Federalism DA

1NCTrump XO creates a review process that is shifting power over education back to the states By S.A. Miller - The Washington Times - Wednesday, April 26, 2017 Trump to pull feds out of K-12 education http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/26/donald-trump-pull-feds-out-k-12-education/ IBPresident Trump signed an ex ecutive o rder Wednesday to start pulling the federal government out of K-12 education, following through on a campaign promise to return school control to state and local officials.¶ The order,

dubbed the “Education Federalism Executive Order,” will launch a 300-day review of Obama-era regulations and guidance for school districts and directs Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to modify or repeal measures she deems an overreach by the federal government.¶ “For too long the government has imposed its will on state and local governments. The result has been education that spends more and achieves far, far, far less,” Mr. Trump said. “My administration has been working to reverse this federal power grab and give power back to families, cities [and] states — give power back to localities.”¶ He said that previous administrations had increasingly forced schools to comply with “whims and dictates” from Washington, but his administration would break the trend.¶ “We know local communities know it best and do it best,” said Mr. Trump, who was joined by several Republican governors for the signing. “The time has come to empower teachers and parents to make the decisions that help their students achieve success.”¶ Ms. DeVos and Vice President Mike Pence were on hand for the ceremony, which was attended by about 25 people, including teachers, lawmakers and the governors.¶ The executive order is not expected to have an immediate impact on school districts. Policy changes will follow a report on the findings of the review.¶ The review will be spearheaded by the Department of Education’s Regulatory

Review Task Force, according to the order.¶ Ms. DeVos already has authority to modify or repeal regulations that are deemed a violation of federal law. The order, however, creates a review for identifying those areas and makes clear her mandate from the president to take action.¶ Reducing the federal government’s role in K-12 is part of Mr. Trump’s reform agenda, which also includes the expansion of school choice programs.¶ Among those at the signing ceremony were Govs. Kay Ivey of Alabama, Gary Herbert of Utah, Paul LePage of Maine, Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Terry Branstad of Iowa, who also is Mr. Trump’s nominee for ambassador to China.¶ Also in attendance were Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, the Republican chairs of the two chambers’ education committees.

Federal action on education upsets the balance of federalism. Lawson 13 – Aaron Lawson, Associate at Edelson PC where his practice focuses on appeals and complex motion practice, J.D. from UMich, Educational Federalism: A New Case for Reduced Federal Involvement in K-12 Education, Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal, Article 5, Volume 2013, Issue 2, Published in the summer of 2013, http://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1333&context=eljEvery state constitution, in contrast with the Federal Constitution, contains some guarantee of

education .18 State courts split into two groups on how to give effect to these guarantees: (1) by evaluating education policy under Equal Protection by declaring education a fundamental right or by treating wealth as a suspect classification,19 or (2) by evaluating education policies under a framework of educational adequacy.20 In either case, these clauses establish substantive educational guarantees on the state level that do not exist at the federal level and provide the courts with a role in ensuring the fulfillment of these guarantees.21 These clauses also help to create a valuable political dynamic , which has inured to the benefit of children. As part of this political dynamic, courts define the contours of these affirmative

guarantees, and the legislature fulfills its own constitutional duty by legislating between those boundaries.2However, when the fed eral gov ernment legislates or regulates in a given field, it necessarily

constrains the ability of states to legislate in that same field. 23 In the field of education, the ability of courts to protect the rights of children is dependent on the ability of legislatures freely to react to courts. As such, anything that constrains state legislatures also constrains state

courts and upsets this valuable political dynamic created by the interaction of state legislatures and state courts. An expansive federal role in educational policymaking is normatively undesirable when it threatens to interfere with this political dynamic. This dynamic receives scant attention in the literature described above. However, mindfulness of this dynamic is crucial to the proper placement of the educational policymaking and regulatory epicenter.Constraints on state legislatures would not be as problematic if the fed eral gov ernment had

proven itself adept at guaranteeing adequate educational opportunity for all students. However, RTTT and NCLB have, in some cases, proven remarkably unhelpful for poor and minority students.24 These negative outcomes, of course, are not guaranteed. However, the fact that federal involvement in education has produced undesirable outcomes for poor and minority students should cause policymakers to reexamine whether it is most desirable for the federal government to play such a significant role in education. This Comment argues that it is not.

Internal link—U.S. Federalism is modeled globallyCalabresi 95 Associate Professor at Northwestern University School of Law- (Steven, "Symposium: Reflections On United States V. Lopez: "A Government Of Limited And Enumerated Powers": In Defense Of United States V. Lopez," Michigan Law Review, December 1995, Lexis)

At the same time, U.S.-style constitutional federalism has become the order of the day in an extraordinarily large number of [*760] very important countries, some of which once might have been thought of as pure nation-states. Thus, the Federal

Republic of Germany, the Republic of Austria, the Russian Federation, Spain, India, and Nigeria all have decentralized power by adopting constitutions that are significantly more federalist than the ones they replaced. Many other nations that had been influenced long ago by American federalism have chosen to retain and formalize their federal structures. Thus, the federalist constitutions of Australia, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, for example, all are basically alive and well today. As one surveys the world in 1995, American-style federalism of some kind or another is everywhere triumphant, while the forces of nationalism, although still dangerous, seem to be contained or in retreat.

The few remaining highly centralized democratic nation-states like Great Britain, France, and Italy all face serious secessionist or devolutionary crises. Other highly centralized nation-states, like China, also seem ripe for a federalist, as well as a democratic, change . Even many existing federal and confederal entities seem to face serious pressure to devolve power further than they have done so far: thus, Russia, Spain, Canada, and Belgium all have very serious devolutionary or secessionist movements of some kind. Indeed, secessionist pressure has been so great that some federal structures recently have collapsed under its weight, as has happened in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the former Soviet Union.

Federalism prevents violence, secessions, and rebellions—prefer empiricsLawoti 3/18/09“Federalism for Nepal”, Mahendra Lawoti is professor at the department of political science at Western Michigan University, writer of several books and Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh with dissertation of Exclusionary Democratization: Multicultural Society and Political Institutions in Nepa., http://www.telegraphnepal.com/backup/telegraph/news_det.php?news_id=5041

Cross-national studies covering over 100 countries have shown that federalism minimizes violent

conflicts whereas unitary structures are more apt to exacerbate ethnic conflicts . Frank S. Cohen (1997)

analyzed ethnic conflicts and inter-governmental organizations over nine 5-year –periods (1945-1948 and 1985-1989) among 223 ethnic groups in 100

countries. He found that federalism generates increases in the incidence of protests (low-level ethnic conflicts) but stifles the

development of rebellions (high-level conflicts). Increased access to institutional power provided by federalism leads to more low-level conflicts because local groups mobilize at the regional level to make demands on the regional governments. The perceptions that conflicts occur in federal structure is not entirely incorrect. But the conflicts are low-level and manageable ones. Often, these are desirable conflicts because they are expressions of disadvantaged groups and people for equality and justice, and part of a process that consolidates democracy. In addition, they also let off steam so that the protests do not turn into rebellions. As the demands at the regional levels are addressed, frustrations do not build up. It checks abrupt and severe outburst. That is why high levels of conflicts are found less in federal countries. On the other hand, Cohen found high levels of conflicts in unitary structures and centralized politics. According to Cohen (1997:624):

Federalism moderates politics by expanding the opportunity for victory . The increase in opportunities for political gain comes from the fragmentation/dispersion of policy-making power… the compartmentalizing character of federalism also assures cultural distinctiveness by offering dissatisfied ethnic minorities proximity to public affairs. Such close contact provides a feeling of both control and security that an ethnic group gains regarding its own affairs. In general, such institutional proximity expands the opportunities for political participation, socialization, and consequently, democratic consolidation.

Saidmeman, Lanoue, Campenini, and Stanton’s (2002: 118) findings also support Cohen’s analysis that federalism influences peace and violent dissent differently. They used Minority at Risk Phase III dataset and investigated 1264 ethnic groups . According to Saideman et al. (2002:118-120):

Federalism reduces the level of ethnic violence. In a federal structure, groups at the local

level can influence many of the issues that matter dearly to them- education, law

enforcement, and the like. Moreover, federal arrangements reduce the chances that any

group will realize its greatest nightmare: having its culture, political and educational

institutions destroyed by a hostile national majority .

These broad empirical studies support the earlier claims of Lijphart, Gurr, and Horowitz that power sharing and

autonomy granting institutions can foster peaceful accommodation and prevent violent conflicts among

different groups in culturally plural societies . Lijphart (1977:88), in his award winning book Democracy in Plural Societies,

argues that "Clear boundaries between the segments of a plural society have the advantage of limiting mutual contacts and consequently of limiting the chances of ever-present potential antagonisms to erupt into actual hostility". This is not to argue for isolated or closed polities, which is almost impossible in a progressively globalizing world. The case is that when quite distinct and self-differentiating cultures come into contact, antagonism between them may increase. Compared to federal structure, unitary structure may bring distinct cultural groups into intense contact more rapidly because more group members may stay within their regions of traditional settlements under federal arrangements whereas unitary structure may foster population movement.Federalism reduces conflicts because it provides autonomy to groups. Disputants within federal structures or any mechanisms that provide autonomy are better able to work out agreements on more specific issues that surface repeatedly in the programs of communal movement (Gurr 1993:298-299). Autonomy agreements have helped dampen rebellions by Basques in Spain, the Moros in the Philippines, the Miskitos in Nicaragua, the people of Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts and the affairs of Ethiopia, among others (Gurr 1993:3190) The Indian experiences are also illustrative. Ghosh (1998) argues that India state manged many its violent ethnic conflicts by creating new states (Such as Andhra Pradesh, Gujurat, Punjab, Harayana, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland) and autonomous councils (Such as Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, Bodoland Autonomous Council, and Jharkhand Area autonomous Council, Leh Autonomous Hill Development Council). The basic idea, according to Ghosh (1998:61), was to devolve powers to make the ethnic/linguistic groups feel that their identity was being respected by the state.

By providing autonomy, federalism also undermines militant appeals. Because effective autonomy provides resources and institutions through which groups can make significant progress toward their objectives, many ethnic activities and supporters of ethnic movements are engaged through such arrangements. Thus it builds long-

term support for peaceful solutions and undermines appeals to militant action (Gurr 1993:303).

Policies of regional devolution in France, Spain and Italy, on the other hand, demonstrate that establishing self-managing autonomous regions can be politically and economically less burdensome for central states than keeping resistant peoples in line by force: autonomy arrangements have transformed destructive conflicts in these societies into positive interregional competition".

Uniqueness

Uq – XO / DeVos

Review process from the XO means shifting towards local control now Reuters Apr 26, 2017 Trump seeks to shrink federal role in education with new order http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-education-trump-idUSKBN17S2U8 IBPresident Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to review the U.S. government's role in school policy, which supporters cheered as the first step in creating more local control in education

and critics worried could lead to lower quality schools in poorer neighborhoods.¶ DeVos has 300 days "to review and, if necessary,

modify and repeal regulations and guidance issued by the D epartment o f E ducation with a clear mandate to identify places where D.C. has overstepped its legal authority ," said Rob Goad, a Department of Education official, according to a transcript of a White House call with reporters.¶ The second most powerful Republican in the House of Representatives, California's Kevin McCarthy, said the federal government had in recent years exceeded its legal authority in creating regulations and guidance¶ "Different people in different states and communities will have different goals and ways of achieving those goals. That is something we should celebrate and enable, not try to stop," he said in a statement.¶ The Democratic National Committee, though, said the order was politically motivated, with Trump wanting something to show in school policy in his first 100 days.¶ The head of the American Federation of Teachers union, Randi

Weingarten, said the current education law, Every Student Succeeds Act, already reduces federal power over schools, especially when it comes to standards and teacher assessments.¶ "What the new law doesn’t do is abandon the requirement for the federal government to protect the civil rights of our students, even if those rights run counter to what states and districts want to do," she said in a statement.

Trump is pushing power back to the states now Dustin Hornbeck, Ph.D. Student in Educational Leadership and Policy, Miami University 2017 May 10th Federal Role in Education Has a Long History https://www.higheredjobs.com/Articles/articleDisplay.cfm?ID=1285President Donald Trump has directed the United States Department of Education to evaluate whether the federal government has " overstep ped its legal authority" in the field of education.

This is not a new issue in American politics. ¶ Ever since the Department of Education became a Cabinet-level

agency in 1979, opposition to federalized education has been a popular rallying cry among conservatives. Ronald Reagan advocated to dismantle the department while campaigning for his presidency, and many others since then have called for more power to be put back into the states' hands when it comes to educational policy. In February of this year, legislation was introduced to eliminate the Department of Education entirely.¶ So, what is the role of the state versus the federal government in the world of K-12 education?¶ As a researcher of education policy and politics, I have seen that people are divided on the role that the federal government should play in K-12 education -- a role that has changed over the course of history.¶ Growth of Public Education in States¶ The 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution states:¶ "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people ."¶ This leaves the power to create schools

and a system for education in the hands of individual states, rather than the central national

government . Today, all 50 states provide public schooling to their young people -- with 50 approaches to education within the

borders of one nation.¶ Public schooling on a state level began in 1790, when Pennsylvania became the first state to require free education. This service was extended only to poor families, assuming that wealthy people could afford to pay for their own education. New York followed suit in 1805. In 1820, Massachusetts was the first state to have a tuition-free high school for all, and also the first to require compulsory education.

UQ – AT: new review irrelevant

Laws on the book already cede education policy to the states Associated Press April 26 2017 EDUCATION Trump order seeks to limit federal role in K-12 education President said the order will help restore local control over education http://www.toledoblade.com/Education/2017/04/26/Trump-order-seeks-to-limit-federal-role-in-K-12-education.html IBWASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order today that aims to reduce the federal government’s role in K-12 education.¶ Trump is giving Education Secretary Betsy DeVos just short of a year — 300 days — to identify areas where Washington has overstepped its legal authority in education, and modify and repeal regulations and guidance from her department, if necessary. A report will be returned to the White House and eventually made public, officials said.¶ Trump complained that the government over the years has forced states and schools to comply with “federal whims.” He said the order will help restore local control over education.¶ “We know that local communities do it best and know it best,” Trump said, surrounded by governors, members of Congress and teachers. “The time has come to empower parents and teachers to make the decisions that help their students achieve success.”¶ Republicans have long chafed at federal government involvement in education, asserting that states and local governments, school boards and parents are best positioned to decide what students learn. Antipathy toward the Education Department ramped up under Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, who offered states billions of dollars of federal money to help improve their schools in exchange for adopting certain academic standards.¶ DeVos said time has shown that “one-size fits all policies and mandates from Washington simply don’t work.”¶ But Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union, said the review was unnecessary because a bipartisan education law enacted in late 2015 had already shifted power from the federal government to states.¶ “This is a case of been there, done that,” Weingarten said. She stressed that the law also contains key civil rights provisions that the federal government is obligated to uphold.

