other ability issues, undocumented and imprisoned trans/ queer people, sex workers, and working-class queers , among others, experience a disproportionate amount of structural violence . In turn, this structural violence more often than not predisposes them to a greater amount of interpersonal violence. Yet many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) folks in the United States who have access to normative power may in their daily lives know very little about either structural or personal violence. The long history and magnified present of gay assimilation illustrates these varying degrees of possibility and power available to some at the expense of others. In contrast, I am marking queer as the horizon where identity crumbles and vitality is worked otherwise. To this end, queer might be a productive placeholder to name a nonidentity where force is made to live . This is not to suggest that the negativity of queer and methodologies of violence define the end of queer worlding or that the parameters of opposition are sedimented as such. 6 On the contrary, the very fact that queers do endure is evidence, as Fred Moten has beautifully argued about the history of blackness in relation to slavery, that “objects can and do resist.” I start here, in reference to Fanon’s text, because he continues to offer us among the most compelling analyses of structural abjection, (non)rec-cognition, and psychic/corporal violence. “Look, a Negro!” violently freezes Fanon in a timeless place as a black object, overdetermined from without, as a signifier with no meaning of its own making. In a similar way, the “dirty faggot” of my opening places queerness in the anonymity of history and shocks it into the embodied practice of feeling queer in a particular place, body, and time. This meditation will attempt to understand how the queer approximates the cutting violence that marks the edges of subjectivity itself. Race and gender figure the contours of my thinking on the work of violence in the gathering up of queer remains. Here the force of violence that interests me is not introduced after the formation of something that might be called queer. I am using the term queer to precisely index the collision of difference and violence. In other words, queer is being summoned to labor as the moment when bodies, non-normative sexuality/genders, and force materialize the im/possibility of subjectivity. Against an identity that assumes a prior unity, queer disrupts this coherence and also might function as a collective of negativity, void of a subject but named as object, retroactively visible through the hope of a radical politics to come. Futurism Link Futurism opposes queer-disabled populations. Rohrer 14, Judy Rohrer is the Director of the Institute for Citizenship and Social Responsibility and an Assistant Professor in Diversity and Community Studies at WKU, 2014(“QUEERING THE BIOPOLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP IN THE AGE OF OBAMA”, 64-66, Accessed 7/14/2017) Feminist disability studies scholar Alison Kafer would argue that anxieties over non-heterosexual reproduction point not just to fears of “unnatural” non-procreative sex and racial hybridity, but also to cultural anxiety over failures to comply with the cultural mandate that we must do everything possible to prevent disability and queerness. She explicates this in her analysis of the 2002 media sensationalization and cultural sanctioning of two Deaf lesbians who sought out a deaf sperm donor to increase the chances that they might have a deaf child, which they did. They were doubly condemned for their “unnatural” and “selfish” desire for a queer disabled family (Kafer 2013, 77-78). Kafer writes: I want to suggest that stories of Deaf lesbians intentionally striving for Deaf babies be read as counternarratives to mainstream stories about the necessity of a cure for deafness and disability, about the dangers of nonnormative queer parents having children. Their stories challenge the feasibility of technological promises of an “amazing future” in which impairment is cured through genetic and medical intervention, thereby resisting a compulsory able-bodied/able-minded heterosexuality that insists upon normal minds/bodies. (Kafer 2013, 84) The “genetic and medical intervention” that Kafer mentions marks a history of biopolitical regulation of the lives of people with disabilities. The medical model of disability constructs disability as a biological mistake or brokenness that ought to be cured or fixed. As such it is not something that one should ever celebrate or desire, as these Deaf lesbians did. A “future for the children” is always one without disability. The fact that this assertion continues to be regarded as common sense (and therefore apolitical), in a time when a parallel assertion about a future without queers is more likely to be challenged, is evidence of the strength of the medicalization of disability. Because a non-disabled future is the proper desire of the proper citizen, it is very difficult for those living with disabilities to have their full citizenship recognized and valued. Robert McRuer also wants to highlight resistance, arguing that the unscripted, “unnatural” lives of “queers and crips” are examples of a “resistance to becoming normate,” which recognizes that “compulsory heterosexuality is contingent on compulsory able-bodiedness, and visa versa” (McRuer 2006, 198 and 2). Here we see the mutual constitution of disability with non-normative sexuality, most evident in historic pathologization. These theorists and others make clear that because these queer lives resist convention and refuse “reproductive futurity,” they are often unintelligible to others and met with dismissal or violent hostility. That violence reveals the biopolitical management of life chances—the coercive side of the complex workings or blood logics, compulsory heterosexuality, white supremacy, and ableism to produce the normative citizen of the state’s desire. All of this is partly to say that simply being categorized as disabled does not automatically make one resist reproductive futurity any more than being labeled queer does. In fact, since the sexualities and reproductivities (or expected lack thereof) of queers and crips are at the heart of justifying our exclusion, there is a strong desire in these communities toward hetero-/homonormative able-bodied reproductivity (which is not to suggest that there are not plenty of queer/crip parents desiring and raising queer/crip kids). In “Disability Nationalism in Crip Times,” McRuer compares developmental moments in queer theory to disability studies and evolving crip theory. He points to scholars like Jasbir Puar and Roderick Ferguson who are at the critical edge of queer theory. They are assisting in “examining the uneven biopolitical incorporation of gay men and lesbians—ana even ‘queers’ or queerness—into global economies, empire, the nation, and the state, even as other subjects are newly queered, marked as excessive, or targeted for death or elimination” (McRuer 2010, 169). As I discussed earlier, Puar names the ways lesbians and gays participate in racialized nationalist projects “homonationalism” and 1 have demonstrated how it has played out in Prop 8 campaigning. McRuer would like to see disability studies/crip theory recognize and attend to disability’s “uneven biopolitical incorporation” or as he suggests in his title “disability nationalism.” He suggests that it has taken longer to get to an analysis of how disability is now being incorporated into and used by the state, because disability as a biopolitical category has been so managed by the state, and has generated a movement striking back at the level of the state. McRuer’s argument ties directly to my assertion that we need to get better at understanding how governmentality and biopolitics work together. Building that understanding requires tne type of self/movement reflection he is suggesting. It means seeing broad ranges of practice between complicity and resistance in “who may desire the state’s desire,” and wno may desire otherwise. This is a particularly important argument to make with regard to disability politics because of the way disability continues to be thought of as somehow a Natural category, outside history and politics. Blacks, natives, queers, crips, all combinations thereof and other non- normative subjectivities (and the collectivities or political movements we generate), are all vulnerable to governmentality and biopolitics. We are vulnerable both to seduction of our desire for state recognition (and the disciplining that compels), and to coercive administration of life chances. Apocalypse Impact Link Securing ourselves against the incoming apocalypse relies on futurism that is inaccessible to queer populations. Kouri-Towe 13, Natalie Kouri-Towe is a Lecturer in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh starting in September 2017. She has worked previously as a visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Thorneloe University at Laurentian in Sudbury, Ontario and an instructor at the University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier University. She completed her PhD in 2015 in the department of Social Justice Education (formerly named: Sociology and Equity Studies in Education), OISE and the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto, 2013 (“Queer Apocalypse: Survivalism and Queer Life at the End”, FUSE, June 16, http://fusemagazine.org/2013/06/36-3_kouri-owe, Accessed 7/20/2017) Queer adjective • Strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Also: of questionable character; suspicious, dubious. noun informal • colloq. (freq. derogatory). A homosexual; esp. a male homosexual. verb informal • To put out of order; to spoil. Also: to spoil the reputation or chances of (a person); to put (a person) out of favour (with another). • To cause (a person) to feel queer; to disconcert, perturb, unsettle. Now rare. [1] The apocalypse is coming and queers are going to spoil it. As narratives of impending apocalypse and postapocalyptic survival permeate our cultural and political landscapes, it becomes increasingly easy to imagine our end. Whether the end of a sustainable environment, the end of culture, or the end of global capitalist economies, the end of life as we know it is both a terrifying possibility and a promising fantasy of a radically different form of life beyond the present. Mainstream depictions of postapocalyptic survival largely centre on the archetypical figure of the male saviour or hero, and advance a familiar patriarchal instrumentalization of women’s bodies as vessels for the survival of the human species. But what alternate stories might we tell about the end, and how might a queer framework reshape our apocalyptic narratives? The proposal to think queerly about the apocalypse is not an attempt to rescue apocalypse stories from the insidious reproduction of hegemonic relations; rather it is an opportunity to playfully consider what queer approaches to survival at the end might offer to our rethinking of the present. Apocalyptic narratives are appealing because we find it hard to imagine a radically different social and political world without the complete destruction of the