Equalization of funding is desirable for Texas public school

Re: any help?


No disagreement here, d.p. "Don't argue funding" is good advice.

It certainly wouldn't be desirable for wealthier districts if their money is being taken away.

Since people are mostly talking about Aff, I'll contribute for Neg. I was going to add Locke's Treatise of Civil Government, mainly parts five and nineteen. Man has his stuff. That stuff is his own. You shouldn't take away his stuff for things that he doesn't want to use it for. Etc, etc. Thoughts?

And there's your counter-argument.

Robin Hood is "socialized" public education. Taxpayers -- that would be your moms and dads and teachers and judges -- in those 'wealthier' school districts don't want their tax dollars going out to West Texas, or the Panhandle.

That's part of the reason why Robin Hood has been halted.

Rebuttal?

The concepts are extraordinarily simple on both sides. Values and criterions are always difficult for me, though. I lose like that.

hey does anyone have any good contentions for the aff case that hasnt been said yet?

Contentions aren't really generic things. They have to actually apply to your case, or there's absolutely no validity.

thats funny whatsername, im reading locke currently. but also Nozick has some good stuff on that as well. his stuff is pretty good for the neg if you have a conservative/libertarian judge. but most of the time those kind of arguements can be a trap were you are pinned as against taxes and then basically against the security of our nation(actually happened to me).

on neg, all i do is prove that equalization is NOT desirable. thats easy enough with a little research, so ill let yall all do your own research.
then as affirmative all you need to be able to do is counter your own arguements and prove that equalization is desirable.

on neg, couldn't you establish a correlation between equilization and communism, and then it would be easy to show undesirablility.

of course you could, but then youd have to say that a recapture plan is the only only to use. then of course you seem to be fighting against the poor, and even though you might attack the semi-marxist way of the Robin Hood plan you are hurting yourself in the end. id say itd be better, ifyou wanna go that road, to attack socialism b/c that is closer to the way it would be run.

just prove that the aff is wrong without being seen as against the poor.

ok can ne1 help me with sum aff contentions for equal oppurtunity plz?

until a minor is legally an adult, it is the responsibility of the community as a whole to provide for the youth equally, so that they begin adulthood as equally as possible.

dern, it sounds really stupid when I write it down, but i could argue it well in person

does that help any ferret?

I haven't read many of the posts on here. To me, the important thing is for poor children to get as good an education as the rich, as nearly as possible. If the Robin Hood plan isn't used, funds will have to come from some other funding, which is also paid by virtually all Texans. I don't see a way to fund schools where the rich don't pay in poor districts.


Poll: More side with Robin Hood plan
House favors a sales tax hike as the Legislature considers options in school financing
By JANET ELLIOTT
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN - "Robin Hood" may be the bane of some of the state's wealthiest school districts, but a majority of Texans agree with the financing system that requires property-rich districts to share their money with property-poor districts, according to a new poll.

The 58 percent support for Robin Hood is the highest recorded by The Scripps Howard Texas Poll since the question was asked in the fall of 2002, and was an 8 percentage point increase since last October.

Thirty-six percent disagreed with the wealth-sharing, and 6 percent said they didn't know.

The support for school funding equity was good news for Wayne Pierce, executive director of the Texas Equity Center, a coalition of mid- to low-wealth districts.

"I think people began to realize that Robin Hood benefited the vast majority of Texas children. It was a fair, simple way of taking the resources where they are in abundance and moving them where children are in abundance," Pierce said.

He said about 88 percent of the state's 4.3 million schoolchildren benefit from Robin Hood.

Eighty percent of Texans said the state should provide more money to public schools. Fifteen percent disagreed and 5 percent said they didn't know.


Finding a new system

The Legislature is working to replace the school finance system with a different funding mechanism that relies less on local property taxes. Lawmakers are considering a variety of ways to pay for a property-tax cut, including new business taxes, higher sales taxes, a cigarette tax hike and video slot machines.

Fifty-four percent of poll respondents said their property taxes are too high while 44 percent said they are just about right. One percent said property levies are too low and 1 percent had no opinion.

Legalizing state-taxed video lottery terminals at horse and dog tracks to help fund schools was supported by 68 percent and opposed by 28 percent with 4 percent having no answer. The support for the video slot machines was down slightly from 72 percent last fall.