UQ – ESSA

ESSA means shift towards state control now – 2017-18 school year is keyAndrew Saultz is an assistant professor of Educational Leadership at Miami University November 2, 2016 Educational Federalism, the Every Student Succeeds Act, and the Future of Educational Policy http://edwp.educ.msu.edu/green-and-write/2016/educational-federalism-the-every-student-succeeds-act-the-future-of-educational-policy/ IBIt is rare to see government limit its own power. Conventional wisdom, and political science literature, indicates that government tends to hold onto, or expand, power over time. So why did Congress return power to states under the Every Student Succeeds Act?¶ The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), signed into law in December of 2015, changes the role of the federal government. Most notably, the law allows states to choose certain provisions of the accountability system. For example, states will choose which ‘non-academic’ indicator (i.e. school climate, discipline, access

to advanced courses) to include in evaluating schools, what assessments to use, and how to measure teacher effectiveness. ESSA replaces No Child Left Behind (NCLB) as the major federal education law. Over the last year, I spent a lot of time researching how ESSA was passed despite such Congressional partisanship, why the federal government chose to reduce its role under the new law, and what this all means for the future of educational policy. Here is what I learned.¶ Congress passed ESSA for three main reasons. First, Congress passed ESSA in response to executive overreach through programs like Race to the Top and NCLB waivers. The U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) and Secretary of Education

Arne Duncan used these programs to incentivize, and cajole, states to change laws around teacher evaluation, standards, and accountability systems more broadly. Race to the Top used stimulus funds from 2009-2010 to create a state competition that rewarded certain state policy changes. The USDOE granted states waivers from some of the provisions of NCLB, most notably the 2014 deadline for all students to be proficient in reading and mathematics. This clearly unattainable goal led state policymakers to jump at the opportunity to gain flexibility from it. However, the USDOE knew that they held incredible bargaining power in this negotiation, so they mandated states to alter policy in substantial ways. Congressional leaders in both parties viewed these programs, especially the waivers, as outside the purview of the executive branch. As a result, a bipartisan consensus emerged around placing stringent limitations on the USDOE through ESSA.¶ Second, 2015 opened with new leadership in three of the four major Congressional leadership positions. Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) took over in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and Representative Bobby Scott (D-VA) emerged as the House Education Committees ranking Democrat, while Representative John Kline (R-MN) remained the Chair. This shift in leadership allowed for fresh negotiations. Further, Speaker Boehner’s resignation reset some of the tension among House Republicans around divisions in the party, particularly between the Tea Party and others. The Tea Party had previously been seen as a coalition that obstructed efforts for a bipartisan compromise. In sum, leadership changes helped reset discussions about how to best shape the new federal role in education.¶ Third, major interest groups shifted their support away from federal involvement in educational policy. The two major teacher unions opposed federal efforts to tie teacher evaluations to student test scores, and began to distance their organizations from the Obama Administration. The Chamber of Commerce, National Governors Association, and over 100 civil rights groups joined the unions in support of ESSA. In short, the largest interest groups in education were all advocating for change. This broad coalition led to bipartisan congressional support for ESSA.¶ What does this mean for the future of federalism?¶ State policymakers are now tasked with making decisions about how to define teacher effectiveness, what measures to include in the school accountability system, and which standards to use. This provides an important opportunity for educators, researchers, policymakers and the public to discuss normative questions around what schools should prioritize and what is good teaching. In Ohio, the department of education is holding a number of information sessions to garner public feedback about these decisions. Now is the time to get involved in this discussion, as the new ESSA accountability system will be implemented in the 2017-2018 school year. The federal government doesn’t reauthorize major laws frequently, so these decisions are likely to be engrained in the educational system for the foreseeable future.¶ The role of the Secretary of Education is limited under ESSA. The law stipulates that the federal government may not define how teachers are to be evaluated or what standards or standardized test states should use. The Secretary of Education will have to be creative in how she influences state policy. While the use of waivers is very limited under ESSA, the executive branch can still bring stakeholders together, use the bully pulpit to advocate for change, and support state departments of education. While these options have less potential to create rapid policy changes, they have a better chance of creating more lasting change.¶ Educational policy has been rightly criticized for narrowing the curriculum and over relying on standardized test scores. While ESSA continues annual testing, it also provides an important opportunity to redefine what we measure and include in school accountability. We know that the public wants more than academic test results from their schools. ESSA provides an opportunity to make that a reality.

Links

2NC – Momentum Building Now

Momentum is key to shifting the power back to the states – the plan jacks that By Joy Pullmann managing editor of The Federalist and author of "The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids," MAY 3, 2017 How Trump’s Executive Order Can Fix Ronald Reagan’s Education Failure http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/03/how-betsy-devos-can-make-trumps-executive-order-fix-ronald-reagans-education-failure/ IBDonald Trump managed to find America’s pulse during his campaign on a low-key issue that nevertheless is definitive to America’s longevity as a freedom-generating nation: education. Of high-profile Republicans, he was one of the few to blast Common Core and vow to “restore local control” to American schools, and through the only mechanism that makes that truly possible: parent choice.

As president, he reiterated that promise, and last week signed an ex ecutive o rder that aims to begin fulfilling it.¶ I’ve got

some bad news: That’s nowhere near good enough. Truly restoring parent control over education requires Congress to cut the U.S. D epartment o f E ducation and relinquish the power they have seized from parents and local communities and given to bureaucrats, a promise Ronald Reagan also made as a presidential candidate but left unfulfilled due partly to staff treachery at a key moment in history. His failure allowed America’s education to metastasize, eroding Americans’ capacity to govern themselves through robust character and careful analysis.¶ Americans have long trusted Democrats far more on education than they do Republicans. Perhaps that’s because Republicans typically offer the same old soft Bolshevism without all the fluffy clothing. They drone on and on about forming our kids like widgets in a corporate machine and fine-tuning percentage points on teacher pay scales. They tell us their five-inch-thick education “reform” bills, laden with dozens of refunded garbage programs and dictatorial control still preserved for federal bureaucrats, diminish “the national school board.” Puh-leese. At least Democrats burn our public education dollars without hiding their glee.¶ The situation is dire. But there are some constructive things the Trump administration can do to better their odds of ending the education monopolies at the root of widespread public dissatisfaction and ideological indoctrination of American kids.¶ Let’s Start With that Executive Order¶ The federal government’s method of securing power over local schools by taxing citizens, then offering their money back if states follow the ignorant orders of politicized and distant bureaucrats, is illegitimate, unconstitutional, and makes Americans dumber. Like the rest of the administrative state, it’s destructive of self-government and government by consent, which is every American’s birthright.¶ That said, I believe in respecting and working within existing culture and systems. The prudential question is how to accomplish as much good as possible given the obstacles at play. The BHAG is to shift the window of what conventional wisdom says is possible, which Trump has

already shown he’s more than capable of doing.¶ So I don’t think Trump should ignore the laws that direct his administration to

keep running programs that waste children’s minds and taxpayers’ money. Instead, his administration should demonstrate to lawmakers and the American public why they should consent to ending all the idiotic things the federal government does in education. His administration should also take care that any resulting policy changes are

prudently carried out to prevent backlash from poor execution.¶ Intelligent use of Trump’s executive order can further that end. The order, even just as a rhetorical document, is good and strong, although it also

reveals Congress has bound the administration’s hands in many respects from restoring self-government in education to the people:¶ It shall be the policy of the executive branch to protect and preserve State and local control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, and personnel of educational institutions, schools, and school systems, consistent with applicable law, including ESEA, as amended by ESSA, and ESEA’s restrictions related to the Common Core State Standards developed under the Common Core State Standards Initiative.¶ …¶ The Secretary shall examine whether these regulations and guidance documents comply with Federal laws that prohibit the Department from exercising any direction, supervision, or control over areas subject to State and local control, including:¶ (i) the curriculum or program of instruction of any elementary and secondary school and school system;¶ (ii) school administration and personnel; and¶ (iii) selection and content of library resources, textbooks, and instructional materials.¶ DeVos will find that yes, the U.S. Department of Education is forced by law to break older laws that aim to restrict the federal government from telling schools what and how they must teach. Her own department was originally approved on the promise to the American people that it would not interfere with freedom of thought and instruction, and it has repeatedly and systematically broken this faith. It has done so, for example, by telling states what tests and curriculum mandates they are allowed to have, and how they must train and certify teachers, and by funding particular curricula and tests (including the national Common Core tests).¶ Americans don’t want the feds doing this, and central planning education only deforms the American character and intellect because centralization always increases costs and reduces quality, as well as eviscerates self-government.¶ The Results of This Order Can Inform Needed Legislation¶ That is Congress’s fault, and Congress must fix it.

Link—Trump’s stance on education is key to federalist balance—Trump must follow through on current XO’sHarold Pease 5/16/2017 “GETTING BACK TO THE CONSTITUTION IN EDUCATION”. Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. https://www.northdenvertribune.com/2017/05/16/federal-power-grab/ But an executive order is not enough and can be rescinded by the next president, as Trump is doing to his predecessor. The EO restricts itself to “under the law”

and Congress (both parties) clearly passed these major education laws identified in the order. Trump must more fully hinge his argument

on the Constitution and on the doctrine of federalism , which preceded the Constitution as a carry-over from the Articles of

Confederation, our first national constitution. He should do so by arguing that he has no authority to enforce law that violates the separation of powers as created by the Constitution, which he has sworn to uphold. He must also encourage Congress to rescind those

laws or, through the states, create a new amendment to the Constitution using Article 5 of the Constitution. Otherwise, this immediate victory ,

his EO, will be short lived .¶ One of the first questions I ask students in an into to government class, since every textbook has a chapter on federalism is, “Who

cares most whether Johnny can read, his mother or federal bureaucrats located hundreds often thousands of miles away.” It is generally agreed his mother does and is in a position to do most to remedy the problem by direct access to his teacher and school and can run for the school board if not satisfied.¶ A second question, “Who suffers most if the school fails Johnny?” Again, his mother as responsible bureaucrats have moved on and she is left long term with the consequences of their failure with Johnny. As a life-long student or instructor, I have never seen evidence that the federal government can administrate the needs of Johnny better than most parents.¶ My best and most caring teacher did her “magic” in a remote country school of two rooms; one a library the other a classroom. She taught all grades 1-8 at once with two or more students from each

grade. No electronic aid or devices—only a chalkboard and books. Government policies and money raining down from afar generally discourage individuality in teaching and creativity . Instead they often spawn collective thought, (the enemy of real

education), by their distribution of money favoring some ideas and groups.¶ Federalism and the wisdom of the Founding Fathers to retain it and to

specifically list the powers of the federal government in Article I Section 8 leaving all other powers, in this case education, at state and local levels, was brilliant. Hopefully, the Trump EO will strike a new public debate eventually removing all federal influence

and funding in education . Trump is not yet a constitutionalist, but this move alone shows him closer than the vast majority of presidents in my lifetime.

Federal Funding

Federal funding crushes federalism - eliminates state incentives for innovationNeal McCluskey is director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom March 14, 2017 For the Love of Choice, Don’t Federalize It https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/love-choice-dont-federalize-it IBThe first question facing any federal proposal should be whether it is allowed by the Constitution. That may seem quaint or quixotic, but it is

fundamental: the Constitution gives Washington specifically enumerated powers, and that is all. Governing

education , aside from enforcing civil rights legislation and regulating schooling on federal lands, is not among them .¶ There are

sound practical reasons for respecting these constitutional limits. First and foremost, federalism defends against centralized control of America’s diverse communities and people. In addition, when sub-national units, such as states and school districts, try something new, the damage is isolated if a plan does not work; if it succeeds, others are free to replicate it and adapt it to their needs.¶ But isn’t school choice fundamentally different from and better than federalism? Doesn’t it inherently move power from higher, more centralized levels to the lowest levels possible: children and families?¶ It

does, and that is a tremendous strength. But as we’ve learned from roughly a quarter-century of experience with state-level school choice programs and federal higher education policy, any connection to the federal

government can have unintended consequences for choice, including incentivizing government control of the schools to which public money flows. That control can diminish and even eliminate the core value of school

choice: the ability to choose something truly different.¶ 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.

Tax Credits

Tax credits enforce crush federalism – they are tied to national accreditation standards for universities Neal McCluskey is director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom March 14, 2017 For the Love of Choice, Don’t Federalize It https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/love-choice-dont-federalize-it IBScholarship tax credits and education savings accounts appear to attract less regulation . Andrew Coulson compared vouchers and tax credits empirically and found that credits are less prone to regulation, probably because no one has tax dollars taken away and sent to someone else. Education savings accounts are too new to know for sure, but the hope is that

they will avoid onerous rules because funds can be spent on multiple uses.¶ But even these seemingly less-

regulation-prone choice mechanisms can come with controls . For instance, schools taking kids with scholarships funded through Florida’s tax credit program must be approved by the state, meet teacher-qualification requirements, and show gains on either state exams or nationally norm-referenced tests. Students in Tennessee’s Individualized Education Account Program must take either a nationally

norm-referenced test chosen by the state department of education or the state exam.¶ Even expanding tax-preferred 529 plans, which currently only apply to higher education expenses, to include K-12 education expenses could threaten schools’ autonomy. Any college on which a student wants to spend 529 account money must be accredited, and requiring that colleges be accredited to take students with federal aid is a major reason that we do not see more postsecondary education innovation . Indeed, accreditation is

the primary way Washington regulates colleges; a student can only use federal aid at an accredited school, and the federal government regulates the accreditors.

