Here is an example of a first affirmative. This piece of evidence and others like it can be found at Cross-x.com Take notice of the form and the organization.
The federal government has done wonders for some aspects of American life. However, education is one in which federal involvement has diseased the minds of students. The Department of Education is the pinnacle of all educational wastelands and something needs to be done about it now. Therefore, my partner and I stand firmly Resolved: That the federal government should establish a policy to significantly increase academic achievement in the secondary schools in the United States.
A. The Department of Education spends too much money and gets too few results
Olson, 1997 [Christine L., Policy Analyst @ The Heritage Foundation, October 9, Heritage Foundation Executive Memorandum No. 496, http://www.heritage.org/library/categories/ education/em496.html]
Currently, the U.S. Department of Education is not required to collect adequate data to answer these kinds of questions. A few studies address related information, however, and their findings underscore the need for Congress to take action. For example, a 1996 Heritage Foundation study of federal spending on elementary and secondary education found that about 85 cents of every education tax dollar sent to Washington, D.C., is sent to the school districts. According to the U.S. Department of Education, of the more than $15 billion allocated to its elementary and secondary education programs in 1996, over $3 billion went for purposes--including administrative overhead and university, state, and national programs of unknown effectiveness--other than the needs of local school districts. But these numbers reveal only the portion of federal dollars that reaches the school districts, which still are several layers of bureaucracy away from classrooms. Little is known about what happens to federal dollars once they reach the districts. Few school districts, parents, and taxpayers have accurate data with which to determine how many cents on the dollar reach their classrooms. H. Res. 139, the Dollars to the Classroom Resolution, is a good first step toward filling this need. To get an idea of just how little gets from school districts into the classroom, Congress can look at data recently released by New York City's public schools revealing that only 43 percent of the city's total education funds was used for direct classroom expenditures. If the numbers from New York City's public school system are any indication of how much federal money reaches classrooms nationwide, the need to find out what schools receive from the U.S. Department of Education and how their students are benefiting is even greater.
B. In the status quo, the DOE and federal education initiatives hurt the states both financially and administratively
Shokraii, 1998 [Nina H., Senior Policy Analyst in Education @ The Heritage Foundation, June 16, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1193, http://www.heritage.org/library/backgrounder/ bg1193.html]
Reduce the regulatory and bureaucratic burden. The high costs of administering federal programs often fall on the states. The regulatory and bureaucratic burdens that federal education programs impose on school districts increase the number of paperwork hours needed to apply for and accept federal dollars and to comply with requirements. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that it takes approximately 48.6 million paperwork hours--the equivalent of almost 25,000 employees working 40 hours a week for a full year--to complete the paperwork involved in administering federal education programs. Consider some of the burdens at the state level: · In 1990, Ohio calculated that over 50 percent of its paperwork burden was related to federal education programs, although only 5 percent of its education revenues came from federal sources.
C. Goals 2000 and other federal education programs are spreading like a virus
Boaz, 1999 [David, executive vice president @ CATO Institute, CATO Handbook for the 106th Congress, p. 127-128]
Goals 2000 creates a plethora of new federal bureaucracies, including the National Education Standards and Improvement Council, the National Education Goals Panel, the National Skills Standards Board, the National Educational Research and Policy Priorities Board, the National Library of Education, the National Occupational Information Coordination Committee, and the National Education Dissemination Committee. It also provides for a network of regional educational laboratories. The act doesn't stop at prescribing actions for states and schools. It also declares, ''Every parent in the United States will be a child's first teacher and devote time each day to helping such parent's preschool child learn.'' Worthy goals, indeed, but does the federal government intend to investigate-or require that states investigate-whether every parent in America is ''devoting time each day to helping such parent's preschool child learn''? Sheldon Richman writes in a study for Colorado's Independence Institute that the entire Goals 2000 program is based on the discredited philosophy that ''high-quality education in the United States requires planning and coordination by the federal and state governments.''