institutions and economies that were built and sustained through colonial and imperial violence and exploitation. If we are already thinking and talking about the apocalypse, then queer thinking about the apocalypse serves as an opportunity for rethinking narratives of politics in both the future and the present. As global, structural, economic and political asymmetries accelerate, more people live in conditions lacking basic resources like food and water, and increasingly suffer from criminalization and incarceration. It is clear that postapocalyptic survival is also not simply a fiction but a daily reality for many people. From refugee camps to welfare reforms, survival is more than an exercise in imagining a different world. But, even for those who are not living through conditions of catastrophic loss, thinking about apocalypse is enticing. We take pleasure in imagining how we might prepare or attempt survival in a shifted environment because to imagine how we might live differently is to introduce new realms of possibility for living differently in our present. So how can we reconcile both the demand for attending to the crisis of survival in the present and the fantasy of postapocalypse? Here queerness might offer us some considerations for rethinking the apocalypse and narratives of survival. Queer Survivalism Survivalism noun • A policy of trying to ensure one’s own survival or that of one’s social or national group. • The practicing of outdoor survival skills. [2] If survivalism is wrapped up in the preservation of the nation state, of race, of gender or of our social order in general, then the first contribution of queerness to the apocalypse is its disruption to the framing of who and what survives, and how. There can be no nation in queer postapocalyptic survival, because the nation presents a foundational problem to queer survival. The nation, which regulates gender and reproduction, requires normalized organizations of sexual and family life in order to reproduce or preserve the national population. If we are already at the end, then why not consider survival without the obligation of reproduction and the heteronormative family? Masculinist narratives of postapocalyptic survival deploy the male protagonist as the extension of the nation. Here, the male hero stands in the place of the military, the police or the law by providing safety and security to his family and “weak” survivors like children and animals. Queer survivalism, on the other hand, disrupts the normative embodiments of survivalism by redirecting our desires to queer bodies, opening up survival to those outside of the prototypes of fitness and health. Because postapocalyptic narratives replicate racist and ableist eugenic tropes of “survival of the fittest,” a queering of survivalism opens up space for thinking about, talking about and planning for more varied and accessible frameworks for doing survival. Conversely, a queering of survival might also open up the option of choosing not to survive, through the refusal of reproduction or the refusal of life itself. The Queer Apocalypse Apocalypse noun • More generally: a disaster resulting in drastic, irreversible damage to human society or the environment, esp. on a global scale; a cataclysm. [3] If we are going to imagine the destruction of the world as we know it, then why not make these fictions meaningful to the present? Lee Edelman has argued that queerness is “the place of the social order’s death drive.” [4] If queerness is a kind of end to the norms and structures of our world, then it makes sense that queerness might say something meaningful about imagining the end. Narratives of postapocalyptic survival function primarily as stories of individual survival against a hostile world, and often a hostile other — in the form of dangerous strangers or zombies. These narratives privilege the individual as the basic unit for survival, replicating the neoliberal values of individualism. At best, these narratives expand beyond the individual survivor when he is joined by his immediate family or builds a new family. Queer models of kinship offer alternate frameworks for imagining survival beyond the individual, through collectivity and alternative kinships. If we are going to imagine surviving either our present or our impending futures, we need collectives to survive. This is old news to people who have long survived through collective struggle and collective support. This is not to simply produce a romantic fantasy of a utopian community, but rather to acknowledge and recognize that strength comes from organizing together. If capitalist, nationalist, patriarchal, heteronormative and neoliberal logics tell us that we’re each responsible for our own lives, then what better queering can we offer than to reimagine stories of how we think about survival, or even to refuse to survive? 2NC Impact Block/Util Modernity allows for the conflation of race and gender to distract from the colonialism and capitalism perpetuated by whiteness. Winnubst 06 Shannon Winnubust Phd, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at Ohio State University, 2016(“Queering Freedom”, pg. 43-45, Accessed 7/18/17) Across the Atlantic and roughly two centuries after Locke’s writing of his Second Treatise, the post-bellum U nited S tates entered into some of the nastiest parts of U.S. history. The operative nexus of racial and sexual difference surfaced with great clarity : black men were lynched on false allegations of raping white women . These allegations, rarely if ever pursued, sufficed as ample cause for castration, dismemberment, burning at the stake, hanging. This horrific violence set the scene for two dynamics to emerge explicitly and continue with great force into the early twenty-first-century United States psyche: the sexualizing of racial difference and the racializing of sexual difference .18 The propertied Christian white male (straight) body19 alone remained unmarked, positioned not only as the politically and economically superior subject, but also as the rational, benevolent patriarch in whose hands the security of all bodies rested. Women and non-white men were accordingly positioned below him, most often pitted against one an other through the fear of alleged aggression and manipulation, as a great deal of twentieth- century African American literature shows all too graphically. 20 The brutal and ugly underbelly of modernity thus surfaced. A period that emerged philosophically as the triumph of rationality and politically as the victory of representative democracy and its liberal individual, modernity was also the period of the birth of global capitalism and its counterparts of colonialism and slavery.21 Many of the modern categories that we see at work in Locke’s texts emerged in the post-bellum United States with a defensive tenacity that bred political, cultural, psychic, and physical violence. For example, as political categories such as freedom and individualism began to be broadened through the emancipation of slaves, other structures of modernity asserted themselves to shape the exact contours and limits of the kinds of emergent freedoms and rights that would develop. Namely, as the battles around the Fifteenth Amendment and suffragist movements showed, racial and sexual difference emerged as primary fields of signification through which entry to the precious categories of freedom and individual rights had to be negotiated. The categories of race and gender were being forged in the explicit terms of legal and political documents. If one was raced or sexed, one had to fight—against other marked (raced, sexed) bodies—for one’s entry into these categories. But the fight turned on evidence of a specific form of rationality. Or, to put it in the language of race and sexual difference, it turned on one’s ability to approximate maleness or whiteness, the two social categories that govern the epistemological category of ‘proper rationality’ and, dialectically, the social category of property ownership. The disjunction of approximating either maleness or whiteness ensured that no set of marked bodies would achieve ‘true’ freedom or individuality: only the white male occupied both positions of power, maleness and whiteness.22 The seduction of freedom thereby became the seduction of phallicized whiteness. Consequently, raced and sexed bodies found themselves fighting against one another in a battle that neither of them could ultimately win : the terms were set by an external ‘overseer .’ This historical scene almost perfectly enacts the logic of power that both Nietzsche and Foucault diagnose so clearly: as the structures of modernity began to be contested philosophically (by Hegel and post-Hegelians, particularly Marx) and politically (by Emancipation), the less codified social and political structures emerged with greater clarity and rigidity to control the kinds of political subjectivities that could emerge.23 As freedom and individual rights, which had been acclaimed as universal, began to be exposed as small section of society, the broader and more vaguely articulated structures of racism and sexism began their slow processes of codification. And the singular standard for the legibility of that emergent political subjectivity of individual freedom remained the same: a propertied Christian white (straight) man, the singular subject position that inhabits both maleness and whiteness—and proper rationality. Broad cultural structures of race and sexual difference thus surface as a complicated nexus of power relations in post-bellum practices such as miscegenation, the one-drop rule, and lynching. In these practices, the intersections of race and sex produce a confusing conflation of values that serve as smoke screens to obfuscate the protected, unmarked subject position of the white man . Values such as purity, virginity, and passivity are written on the female body as inherent qualities. In what should appear as an obvious contraposition, values such as bestiality, aggression, and uncivilized nature are written on the black body. The black female body , left in the wreckage of embodying these contradictory ‘natural’ traits, becomes a general aberration that is treated with confusion and fear . And the white male body emerges as the unmarked, normative mode of subjectivity. Or, to put this in the terms above, the white male body solidifies his position as the modern man—the rational, transcendental man in control of both nature and history. The mode of rationality that defines high modernity—namely, as instrumental, transcendental, and detached from history—expresses itself directly in the mode of subjectivity inhabited by white propertied Christian (straight) men in the post-bellum United States. It is what enables and ensures their power over nature and the social field of relations, and their subsequent freedom. People in a position of privilege don’t think structural violence is a real issue because it doesn’t directly affect them – only embracing the uncomfortable risk of our impact calculus is ethical Saunders 5, Rebecca Comparative Lit at Illinois St., 2005 (“Risky Business: Edward Said as Literary Critic”, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25.3, p. 529-532 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/193160, Accessed 