AT: Funding not coercive

Funding creates vicious cycles of aid dependency for both families and institutions - higher education proves this ensures federal controlNeal McCluskey is director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom March 14, 2017 For the Love of Choice, Don’t Federalize It https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/love-choice-dont-federalize-it IBBut what if the proposed numbers of federal choice dollars, potential beneficiaries, and participating schools were small? Wouldn’t that allay concerns about Washington dictating terms to private schools

nationwide?¶ Well, not exactly. The numbers may start small, but the allure, and eventual necessity, of getting those dollars would likely grow quickly. Once a single group starts getting aid, others

naturally demand the same thing. Looking further at higher education is instructive.¶ In 1970-71, there were only a relative handful of federal student aid programs, and total aid, including loans, amounted to just $16.5 billion in 2015 dollars. The number of programs has since nearly doubled, and the total amount of federal aid in the 2015-16 academic year was $140.1 billion. Readily available data on the share of students receiving federal aid only goes back to the 1992-1993 academic year, but the growth in aid dependence is also clear: In 1992-93, 45 percent of full-time, full-year undergraduates used some form of federal aid. By 2011-12, that had jumped to 73 percent.¶ What about federal higher education tax incentives? Though nonexistent until the 1996-97 school year, more than $18 billion in tax benefits were claimed in 2015-16.¶ Aid money got baked into the system, and now colleges can no longer exist without taking students with federal aid. Aid-eschewing institutions would be unable to pay for all the stuff, academic and otherwise, that aid-accepting schools provide and would struggle mightily to attract students. And since aid is built into the prices, students need it, too.¶ With federal school choice, K-12 schools and families would also likely become hooked on federally connected cash, including money furnished through donation tax credits, and the vicious cycle of aid leading to price inflation would take off. This danger is especially acute in the context of a federal program since, unlike individual states, Washington can easily borrow or even print money it does not have. These abilities matter even for credits , allowing the feds to more

easily forego tax revenue.¶ With burgeoning federal aid, federal rules that would make autonomous private schools ever more homogenous and, well, public would also likely proliferate. We have seen the

regulation impetus in state-funded school choice programs. We have also seen it in higher education. That sector

deals with adults and, hence, has been less prone to regulation than K-12 education, but it has nonetheless become increasingly subject to federal controls, including through accreditation and a Sword of Damocles—separation from student aid—hanging over institutions that, regardless of the mix of students they serve, do not meet federal performance metrics.¶ Imagine if there had been a federal voucher or tax credit program just a few years ago. Private schools nationwide could have faced heavy pressure to adopt nationally uniform curriculum standards. They could have been subjected to “Dear Colleague” letters prescribing, even for religious schools, their bathroom and locker room access policies. They could have been coerced into teacher evaluations based in part on standardized test scores. Choice, quite simply, could have been kneecapped, even if more people were able to exercise it.¶ If the goal is to maximize true

choice—not just give more people something called “choice”— the conclusion is clear : A federal program would be too dangerous, threatening to snuff out federalism and impose uniformity on private schools nationwide. It would also violate the Constitution, which was written as it was because the Founders knew that education was no place for the national government.

Funding initiatives are ineffective and constrain school choice By Corey A. Deangelis June 8, 2017 10:49AM Education Dollars Should Matter—but Do They?https://www.cato.org/blog/education-dollars-should-matter IBEducation reporters such as Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum continue to cling to the idea that pouring exorbitant resources into an inefficient school system can make a sustainable difference in the lives of America’s children. To support the claim, Barnum points to a couple of recent studies examining the association between court-

ordered education spending increases and student outcomes.¶ Jackson, Johnson, and Perisco (2016) conclude that an annual 10% increase in per pupil spending for all 12 years of schooling leads to an increase of about a third of a year of completed education. Similarly, Lafortune, Rothstein, and Schanzenbach (2016) find that court-ordered spending increases improve test scores for the least-advantaged students by a little under a hundredth of a standard deviation per year.¶ However, both of these studies suffer from important methodological issues that limit their ability to identify a strong causal relationship between education dollars and student outcomes.¶ Methodological Problems¶ Obviously,

court-ordered spending reforms are not random events, so using them to predict educational expenditures still results in biased estimates. The public’s desire to improve education in a given location likely leads simultaneously to court-ordered spending increases and political pressures to improve school quality.¶ Perhaps more concerning is that event studies like the ones Barnum cites capture an entire package of educational reforms during a particular period. For some reason, authors of these types of studies have chosen to point to spending as the cause of the altered outcomes. However, other reforms such as testing accountability, pay-for-performance, and educational choice happened during the study timeframes.¶ Costs vs. Benefits¶ For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the detected effects could actually be attributed to educational dollars.¶ The study by Lafortune, Rothstein, and Schanzenbach finds that a large court-ordered spending increase only raises test scores by seven-thousandths of a standard deviation per year. For the most-advantaged students, the effects are zero. The fact that the detected impacts are trivial suggests that authors are simply picking up the bias generated by their empirical techniques.¶ However, even if court-ordered spending decisions were indeed random, another important question arises: do the benefits justify the additional costs? In theory, pouring billions of educational dollars into systems designed to improve test scores should do just that, even if schools are not particularly efficient. Certainly, if researchers found that a million dollars per student per year increased their test scores by a couple of points, we would be neither surprised nor enthusiastic.¶ Defining Benefits¶ Further, even if traditional public schools were efficient in allocating resources towards student achievement, it still is not clear whether test scores actually matter. Allocating more resources towards increasing test scores may actually harm students if educators consequently focus less on molding nearly unmeasurable

character skills such as morality and determination.¶ If we really want educational dollars to matter, we ought to allow children to take their public funds to the schools that are best for them. Only in that scenario will educational institutions have a strong incentive to shape the skills that individual children actually need for lifelong success.

STEM - General

Federal STEM programs trade off with innovation at the state level Lindsey M. Burke is a Policy Analyst in the Domestic Policy Studies Department and Jena Baker McNeill is Policy Analyst for Homeland Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation 2011 January 5 “Educate to Innovate”: How the Obama Plan for STEM Education Falls Short http://www.heritage.org/education/report/educate-innovate-how-the-obama-plan-stem-education-falls-short IBWhen President Obama announced his Administration’s plan to enhance STEM education, he affirmed that “we know that the nation that out-educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow.”[8] The President’s plan to enhance STEM education, much like similar efforts in the past to improve education through short-term bursts with federal dollars, falls short of the dramatic changes needed in the educational system to truly fill the gap.¶ The need to improve STEM education in the United States is no recent revelation . Over the

past 50 years, American leaders have repeatedly discussed the need to enhance STEM education. Yet, despite increasing federal efforts and spending, U.S. students continue to under-perform in STEM subjects . In 2007, for instance, the America COMPETES Act created new federal funding for STEM education. The act included the creation of a new federal initiative to train 70,000 new teachers in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, as well as initiatives intended to provide existing teachers with STEM training and to encourage university students pursuing STEM degrees to concurrently obtain teaching certifications. Despite these efforts, there remains a major shortage of qualified STEM teachers throughout the nation—and American students continue to perform worse than their peers in STEM subjects.[9]¶ Encouraging the private sector to get involved in the education of tomorrow’s workforce can align the education of today with the skills needed for tomorrow .

Using creative approaches to tackle learning challenges is certainly a concept that should be embraced. The problem with the President’s approach, however, is that the root of America’s STEM education deficit is much more fundamental than the problems addressed by the President’s initiatives . The American K–12 education system is meant to function as a pipeline that prepares students for higher education and careers.

But with an average annual dropout rate of close to 10 percent, there is little doubt that this pipeline has sprung a leak.[10] Even many of those who do graduate with a high school diploma lack the knowledge and skill-base to succeed in the STEM field.¶ In the United States today, just 73 percent of freshmen entering high school will graduate within four years, and those who do are often not adequately prepared for higher education and careers in STEM fields.[11] Too many students are not making it through the leaky pipeline of the American education system with the skills they need to succeed. The reasons for their underperformance stems from a number of problems:¶ A One-Size-Fits-All Approach. Despite increasing federal control over the American education system over the past 50 years, educational achievement across the country has continued to deteriorate.[12] A large part of the problem is that the federal focus centers on a one-size-fits-all approach. Most recently, this approach is part of the Obama Administration’s efforts to impose national education standards and tests on states. This is a significant federal overreach into states’ educational decision-making authority, and will likely result in the standardization of mediocrity, rather than a minimum benchmark for competency in math and English.[13] Applying a blanket approach to education reform undermines innovation in STEM education, increasing conformity at the expense of meeting the diverse needs of students and parents.

Federal efforts to enhance STEM trades off with similar initiatives at the state levelLindsey M. Burke is a Policy Analyst in the Domestic Policy Studies Department and Jena Baker McNeill is Policy Analyst for Homeland Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation 2011 January 5 “Educate to Innovate”: How

the Obama Plan for STEM Education Falls Short http://www.heritage.org/education/report/educate-innovate-how-the-obama-plan-stem-education-falls-short IBAbstract: President Obama’s Educate to Innovate initiative has provided billions in additional federal funding for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education programs across the country. The Administration’s recognition of the importance of STEM education— for global competitiveness as well as for national security—is good and important.

But the past 50 years suggest that federal initiatives are unlikely to solve the fundamental problem of American underperformance in STEM education. Heritage Foundation education and national security analysts explain that, though Educate to Innovate is intended to raise the U.S. “from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math,” the federal program’s one-size-fits-all approach fails to remedy the underlying problems of academic performance and does not plug the leaky pipeline in the American education system.¶ In the 1950s and 1960s, Sputnik and the space race inspired a generation of Americans to pursue education and careers in science and technology. Half a century later, American students are now ranked 22nd and 31st among their peers throughout the world in science and math, respectively. Students in the United States, once a leader in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), are now outperformed by students from Liechtenstein, Slovenia, Estonia, and Hungary, among others.[1]¶ In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education published “A Nation at Risk,” a national study that highlighted the unacceptable state of the American education system:¶ Our nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. This report is concerned with only one of the many causes and dimensions of the problem, but it is the one that undergirds American prosperity, security, and civility.... What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur—others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.[2]¶ More than two decades later, in 2010, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine published “Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5,” which built on the findings of their 2005 “Gathering Storm” report. Notably, the report warns that, “Today, for the first time in history, America’s younger generation is less well-educated than its parents.”[3]¶ Attempting to counter the faltering academic standing of American students and seeking to elevate them “from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math,” the Obama Administration announced its Educate to Innovate initiative in November 2009.[4] The program, while touted as an effort to enhance STEM education, falls short of achieving this goal because it fails to address the underlying problems that plague the current educational system.¶ The Obama Administration should limit, not increase, federal influence over education, and afford state and local policymakers flexibility with their federal education dollars in order to better target resources to those areas most in need. For their part, state and local policymakers should:¶ Promote

alternative and flexible means to certify new teachers;¶ Create an environment favorable to online education to allow

more students to have access to quality STEM education;¶ Link teacher pay to performance to help recruit and retain qualified teachers; and¶ Reform the traditional public school structure to promote school choice.¶ Educate to Innovate

STEM – School Choice

Federal one size fits all STEM programs kill school choice – trades off with STEM innovationLindsey M. Burke is a Policy Analyst in the Domestic Policy Studies Department and Jena Baker McNeill is Policy Analyst for Homeland Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation 2011 January 5 “Educate to Innovate”: How the Obama Plan for STEM Education Falls Short http://www.heritage.org/education/report/educate-innovate-how-the-obama-plan-stem-education-falls-short IBFixating on the Traditional School Model. While alternative education programs have long been in development, the American education system has continued to fixate on the traditional school model. Alternative education programs offer much promise for fostering innovation in education across the country. Online or virtual learning programs, for example, allow a break from the traditional model in which educational opportunity is tied to one’s zip code and enables students to gain access to the best teachers regardless of where they are located. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education conducted a meta-analysis of online-learning studies and concluded that “students who took all or part of their class online performed modestly better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.”[18]¶ Online-learning options are growing rapidly and present an effective new medium for STEM education. As of 2009, 45 states had some form of online-learning program, with more than one million students enrolled in courses online.[19]¶ Plugging the Leaky Pipe¶ This leaky pipeline is perpetuated as students, ill-prepared by a faltering educational system, face significant challenges in pursuing STEM education in post-secondary school . While the absolute number of students attaining STEM degrees more than doubled between 1960 and 2000, the number of students attending college increased. The percentage of students obtaining STEM degrees has, thus, held relatively constant around 17 percent for the past several decades. In the 2002–2003 school year, for example, of the approximately 2.5 million degrees awarded, 16.7 percent of bachelor’s degrees, 12.9 percent of master’s degrees, and 34.8 percent of doctoral degrees were in a STEM field. In comparison, roughly equal numbers of bachelor’s degrees were awarded in STEM as were awarded in business, and twice as many business master’s degrees were awarded. Only at the doctoral level do STEM degrees exceed most other fields.[20]¶ Despite the low number of STEM degrees awarded, demand for STEM professionals is growing. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that between 1993 and 2004, employment in STEM fields grew by 23 percent, while overall employment in non-STEM fields grew by only 17 percent.[21] Furthermore, in 2010, the National Science Foundation reported that “the S&E [science and engineering] workforce has shown sustained growth for over a half a century, and growth is projected to continue in the future.” The same National Science Foundation report also estimated that the average annual growth rate for the science and engineering workforce is 6.2 percent, compared to 1.6 percent for the overall U.S. workforce. While the current economic recession has strained employment opportunities, the need for STEM remains strong and is a means to foster innovation in national security and industry, as well as promote job growth in research and development and related areas. The current educational system, however, continually fails to prepare students for a post-secondary STEM curriculum.¶ This means that America needs a real solution to the challenges in STEM education, one that develops and fosters interest in the subjects from an early age and builds a strong

base of STEM-educated citizens throughout the United States. In order to achieve this goal, federal and state policymakers should work toward genuine education reform that empowers parents to choose a school that best meets the needs of their children. Data demonstrate that the one-size-fits-all federal efforts to improve STEM education have simply fallen short in educating America’s children in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Educate to Innovate is another broad scheme