In order to significantly increase academic achievement in secondary schools in the United States, the USFG should, as per the recommendation of David Boaz, "abolish the Department of Education and return education to the state, local, or family level, as provided by the Constitution". Enforcement guaranteed through normal means, affirmative speeches serve to clarify intent.
A. Federal involvement in education hurts academic achievement more than anything else
Boaz, 1999 [David, executive vice president @ CATO Institute, CATO Handbook for the 106th Congress, p. 129-130]
The problem with U.S. schools is not lack of funding. The problem is that the schools are run by a bureaucratic government monopoly, which is increasingly isolated from competitive or community pressures. We expect good service from businesses because we know-and we know that they know-that we can go somewhere else if we're not happy. We instinctively know we won't get good service from the post office or the Division of Motor Vehicles because we can't go anywhere else. So why, on the eve of the 21st century, are we still running our schools like the post office instead of Federal Express? We need to open education to competition. Let parents choose the schools they think will be best for their children, without making them pay once for government schools and again for an independent school.
B. The worst thing we can do for education is anything at the federal level - the best thing to do is to Abolish the DOE
Boaz, 1999 [David, executive vice president @ CATO Institute, CATO Handbook for the 106th Congress, p. 130-131]
The way to improve American education is to open the system to choice and competition. Give parents the freedom to send their children to schools that they choose. Get the dynamic and innovative for-profit sector looking for ways to deliver more education for less money. Let a thousand experiments bloom-from charter schools to vouchers to tax credits to private management to full separation of school and state-and let families and school systems emulate the successful ones. But here's the urgent warning to well-meaning members of Congress: Don't do any of this at the federal level. Don't reform education. Don't change the rules. Don't set up a demonstration project. Don't impose national standards. And by all means don't set up a national voucher plan. Even block grants to states, favored by some conservatives, have many problems: they continue the illusion that federal money is ''magic money'' that doesn't come from the people in the several states; they get state and local education agencies hooked on federal money; and they subsidize the very monopolies that need to be opened to competition. Just eliminate the Department of Education, end its meddlesome subsidies and regulations, and return its $30 billion budget to the American people in the form of a tax cut. Then let 260 million Americans decide how best to spend that money. The question isn't whether Americans will spend lots of money on education. The question is who will spend that money: Congress and the federal bureaucracy, state bureaucracies, local school districts, or families. The closer to the family we push the decision-making, the more dynamic, competitive, and innovative the educational system will be. Congress should affirm the wisdom of the Founders in not granting the federal government any power over education and return the vital function of education to the states, localities, and families where it can be managed best.
C. Abolishing the DOE at the federal level is the best thing for American education - Constitution proves this
Boaz, 1999 [David, executive vice president @ CATO Institute, CATO Handbook for the 106th Congress, p. 124]
The greatest service the 106th Congress could perform for American education would be to rekindle the original understanding of the delegated, enumerated, and thus limited powers of the federal government and to return control and financing of education to states, localities, and families. This argument is not based simply on a commitment to the original Constitution, as important as that is. It also reflects an understanding of why the Founders were right to reserve most subjects to state, local, or private endeavor. The Founders feared the concentration of power. They believed that the best way to protect individual freedom and civil society was to limit and divide power. Thus it was much better to have decisions made independently by 13-or 50-states, each able to innovate and to observe and copy successful innovations in other states, than to have one decision made for the entire country. As the country gets bigger and more complex, and especially as government amasses more power, the advantages of decentralization and divided power become even greater.
A. US education policy is moving farther down the slippery slope of complete centralization
Boaz, 1999 [David, executive vice president @ CATO Institute, CATO Handbook for the 106th Congress, p. 129]
As the world is turning away from central planning and government mandates, U.S. education policy is moving in just the opposite direction. A legitimate concern about the quality of education has been coopted by the education establishment and turned into an excuse for more funding and more federal regulation. Amazingly, the 104th Congress actually appropriated more money for the Department of Education in FY97 than President Clinton had requested. In a memo to department employees, Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley and Deputy Secretary Marshall S. Smith called their new budget ''a truly remarkable turn of events for the Department of Education.''