7/18/17)</p><p>Risk-free ethics, like all protection from risk, are a class privilege. As Deborah Lupton puts it, “The disadvantaged have fewer opportunities to avoid risks because of their lack of resources compared with the advantaged”; “ people’s social location and their access to material resources are integral to the ways in which they conceptualize and deal with risk .”22 Or, as Ulrich Beck argues, “Poverty attracts an unfortunate abundance of risks. By contrast, wealth (in income, power or education) can purchase safety and freedom from risk.”23 Thus when we endorse a risk-free ethics, we should bear in mind that members of social groups with less to lose and more to gain are more likely to engage in risky behaviors than are members of more secure and privileged social groups. Moreover, as Mary Douglas has argued at length, risk is a forensic resource and, much like the “danger” she elaborated in her early work, functions as a means of social control. “Anthropologists would generally agree,” she writes, “that dangers to the body, dangers to children, dangers to nature are available as so many weapons to use in the struggle for ideological domination.”24 These weapons are sharpened, she argues, by Western societies’ association of risk assessment with scientific neutrality. Along similar lines, Nick Fox contends that “ risk analysis is a deeply political activity. The identification of hazards (and the consequent definition of what is a risk) can easily lead to “the valorization of certain kinds of living over others.”25 The identification of “risk groups” deemed to be threatening to the social order—the unemployed, criminal, insane, poor, foreign—are a common technology for establishing boundaries between self and other, the normal and the pathological, that is, for securing that “formidable battery of distinctions” Said analyzes between “ours and theirs, proper and improper,” higher and lower, colonial and native, Western and Eastern.26 In a fascinating article on debates over native title in Australia, Eva Mackey demonstrates both the way in which political actors deploy a rhetoric of risk , danger, and threat and the uses of risk management to imperial hegemony. Not only have newspaper headlines “presented native title as an issue that has brought the nation to the brink of a dangerous abyss, to the point of destruction,” but the Howard government “constructs native title as a danger and risk to the ‘national interest,’ particularly a risk to competitiveness, opportunities, and progress. The entire anti-native title lobby have all stated . . . that the uncertainty over native title is dangerous for investment and economic competitiveness.”27 As Mackey points out, these notions of danger imply “a normative, non-endangered state,” and it is through ideas of the normal and deviant that institutional power is maintained.28 A related argument articulated by governmentality theorists is that modern societies normalize risk avoidance and pathologize risk taking, represent the former as rational and mature, the latter as irrational and childish— oppositions that, again, are familiar to any student of colonial discourse.29 These oppositions are buttressed by an elaborate apparatus of expert knowledge produced by disciplines such as engineering, statistics, actuarialism, psychology, epidemiology, and economics, which attempt to regulate risk through calculations of probability and which view the social body as “requiring intervention, management and protection so as to maximize wealth, welfare and productivity.”30 Knowledge produced about probability is then deployed as counsel to individuals about how to conduct their lives. As Lupton contends: “In late modern societies, not to engage in risk avoiding behavior is considered ‘a failure of the self to take care of itself—a form of irrationality, or simply a lack of skillfulness’ (Greco 1993). Risk-avoiding behavior, therefore, becomes viewed as a moral enterprise relating to issues of self-control, self- knowledge and self-improvement.”31 This is a characteristic of neoliberal societies that Pat O’Malley, Franc¸ois Ewald, and others refer to as the “new prudentialism.”32 To recognize that risk is a form of social control, and that risk taking is more necessary to certain classes than to others, is also to recognize that risk is not an objective entity or preexisting fact but is produced by specific cultural, political, and institutional contexts, as well as through competing knowledges. “To call something a risk,” argues Douglas, “is to recognize its importance to our subjectivity and wellbeing.” 33 Anthony Giddens, similarly, contends that “there is no risk which can be described without reference to a value.”34 In a frequently cited passage, Ewald writes, “Nothing is a risk in itself; there is no risk in reality. But on the other hand, anything can be a risk; it all depends on how one analyses the danger, considers the event.”35 Indeed, this is precisely the unconscious of risk-management technologies, which assume both that risks are preexistent in nature and that individuals comport themselves in strict accordance with a “hedonic calculus.” 5 3 1 Also embedded within this insurantial unconscious is the fact that, as Fox puts it, “The welladvertised risk will turn out to be connected with legitimating moral principles.”36 If postcolonial studies, as I am arguing, should more rigorously interrogate risk-avoidance strategies (including those that repress or discipline the foreignness in language) on their political, class, and ideological investments, it should also recognize the degree to which risk management (no doubt among modernity’s most wildly optimistic formulations) indulges in a fantasy of mastery over uncertainty. In risk-management discourses, risk has taken on the technical meaning of a known or knowable probability estimate, contrasted with uncertainty, which designates conditions where probabilities are inestimable or unknown. This transformation of the unknown into a numerical figure, a quantification of nonknowledge that takes itself for knowledge, attempts to master whatever might be undesirable in the unknown (i.e., the future) by indemnifying it in advance—and thereby advertising its own failure. I believe it could be demonstrated, moreover, were we to trace the genealogy of this fantasy, that it coincides at crucial moments with the history of colonization. The notion of risk, first used in relation to maritime adventures, arises contemporaneously with modern imperialism, to describe the hazards of leaving home. With industrial modernity, and particularly the rise of the science of statistics in the nineteenth century, it took on themien of instrumental reason and the domination of nature, nuances that bear an unmistakable resemblance to the logics of concurrent colonial enterprises.37 This fantasy of mastery is also a suppression of possibility; in most instances, risk avoidance is an (implicit or explicit) maintenance of dominant values. Risk taking, by contrast, is the condition of possibility of possibility— that is, of change. It is perhaps no surprise that one’s political position is the strongest predictor of his/her attitude toward risk. Risk , as we have seen, is regularly formulated as that which threatens the dominant order (conceived on the level of a society, a colonial regime, or a global economic order). That threat , of course, is the “danger” of transformation, of reorganized social and ideological hierarchies , redistributed economic and cultural capital, renovated geopolitical relations—in short, precisely the kinds of transformation called for by much of postcolonial studies. Risk, including the risk of errors in meaning, may be necessary to any social change, that is, to engaging in the kind of oppositional criticism Said advocates: “Criticism must think of itself,” he writes, “as constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination, and abuse.”38 The necessity of risk to change (and the craven conformism of risk avoidance) is a principle Friedrich Nietzsche elaborates in Beyond Good and Evil, where, critiquing the “timidity of morality,” he calls for a new species of philosophers, willing to risk untruth, uncertainty, even ignorance, thinkers willing to inhabit “the dangerous maybe.”39 Nietzsche was also prescient in recognizing that “howmuch or how little is dangerous to the community . . . now constitutes the moral perspective; here, too, fear is again themother ofmorals.”40 More recently, philosophers such as Derrida and John D. Caputo (explicitly taking up Nietzsche’s vocation) have argued that change, indeed social responsibility itself, inevitably demands a wager on uncertain possibilities (or, in Derridean terms, the “aporia”). “Let us not be blind,” writes Derrida, “to the aporia that all change must endure. It is the aporia of the perhaps, its historical and political aporia. Without the opening of an absolutely undetermined possible, without the radical abeyance and suspense marking a perhaps, there would never be either event or decision. . . . no decision (ethical, juridical, political) is possible without interrupting determination by engaging oneself in the perhaps.”41 On similar grounds, Caputo argues for “the suspension of the fine name of ethics in the name of obligation” and contends that “to speak of being against ethics and deconstructing ethics is to own up to the lack of safety by which judging is everywhere beset. . . . to admit that ‘obligation’ is not safe, that ethics cannot make it safe, that it is not nearly as safe as ethics would have us believe.”42 2NC – FW Top Level Counter interpretation - the judge should be an ethical decision maker. The aff should not get to weigh the consequences of the plan. The 1AC perpetuates stigma against the disabled - claims of the value of role-play and policy-making education assume an able-bodied locus of subjectivity. Breckenridge and Vogler 01, Carol A. Breckenridge teaches in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago,Candace Vogler is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and codirector of the Master's Program in the Humanities, 2001(“The Critical Limits of Embodiment: Disability's Criticism”, Public Culture 13.3, fall 2001, http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/article/26251#authbio1, Accessed 7/21/17) Disability studies teaches that an assumed able body is crucial to the smooth operation of traditional theories of democracy, citizenship, subjectivity, beauty, and capital. By assuming that the normative human is an able-bodied adult, for example, liberal theory can conflate political or economic interests with desires, political representation with having a voice in policy- making, social organization with voluntary association, and so on. Liberal theory naturalizes the political by making it personal . And the “person” at the center of the traditional liberal theory is not simply an individual locus of subjectivity (however psychologically fragmented, incoherent, or troubled). He is an able-bodied locus of subjectivity, one whose unskilled labor may be substituted freely for the labor of other such individuals, one who can imagine himself largely self-sufficient because almost everything conspires to help him take his enabling body for granted (even when he is scrambling for the means of subsistence). However, the mere possibility of a severely cognitively disabled adult citizen disrupts the liberal equations of representation and voice, desire and interest. Advocacy for the severely cognitively disabled is not a matter of voicing their demands. More generally, the intricate practical dialectics of dependence and independence in the lives of many disabled people unsettle ideals of social organization as freely chosen expressions of mutual desire. 