that will spend taxpayer dollars without getting to the root cause of deficiencies in the K–12 education system. In order to plug the leaky pipeline of STEM education, states should:¶ Seek alternative and flexible means to certify new teachers. Too many science and math teachers do not have a degree in the subjects they teach. STEM majors have the potential to serve as high-quality science and math teachers; however, the rigor of such courses of study makes it difficult for these students to concurrently pursue minors or certificates in education. Traditional education degrees or certificate programs have a high cost in both time and money. Alternative certification programs, however, offer a low-cost, time-efficient means of training greater numbers of quality STEM professionals to enter the teaching field.¶ Organizations such as the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) offer increasing appeal to both potential new teachers and schools seeking to hire these excellent teachers. Last year, ABCTE provided 219 new teachers with certificates, up from 144 in 2008. The cost of this program is a mere $1,995, while a traditional university degree could cost on average $28,080 at a public four-year university, or upwards of $105,092 at a private university.[22] Candidates for an ABCTE certificate need only to hold a bachelor’s degree, pass a background check, and

pass teaching-knowledge and subject-area exams, with most completing the program in less than a year. ABCTE certification is already accepted as a teaching qualification in Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, and Oklahoma.[23] While alternative teacher-certification skeptics have argued that such programs are not as rigorous, research has shown these concerns to be unfounded.[24] ABCTE reports that only 40 percent of its candidates are able to complete their rigorous program, highlighting its quality and merits.[25]¶ Nevertheless, traditional four-year universities are also stepping up in forming programs to encourage and enable STEM majors to pursue teaching after graduation. The University of Texas at Austin’s UTeach program, for example, offers students the opportunity to obtain a STEM degree and a teaching certificate concurrently.[26] The University of Texas is now graduating 70 science and math teachers per year with a 70 percent retention rate compared to the 50 percent national retention rate.[27] Following on the UTeach example, 13 other universities, including the University of California at Berkeley, have begun similar programs as part of the National Science and Mathematics Initiative (NSMI).[28]¶ Encourage greater access to online classes and programs. In recent history, the quality of education available to a student has largely been determined by zip code. Online education programs, however, provide quality STEM education to students regardless of geography. Approximately 1 million students, or 2 percent of U.S. K–12 students, already participate in online education, with 27 states offering statewide virtual schools and 24 states plus the District of Columbia allowing students to attend these schools full-time.[29]¶ Across the nation, there is a great variety of online or virtual learning programs. Many offer supplementary education, presenting students the opportunity to take classes not offered at their schools (whether an upper-level Advance Placement (AP) class or basic physics) or offering a hybrid education to enhance in-class instruction. Others offer full-time programs or cyber charter schools where students “attend” all of their classes online. These programs may be either publicly run, under state, school district, or charter authority, or privately run, as the for-profit education industry now accounts for roughly 10 percent of the education market.[30] Another added benefit to online education is the ability to customize programs to student needs and allow students to work at their own pace.¶ For STEM education and beyond, virtual learning programs address teacher shortages. Students are able to take a chemistry class from the best instructors online, countering the fact that many school districts have trouble finding qualified STEM teachers. Some online programs even offer virtual chemistry or biology laboratories.¶ Link pay to performance. Teachers’ salaries have long been based on seniority and credentials, completely ignoring market influence and teacher efficacy. To help recruit and maintain qualified teachers, school districts should link pay to performance. For STEM teachers or those with degrees or professional experience in the field, higher salaries are more prevalent in industry than in the teaching profession.¶ Recognizing this market demand, employers may need to offer STEM teachers better compensation. Providing bonuses for those teachers who are successful in recruiting more students to enroll and pass AP courses in the STEM fields could attract and retain high-quality teachers.[31] In Florida, a state leader in education reform, the One Florida program offers $50 in state funding to teachers for each of their students who pass an AP exam, up to $2,000 a year.[32]¶ Empower parents with school choice. Millions of students across the country are trapped in low-quality, government-assigned public schools. School choice, however, offers parents the opportunity to choose schools for their children that offer better opportunities that meet their children’s needs. Last year, 23 private-school-choice programs in 15 states

and the District of Columbia offered varying degrees of school choice options to 190,000 of the nation’s students. These programs not only provide better educational opportunities, but force schools to have greater accountability to students and their families through competition. In addition, 40 states and the District of

Columbia permit charter schools, and 46 states have public-school-choice options.[33]¶ In the case of public-school choice, a key component has been the availability of “backpack funding,” or allowing funding to follow a student to a public school of choice. Such mobile funding also offers great potential for the future of online education, such that students could be able to use either a portion of their educational funding for supplemental virtual education or all of their educational funding for full-time programs.¶ A Nation at Risk¶ A STEM-educated workforce is vital to the security and the prosperity of the U.S. as industry and government increasingly demand highly trained STEM professionals to compete in the global market, and look to science and technology to help stay one step ahead of national security threats.¶ The United States must not allow itself to continue to be outcompeted in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. While the Administration’s Educate to Innovate initiative is intended to raise the U.S. “from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math,” this one-size-fits-all, federal approach fails to remedy the underlying problems of academic performance and does not plug the leaky pipeline in the American education system.

STEM – state support now

Momentum for STEM programs is building at the State level nowBy Isaac S. Solano 2017 February 24 Stem Education A Hot Topic For State Lawmakers http://www.ncsl.org/blog/2017/02/24/stem-education-a-hot-topic-for-state-lawmakers.aspx IBAcross the country, state legislators have renewed interests in Science, Technology, Engineering and

Mathematics (STEM) education.¶ Boy with science project The United States Department of Education's STEM 2026 report, estimates that major American companies will need to add nearly 1.6 million STEM-skilled employees over the next five years.¶ Growing state economies is always a big focus for legislators and many are looking towards improving the STEM workforce as a way to address job growth in their states.¶ Some legislation has focused on helping young students build necessary STEM skills at an early age which may help to one day fill some of these jobs.

STEM – federal budget cuts

Trump is cutting federal STEM funding now and handing it over to the states – the plan reverses that trendSwapna Krishna is a space science and tech writer with a weekly column at Paste Magazine 3/21/17 How Trumps Budget Cuts Will Affect STEM education for low and middle income families https://www.fastcompany.com/3069109/how-trumps-budget-cuts-will-affect-stem-education-for-low-to-middle-income-familiesBut in his budget, Trump proposes eliminating the NASA Education Office entirely. The NASA Education Office consists of K–12 education outreach, scholarships, fellowships, grants, and more. In essence, it trains the next generation of scientists, engineers, educators, and astronauts . Does cutting this office, which the administration sees as redundant, actually hurt Trump’s goals for NASA?¶ Gene Gordon is a New York high school physics teacher who has worked closely with NASA’s Education Office for years. He has been a NASA fellow and has been invited to various NASA events and launches, all of which he’s shared with his students. “I was live broadcasting the Orion launch back [in December 2014] to all the schools, K–12 in all our districts, and also in other districts. People in the local area started following me and wanted to have their students connect up and ask questions. It really blossomed over the past 10 years into this passion in the area about everything NASA and the space program.”¶ STEM education is increasingly important, but Gordon makes clear that this isn’t just about science and math. “It’s using one passion to ignite an overall passion about good work ethics and what you need to survive in this world. NASA’s always been about combining things,” Gordon says. “These programs are giving them life skills and

skills to succeed in their careers and in their futures, even if they don’t go into a STEM field.”

Trump is cutting federal STEM funding now and handing it over to the states – the plan reverses that trendBY ALI BRELAND - 05/23/17 01:56 PM EDT Trump budget makes heavy cuts to science research http://thehill.com/policy/technology/334764-trump-budget-would-make-heavy-cuts-to-sciencePresident Trump’s fiscal 2018 budget unveiled Tuesday proposes massive cuts for the National Science Foundation.¶ The plan would cut $776 million, an 11 percent reduction, from the foundation, which gives grants for non-medical research in science and engineering.¶ Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, defended the proposal, accusing the foundation of wasteful spending.¶ “The National Science Foundation last year used your taxpayer money to fund a climate change musical. Do you think that’s a waste of your money?” he said in a White House briefing on Tuesday.¶ While Congress is expected to reject much of the president's budget, the scientific community blasted the cuts.¶ “The extreme funding cuts to science agencies and related programs included in the budget released today would harm America’s research enterprise and our nation’s leadership in scientific discovery,” said Science Coalition Vice President Anna Quider.¶ “From life changing discoveries to innovations that produce new industries, and from building a STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] workforce to creating new jobs, science-driven innovation has been a powerful driver of the U.S. economy for decades,” she continued.¶ The science cuts are part of a budget blueprint that would cut $1.5 trillion in nondefense spending and another $1.4 trillion in Medicaid spending, while boosting defense by over half a trillion over a decade.

Impacts

DA Turns the Case

DA solves the aff—Only preserving federalism can ensure state follow thruHess and Kelly 9/15/15“More Than a Slogan: Here are five good reasons federalism is so important in education.” Frederick M. Hess, Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the new book, “Letters to a Young Education Reformer.” Andrew Kelly , Andrew P. Kelly is a resident scholar and director of the Center on Higher Education Reform at the American Entrprise Institute. https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/09/15/5-reasons-federalism-in-education-matters Those seeking to do more and more of the nation's education business in Washington fail to recognize that federalism has its own unique strengths when it comes to education. Now, those arguing for a larger federal role have reasonable points to make. Some states do have a history of ignoring failing schools or doing too little for disadvantaged students. It is also true that states can ignore federal inducements in order to go their own way (though that's easier said than done when non-participation comes with a giant price tag).

The response to these concerns should not be shallow sloganeering around the virtues of limited government,

but a competing vision of how to order our community affairs and an explanation of why , at least in

the American system, the federal government just isn't well suited to govern education . Anything less makes it all too

easy for liberals, and even well-intentioned moderates, to dismiss federalism as an inconvenient obstacle to be overcome rather than an asset to be embraced.

Federalism matters for at least five reasons .It's a matter of size. Education advocates suffer from severe bouts of Finland and Singapore envy. They tend to ignore that most of these nations have

populations of 5 million or so, or about the population of Maryland or Massachusetts. Trying to make rules for schools in a nation that's as large and diverse as the U.S. is simply a different challenge .

It aligns responsibility and accountability with authority. One problem with tackling education reform from Washington is that it's not members of Congress or federal bureaucrats who are charged with making things work or who are held accountable when they don't. Instead, responsibility and blame fall on state leaders and on the leaders in those schools, districts and colleges who do the actual work. The more authority moves up the ladder in education, the more this divide worsens .It steers decisions towards the practical. No Child Left Behind promised that 100 percent of students would be proficient in reading and math by 2014. President Barack Obama wants to ensure that all students can attend community college for "free" – though most of the funds would come from

states. It's easy for D.C. politicians to make grand promises and leave the consequences to someone else. State leaders must balance the budget and are answerable to voters for what happens in schools and colleges; this tends to make them more pragmatic in pursuing reform.

When policymakers are embedded in a community, as mayors and state legislators are, there is also more

trust and opportunity for compromise . That kind of practicality might disappoint firebrands eager for national solutions, but it's

a better bet for students than the wish lists and airy promises of Beltway pols.

It leaves room for varied approaches to problem-solving. One of the perils of trying to "solve" things from Washington is that we wind up with one-size-fits-all solutions. No Child Left Behind emerged from a wave of state-based efforts to devise

testing and accountability systems. Those state efforts were immensely uneven, but they allowed a variety of approaches to emerge, yielding the opportunity to learn, refine and reinvent. That's much more difficult when Washington is seeking something that can be applied across 50 states.

Link and turns case— The perception of federal encroachment means schools won’t follow thru kills implementation Fensterwald 1/19/16“Federal officials urged not to step on state's school reforms”, John Fensterwald, editor-at-large of EdSource Today, joined EdSource in 2012. Before that, he was editor and co-writer for the “Thoughts on Public Education (TOP-Ed)” website, a leading source of California education policy reporting and opinion, which he founded in 2009. For 11 years before then, John wrote editorials for the Mercury News in San Jose, with a focus on education. He worked as a reporter, news editor and opinion editor for three newspapers in New Hampshire for two decades before receiving a Knight Fellowship at Stanford University in 1997 and heading West., https://edsource.org/2016/federal-officials-urged-not-to-intrude-on-states-school-reform-essa-nclb-lcff/93632

Superintendents, teachers, advocates for students and business and community leaders sounded a strong, though not unanimous, call Monday for federal officials to give California wide berth to fashion a

school improvement system without micromanagement from Washington .

“The best-run companies empower front-line workers. Focus on being a partner, not on telling us how to do the job but on helping us do the job,” David Rattray, executive vice president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, told U.S. Department of Education officials at a hearing in Los Angeles on the Every Student Succeeds Act, the successor to the No Child Left Behind Act.In all-day hearings last week in Washington, D.C., and at UCLA on Monday, federal education officials led by Ann Whalen, senior adviser to Acting Education Secretary John King, sought advice on regulations to implement the new law. The watchword from California – from the State Board of

Education to the local level – was that the new regulations shouldn’t encroach on the flexibility that Congress

intended when it passed and President Barack Obama signed the law last month.

“ Implementation depends on lessons learned from the failure of NCLB ,” said Patricia Rucker, a member of

the state board who spoke in her role as a lobbyist for the California Teachers Association. “Balance federalism with local control. Rule making should be disciplined to respect the nuances of state plans .”