B. Abolishing the DOE returns the Constitutionally-granted power of education to its rightful owners: the states
Boaz, 1999 [David, executive vice president @ CATO Institute, CATO Handbook for the 106th Congress, p. 123-124]
But neither the importance of education nor its poor quality means that education is an important function of the federal government. In fact, education is not mentioned in the Constitution of the United States, and for good reason. The Founders wanted most aspects of life managed by those who were closest to them, either by state or local government or by families, businesses, and other elements of civil society. Certainly they saw no role for the federal government in education. Once upon a time, not so very many years ago, Congress understood that. The History of the Formation of the Union under the Constitution, published by the United States Constitution Sesquicentennial Commission, under the direction of the president, the vice president, and the Speaker of the House in 1943, contained this exchange in a section titled ''Questions and Answers Pertaining to the Constitution'': Q. Where, in the Constitution, is there mention of education? A. There is none; education is a matter reserved for the states.
C. Federalism prevents religious and racial war and violence in the United States - these liberties must be protected
Calabresi, 1995 [Steven G., prof. of law - Northwestern University, December, Michigan Law Review, "A Government of Limited and Enumerated Powers": In Defense of United States v. Lopez, p. Lexis-Nexis]
Small state federalism is a big part of what keeps the peace in countries like the United States and Switzerland. It is a big part of the reason why we do not have a Bosnia or a Northern Ireland or a Basque country or a Chechnya or a Corsica or a Quebec problem. American federalism in the end is not a trivial matter or a quaint historical anachronism. American-style federalism is a thriving and vital institutional arrangement - partly planned by the Framers, partly the accident of history - and it prevents violence and war. It prevents religious warfare, it prevents secessionist warfare, and it prevents racial warfare. It is part of the reason why democratic majoritarianism in the United States has not produced violence or secession for 130 years, unlike the situation for example, in England, France, Germany, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, or Spain. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that is more important or that has done more to promote peace, prosperity, and freedom than the federal structure of that great document.
A. States Make Better Decisions
Calabresi, 1995 [Steven G., prof. of law - Northwestern University, December, Michigan Law Review, "A Government of Limited and Enumerated Powers": In Defense of United States v. Lopez, p. 777]
Decentralized governments make better decisions than centralized ones for reasons additional to the whip they feel from competition. Decentralization ensures that "those responsible for choosing a given social policy are made aware of the costs of that policy." This helps ensure a more informed weighing of costs and benefits than often occurs at the national level where taxpayers often may be less cognizant of the social costs of particular legislation.
B. States Can Better Adapt Their Policies For People
Calabresi, 1995 [Steven G., prof. of law - Northwestern University, December, Michigan Law Review, "A Government of Limited and Enumerated Powers": In Defense of United States v. Lopez, p. 775]
The opening argument for state power is that the social tastes and preferences differ, that those differences correlate significantly with geography, and that social utility can be maximized if governmental units are small enough and powerful enough so that local laws can be adapted to local conditions, something the national government, with its uniform lawmaking power, is largely unable to do. Consider here the following example offered by Professor McConnell: Assume that there are only two states, with equal populations of 100 each. Assume further that 70 percent of State A, and only 40 percent of State B, wish to outlaw smoking in public buildings. The others are opposed. If the decision is made on a national basis by a majoirty rule, 110 people will be pleased, and 90 displeased. If a separate decision is made by majorities in each state, 130 will be pleased, and only 70 displeased. The level of satisfaction will be still greater if some smokers in State A decide to move to State B, and some anti-smokers in State B decide to move to State A. As McConnell's example shows, federalism can produce, at least in some admittedly abstract situations, a net gain in social utility. This lends credence to the argument made above that federalism sometimes can alleviate the problem of raw majority rule, the key problem generated by democratic government.