2NC - Portable Skills Claims about portable skills under modern conceptions of political framework rely on an understanding of education which frames students as units of rationality to be bettered. This form of dispassionate subject construction means we only ever learn how to care for the system reinforcing exploitation and oppression. Mourad 01, Roger Mourad is Director of Institutional Research at Washtenaw College and teaches at the University of Michigan. His academic credentials include a Ph.D. in Higher Education, M.A. in Philosophy of Education, and J.D. in Law, all from the University of Michigan, 2001(“Education After Foucault: The Question of Civility”, Washtenaw College, Pg 752 – 756, Accessed 7/20/17) EDUCATION FOR IMPROVEMENT, OR “KICKING THE DOG” Too many lost names too many rules to the game Better find a focus or you’re out of the picture.48 The idea that the fundamental issue of the just civil state is to find the right balance between preserving individual freedom and constraining individual threat has served as a tacit foundation within which belief and debate about educational philosophy, policy, and practice develop. This statement is not intended to suggest that there is some direct and specific historical connection that can be unequivocally demonstrated to exist between foundational political theory and mainstream educational theories and practices. However, I want to propose that there is a compatibility between them that has important consequences for a new critique of organized formal education. In the remainder of this paper, my aim is to argue that the tenor of the theories that I have summarized is endemic in the ordinary ways that we think about and engage in organized education. How is the idea of the basic human being that is posed as the fundamental social, political, and pedagogic problem for modern civilization, this human being that must be managed in order to keep it from harming itself and others, played out in educational presuppositions? The tacit, unchallenged belief is that through education , the human being must be made into something better than it was or would be absent a formal education. There are all kinds of versions of this subject and of what it should become: potential achiever, qualified professional, good citizen, “leader,” independent actor, critical thinker, change agent, knowledgeable person. In all cases, the subject before education is viewed to be , like the subject before civilization, something in need of being made competent —and safe—in the mind of the educator. From this vantage point, the pedagogic relationship between teacher and student, between competent adult and incompetent child ~or adult!, contains within it a possibility that it seeks to overcome, namely, a rejection of the socialization program of the former by the latter. There is an implicit conflict between individuals as soon as the student walks into the school or college classroom door from outside the civility that the teacher would have that student become. It must be resolved, or contained in some way; and this is done immediately by rendering the student a rule follower ~a follower of the social order!both in and out of the classroom. Or the student must be rendered a challenger of the social order, in favor of an order that overcomes oppression—to become a competent comrade. The individual must be taught how to be an individual in accordance with this balance. Being an individual means being “free”—it means being “self-determined,” it means competing, and it means obeying the law. This is the case, even if the teaching is done with kindness and sensitivity. The responsibility for dealing with suffering and limitation lies almost solely with this individual, not the state. In fact, if suffering is viewed at all, it tends to be viewed as something that is good for the individual to endure or to fight in order to overcome it. Limitation is not acknowledged, unless the individual is deemed disadvantaged in some way, and the remedy tends to be to provide the person with an opportunity to become competent. Is it any wonder that parents of children with disabilities, aided by many educators, often must fight for educational and other services? This situation simply reflects that the basic logic of organized formal education and, more generally, the state, is not predicated upon a recognition that the human being is susceptible to suffering or that the state’s reason for being should be to care for people. If caring for its inhabitants were the basic purpose of the civil state, then there would be no need to fight for this recognition. Is it any wonder that the education of the ordinary child is mainly training for a far-off, abstract future that is destined to be better than life at present? Why must school be about overcoming anything? We talk about equipping children and adults to “solve problems.” Yet, problems do not fall from the sky; they do not exist as such until a human being gives them a name. In contrast, the concept of contention suggests that the practical role of reason should be used to understand the human being as subject to suffering and to act accordingly as moral agents. That is very different from an educational philosophy, policy, and practice that views reason as an instrument by which to overcome obstacles and to conform to the social order. It may be argued that modern education is about reason, about how to think and live reasonably and, therefore, how to live well and to care for oneself and for others. Yet it is commonly expressed that we live in a “complex world” and that children and adults must “learn how to learn,” in order to “succeed in a world of rapid change.” The question that needs to be asked is: Why should a person have to? In effect, education expects the human being to have an unlimited ability to think and act with reason sufficient to cope with increasingly complex situations that require individual intellect to adequately recognize, evaluate, and prioritize alternative courses of action, consider their consequences, and make good decisions. For the most part, the increasing complexity of civil society and the multiplicity of factors that intellect is expected to deal with in different situations are not questioned in education. Is this what education is rightly about? Education is as much about the use of intelligence to avoid suffering and feelings of limitation and about fending off feelings of fear as it is about learning. It is about acting upon other people and upon the civil order to deal with perceived threats. One must be an “active learner” or else. Why? The individual must be acted upon and rendered into an entity that engages reality in the ways that are deemed just by many educators, lawmakers, and others with a stake in the perpetuation of the given social order . Thus, the individual is exhorted to “do your best,” “make an effort,” “earn a grade,” “be motivated,” “work hard,” “overcome obstacles,” “achieve.” Why should education be about any of these things? Unfortunately, the culture of scholarship is thoroughly consistent with these precepts. When we question them, we challenge the ends that they serve but not the ideas themselves. We believe that education is rightly about improvement. This philosophy of improvement is not necessarily consistent with enhancement of living. It often has the opposite effect. How is this result justified? Certainly, it can feel good to accomplish something or to overcome obstacles. Does that mean that adversity should be a positive value of the civil state? The modern idea, beginning with Descartes and established through Lockean empiricism ~and made pedagogic by Rousseau’s Emile!, that anyone can be rational leads quickly to the idea that everyone is responsible for being wholly rational, as that word is understood according to the social order . The perpetuation of the given social order in education as elsewhere is about gaining advantage and retaining power. It is about cultural politics and about marginalization of various groups and about class and about socializing children to believe in capitalism as if it is a natural law. Yet under the analysis that I have made here, these major problems are symptoms of something more basic. The more basic problem that I have emphasized here is inextricable from the problem of the just civil state. It is about the intense pressures on people to think and act in ways that serve broader interests that are not at all concerned with their well-being in a variety of contexts including psychological, social, economic, political, and cultural. It is no answer to ground pedagogy in the notion of “building community.” The idea that something must be built implies that something must be made better in order for it to be tolerated. Moreover, “community” carries with it the prerequisite that one be made competent to be a member— again, the presumption that something must be done to the person to make it better in some way. I do not mean to say that educators have bad intent. I do mean that this ethos of betterment through competency will inevitably fail to fulfill the dreams of reformers and revolutionaries. It does not consider the human being as an entity to care for but rather as something to be equipped with skills and knowledge in order to improve itself. This failure is not only because there are millions of children and adults that live in poverty in the wealthiest countries in human history. It is because the state of mind that can tolerate such suffering is the same state that advances and maintains the ethos of civility as betterment, rather than civility as caring for people because they are subject to suffering. The alternative that I have only introduced in a very abbreviated way under the rubric that I called “contention” is intended to be pragmatic in the ways that Foucault and Richard Rorty are pragmatic in their respective approaches to the subject of the state.49 It is intended to address an unacceptable state of contemporary Western civilization, namely, its repetitive and even escalating incidence of disregard for suffering and harm in many forms, despite intellectual, social, medical, legal, educational, scientific, and technological “progress.” We have had two hundred years of modern educational principles, and two hundred years of profound suffering along with them. The problem of the individual calls for a new formulation and for a proper response—one that cares for the individual rather than makes it competent. The “modern project” of betterment through competency and opportunity must be challenged and replaced by an emotionally intelligent ethos that expressly and fundamentally acknowledges suffering and