AT: race to the bottom

Race to the bottom arguments are wrong – empirics prove they are more accountable and fast acting than the fedsPietro S. Nivola Senior Fellow Emeritus - Governance Studies October 1, 2005 “Why Federalism Matters” https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-federalism-matters/ IBOpinions are bound to differ on which level of government should have the last word about marriages or abortions. More puzzling is how the central government has come to meddle incessantly in matters that are ordinarily much more mundane, often meeting little or no resistance. Contemporary American federalism badly needs a realignment here. For the often

indiscriminate preoccupation of national policymakers with the details of local administration is not just wasteful; it can be irresponsible.¶ Let us glance at a small sample of local functions now monitored by federal agencies and courts. Federal law these days is effectively in the business of determining the minimum drinking age for motorists, setting the licensing standards for bus and truck drivers, judging the fitness tests for recruits of local police or fire departments, overseeing spillages from thousands of city storm sewers, requiring asbestos inspections in classrooms, enforcing child support payments, establishing quality standards for nursing homes, removing lead paint from housing units, replacing water coolers in school buildings, ordering sidewalk ramps on streets, deciding how long some unruly students in public schools can be suspended, purifying county water supplies, arresting carjackers, mandating special education programs for preschoolers, influencing how much a community has to pay its snowplow operators or transit workers, planning athletic facilities at state universities, supplying communities with public works and reimbursements for nearly any kind of natural disaster, telling localities in some states how to deploy firefighters at burning buildings, instructing passengers where to stand when riding municipal buses, and so on.¶ Several of these illustrations may sound farcical, but none is apocryphal. The directives for firefighters, for example, are among the many fastidious standards formulated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The pettifogging about where to stand in buses is a Department of Transportation regulation, which, believe it or not, reads as follows:¶ Every bus, which is designed and constructed so as to allow standees, shall be plainly marked with a line of contrasting color at least 2 inches wide or equipped with some other means so as to indicate to any person that he/she is prohibited from occupying a space forward of a perpendicular plane drawn through the rear of the driver’s seat and perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the bus. Every bus shall have clearly posted at or near the front, a sign with letters at least one inch high stating that it is a violation of the Federal Highway Administration’s regulations for a bus to be operated with persons occupying the prohibited area.¶ Tangents like these are baffling. Why should a national cabinet department or regulatory bureaucracy be bothered with how “standees” ride local buses or how a town’s firefighters do their jobs? If municipal transit authorities or fire departments cannot be left to decide such particulars, what, if anything, are local governments for? Surely, most of the matters in question—putting out a fire, taking a bus ride, disciplining a troublemaker in school, removing hazards like asbestos or lead from a school or a house—rarely spill across jurisdictions and so do not justify intervention by a higher order of government.¶ Nor can a plausible case be made that central overseers are needed for each of these assignments because communities would otherwise “race to the bottom.” How many states and localities, if left to their own devices, would practice fire prevention so ineptly

that they require tutelage from a federally approved manual? Before Congress acted to rid the Republic of asbestos,

the great majority of states already had programs to find and remove the potentially hazardous substance. Long

before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency promulgated expensive new rules to curb lead poisoning, state

and municipal code enforcement departments were also working to eliminate this danger to the public health.

Impact – trades off with state innovation

Centralization bad – causes dependency and inaction at the local levelPietro S. Nivola Senior Fellow Emeritus - Governance Studies October 1, 2005 “Why Federalism Matters” https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-federalism-matters/ IBWhy the paternalists in Washington cannot resist dabbling in the quotidian tasks that need to be performed by state and local officials would require a lengthy treatise on bureaucratic behavior, congressional politics, and judicial activism. Suffice it to say that the propensity, whatever its source, poses at least two fundamental problems.¶ The first is that some state and local governments may become sloppier about fulfilling their basic obligations. The Hurricane Katrina

debacle revealed how ill-prepared the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana were for a potent tropical storm that could inundate the region. There were multiple explanations for this error, but one may well have been habitual dependence of state and local officials on direction, and deliverance, by Uncle Sam. In Louisiana, a state that was receiving more federal aid than any other for Army Corps of

Engineers projects, the expectation seemed to be that shoring up the local defenses against floods was chiefly the responsibility of Congress and the Corps, and that if the defenses failed, bureaucrats in the Federal Emergency Management Agency would instantly ride to the rescue. That assumption proved fatal. Relentlessly pressured to spend money on other local projects, and unable to plan centrally for every possible calamity that might occur somewhere in this huge country, the federal government botched its role in the Katrina crisis every step of the way—the flood prevention, the response, and the recovery. The local authorities in this tragedy should have known better, and taken greater precautions.

Impact – terrorism

Centralization trades off with federal governments ability to combat terrorism – federalism is key Pietro S. Nivola Senior Fellow Emeritus - Governance Studies October 1, 2005 “Why Federalism Matters” https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-federalism-matters/ IB

Apart from creating confusion and complacency in local communities, a second sort of disorder begot by a national government too immersed in their day-to-day minutia is that it may become less mindful of its own paramount priorities.¶ Consider an obvious one: the security threat presented by Islamic extremism. This should have been the U.S. government’s first concern , starting from at least the early 1990s. The prelude to September 11, 2001 was eventful and ominous. Fanatics with ties to Osama bin Laden had bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. Muslim militants had tried to hijack an airliner and crash it into the Eiffel Tower in 1994. U.S. military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, were blown up, killing nearly a score of American servicemen in 1996. Courtesy of Al Qaeda, truck bombings at the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 caused thousands of casualties. Al Qaeda operatives attacked the USS Cole in 2000.¶ And so it went, year after year. What is remarkable was not that the jihadists successfully struck the Twin Towers again in the fall of 2001 but that the United States and its

allies threw no forceful counterpunches during the preceding decade, and that practically nothing was done to prepare the American people for the epic struggle they would have to wage.

Instead, the Clinton administration and both parties in Congress mostly remained engrossed in domestic issues, no matter how picayune or petty. Neither of the presidential candidates in the 2000 election seemed attentive to the fact that the country and the world were menaced by terrorism. On the day of reckoning, when word reached President George W. Bush that United Airlines flight 175 had slammed into a New York skyscraper, he was busy visiting a second-grade classroom at an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida.¶ The government’s missteps leading up to September 11th, in short,

had to do with more than bureaucratic lapses of the kind identified in the 9/11 Commission’s detailed litany. The failure was also rooted in a kind of systemic attention deficit disorder. Diverting too much time and energy to what

de Tocqueville had termed “secondary affairs,” the nation’s public servants from top to bottom grew distracted and overextended.¶ To be sure, the past four years have brought some notable changes. Fortifying the nation’s security and foreign policy, for instance, remains a problematic work in progress, but is at least no

longer an item relegated to the hind sections of newspapers and presidential speeches. Nonetheless, distraction and

overextension are old habits that the government in Washington hasn’t kicked. Controversies of the most local, indeed sub-local, sort—like the case of Terri Schiavo—still make their way to the top, transfixing Congress and even the White House.¶ The sensible way to disencumber the federal government and sharpen its focus is to take federalism seriously—which is to say, desist from fussing with the management of local public

schools , municipal staffing practices, sanitation standards, routine criminal justice, family end-of-life disputes, and countless

other chores customarily in the ambit of state and local governance. Engineering such a disengagement on a full scale, however, implies reopening a large and unsettled debate: What are the proper spheres of national and local authority?

ExtinctionNathan Myhrvold, PhD in theoretical and mathematical physics from Princeton, former chief

technology officer of Microsoft, 13 [July 2013, “Strategic Terrorism: A Call to Action,” The Lawfare Research Paper Series No.2, http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Strategic-Terrorism-Myhrvold-7-3-2013.pdf]Several powerful trends have aligned to profoundly change the way that the world works. Technology now allows stateless groups to organize, recruit, and fund themselves in an unprecedented fashion. That, coupled with the extreme difficulty of finding and punishing a stateless group, means that stateless groups are positioned to be lead players on the world stage. They may act on their own, or they may act as proxies for nation-states that wish to duck responsibility. Either way, stateless groups are forces to be reckoned with. At the same time, a different set of technology trends means that small numbers of people can

obtain incredibly lethal power. Now, for the first time in human history, a small group can be as lethal as the largest superpower. Such a group could execute an attack that could kill millions of people. It is technically feasible for such a group to kill billions

of people, to end modern civilization—perhaps even to drive the human race to extinction . Our defense establishment was shaped over decades to address what was, for a long time, the only strategic threat our nation faced: Soviet or Chinese missiles. More recently, it has started retooling to address tactical terror attacks like those launched on the morning of 9/11, but the reform process is incomplete and inconsistent. A real defense will require rebuilding our military and intelligence capabilities from the ground up. Yet, so far, strategic terrorism has received relatively little attention in defense agencies, and the efforts that have been launched to combat this existential threat seem fragmented. History suggests what will happen. The only thing that shakes America out of complacency is a direct threat from a determined adversary that confronts us with our shortcomings by repeatedly attacking us or hectoring us for decades.

Impact – Iraqi Federalism

US specifically influences Iraqi federalism – which is key to counter civil war and ISIS. Absent federalism, escalation would spill-over to the region Pollack ‘14(Kenneth, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institute, “Options for U.S. Policy Toward Iraq,” July 24, http://www.brookings.edu/research/testimony/2014/07/24-options-us-policy-toward-iraq-pollack)Second, it is equally critical that we accept the reality that Iraq has fallen once more into civil war. It is not “on the brink of civil war.” It is not “sliding into civil war.” It is not “at risk of a new civil war.” It is in a civil war . This is what civil war looks like. And civil wars have certain dynamics that need to be understood if they are to be ended, or even merely survived. Iraq’s current situation is the recurrence of the civil war of 2006-2008. In 2007-2008, the United States committed tremendous military and economic resources to pull Iraq out of that first instance of civil war. This time around, Washington has made clear that it will not devote anything like the same resources and there is no other country that can. This second point is important because intercommunal civil wars like Iraq’s are difficult for external powers to end without either a significant commitment of resources or a terrible slaughter by one or more of the combatants. Given the American public’s understandable unwillingness to re-commit the kind of resources we did in 2007-2008, we are unlikely to bring the Iraqi civil war to a speedy end with minimal bloodshed and still safeguard the range of American interests engaged there. For those reasons, the hard truth we face is that, in the circumstances we currently find ourselves in, our options range from bad to awful. Nevertheless, doing nothing because all of the options are unpalatable would be the worst choice of all. Civil wars do not just go away if they are ignored. They burn on and on. They also have a bad habit of infecting neighboring states— just as the Syrian civil war has helped re-ignite the Iraqi civil war. If we try to turn our back on Iraq once again, it will affect its neighbors . It could easily affect the international oil market (and through it, the U.S. economy , which remains heavily dependent on the price of oil no matter how much we may frack). It will also generate terrorists who will seek to kill Americans. So our option may be awful, but we have no choice but to try to make them work. Plan A: Rebuilding a (Somewhat) Unified Iraq Although I believe that the Obama Administration’s Iraq policy has been disastrous, and a critical factor in the rekindling of Iraq’s civil war,[1] I find myself largely in agreement with the approach they have adopted to deal with the revived civil war. Our first priority should be to try to engineer a new Iraqi government that Kurds, Shi’a and moderate Sunnis can all (endorse) embrace, so that they can then wage a unified military campaign (with American support) against ISIS and the other Sunni militant groups.[2] That needs to remain Washington’s priority until it fails

because it is the best outcome for all concerned, including the United States. Doing so would be the most likely way to dampen or eliminate the current conflict, and create the fewest causes for future violence. It could also succeed relatively quickly —in a matter of months rather than years like all of the other options. However, it will be extremely difficult to pull off. The keys to this strategy will be to convince the Kurds not to break from Iraq and convince moderate Sunnis to remain part of the Iraqi political process—and to turn on ISIS and the other Sunni militant groups . As I and other experts on Iraq have

written, this will require both a new political leadership and a drastic overhaul of Iraq’s political system. With regard to the former condition, at this point, it seems highly unlikely that Nuri al-Maliki can remain prime minister and retain either the Kurds or meaningful Sunni representation in his government. However, even if he were removed and new, more acceptable leaders chosen, there would still be a long way to go.[3] Even moderate Sunni leaders are not going to go back to the status quo

ante. They now insist on decentralizing power from the center to the periphery, a redistribution of power within the federal government, and a thorough depoliticization of the Iraqi security services so that they cannot be used as a source of repression by what will inevitably be a Shi’a-dominated central government. They are likely to demand to be allowed to form a federal region like the Kurdistan Regional Government , complete with a separate budget and their own military forces

akin to the Kurdish Peshmerga. For their part, the Kurds will want even more than that. At this point, given the extensive autonomy that the KRG already enjoys, coupled with the territorial and administrative gains it has won in the wake of the ISIS offensive, greater federalism probably won’t be an adequate alternative to independence for the Kurds. If the Kurds can be prevented from seceding, it will probably require Baghdad to accept a confederal arrangement with Erbil. The difference here is that in a typical federal system, resources and authorities are generated from the center and delegated to the periphery for all but a limited number of constrained functions. However, keeping the Kurds on board will likely necessitate a shift to one in which resources and authority begin in the periphery and then are shared with the center for specific purposes and under specific constraints. The Kurds are likely to insist that the KRG maintain the current lines of control in disputed territories unchanged until a referendum can be conducted in accordance with article 140 of the Iraqi constitution. Baghdad will have to recognize Erbil’s right to develop and market the oil it produces as the new status quo. As for oil revenues, Erbil will demand that it be allowed to keep the Kirkuk oil fields it has now secured, and agree that Baghdad and Erbil each be allowed to pump as much oil as they like and pay all of their own expenses from those revenues. Assuming that moderate Sunnis, Kurds and moderate Shi’a can all agree on these various changes, we could see the resurrection of a unified Iraqi polity . It is reasonable to assume that in those happy

circumstances, many Sunni tribes will be ready to fight ISIS a nd the other Sunni militant groups—and to accept assistance from the United States to do so. (Although they have made clear that they will not accept assistance from the Iraqi security forces until they have been thoroughly depoliticized.) Moreover, these are really the only circumstances in which the United States should be willing to provide large-scale military assistance to the Iraqi government to fight ISIS and the other militant groups. Only in those circumstances will such assistance be seen as non-partisan, meant to help all Iraqis and not just the Shi’a (and their Iranian allies).