Support for gambling

Sixty percent said they would support casino gambling if the revenue helped fund public schools and 37 percent were opposed. Three percent said they didn't know.

The telephone survey of 1,000 Texans from Jan. 27 through Feb. 14 showed high support for raising the cigarette tax by $1 per pack. Sixty-five percent favored, 33 percent opposed and 2 percent had no opinion.

There was less enthusiasm for increasing the state sales tax as part of a school finance plan. Thirty-six percent favored that approach but 56 percent were opposed. Six percent said their answer would depend on how much the tax was hiked, and 2 percent said they didn't know.

House Speaker Tom Craddick said most representatives support increasing the sales tax to buy down the property tax. He said he didn't know if there is enough support in the House to pass any new gambling measure.

The poll also asked about a state income tax. Forty-four percent favor an income tax if it reduced property taxes and the revenue was used to pay for public schools. Forty-nine percent oppose an income tax and 7 percent don't know.

Margin of error for the poll was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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oooohhhh...i like you

i still think that its suicide to attempt to argue funding, its completely devastating b/c when you argue funding you have to be able to prove that without a doubt it will help to improve the quality of education, which really is more important than anything else. The negative has this great ability to say that equalization doesnt actually raise the bar of educational standards but actually just lowers the richer districts ALOT and raises the poorer districts just a little, this is where you can argue that there is flawed marxist philosophy at its best. Instead of statewide increase in educational standards we would succeed in lowering them to an even worse level. We already have an extrememly lax system in Texas and the US as a whole, we should be striving to raise educational funding, not equalize if we want to create an excellent pool of workers for competition in the global econonmy. We've seen it already in Texas that equalization hasn't really worked, even though TAAS and TAKS scores are better, the tests themselves have been made easier, not that they were ever even hard anyways.(thats my capitalist neg. position)

The rich schools will not let a thing like equal funding bring their schools down. They would make extra monetary efforts to keep them riding high. Maybe grumbling, but they are overachievers who will not let thir schools degenerate.

does anyone know a site with written transcrips of the Robin Hood debate in the Texas legislature? I could use some of their quotes, etc.

The Texas Legislature Online site is:

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us

The Legislative Reference Library provides access to filed bills, newspaper clippings, online databases and statistical information about the Texas Legislature.

You'll have to dig around for what you're looking for, hyper.

Greg Moses publishes an excellent resource called the Texas Civil Rights Review that summarizes the closing legal arguments in the recent school funding case (this material is copyrighted, so here's a short excerpt. Go here for the full text):

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Your Honor, if it please the Court, "lost opportunities" are two simple and yet profound words to describe why our clients, the Edgewood intervenors, appear once again in court.

Lost opportunities for our clients to provide a quality education to each and every child in their district because of the inequity in funding between property poor and property rich districts.

Lost opportunities for our clients to provide a quality education to each and every limited English proficiency child in their district because of the insufficient weight and allotment provided for bilingual education.

Lost opportunities for our clients to provide a quality education to each and every poor child in their districts because of the insufficient weight and allotment provided for compensatory education.

Lost opportunities for our clients to provide a quality education to each and every child in their districts because of the inequitable and insufficient funding for facilities, forcing our districts to place their children in overcrowded, deteriorating and unsafe facilities.

And all of these lost opportunities lead to the most glaring, the most disheartening opportunities lost, and those are for our Texas children.

Lost opportunities for our children to succeed in school, to make the most of their abilities, and to learn in facilities that are safe and not overcrowded, ultimately lost opportunities to fully participate in the social, economic and educational opportunities that present themselves now and those that await them in the future.

Our clients ask for nothing more and our children deserve nothing less. And what our children deserve is exactly what our Constitution guarantees.

Is it too much to ask our great state of Texas for equal access, meaningful opportunities for each and every child, whether they're rich or poor, black, white, Hispanic or whatever other race or ethnicity, whether the children live in Alamo Heights or in west side San Antonio, in Edgewood, in the downtown suburban district of Highland Park, or the little town in the Valley known as Edcouch-Elsa.

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You're likely to find all sorts of good affirmation arguments at that website, but be careful to quote directly where appropriate. Don't plagiarize.

Thanks, much obliged

You're welcome. And you are correct; edgar is one of the finest people on these here boards.

Pdiddie is one of my heroes.