limitation in philosophy, policy, and practice. Other Possible Alts The alternative is a queercrip reading of 1ac. Solis 07, Santiago Solis Teachers College of Columbia University, Senior Director, Center for Student Diversity at Towson University, 2007(“Snow White and the Seven "Dwarfs" – Queercripped”,winter 2007, pg 127 – 128, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/206337/pdf, Accessed 7/14/17) Ultimately, in “Snow White,” fantasy has such a normalizing function that it is no longer about the reader using her or his imagination to conceptualize unfamiliar realities or unexplored possibilities; instead, the story attempts to restrict or regulate the reader’s imagination by producing its own vision and version of the ideal fantasy—one that negates the existence of homosexuality and disability. In this way, the story operates as a historical narrative as it mirrors what society considers objectionable, indecent, and immoral. Through subtle and open forms of marginalization and silencing, it reinforces and extends homophobia and ableism. Consequently, as the process of homogenization and normalization suppresses alternative sexual and bodily identities, the young female reader may begin to replicate privileged ways of being in the world. After all is said and done, Snow White herself is the embodiment of the classical beauty that girls (but not boys) are expected to reproduce. “Snow White” continues to be a popular fairy tale because it perpetuates sexual and bodily ideals that the mainstream values and sustains. The idealized virtuosity and desirable beauty of Snow White—her presumed feminine qualities (subservient, virginal, defenseless, dependent, delicate, refined, ablebodied, and heterosexual)—help produce the ideal image of how young girls should behave or what they should look like. In a society in which the male gaze dominates, the female body is already viewed as an object of desire, and Snow White’s objectification is not seen as problematic from that perspective. The female body, and the heterosexual and able-bodied female in particular, becomes a site for a specific kind of sexual desire. However, what is striking about the “Snow White” story is that rather than explicitly rejecting the undesirable homosexual and disabled body, it simply disqualifies them as nonexistent—insidiously—through omission. Furthermore, the rhetoric of infantilization that is used to represent the seven dwarfs serves multiple purposes. First, the physical shortcomings that the dwarfs presumably embody confirm ideas about manhood; their disabled bodies explicitly contradict normal conventions of masculinity (sexuality, virility, and so on). The dwarfs are represented as displaced children, and therefore not as real men. Second, the dwarfs are emasculated. Since the Prince is the only one who can view Snow White through the male gaze, it is only he, not the emasculated and infantilized dwarfs, who can claim sovereign authority over Snow White. And since society presumes everyone is heterosexual unless stated otherwise, the Prince is automatically assumed to be only and exclusively heterosexual and, therefore, he must fall in love with Snow White. Third, because of the masculine prowess the Prince displays, young boys (but not girls) are expected and even encouraged to identify with him. Since the Prince epitomizes heterosexual and able-bodied manliness— physical qualities that are recognized and admired by mainstream society—young boys quickly learn to emulate these bodily traits and behaviors. To reiterate, contemporary audiences continue to accept the fairy tale because the story extends idealized notions of social and sexual behaviors, which, as I have argued, are based on heterosexist and ableist apprehensions. I attempted to explore a range of conceivable responses that “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” might provoke to ascertain how different authors and illustrators have negotiated the stigma and invisibility surrounding homosexuality and disability. Furthermore, I proceeded chronologically to determine if more recent publications progress toward affirmative representations. Unfortunately, even contemporary variations on the tale continue to produce a public imagery that supports hetero-corporo-normative desire and identity; none of them depart from or defy heterosexist and ableist norms. For this reason, I tried to pay attention to that which remains silenced or unsaid. In doing so, I discovered a number of discounted erotic possibilities (for example, between the dwarfs, between the dwarfs and the Prince, and between the dwarfs and Snow White). But what does it mean, after all, to suppress or negate queercrip representations? Why should future tellings incorporate or provide a queercrip perspective ? In other words, What function would a queercrip approach serve ? A queercrip reading of the story offers the potential to explore sexual fantasies that might inform and transform narrow images of desirability . The eroticization of the queercrip body, for example, can instill pride and foster public affirmation for queercripness. Queercripness is located “not so much in any specifically . . . [queercrip] practice but in a larger liberation of psychic and social life, one that gives defiantly corporeal form to the repressed materials and forbidden fantasies” (Meyer 2002, 161). Through the lens of queercripness a fear of sexual fantasies that might be perceived as “deviant” is not only displaced, but fear itself is subsequently replaced by a desire for varied forms of corporeal lustfulness. In this way, each type of body, or body type, is seen as a new source of sexual inspiration. Queercripness, therefore, does not in itself promote homosexuality; instead, it seeks to generate new social conditions from which all types of people can be sexually expressive and passionately embodied. In short, queercripness undoes dichotomized distinctions between the normative and the non-normative. AT: Vague Alts Bad We aren’t a vague alt – 1NC alt was very clear that a rejection of the future is the only way we can remedy the links. Increases critical thinking – forces the aff to make strategic arguments to compare the 1AC to the K – unanticipated consequences are a major part of understanding decision making. Cross-ex checks abuse – secures 2AC prep and checks moving targets Err neg on theory – aff gets the first and last speech and infinite prep Reject the arg, not the team – alts test aff intrinsicness to solvency and not a reason to vote against us. Generic Links Spending DA Note—The plan is IDEA B meaning about kindergarten to 21 </p><p>Plan spends Billions McCann 16 (Clare McCann is a policy analyst with the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation. Ms. McCann graduated from The George Washington University with a B.A. in Political Science and a focus in Public Policy. “IDEA Funding “2016 http://www.edcentral.org/edcyclopedia/individuals-with-disabilities-education-act-funding-distribution/)#JSKI </p><p>IDEA Funding refers to how federal money for special education is disbursed under the act. ¶ IDEA Authorized Funding Streams¶ Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), federal special education funds are distributed through three state grant programs and several discretionary grant programs. Part B of the law, the main program, authorizes grants to state and local education agencies to offset part of the costs of the K-12 education needs of children with disabilities; it also authorizes preschool state grants . Part B, section 611 authorizes funding to students age 3-21, while section 619 is targeted specifically at children aged 3 to 5. The funding formulas to distribute to states are nearly identical, but Congress separately allocates total funds for each section separately. ¶ ¶ Part C authorizes infant and toddler state grants for pre-kindergarten programs and early intervention services. Part D and Part E authorize discretionary grants to state and local education agencies for a variety of “national” special education activities, including research, evaluation, and the training and recruitment of personnel.¶ ¶ The greatest share of annual IDEA funding comes from Part B Section 611 grants to states. In fiscal year 2014, which covers the school year 2014-15, total IDEA funding was $12.50 billion, of which $11.47 billion is dedicated to IDEA Part B Section 611 state grants. When advocates say that IDEA programs are under-funded, they are most often referring to Part B Section 611 state and local grant aid. The plan costs lots of money U.S. Code 20 (20 U.S. Code § 6062 - Funding for Individuals with Disabilities Education Act https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/6062 Accessed July 30, 2017) (a) Findings The Congress finds that— (1) the I ndividuals with D isabilities E ducation A ct [20 U.S.C. 1400 et seq.] was established with the commitment of forty percent Federal funding but currently receives only eight percent Federal funding; (2) this funding shortfall is particularly burdensome to school districts and schools in low-income areas which serve higher than average proportions of students with disabilities and have fewer local resources to contribute; and (3) it would cost the Federal Government approximately $10,000,000,000 [ 10 billion dollars ] each year to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. (b) Sense of Congress It is the sense of the Congress that the Federal Government should provide States and communities with adequate resources under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [20 U.S.C. 1400 et seq.] as soon as reasonably possible, through the reallocation of noneducation funds within the current budget monetary constraints. Federalism DA Special Education is a matter of states’ rights---federal overreach decks federalism Gregory and Kaufman 2010 (Erin R. Gregory¶ Dean Kaufman¶ Education Law & Policy¶ Spring 2010 “EDUCATION AND FEDERALISM: THE ROLE FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT¶ IN EDUCATION REFORM” https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/290b/cdfdb2cc2cdab7c352063eaad7d9216d372e.pdf)#JSKI </p><p>As the federal government has taken on a more active role in regulating education, the ¶ power struggle between state or local governments and the federal government has grown. For ¶ example, prior to the passage of NCLB, Connecticut developed a system of assessment which ¶ included multiple choice questions as well as short answer and essay questions in the areas of ¶ reading, writing and mathematics.26 Connecticut’s program also madesignificant ¶ accommodations for special education students and students for whom English was not their ¶ primary language. 27 Although the state’s education system is not without its short comings ,¶ 26 Connecticut v. Spellings, 453 F. Supp. 2d 459, 475 (D. Conn. 2006).¶ 27 Id. at 476.