Middle East war goes nuclear Primakov 9 (Yevgeny, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation; Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; member of the Editorial Board of Russia in Global Affairs. This article is based on the scientific report for which the author was awarded the Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2008, “The Middle East Problem in the Context of International Relations”, 9/08)The Middle East conflict is unparalleled in terms of its potential for spreading globally. During the Cold War, amid which the Arab-Israeli conflict evolved, the two opposing superpowers directly supported the conflicting parties: the Soviet Union supported Arab countries, while the United States supported Israel. On the one hand, the bipolar world order which existed at that time objectively played in favor of the escalation of the Middle East conflict into a global confrontation. On the other hand, the Soviet Union and the United States were not interested in such developments and they managed to keep the situation under control. The behavior of both superpowers in the course of all the wars in the Middle East proves that. In 1956, during the Anglo-French-Israeli military invasion of Egypt (which followed Cairo’s decision to nationalize the Suez Canal Company) the United States – contrary to the widespread belief in various countries, including Russia – not only refrained from supporting its allies but insistently pressed – along with the Soviet Union – for the cessation of the armed action. Washington feared that the tripartite aggression would undermine the positions of the West in the Arab world and would result in a direct clash with the Soviet Union. Fears that hostilities in the Middle East might acquire a global dimension could materialize also during the Six-Day War of 1967. On its eve, Moscow and Washington urged each other to cool down their “clients.” When the war began, both superpowers assured each other that they did not intend to get involved in the crisis militarily and that that they would make efforts at the United Nations to negotiate terms for a ceasefire. On July 5, the Chairman of the Soviet Government, Alexei Kosygin, who was authorized by the Politburo to conduct negotiations on behalf of the Soviet leadership, for the first time ever used a hot line for this purpose. After the USS Liberty was attacked by Israeli forces, which later claimed the attack was a case of mistaken identity, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson immediately notified Kosygin that the movement of the U.S. Navy in the Mediterranean Sea was only intended to help the crew of the attacked ship and to investigate the incident. The situation repeated itself during the hostilities of October 1973. Russian publications of those years argued that it was the Soviet Union that prevented U.S. military involvement in those events. In contrast, many U.S. authors claimed that a U.S. reaction thwarted Soviet plans to send troops to the Middle East. Neither statement is true. The atmosphere was really quite tense. Sentiments both in Washington and Moscow were in favor of interference, yet both capitals were far from taking real action. When U.S. troops were put on high alert, Henry Kissinger assured Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that this was done largely for domestic considerations and should not be seen by Moscow as a hostile act. In a private conversation with Dobrynin, President Richard Nixon said the same, adding that he might have overre-acted but that this had been done amidst a hostile campaign against him over Watergate. Meanwhile, Kosygin and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko at a Politburo meeting in Moscow strongly rejected a proposal by Defense Minister Marshal Andrei Grechko to “demonstrate” Soviet military presence in Egypt in response to Israel’s refusal to comply with a UN Security Council resolution. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev took the side of Kosygin and Gromyko, saying that he was against any Soviet involvement in the conflict. The above suggests an unequivocal conclusion that control by the superpowers in the bipolar world did not allow the Middle East conflict to escalate into a global confrontation. After the end of the Cold War, some scholars and political observers concluded that a real threat of the Arab-Israeli conflict going beyond regional frameworks ceased to exist. However, in the 21st

century this conclusion no longer conforms to the reality. The U.S. military operation in Iraq has changed the balance of forces in the Middle East . The disappearance of the Iraqi counterbalance has brought Iran to the fore as a regional power claiming a direct role in various Middle East processes . I do not belong to those who believe that the Iranian leadership has already made a political decision to create nuclear weapons of its own. Yet Tehran seems to have set itself the goal of achieving a

technological level that would let it make such a decision (the “Japanese model”) under unfavorable circumstances. Israel already possesses nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles. In such circumstances, the absence of a Middle East settlement opens a dangerous prospect of a nuclear collision in the region , which would have catastrophic consequences for the whole world . The transition to a multipolar world has objectively strengthened the role of states and organizations that are

directly involved in regional conflicts, which increases the latter’s danger and reduces the possibility of controlling them. This refers, above all, to the Middle East conflict. The coming of Barack Obama to the presidency has allayed fears that the United States could deliver a preventive strike against Iran (under George W. Bush, it was one of the most

discussed topics in the United States). However, fears have increased that such a strike can be launched by Israel, which would have unpredictable consequences for the region and beyond. It seems that President Obama’s position does not completely rule out such a possibility.

Modeling – Iraq Yes ModellingIraq models US federalism – decentralization key to stabilityWashington Post 7(Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “Federalism, Not Partition,” October 3, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/02/AR2007100201824.html)The Bush administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki greeted last week's Senate vote on Iraq policy -- based on a plan we proposed in 2006 -- with misrepresentations and untruths. Seventy-five senators, including 26 Republicans, voted to promote a political settlement based on decentralized power-sharing. It was a life raft for an Iraq policy that is adrift. Instead, Maliki and the administration -- through our embassy in Baghdad -- distorted the Biden-Brownback amendment beyond recognition, charging that

we seek to "partition or divide Iraq by intimidation, force or other means." We want to set the record straight. If the United States can't put this federalism idea on track , we will have no chance for a political settlement in Iraq and, without that, no chance for leaving Iraq without leaving chaos behind . First, our plan is not

partition, though even some supporters and the media mistakenly call it that. It would hold Iraq together by bringing to life the federal system enshrined in its constitution. A federal Iraq is a united Iraq but one in which power devolves to regional governments, with a limited central government responsible for common concerns such as protecting borders and distributing oil revenue. Iraqis have no familiarity with federalism, which, absent an occupier or a dictator, has historically been the only path to keeping disunited countries whole. We can point to our federal system and how it began with most power in the hands

of the states. We can point to similar solutions in the United Arab Emirates, Spain and Bosnia . Most

Iraqis want to keep their country whole. But if Iraqi leaders keep hearing from U.S. leaders that federalism amounts to or will lead to partition, that's what they will believe. The Bush administration's quixotic

alternative has been to promote a strong central government in Baghdad. That central government doesn't function; it is corrupt and widely regarded as irrelevant. It has not produced political reconciliation -- and there is no evidence it will. Second, we are not trying to impose our plan. If the Iraqis don't want it, they won't and shouldn't take it, as the Senate amendment makes clear. But Iraqis and the White House might consider the facts. Iraq's constitution already provides for a federal system. As for the regions forming along sectarian lines, the constitution leaves the choice to the people of its 18 provinces. The White House can hardly complain that we would force unwanted solutions on Iraqis. President Bush did not hesitate to push Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari out of office to make way for Maliki, and he may yet do the same to Maliki. The United

States has responsibilities in Iraq that we cannot run away from. The Iraqis will need our help in explaining and lining up support for a federal solution. With 160,000 Americans at risk in Iraq, with hundreds of billions of dollars spent, and with more than 3,800 dead and nearly 28,000 wounded, we also have a right to be heard. Third, our plan would not produce "suffering and bloodshed," as a U.S. Embassy statement irresponsibly suggested. And it is hard to imagine more suffering and bloodshed than we've already seen from government-tolerated militias, jihadists, Baathists and administration ineptitude. More than 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes, most for fear of sectarian violence. The Bush administration should be helping Iraqis make federalism work -- through an agreement over the fair distribution of oil revenue; the safe return of refugees; integrating militia members into local security forces; leveraging the shared interest of other countries in a stable Iraq; and refocusing capacity-building and aid on the provinces and regions -- not scaring them off by equating federalism to partition, sectarianism and foreign bullying. To confuse matters more, the administration has conjured a "bottom-up" strategy that looks like federalism and smells like federalism -- but is, in reality, a recipe for chaos . "Bottom-up" seems to mean that the United States will support any group, anywhere, that will fight al-Qaeda or Shiite extremists. Now, it always made sense to seek allies among tribal chiefs to fight common terrorist enemies. But to simply back these groups as they appear, without any overall political context or purpose, is to invite anarchy. Nothing will fragment Iraq more than a bottom-up approach that pits one group against another and fails to knit these parts into governable wholes. Federalism is the one formula that fits the seemingly contradictory desires of most Iraqis to remain whole and of various groups to govern themselves for the time being. It also recognizes the reality of the choice we face in Iraq: a managed transition to federalism or actual partition through civil war .

US is the best model for Iraq decentralization – key to stop inevitable collapseMihalakas ’12 [Nasos Mihalakas, LLM from University College London and a JD from the University of Pittsburgh, “Time for Iraq to Activate its Federation Council!”, April 30, https://mihalakas.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/time-for-iraq-to-activate-its-federation-council/]The political power struggle in Baghdad has significantly escalated since the last U.S. troops withdrew in December 2011, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki slowly abandoning the principle of a unity government that gives all stakeholders a share of power and instead trying to consolidate power in his own hands. The situation has deteriorated so much that in a recent interview with the Associated Press the president of Iraq’s self-rule Kurdish region (Massoud Barzani) demanded that

Shiite leaders “agree on sharing power with their political opponents by September or else the Kurds could consider breaking away from Baghdad.” Tony Karon reports, that even the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose support was critical to getting Maliki reelected, has taken to referring to the Prime Minister as “the dictator.” The most egregious case of power-grab by Maliki, was the ‘politically motivated’ prosecution of Iraqi Sunni leader and Vice-President of the government Tarek al-Hashemi, who was forced to flee Baghdad to escape criminal charges his supporters see as designed to hobble the Sunni political leadership. According to Mr. Karon, Hashemi fled first to Erbil, capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), whose terrain the Iraqi security forces are not authorized to enter, and is now in Turkey. Barzani’s ‘declaration of defiance’ against Maliki, is very much the result of Kurdistan’s long-held desire for independence as well as a consequence of Maliki’s recent attempt to consolidate power. Although unilateral secession by the Kurds (or the Sunnis) is somewhat

unlikely, the escalation of political tensions by Maliki could lead to the eventual break-up of Iraq .

Furthermore, according to the AP, Barzani also said he “wholeheartedly” supports Sunni desires to create their own self-rule regions in Iraq. Sunni lawmakers, whose Iraqiya political coalition

won the most seats in 2010 parliamentary elections but were outmaneuvered by Maliki for the right to form the government, bitterly complain they have no say in Iraq’s power structure. Unless something is done to alleviate the concerns of Kurds and Sunnis about their place in the national government, Iraq might inevitable collapse . Salvation however might still lie within, courtesy of the federal elements of the Iraqi constitution . Iraq’s Ethnic Federalism Under Iraq’s current ‘ethnic/religious federalism’, major political powers are divided among people representing the three main religious/ethnic division: the Kurds who make up 20% of the population, and between the two Muslim faiths (65% Shia and 30% Sunni). Therefore, the convention that has emerged since 2005 (when the current constitution came to force) has been to elect a President of Kurdish background, while the Prime Minister has to come from the Shia community, and the Speaker of the Council of Representatives (parliament) from the Sunni community. In Iraq’s federal structure there are four different levels of government: the central government in Baghdad, the regions (currently only one – Iraqi Kurdistan), the provinces (eighteen) and the local administrations. The Iraqi constitution is very much typical federal constitution, in the way it distributes powers vertically. The federal/national government in Baghdad has limited enumerated powers, and the provinces are endowed with their own distinct political/legislative/judicial authorities. Therefore, the constitution provides that the regions enjoy a great amount of power under this structure, often at the expense of the central government in Baghdad. The constitutions federalism even grants provinces the power to join together and form ‘regions’ which will be semi-autonomous. Although Iraqi Kurdistan is the only legally defined region within Iraq, with its own government and quasi-official militia, other provinces can do the same through a referendum (See: Art. 115 of the Iraqi Constitution). Therefore, Article 115 applies to provinces joining together and forming a region. In fact, instead of blocking the creation of large and powerful administrative regions in the country that could confront central government or even each other, the constitution actually encourages it. This is particularly worrying considering that separatism is already a very powerful trend in Iraq. In Iraq, it was very much expected that the governorates will begin the process of grouping together immediately after the parliamentary elections of 2005.

Political tensions between the three communities, could lead to further ethnic/religious divisions and the eventual ‘partition’ of Iraq. According to Zaid Al-Ali, “the result will most likely be that Iraq will eventually come to resemble Belgium, whose federal structure of government contains three states: Flanders (Flemish-speaking), Wallonia (French-speaking), and Brussels itself.” Similarly, Iraq is likely to be divided in three parts, with a Kurdish region in the north, a Shia-

dominated south and a Sunni region in the center. Horizontal Federalism – the Iraqi Federation Council The only way to prevent this from happening is by strengthening ‘horizontal federalism’ within the Iraqi federal government. Under the Iraqi Constitution, there are to be two legislative houses, the Council of Representatives and the Federation Council. The Council of Representatives is directly elected by the people, “at a ratio of one representative per 100,000 Iraqi persons representing the entire Iraqi people.” The Council of Representatives has the power to enact all federal laws, including the approval and adjustment of the federal budget, conduct foreign policy and defense, and consent to a declaration of war or state of emergency. On the other hand, the Federation Council does not exist yet. The Federation Council is to be composed of representatives of regions and all governorates that have not joined a region. The Constitution does not enumerate the formation or functions of the Federation Council, but leaves those particulars to the Council of Representatives. (See: Article 62 of the Iraqi Constitution) There are plenty of available models for a second legislative chamber representing sub-

national entities (like the German Bundesrat, or the South African National Council of Provinces), but of course the U.S. Senate could be the best model to protect the provinces and curb the federal government’s powers . A second legislative body, which represents all provinces equally, with a primary function of safeguarding the rights and privileges of the regions and provinces from excessive overreach by the federal government will go a long way in alleviating fears and concerns by the ethnic/religious minorities of Iraq – as well as strengthen federalism and prevent any further talk of

Affirmative Answers

Non Unique – Common Core

Non Unique – Federal requirements control state initiativesBy Joy Pullmann managing editor of The Federalist and author of "The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids," MAY 3, 2017 How Trump’s Executive Order Can Fix Ronald Reagan’s Education Failure http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/03/how-betsy-devos-can-make-trumps-executive-order-fix-ronald-reagans-education-failure/ IBUnderstanding this reality is crucial to making wise education policy decisions. Despite prominent Republicans’ statements otherwise, federal mandates continue to enforce Common Core, among other meddlesome

indignities. Trump needs to address this to fulfill his campaign promises. Common Core propagandists are

telling policymakers otherwise to preserve their power after the American people rejected their craptastic product.¶ States may have renamed Common Core, but almost all of them still use it. Here in Indiana, where we supposedly kicked

the thing, schools are still using Common Core lesson plans, instruction, textbooks, and tests. And part of the reason is federal mandates. As former U.S. Department of Education official Ze’ev Wurman commented:¶ ESSA requires ‘State academic standards [that] are aligned with entrance requirements for credit-bearing coursework in the system of public higher education in the State and relevant State career and technical

education standards.’¶ This is a double-speak for Common Core. Neither Race to the Top, nor NCLB Flex waivers [the mechanisms Obama used to impose Common Core on the nation], ever required ‘Common Core.’ Instead, they always used a similar stand-in of ‘Career- and College-Ready standards.’¶ Education, perhaps more than any domain except business, is stuffed with puff pastries. It’s fine if people want to fill their own heads with junk food, but not when they want to seize federal power and taxpayer money to force it on American children. The surest way to prevent dominating others for private gain is to eliminate the “one ring to rule them all” that enables it. Hey, maybe that’s why the Constitution doesn’t give the federal government authority over education in the first place!¶ DeVos’s inquiry, if it is tough and honest, will bring such pressure points to light. Her own department has for years released research showing many of its leading programs are completely ineffective and have been so since spawning. Time for all those monsters to come out of the closet and be buried six feet under with a stake through their hearts. Make Congress defend funding, to the tune of trillions, programs that repeated studies have shown benefit cronies at the expense of Americans.¶ The DeVos report that fulfills Trump’s order could counterpoint the 1983 “Nation at Risk” report that scholar Vicki Alger shows was a deliberate attempt to bait and switch the Reagan administration into not only reversing the president’s promises to end the Education Department, but turbocharging that dead-weight department’s power. The department’s slated layoffs could assist. Dream big, Madame Secretary! The four in five Americans who don’t want the federal government determining what kids learn are already dreaming with you.

