Equalization of funding is desirable for Texas public school

"It is the contention of the negation that equalization of funding is not desirable for Texas public schools, because there is simply no method of funding that would enable the school districts across a state as vast and disparate as Texas to be equalized.

The rural school districts of West Texas and the Panhandle, which have fewer taxpayers (and consequently fewer tax dollars), fewer students, a greater challenge of attracting teachers based on their ability to pay competitive salaries, many more miles to bus students to school, and other expense factors will always be at an inherent disadvantage to the school districts of the major metropolitan areas in terms of funding -- Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, etc.

This should not be interpreted to mean that the quality of education of less-well-heeled school districts should similarly lag the well-to-do ones.

Rather than concentrating on an unattainable goal -- equalization of funding -- the rural districts must raise their quality of educating Texas students in areas they are better equipped to address with little to no increase in expenses, such as training and retaining teachers and having those teachers focus on individual instruction (as their class sizes are smaller than the urban districts'). Steps such as these cost nearly nothing extra and would show potentially dramatic results.

This would begin to bring the principles of capitalism into focus relative to the public school system in Texas.

If a voucher system were introduced, then the free market would be unleashed to produce the results we have seen in every other walk of life: schools competing for students by offering outstanding curricula and top-notch instructors, with those most successful (schools as well as students) reaping the benefits.

Because public school funding can never (in practice) hope to achieve the goal of equal funding, because competition -- the free market system, upon which so much of our country's success is based has proven itself to be to the best way to reward excellent organizations, the negation contends that equalization of public funding for Texas school districts is not desirable."

I won't use this topic until Distric, which is a couple of months away. At least I will have time to really build a good case. Hey PDiddie, and anyone else, any ideas for value and criterion? I feel that those are going to be the hardest parts of the case to build.

I do TFA (Texas Forensic Association) tournaments before District, instead of other UIL tournaments (use District topic). My topic for that is another post (Democracy is best served by strict separation of Church and State).

So, I won't use this topic until I go to District. In UIL, we have a fall and spring topic, with the spring topic being used for District and above. Maybe that is because research is soooo much easier? And with the value and criterion, it is like Idiots said. In LD (Lincoln-Douglas) Debate, we do value debate, not policy like CX. We have to uphold a human value over our opponents, like justice, or democracy, etc. The criterion is something which better defines our value, and the way we use it. Hope that helps!!