¶ specifically the District Court referenced an NAACP report indicating that Connecticut had not ¶ success fully remedieda“poortonon- poorachievementgap,”Connecticutstudentsareamong ¶ the highest achieving students in the country.28 Following the passage of NCLB, Connecticut ¶ requested a waiver of the NCLB requirement to administer a yearly assessment test, arguing that ¶ their current form of assessment was superior.29 The waiver was denied and Connecticut filed ¶ suit challenging several provisions of NCLB.30¶ While Connecticut v. Spellings provides an interesting look into the shortcomings of¶ NCLB and the judicial response to these challenges, this case importantly highlights the ¶ problems with the current federal stance toward education.31 Connecticut has developed a ¶ system by which to measure student achievement but its efforts to improve an already successful ¶ s chool system are hindered by the imposition of federal requirements. Rather than discouraging ¶ different approaches, the federal government should encourage states like Connecticut to build ¶ upon already successful programs . ¶ IV. STRIKING THE BALANCE BETWEEN LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL CONTROL¶ Federal government involvement in education policy is inevitable as education continues¶ to be at the forefront of national issues due to the United States’ declining global rankings . 32 ¶ However, the role of the federal government should be limited to establishing national goals for ¶ education and providing funding in the form of incentives to states that are capable of meeting ¶ those standards as well as ensuring compliance with civil rights. The ideal role for the federal ¶ 28 Id. at 475. See also, U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education¶ Statistics <http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/>¶ 29 Id. at 476.¶ 30 Id. at 464-65.¶ 31 See also, Powell, Brandi M., Take the Money or Run?: The Dilemma of the No Child Left Behind Act for State¶ and Local Governments. Loy. J. Pub. Int. L. 153, 153-54 (2005).¶ 32 Pinder, Kamina Aliya, Federal Demand and Local Choice: Safeguarding the Notion of Federalism in Education¶ Law and Policy, 39 J.L. & Educ. 1, 2 (2010).¶ government, then, is to encourage states to come up with creative, practical solutions to improve¶ education through rewarding success rather than punishing failures. ¶ Such a plan would require evaluation of progress through national testing and ¶ d evelopment of standards by the federal government rather than allowing states to come up with ¶ their own educational standards. 33 An incentive program would not be coercive but would ¶ instead encourage states to develop innovative ways of meeting the national goals, rather than¶ the NCLB system which encourages states to lower standards and avoid federal penalties. This ¶ type of incentive based answer to the education problem is entirely consistent with constitutional ¶ principles of federalism. Such a program would allow states to do what they do best— devising ¶ creative strategies to solve pervasive problems and tailoring the solutions to the unique needs of ¶ the population of that state—while the federal government facilitates innovation through ¶ deregulation. IDEA Framework requires legislators to regulate both public and private schools, uniquely ruins federalism. Lisa R. Knickerbocker 01, Ohio State law journal, 2001(“The Education of All Children with Disabilities: Integrating Home- Schooled Children into the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act”, Ohio State Law Journal, http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/students/groups/oslj/files/2012/03/62.4.knickerbocker.pdf, Accessed 7/30/2017) In light of the above discussion, it appears that the IDEA statutory framework does not specifically deal with homeschoolers and accords deference to state law regarding the definition of a “ private school or facility.” But, the purposes undergirding the IDEA, plus the need for more uniformity in its application, dictate that Congress should integrate home-educated students into the Act by analogizing them to private school students.[181] As noted earlier, the foundational purposes of the statute readily encompass the provision of IDEA funds to home-schooled children.[182] Home-educated children with disabilities, just as private school children with disabilities, will grow into adult citizens. The same national interest in promoting productive, self-sufficient citizens equally applies to these home-educated children.[183] The same legislative desire to ensure the rights of and improve the educational experiences of all disabled children should also apply equally to home-educated children.[184] The Ninth Circuit accepted the IDEA’s deference to the states as a legitimate attempt to preserve state sovereignty.[185] The court believed that the states’ treatment of home schools differs sufficiently from their treatment of private schools to justify the refusal of any analogous relationship.[186] Although federalism concerns are important considerations, this legislation already defines many uniform issues of scope, including , for example, the exact range of qualifying disabilities that must be covered . [187] So why should it not go a little further and unify the states’ application of the law to home-educated students?[188] Only a minority of states currently define “private school ” so as to include home-educated students.[189] Without some kind of uniform change to the statutory framework, only home-schooled students in these limited states automatically qualify for the opportunity to receive federal assistance under the IDEA’s private school provisions .[190] </p><p>Education Policy regardless of state spending programs is still a states’ right and increased involvement undermines states’ rights Prager 15 — Sarah Prager is an Assistant Corporation Counsel at the New York City Law Department, was an Articles Editor of the 2013-2014 New York Law School Law Review (“An "IDEA" to Consider: Adopting a Uniform Test to Evaluate Compliance with the IDEA's Least Restrictive Environment Mandate,” New York Law School Law Review (59 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 653), Available Online) Education has always been an area of state regulation. And educational policy is one of the few spheres of authority that have been traditionally recognized as exclusively committed to the states. n209 In recent years, the federal government has employed its spending power to incentivize states to adopt or modify educational policy goals as applied to discrete segments of the student population. n210 However, even under conditional spending programs such as the IDEA, courts must remain careful not to impute to Congress an intent of upsetting the federalism status quo an d, specifically, the states' traditional authority over their own educational policy. n211 While the Supreme Court has yet to address the IDEA's mainstreaming requirement, the Rowley Court did warn the lower courts not "to substitute their own notions of sound educational policy for those of the school authorities which they review." n212 Thus, while federal courts have a duty to ensure that recipient states comply with the IDEA's substantive standards, they may not "impose substantive standards of review which cannot be derived from the Act itself." n213 Federal funding wrecks federalism McCluskey 17 - Neal McCluskey is a director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom (“For the Love of Choice, Don’t Federalize It”, https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/love-choice-dont-federalize-it) Federal money means federal regulation We should protect federalism both to ensure that differing methods of delivering choice can be tried without having to compete against a choice monopolist—an oxymoronic but all-too-real concept when discussing the feds— and to prevent national homogenization of private schools via the kinds of regulations that inevitably get attached to federal dough . On the first major concern—avoiding a monopoly choice system—I believe the most meaningful form of accountability is having to satisfy parents. But while I oppose most rules and regulations on schools participating in choice programs, I would never declare that my preferred amount of regulation is always and everywhere incontrovertibly right. Research does not make a slam-dunk case for any specific system. Research is limited, as are our minds. The way we learn what’s best now and continue to discover methods that may be better is to allow free action on a level playing field. Federalism helps us do just that. On the second point—federal “help” rendering once-autonomous private institutions increasingly homogenous—all major forms of choice are susceptible to government control to varying degrees. The danger is far greater when that control comes from Washington, because you can’t even move to another state to escape it. Agenda Politics DA Disability issues are a wedge in American politics – it is extremely partisan due to the 2016 election Graham 16 (David A. Graham, Staff Writer at the Atlantic, “How Did Disabilities Become a Partisan Issue?”, September 21, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/clinton-disabilities-speech/500954/) You’d think none of that would be all that controversial. Disabilities strike across age groups, racial barriers, and partisan lines. In this election, even this is a polarized issue—though the roots of that split actually date back to before Donald Trump was a major political figure. Disability politics used to be bipartisan. The Americans with Disabilities Act was primarily authored by Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat. It passed the Senate and House overwhelmingly—91-6 and 377–28, respectively, and was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1990. When he signed the law, Bush said: Now I sign legislation which takes a sledgehammer to another wall, one which has for too many generations separated Americans with disabilities from the freedom they could glimpse, but not grasp. Once again, we rejoice as this barrier falls for claiming together we will not accept, we will not excuse, we will not tolerate discrimination in America…. To those Members of the House of Representatives with us here today, Democrats and Republicans as well, I salute you. And on your behalf, as well as the behalf of this entire country, I now lift my pen to sign this Americans with Disabilities Act and say: Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down. Eighteen years later, Bush’s son George W. Bush signed some expansions of the ADA into law. Since then, however, things have sputtered . In 2012, the Senate failed to ratify a United Nations treaty called the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities. Democrats supported the treaty, but Republicans were split. On the pro side were George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole, the former Senate GOP leader and presidential candidate who was injured during World War II. On the con side were a bloc who warned on extremely dubious grounds that the treaty would allow the UN to meddle in U.S. courts. In the end, the treaty failed, despite Dole himself appearing on the Senate floor to lobby. It needed two-thirds of votes to pass, but was only able to garner 61. The Trump campaign has only exacerbated any such splits. The most egregious moment came when he mocked New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski . Trump falsely claimed he’d seen Muslims celebrating 9/11 in the streets in New Jersey, and pointed to reporting Kovaleski, who was then