Non Unique – AT: XO / DeVos

Its empty rhetoric and doesn’t change the nature of education policyBY CNN WIRE APRIL 26, 2017 Trump Signs Executive Order Designed to Roll Back Federal Involvement in Education http://ktla.com/2017/04/26/trump-signs-executive-order-designed-to-roll-back-federal-control-of-education/ IBThe order specifically calls for a 300-day review of education regulations on grades K-12 proposed and enacted by former President Barack Obama — and instructs DeVos, a longtime advocate for local control of education, to produce a report that details which actions she believes overreached.¶ It isn’t entirely clear, however, whether the order actually provides the education secretary with more power.¶ “We will make those decisions once the report has concluded,” a White House official said, after being asked how the order empowers DeVos. At the end of the review, according to the order, DeVos will be asked to “rescind or revise any regulations that are identified” as oversteps.¶ In particular, the order asks for DeVos to review the Every Student Succeeds Act, an Obama-era education law, and Common Core, education standards that were initially adopted by most states but have drawn the ire of conservative critics in recent years.¶ Democrats slammed the executive order as nothing more than empty rhetoric on Wednesday, with a spokesperson for the Democratic

National Committee flatly saying, “this EO changes absolutely nothing.”¶ “Trump isn’t signing it to actually improve education for American students, he is doing it to put a fake point on the board within his first 100 days because he doesn’t have any accomplishments of significance,” said Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee.¶ The executive order is the 28th Trump has signed since taking office in January, more than any president in the last 72 years.

No Link – Incentives don’t violate federalism

Establishing national standards doesn’t violate federalism – it establishes a cooperative modelErin R. Gregory and Dean Kaufman Education Law & Policy Spring 2010 Education And Federalism: The Role For The Federal Government In Education Reformhttps://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/290b/cdfdb2cc2cdab7c352063eaad7d9216d372e.pdfFederal 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 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¶ development 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.¶ Under the Obama Administration, the Department of Education has developed a new¶ proposal to reform the educational system through the reauthorization of the Elementary and¶ Secondary Education Act.34 Among the goals of ‘Race to the Top’ is for every student to¶ graduate from high school prepared for college and a career, restructuring the lowest performing¶ schools and creating an Investing in Innovation fund which would reward successful existing¶ programs and encourage the development of new programs.35 This proposal takes an important¶ step towards changing the course of federal involvement in day to day education policy.

Federal Control Good

Federal authority is key to maintaining a meaningful floor of educational quality—ESSA gives enough deference to states while maintaining effective federal enforcement powerKristi Bowman Vice Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, Michigan State University 2017 “The Failure of Education Federalism” March 10th, 2017. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2876889

Additionally, although Michigan is only one state, its experience operates as an outsized caution against the specific policy of unfettered school choice and the more general model of education federalism (dual federalism) that involves great deference to state and local authorities.161 Regarding the federalism model, if the ability to define a “right to education” remains exclusively with the states, then state courts—the backstop for education rights—can interpret these rights so minimally that they effectively refuse to consider the question of educational quality at all. Moving forward, the form of federalism in education must shift to a

cooperative one , and reforms must be grounded in both liberty and equality . In September 2016,

some of the attorneys who brought the “right to read” case in state court filed a complaint in federal court with just this approach.162 As of March 2017, the complaint awaits the federal district court’s ruling on the state’s motion to dismiss. IV. COOPERATIVE FEDERALISM Fortunately for the children of this country, education federalism does not fail all states—some states have robust school finance systems and related policies that produce education of an acceptable level of quality (or higher), and do so more or less uniformly. In other states, judicial intervention has remedied constitutionally and functionally inadequate systems.

However, as the previous section demonstrated, not all states are willing and able to address structural

problems in public education . Especially given the likely growing federal support for school choice under the Trump

Administration, it is important to consider a range of federal legal protections that could create and maintain a meaningful federal floor of educational quality . This Section first discusses action that Congress

and the U.S. Department of Education could take, with the idea that legislative and agency-driven reforms are theoretically easier to enact and also have the long-term potential to be more effective in some ways than judicial reforms. That said, this Article also acknowledges that the reforms proposed here are unlikely to be supported by the Trump Administration or the current Congress and thus may be more viable in the long-term than in the short-term. Because judicial reforms sometimes occur when legislative and executive reforms cannot, and because judicial reforms are more difficult to un-do, this Section then turns to the courts. Specifically, by coupling the concepts of liberty and equality, this Section ultimately proposes a de facto federal constitutional amendment through interpretation that engages both the Equal Protection Clause and Substantive Due Process.163 At the heart of each of the approaches considered in this section is, as law professor Kimberly Jenkins Robinson has argued, a shift in our approach to public education from dual federalism to cooperative federalism. A. Federal Legislation and Agency Action Congress has legislated about public education regularly since the 1960s, and for good reason. As then-law professor, now California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu articulated in 2006, the Citizenship Clause is one source of authority for Congress’s involvement in education policy, and of course the Fourteenth Amendment is connected to this.164 For various reasons, Congress seems quite willing to continue legislating about public education. Additionally as law professor Kimberly Jenkins Robinson convincingly argues, even after the Court’s 2012 decision limiting Spending Clause authority in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 165 Congress retains substantial authority to legislate about education—and the legislative and executive branch are in some ways better suited to education reform than the judiciary. 166 Congressional Acts often go hand-in-hand with federal agency enforcement, and thus the U.S. Department of Education has substantial experience by this point in time interpreting and enforcing statutory and constitutional law. This role is nothing new either in the specific context of education or in the general context of the federal government,167 and in fact federal agencies are especially important today in what law professor Karen Tani calls the “age of cooperative federalism.”168 Accordingly, the combination of Congressional action and agency enforcement can be a powerful tool in the pursuit of educational quality. Examples of that partnership include: • Title IV and VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which address race discrimination169; • The Bilingual Education Act of 1968170 (repealed in 2002) and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, which establish rights for non-native English speaking students171; • The Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1965,172 which was superseded by the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act of 1990173; Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973174; and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 175

which all serve to make schools accessible to students with disabilities; • Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which provide for sex and gender equity in schools; and • The McKinney Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987, 176 which ensures educational access for homeless children. In short, the Department of Education is involved in enforcing a wide range of statutes, and has been for quite some time. Of course, the federal government’s broadest regulation of education remains the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). 177 Since its enactment, ESEA has been reauthorized and amended roughly every five years.178 Although ESEA began as part of President Johnson’s war on poverty, and thus provided supplemental funds for the education of students in poverty, it has grown substantially since then. The most well known rendition of the law may be the 2001 variation, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).179 NCLB was notable because it required states to develop proficiency standards, test students’ proficiency on a regular basis, and make regular progress towards uniform proficiency.180 The goal was noble, and the Act sought to incorporate the current model of education federalism, dual federalism, deferring significantly to state and local authorities. 181 However, many problems emerged , not the least of which was schools’

inability to make sufficient progress toward the goal of uniform proficiency even though the states themselves determined what was proficient.182 Had the Act been reauthorized on the usual timeline, lawmakers could have revised the statute to include more realistic goals, but by the time the Act was reauthorized as the Every Student Succeeds Act in December 2015,183 nearly all states seemed to need waivers to comply with NCLB so that they could continue to receive the federal funding that makes up roughly 10% of an average school district’s budget. 184 As law professor Derek Black chronicles, under Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s direction, the Department took the unprecedented step of conditioning its granting of waivers on states adopting certain policies. 185 This approach is only permissible if the authorizing statute provides sufficient notice—which NCLB did not, but future iterations of ESEA could. 186 Interestingly, at the same time that NCLB unfolded nationwide, states’ standards became increasingly uniform: as of 2016, 42 states and the District of Columbia had adopted the Common Core State Standards.187 Theoretically, this may open a political window for federal involvement in establishing a minimum quality level via the next (post-ESSA) iteration of ESEA. Before continuing this conversation, however, it is important to note that neither the new Congress nor the new Administration seem likely to want to pursue this course of action. But, for a Congress or an Administration so inclined, this option would be attractive because although the ESEA regulations are conditions on the receipt of funding rather than mandates, no state has yet been able to opt out of receiving this funding and thus

opt out of abiding by these conditions.188 Even more significantly, imposing a uniform floor of educational quality in part through national standards (opportunity-to-learn189 or otherwise) still could allow states some options, but limit the choice to the two or three sets of standards widely-adopted nationally, assuming those are at a sufficient level. Additionally, the enforcement would not be via lawsuit but would be through the executive branch (the Department of Education) via the potential loss of the funds to which the policy strings were attached. 190 Funding cutoff is a tool that has given the federal government significant and effective persuasive authority throughout history, including during the very difficult process of school desegregation beginning in the 1960s. 191 Furthermore, such enforcement would provide political cover to state legislatures who need to raise taxes, repurpose funding streams, or enact other understandably unpopular policies in order to comply with the conditions of receiving ESEA funding. There are disadvantages to Congressional action and Executive enforcement, of course. If actually enforced, funding cutoffs are not particularly helpful in a situation of constrained resources.192 A legislative policy is much easier to overturn than a judicial one, thus education would remain politicized, albeit at a different level. Perhaps even more significantly, though, the perception that the federal government should have an incredibly limited role in social welfare services such as education is deeply held,193 even though the U.S. is an outlier in this regard on the global stage. Indeed, the 2015 version of ESEA (ESSA) pulled back from NCLB’s highly regulatory approach, deferring more to the states.194 Relatedly, it is not unusual to hear a politician propose eliminating the U.S. Department of Education altogether, and in fact a member of Congress introduced such a bill in February 2017. 195 Thus, while ease of statutory repeal is one disadvantage, inability to enact a statutory reform in the first place may be an even more significant one, especially in today’s political climate. Finally, the more directive federal education legislation becomes, the closer it gets to the trigger the Court established in NFIB v. Sebilus196 when it struck down legislation as having “cross[ed] the line from coercion to compulsion.” It appears highly likely that current federal education legislation remains compliant with Spending Clause requirements, but future legislation must be mindful of this decision. 197 The impact this approach could have for local districts is uncertain because the contours of Congressional action and executive enforcement could vary so widely. However, if any real federal quality floor for public education is created, it would seem that states would be compelled to assist local districts in a meaningful manner so that every school offers students an education at a certain basic level of quality. Many schools across Michigan, and indeed across the entire country, would benefit.

Federal incentive grants, like the plan, promote state innovation while ensuring the USFG is a key agenda setterShannon K. McGovern J.D., NYU School of Law 2011 “A New Model for States as Laboratories for Reform: How Federalism Informs Education Policy.” NYU Law Review. 2011 http://www.nyulawreview.org/sites/default/files/pdf/NYULawReview-86-5-McGovern.pdf

Incentive grants—if properly implemented as outlined in broad strokes below—are the optimal

way for the federal government to harness the states’ policy making expertise in service of its own responsibility to equalize educational opportunity and increase national competitiveness in a global economy.178 Indeed, it was the failure to employ truly objective criteria— and not the

fiscal mechanism of the competition itself—that threatened to coopt state policy making autonomy and ossify unproven reform trends. Race to the Top evaluated potential programs in part on the basis of congruence with the Obama Administration’s specific policy preferences. I propose instead the use of scoring rubrics that reward points chiefly for research design, taking into account feasibility, cost effectiveness, program scope, past success or failure of similar policy initiatives there or elsewhere, and capacity for replication in other states or school populations. Imposing very specific program requirements from the top down not only threatens state autonomy in a federalist system, but also stifles innovation. By contrast, a pilot program aims to discover and develop best practices. Therefore, significant discretion on the ground to anticipate and respond to local conditions and unanticipated problems would best allow for innovation.179 Consider a pilot program to evaluate how to set teacher compensation to best encourage student achievement. Proposals might range from an across-the-board salary increase to incentivize morale and retention of good teachers; bonuses for extraordinary student progress and/or student achievement; salary reductions for failure to meet certain benchmarks; or a variable salary system with each teacher’s salary set each year on the basis of the prior year’s performance. In evaluating such a proposal, the DOE, through its independent evaluators, may assess the feasibility of the program in light of current conditions in that state, the state’s union obligations, existing empirical research, and similar programs in other states, but it would not afford substantive preference to any one proposal. Indeed, the pilot program should not have been authorized if a particular result was desired. I have delineated only the outlines of a pilot program, but the four federalism considerations developed in Part II can inform pro gram specifications for this and future proposals.180 At a broad level of abstraction, a pilot program of the kind I envision internalizes both the state legislatures’ policy making autonomy and the advantages of local control. Supporting development of education policy in the states avoids coercive top-down directives and exploits the chief structural advantages of a lower level of government: proximity to “the People” and the associated values of citizen participation and locally tailored initiatives. The guiding spirit of the proposal eschews ossification of unproven policy trends by restricting the subject matter of pilot programs to cutting-edge or untested education initiatives and precluding federal policy mandates. Admittedly, politicization of the process remains a threat, notwithstanding procedural safeguards that promote transparent and independent means of evaluation.181 However, ossification can be further prevented by extending project timelines both at the proposal and implementation stages to counteract the government’s demonstrated bias for “shovel ready” projects that perpetuate the status quo.182 Finally, while limited pilot programs will not produce parity in federal and state education funding, they do provide some assistance to strained state budgets. While this proposal appears to give most autonomy to states in developing policy, the federal policy making role is enhanced in two ways. First, by selecting

the subject matter of pilot projects, the federal government becomes a key education agenda

setter for the nation . Second, by conducting and evaluating pilot projects over time, the federal government can learn which reforms are worthy of increased federal investment and regulation through new or existing programs. These oversight powers are important tools for addressing

national competitiveness in a global economy . Unfortunately, a program of this scale cannot eliminate the

substantial interstate inequalities in state education budgets that partially create the problem,183 but it offers a start, particularly if incentive grants take into account state need in terms of relative fiscal capacity. This Note has highlighted how federal education policy can impinge on state policy making autonomy. It is important to remember, however, that the success of federal spending programs relies on the federal government’s ability to police state conduct. The key lesson of NCLB, expounded at length by other writers, is the need to avoid creation of perverse incentives.184 While there is a fine line between coercion and accountability, the federal government must retain some oversight of state spending to ensure funds are being used for true reform. Analysis of the first year of short-term federal education funding programs enacted as companions to Race to the Top suggests that many states used earmarked funding primarily to fill their own budget shortfalls, in contravention of the statutory purpose of the appropriation.185 The use of reporting mechanisms and staggered appropriation of programs can help mitigate the risk that cashstarved states misappropriate federal funds.186 My pilot program proposal, though modest, illustrates the potential of a “polyphonic” model of education federalism. In the short term, the programs would harness the pluralism

inherent in a large, heterogeneous federal system to test a number of innovative education solutions. In the medium– to long-term, emerging consensus on the best education policies may, but need not, suggest subject areas for substantive federal regulation. My modified “polyphonic” education policy framework tolerates—in fact, celebrates—a diversity of approaches as long as the federal government remains able to pursue national imperatives for educational quality and equality of opportunity.

AT: State control solves inequality

State control magnifies inequality – federal control is keyKimberly Jenkins Robinson Professor of Law, University of Richmond School of Law 2015 “Disrupting Education Federalism.” Washington University Law Review, vol. 92, no. 4. 2015. 4. Education Federalism’s Insistence on State and Local Control of School Finance Systems Invites Inequality Primary state and local control over education essentially invite inequality in educational opportunity because of pervasive state insistence that local governments raise education funds and state funding formulas that do not effectively equalize the resulting disparities in revenue.121 Although some influential victories have occurred,122 school finance litigation has mostly failed to change the basic organizational structure of school finance systems and their reliance on property taxes to fund schools.123 Instead, this litigation at best has obtained limited increases in funding for property-poor districts while allowing property-rich districts to maintain the same funding level or to raise their funding rate at a slower pace.124 Recent evidence of the persistent inequalities in school funding can be found in two distinct 2013 reports. A report from the Council on Foreign Relations found that in the United States more is spent per pupil in highincome districts than in low-income districts .125 This stands in sharp contrast to most other developed nations where the reverse is true.126 The Equity and Excellence Commission report also found that “[n]o other developed nation has inequities nearly as deep or systemic; no other developed nation has, despite some efforts to the contrary, so thoroughly stacked the odds against so many of its children.”127 These disparities are due in substantial part to the continued state reliance on property taxes to fund schools.128 As a result, state school finance systems in the United States typically create many predominantly low-income and minority schools that predictably produce poor outcomes because these schools typically lack both the resources to ensure that their students obtain an effective education and the capacity to undertake effective reforms even when these reforms are well conceived.129 The harms from persistent and pervasive disparities in educational opportunity are not limited to schoolchildren, their families, and their communities. These disparities also harm nationwide interests in a strong economy and a just society. The United States needs to maintain international academic competitiveness to attract businesses and prevent the loss of jobs to other more educated nations.130 Yet, international assessments reveal that the performance of U.S. students is often average or below average when compared to other countries,131 which will make it difficult for U.S. students to compete successfully against students from many other nations. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international assessment of performance in math, reading and science, was administered in 2012 to students in sixty-five education systems.132 The results showed that the average U.S. student who participated scored average in reading and science literacy and below average in math literacy when compared to other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.133 Doctors Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson and Ludger Woessman, professors of education at Stanford University, Harvard University and the University of Munich respectively, summarized the lackluster performance of U.S. students on international assessments in a 2013 book by noting that: The evidence of international comparison is now clear. American students lag badly and pervasively. Our students lag behind students not just in Asia, but in Europe and other parts of the Americas. It is not just disadvantaged students or a group of weak students who lag, but also American students from advantaged backgrounds. Americans are badly underrepresented among the world’s highest achievers.134 Although some challenge such conclusions from international assessments as overblown and simplistic,135 others conclude that these less than stellar outcomes indicate that the U.S. education system is failing to prepare many of its students to compete successfully for jobs with other students from around the world.136 Research reveals that the long-term vigor of the

U.S. economy will depend on the advanced skills that are typically provided in higher education and that are needed for upper-level technical occupations.137 Although the U.S. higher education system historically has been considered world-class, the United States is facing substantial competition from other countries with their fast-growing higher education systems.138 As Thomas Bailey, Teachers College professor of economics and education, has summarized in his research: Occupational forecasts, analyses of job content, trends in wages, and changes in international competition all point to an increasing need in the United States for workers with high-level skills. Achieving increases in skill levels will be difficult as long as current gaps in educational attainment based on income, race, and ethnicity remain.139 In this environment, the U.S. economy and its competitiveness will be increasingly hindered by low college enrollment and completion rates for Hispanic and African American students who increasingly will make up a larger share of the workforce.140 Many U.S. students cannot compete successfully with students from other developed countries, and the lower achievement of U.S. students could cause comparatively slow growth for the U.S. economy in the years to come.141 The nation also has a strong interest in ensuring that entire segments of the American public are not foreclosed from the American dream due to their family income and

racial and ethnic background. The principle of equal opportunity remains an enduring value within American society142 even though that value has never been fully realized. Rather than abandon the interest in equal opportunity, the nation must explore how this value can become a reality for the nation’s schoolchildren. In Part II I propose some innovative ideas on how to accomplish this goal by restructuring education federalism.

AT: key to democracy / participation

Emphasis on state control doesn’t spill upPietro S. Nivola Senior Fellow Emeritus - Governance Studies October 1, 2005 “Why Federalism Matters” https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-federalism-matters/ IB

In principle, empowering citizens to manage their own community’s affairs is supposed to enhance civic engagement in a democracy. Its “free and popular local and municipal institutions,” argued John Stuart Mill, provide “the peculiar training of a citizen, the practical part of the political education of a free people.” From this, informed deliberation and a pragmatic ability to respect both the will of the majority and the rights of minorities—in short, fundamental democratic values—are inculcated.¶ But in the real world of local politics, these results are often elusive. Prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, southern blacks got a “political education” all right, only not the kind Mill had in mind. Presently, even if it no longer perpetrates wholesale disenfranchisements, community governance can fall

short in other ways: it edifies few people when few participate. Keep in mind that the average municipal election in

the United States engages less than a third of the local electorate. And the smaller the community’s scale, the smaller the share of participants. At best, one in ten registered voters shows up at New England’s quaint town meetings.¶ If local self-government interests average citizens less than it should, maybe at least it still has much to teach their elected officials. Supplying thousands of state and local elective offices, a federal system like America’s creates a big market for professional politicians. Many of them (for example, state governors and big-city mayors) have demanding jobs. Their challenges help prepare the nation’s pool of future political leaders.¶ There is no question that those who attain high public office in the United States mostly rise through the ranks of the federal system’s multiple tiers, and have been schooled therein. Fifty-six senators in the current Congress were former state legislators or holders of state-wide elective offices. Four of America’s last five presidents have been governors. It is by no means clear, though, that the ex-governors who worked their way up federalism’s ladder outshine, for example, the national leaders of the United Kingdom. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, America elevated such former governors as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald W. Reagan, and George W. Bush to the presidency. Were they better equipped than Britain’s leadership (think Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, or Tony Blair)?¶ Not only that, but there also is some question just how relevant the lessons learned in, for example, the statehouses of relatively small states—like Georgia,

Arkansas, or Vermont—are to the men and women who move from there onto the nationa l, or

international, stage. As a one-term governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter had successfully reorganized that state’s modest bureaucracy and improved its budgetary performance. But the managerial magic he had worked in Georgia proved of limited use when, as president, Carter turned his attention to Washington’s bureaucratic behemoths, such as the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.¶ Or consider Bill Clinton’s presidency. Not infrequently, its cosmopolitan aspirations and impressive achievements were buried by the rest of this ex-governor’s agenda, which sometimes seemed incongruously steeped in parochial concerns. Clinton’s long speeches, we might recall, delved into the enforcement of truancy laws, the use of school uniforms, the math tests of eighth graders, the need to connect hospitalized children to the Internet, the marshaling of work-study students as reading tutors, the ability of medical insurance to cover annual mammograms, the revitalization of community waterfronts, the appropriate hospital stay for women after a mastectomy, the work of local development banks, the record of Burger King and other businesses in creating jobs for welfare recipients, and so on—in sum, preoccupations suited to governors, county supervisors, hospital administrators, or school boards. But to a world leader?¶ In 2004, another very good governor, Howard Dean, mounted a spirited campaign for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination. Dean pointed to his accomplishments in Vermont, a state that had (as Mark Singer observed in a January 2004 profile in The New Yorker) a population smaller than metropolitan Omaha and an annual budget of barely a billion dollars. For a time, he became the front runner, the considerable limitations of his small-state political background notwithstanding. What was some of that experience like? According to an article in The New York Times (also in January 2004) reflecting on Dean’s gubernatorial years, “The profoundly local aspect of his job was clear in 2002, when he said, ‘I can assure you, of all the things that I had to live with…the most difficult were the cascades of calls in the summer of ’93 and ’94 about how long the wait was at the Department of Motor Vehicles.'”¶ No matter how seasoned and capable a governor may be, travails like these are not the same as those likely to be faced by anyone who aspires to lead the country, never mind the international community. Granted, there is no job that can adequately prepare a wouldbe president. Montpelier is not Washington, nor for that matter is Sacramento or Austin. Other things equal, however, a stint as the chief executive of a large place (like California or Texas) may offer a somewhat better test. Yet, more or less indiscriminately, the process of political recruitment in the United States seems to regard states large and small as equally promising springboards.

AT: federalism laboratories

The laboratory analogy is inaccurate and overstatedPietro S. Nivola Senior Fellow Emeritus - Governance Studies October 1, 2005 “Why Federalism Matters” https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-federalism-matters/ IB

What about the states as laboratories for other experiments—the testing of new public policies, for instance?¶ Yes, there have been important policy innovations that had their origins , as Justice Louis Brandeis famously said,

in a few courageous states. California has long been the pacesetter in the regulation of air quality. Texas provided a model for recent federal efforts to boost the performance of public schools (the No Child Left Behind Law). Wisconsin pioneered, among other novelties, the income tax and a safety net for the unemployed years before these ideas became national law. Yet, while myopic Washington insiders often pay too little attention to initiatives occurring outside the Beltway ,

aficionados of state government often devote too much. The significance of experimentation at the state and local level should be neither overlooked nor overstated.¶ Take the now-legendary

example of welfare reform. Thanks to liberal use of federal administrative waivers in the early 1990s, the states took the lead in revising the nation’s system of public assistance. They were widely credited with setting the stage

for the historic national legislation of 1996—and also for securing a dramatic decline in caseloads. How much of the decline, however, could be attributed to the actions of the states, both before and after the 1996 law, is actually a matter of considerable debate. Most of the caseload reduction had less to do with inventive state policies than with a strong economy and expanded federal aid (most notably, the Earned Income Tax Credit) to low-income persons who entered the workforce. In sum, although state experiments were undoubtedly instructive and consequential, other fundamentals were more so. One suspects that what holds for the welfare story also applies to some other local inventions—for example, smart growth strategies, school reform , or the deregulation of electric utilities—

the impact of which state politicians sometimes exaggerate.

AT: Modeling

U.S. modeled federalism is ineffective. Even if modeled the best principles aren’t usedCalabresi 2015“DOES INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN MAKE A DIFFERENCE?”, Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law; Visiting Professor of Political Science, Brown University 2010–2018, Vol. 109, No. 3 Symposium, http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1206&context=nulrTwo distinctive features of American constitutionalism that have been much copied abroad are the U.S. systems of

federalism and presidential separation of powers.3 The results have not been very encouraging . In otherwise stable western constitutional democracies such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Spain ,

federalism has led to powerful separatist movements ,4 and, as a result, the specter of secession hangs over those countries. The experience abroad with exports of U.S.-style presidential separation of powers has been, if anything, even worse.

Many presidential separation of powers democracies in Latin America have at one time or another degenerated into an authoritarian system of one-man presidential rule ,5 and the same thing has also happened in Russia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and South Korea .6 As a result, political scientists, advisers, and constitution writers today often weigh in against federal or separation of powers systems and in favor of unitary, parliamentary structures.7 Those unitary parliamentary structures, however, have also degenerated into authoritarian rule as in Japan and Italy prior to World War II.

In this Essay, I identify two key features of U.S. constitutional design that I think are integral to the success of U.S. federal and presidential separation of powers. These features, however , are not widely

known and not widely copied when emerging democracies choose to write a constitution . In

Part I, I focus on the facts that American federalism is characterized by a much larger number of state entities than exist in most federal regimes and that state boundary lines are drawn fairly arbitrarily, crosscutting regional, religious, and ethnic boundaries. In Part II, I highlight five features of the U.S. system of presidential separation of powers. These five features make American presidents much weaker than those in other presidential systems, such as France. The failures of presidential systems in other countries are largely due to their failure to copy aspects of U.S. constitutionalism that constrain our presidents. I focus my discussion in both parts on the experience of those countries with constitutional democracies that are members of the Group of Twenty (G20) nations, which together produce 85% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP).8 If we could better explain and understand the constitutional experience in the G20 nations, we could do so all over the world.