a reporter for The Washington Post. When Kovaleski, who has a congenital condition affecting his joints, contradicted Trump, Trump mocked him, doing a physical impression of Kovaleski: Trump denied that he was mocking Kovaleski, despite the evidence. He also argued that his legally required compliance with the ADA proved his support for the disabled, although as Gideon Resnick pointed out, Trump has been sued repeatedly for violating the ADA. He also appeared to mock conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer, who is paralyzed from the waist down, saying, “I get called by a guy that can't buy a pair of pants, I get called names? Gimme a break.” As Irin Carmon reported, disability advocates were displeased by Trump’s decision to name his campaign book Crippled America. In a 2011 book, meanwhile, he wrote, “Then there's the disability racket. Did you know that one out of every 20 people in America now claims disability? That adds up to $170 billion a year in disability checks. Between 2005 and 2009, it is estimated that $25 billion were eaten up in fraudulent Social Security Disability Insurance filings. On and on, scam after scam it goes; as always, taxpayers are the ones getting stiffed.” (The idea that disability insurance is being overused is one sometimes voiced by analysts across the ideological spectrum.) All of this makes Trump an alluring target for the Clinton campaign. An August Bloomberg poll, for instance, found Trump’s mockery of Kovaleski to be the single most disliked moment of his campaign. In June, PrioritiesUSA, a super PAC supporting Clinton, launched a brutal ad spotlighting the comments: That was not uncontroversial on its own. As David M. Perry wrote in The Atlantic, “It’s exciting to see disability issues play a role in the campaign, and gratifying to see a politician take heat for humor that offended many people. The ad, however, also plays into stereotypes about disability, revealing tensions between disability-rights activists and mainstream politicians.” But Clinton’s focus on disability issues isn’t just a matter of electoral jockeying. It’s also in line with the direction of progressive politics as a whole. The Democratic Party has increasingly embraced the language and agenda of social justice. As my colleague Clare Foran noted back in March, Clinton herself has adopted the language of intersectionality, the idea that forms of discrimination, marginalization, and inequality should not be considered singly but as a complex, with different forms compounding one another. This shift is not without a reaction. The Trump campaign has seized on “political correctness” as a great ill afflicting America. White, straight, male voters who lean toward Trump, and who are those least affected by discrimination, might be inclined to dismiss discussions of intersectionality as simply more political correctness. The two moves in concert produce a feedback loop: Progressives become more and more concerned about the dismissal of intersectional concerns, while that growing concern only convinces conservatives that the attention being paid to matters of race, disability, class, or gender are disproportionate and a result of political correctness. In other words, the 2016 presidential campaign may have produced a sharpened and accelerated partisans split on disability accommodation, transforming them from a universal concern to a wedge issue, but November 8 is unlikely to mark the end of the trend or any renewed unity. Trump planning to cut special education funding now–plan reverses his agenda and decks PC Green 5/3/17 (Erica L. Green is an Education Reporter at The New York Times. May 3, 2017 “A Little-Noticed Target in the House Health Bill: Special Education,” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/us/politics/health-bill-medicaid-special-education-affordable-care-act.html Accessed July 30, 2017) WASHINGTON — While House Republicans lined up votes Wednesday for a Thursday showdown over their bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Vickie Glenn sat in her Murphysboro, Ill., office and prayed for it to fail. Ms. Glenn, a Medicaid coordinator for Tri-County Special Education, an Illinois cooperative that helps more than 20 school districts deliver special education services to students, was worried about an issue that few in Congress were discussing: how the new American Health Care Act, with its deep cuts to Medicaid, would affect her 2,500 students . With all the sweeping changes the Republican bill would impose, little attention has been paid to its potential impact on education. School districts rely on Medicaid, the federal health care program for the poor , to provide costly services to millions of students with disabilities across the country. For nearly 30 years, Medicaid has helped school systems cover costs for special ed ucation services and equipment, from physical therapists to feeding tubes. The money is also used to provide preventive care , such as vision and hearing screenings, for other Medicaid-eligible children. “If I could have 10 minutes with President Trump, I could help him understand what we do, why it’s important,” Ms. Glenn said. “If he understood, he would protect it, because this isn’t Republicans and Democrats. It’s just kids.” The new law would cut Medicaid by $880 billion , or 25 percent, over 10 years and impose a “per-capita cap ” on funding for certain groups of people, such as children and the elderly — a dramatic change that would convert Medicaid from an entitlement designed to cover any costs incurred to a more limited program. AASA, an advocacy association for school superintendents, estimates that school districts receive about $4 billion in Medicaid reimbursements annually. In a January survey of nearly 1,000 district officials in 42 states, nearly 70 percent of districts reported that they use d the money to pay the salaries of health care professionals who serve special education students . Republicans say federal health programs must be restructured to curb their soaring costs — the biggest driver of projected budget deficits — and force a smarter allocation of limited resources. But in a letter sent to top lawmakers this week, a coalition of school educators and advocacy organizations said such efforts would force states to “ration health care for children.” The advocates argued that under the House bill, the federal government would transfer the burden of health care to states, which would result in higher taxes, eligibility cuts or curtailed services for children. And they said that schools would have to compete for funding with other entities, like hospitals and clinics,that serve Medicaid-eligible children. The ability of school systems to provide services mandated under the federal I ndividuals With D isabilities E ducation A ct would be strained . The law is supposed to ensure that students with disabilities receive high-quality educational services, but it has historically been underfunded. “School-based Medicaid programs serve as a lifeline to children who can’t access critical health care and health services outside of their school,” said the letter sent this week by the Save Medicaid in Schools Coalition, which consists of more than 50 organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, and the School Superintendents Association. Ms. Glenn said she believed that Medicaid should be reined in. But, she said, schools are already reimbursed for only a fraction of the costs of services they provide. The National Alliance for Medicaid in Education estimates that 1 percent of all Medicaid reimbursement goes to local school districts. Even without the funding, school districts would be legally required to provide special education services. “I realize there have to be cuts, because Medicaid’s been out of control,” Ms. Glenn said. But, she added: “We have so many more demands. We’re not in it making money. We’re constantly in the hole.” John George, executive director of the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit in Pennsylvania, said Medicaid primarily paid for speech, physical and behavior therapists. Special education students make up roughly 16 percent of his student population, he said, and his most recent Medicaid reimbursement was about $5.4 million. “It’s devastating,” Mr. George said of the potential impact of losing Medicaid funding. “Our most vulnerable citizens are going to be suffering the most. If any legislator votes for this, it’s unconscionable.” IDEA Unpopular Glatter 17, Hayley Glatter is a former editorial fellow at The Atlantic, 2017(“Five Cabinet Nominees Who Could Affect Education”, The Atlantic, Jan 11, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/01/five-cabinet-nominees-who-could-affect-education/512738/, Accessed 7/8/17) Some civil-rights groups are concerned the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights could be moved to the Department of Justice, meaning Jeff Sessions—who has an incredibly controversial record on civil rights—would oversee it. The former Alabama senator claimed in a 2009 National Review interview to have “filed 20 or 30 civil-rights cases to desegregate schools and political organizations and county commissions when [he] was a United States attorney.” However, as The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer explained, this doesn’t appear to be true. There is no evidence suggesting Sessions filed any new desegregation lawsuits or made meaningful legal contributions to integrate what are today some of the nation’s most segregated school districts. Sessions also harshly criticized the Individuals With Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) in a 2000 speech on the Senate floor. IDEA protects the education of children with special needs, ensuring they receive appropriate resources, help, and evaluations. In his speech, Sessions denounced the behavioral issues he said IDEA allowed to proliferate and said the law “may be the single most irritating problem for teachers throughout America today.” He argued IDEA—which has since been amended— permits children with disabilities “to commit crimes, to disrupt classrooms, to curse teachers, principals and students, and abuse them, and do so with impunity.” Additionally, during his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Sessions said Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which was developed by the Obama administration and offers temporary deportation relief to some young people, including many students, is constitutionally objectionable. He said the Department of Justice would have no issue ending the program should he be confirmed. DACA grants recipients work authorization and has helped many students gain access to in-state tuition at their local public universities. Cap K Capitalism rejects the disabled body from society- never letting them intargrate or have a equal playing field Oliver 99 (Professor Michael J. Oliver Professor of Disability Studies¶ University of Greenwich, London, England “APITALISM, DISABILITY AND IDEOLOGY:¶ A MATERIALIST CRITIQUE OF THE NORMALIZATION PRINCIPLE” 1999, http://www.independentliving.org/docs3/oliver99.pdf) #JSKI</p><p>Before proceeding further, it is perhaps necessary to explain the use of terminology in this chapter. Underpinning it is a materialist view of society; to say that the category disability is produced by capitalist society in a particular form implies a particular world view . within this world view, the production of the category disability is no different from the production of motor cars or hamburgers. Each has an industry,whether it be the car, fast food or human service industry. Each industry has a workforce which has a vested interest in producing their product in particular ways and in exerting as much control over the </p><p> process of production as possible. ¶ Producing a materialist theory of disability¶ The production of disability therefore is nothing more or less than a set of activities specifically geared towards producing a good - the category disability - supported by a range of political actions which create the conditions to allow these productive activities to take place and underpinned by a discourse which gives legitimacy to the whole enterprise . As </p><p> to the specifics of the terminology ¶ used in this discourse, I use the term disabled people generically and refuse to divide the group in terms of medical conditions, functional limitation or severity of impairment. For me disabled people are defined in terms of three criteria; (i) they have an impairment; (ii) they experience </p><p> oppression as ¶ a consequence; and (c) they identify themselves as a disabled </p><p> person . ¶ Using the generic term does not mean that I do not recognise differences in experience within the group but that in exploring this we should start from the ways oppression differentially impacts on different groups of people rather than with differences in experience among individuals with different impairments. I agree that my own initial outlining of a materialist theory of disability (Oliver 1990) did not specifically include an examination of the oppression that people with learning difficulties face (and I use this particular term throughout my paper because it is the one democratic and accountable organisations of people with learning difficulties insist on).¶ Nevertheless I agree that¶ "For a rigorous theory of disability to emerge which begins to examine all disability in a </p><p> materialist account, an analysis of normalization must be included". ¶ (Chappell 1992.38)¶ Attempting to incorporate normalization in a materialist account however, does not mean that I believe that, beyond the descriptive, it is of much use. Based as it is upon functionalist and interactionist sociology, whose defects are well known ( Gouldner1970), it offers no satisfactory explanation of why disabled people are oppressed in capitalist societies and no strategy for liberating us from the chains of </p><p> that oppression. ¶ Political economy, on the other hand, suggests that all phenomena ¶ </p><p>(including social categories) are produced by the economic and social ¶ forces of </p><p> capitalism itself. The forms in which they are produced are ¶ ultimately dependent upon their relationship to the economy (Marx 1913). Hence, the category disability is produced in the particular form it appears by these very economic and social forces . </p><p>Further, it is produced as an economic problem because of changes in the nature of ¶ work and the needs of the labour market within capitalism . ¶ "The speed of factory work, the enforced discipline, the time-keeping and production norms -all these </p><p> were ¶ Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 2 (16)¶ a highly unfavourable change from the slower, more self-determined methods of work into which many handicapped people had been integrated" .¶ (Ryan and Thomas 1980.101)¶ The economy, through both the operation of the labour market and the social organisation of work, plays a key role in producing the category disability and in determining societal responses to disabled people. In order to explain this further, it is necessary to return to the crucial question of what is meant by political economy. The following is a generally agreed definition of political economy,¶ "The study of the interrelationships between the polity, economy and society, or more specifically, the reciprocal influences </p><p> among government the ¶ economy, social classes, state and, status groups. The central problem of the political economy perspective is the manner in which the </p><p> economy and ¶ polity interact in a relationship of reciprocal causation afecting the </p><p> distribution of social goods". ¶ (Estes et al 1982)¶ The central problem with such an agreed definition is that it is an¶ explanation which can be incorporated into pluralist visions of society as a consensus emerging out of the interests of various groups and social forces and indeed, this explanation has been encapsulated in a recent book on disability¶ " A person's position in society affects the type and severity of physical disability one is likely to experience and more importantly the likelihood that he or she is likely to receive rehabilitation servic es. Indeed, the political economy of a community dictates what debilitating health conditions will be produced, how and under what circumstances they will be </p><p> defined, and ultimately who will receive the services". ¶ (Albrecht (1992.14) ¶ This quote lays out the way in which Albrecht pursues his argument in¶ three parts. The first part shows how the kind of society people live in influences the kinds of disability that are produced, notably how the mode of production creates particular kinds of impairments. Further, he traces the ways in which the mode of production influences social interpretation and the meanings of disability and he also demonstrates how, in industrial societies, rehabilitation, like all other goods and services is transformed into a commodity.¶ The second part of the argument shows how intermediate social¶ institutions in America, such as the legal, the political and welfare¶ systems contribute to the specific way in which disability is produced and their role in the transformation of rehabilitation into a commodity. The final part considers what this may mean in terms of future developments in social policy and what effects it may have on the lives of disabled people.¶ Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 3 (16)¶ It is difficult to disagree with this formulation at the descriptive level but the problem with this pluralist version of political economy is that the structure of capitalist America itself goes unexamined as does the crucial role that the capitalist economy plays in. shaping the experience of groups and individuals. Exactly the same criticism can be levelled at normalization theory. Devaluation according to normalization theory is a universal cognitive process and economic and social conditions are only relevant to who gets devalued.¶ Political economy, as it is used here, takes a particular theoretical view of society; one which sees the economy as the crucial, and ultimately determining factor, in structuring the lives of groups and individuals. Further, while the relationship between various groups and the economy may differ in </p><p> qualitative ways, the underlying structural relationship remains. ¶ "The convergence and interaction of liberating forces at work in society against racism, sexism, ageism and economic imperialism are all oppressive 'isms' and built-in responses of a society that considers certain groups inferior. All are rooted in the social-economic structures of society. All deprive certain groups of status, the right to control their own lives and destinies with the end result of powerlessness. All have resulted in economic and social discrimination. All rob (American) society of the energies and involvement of creative persons who are needed to make our society just and </p><p> humane. All have brought on individual alienation, despair, hostility, and anomie". ¶ </p><p>(Walton 1979.9)¶ Hence the oppression that disabled people face is rooted in the ¶ economic</p><p> and social structures of capitalism. And this oppression is ¶ structured by racism, </p><p> sexism, homophobia, ageism and disablism which ¶ is endemic to all capitalist societies and cannot be explained away as a universal cognitive process . To explain this further it is necessary to go back to the roots of capitalism itself.¶ Disabled people and the rise of capitalism¶ Whatever the fate of disabled people before the advent of capitalist ¶ </p><p> society and whatever their fate will be in the brave new world of the ¶ twenty first </p><p> century, with its coming we suffered economic and social ¶ exclusion. As a consequence of this exclusion disability was produced in a particular form; as an </p><p> individual problem requiring medical treatment. ¶ At the heart of this exclusion was the institution -something on which we would all agree. In the nineteenth and twentieth century, institutions proliferated in all industrial societies (Rothman 1971) but to describe this, as Wolfensberger does, as 'momentum without rationale' (p3) is patently absurd. The French Marxist, Louis Althusser (1971), suggested that all capitalist societies are faced with the problem of social control and they resolve this by a combination of repressive and ideological mechanisms.¶ The reason for the </p><p> success of the institution was simple; it combines ¶ these mechanisms almost perfectly. It is repressive in that all those who either cannot or will not conform to the norms and discipline of capitalist society can be removed from it. It is ideological</p><p> in ¶ that it stands as a visible monument for all those who currently conform but may </p><p> not continue to do so -if you do not behave, the institution awaits you. ¶ It is for this reason that the institution has been successful. Its presence perfectly meets capitalism's needs for discipline and control (Foucault 1972). It is also the reason why, despite the fact that the defects of institutions have been known for the 200 years that they have existed, they have remained unaddressed. Indeed, the principle of 'less eligibility' was central to the rise of the institution. It is simply not true to say that we have only known of their defects in recent years because, if this were the case, they would then not have been performing their ideological control function. Day trips to institutions, which originated in the 1850's not the 1950's, were precisely for this purpose; to demonstrate how awful they were for the purposes of social control, not to educate the public about their reform (p8)¶ What is also not in dispute between us is that in the second half of the twentieth century, the physical and ideological dominance of the¶ institution began to decline (Scull 1977). What is in dispute however, is why this should be so. While not claiming that the normalization principle was the only causal factor in what has become known as de-¶ institutionalization or de-carceration, Wolfensberger nonetheless claims that it 'broke the back of the institutional movement' (p60) and without it 'there would have been massive investments in building new, smaller, regionalised institutions' (p16). I would not wish to dismiss the role of ideas, or more appropriately, ideologies in this process but there were other, more important factors.</p>