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States CP 1NC

[Sample] Text: The United States federal government should grant decision making and funding power over school lunch and nutritional programs to the states. The fifty state governments of the United States should substantially increase funding for nutrition education, Farm to School lunch programs, and require the removal of vending machines and competitive food options and that school lunches meet uniform nutritional standards requiring increased fruits and vegetables for elementary and secondary education.

States solve better and the CP’s key to avoid federal overreach—education policy is key Kevin D. Roberts, 17 – Ph.D., longtime educator who is Executive Vice President of the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin (2/7, “States, Not the Feds, Should Lead Education Reform.” http://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2017/02/07/states_not_the_feds_should_lead_education_reform__110115.html)

The era of Donald Trump offers conservative reformers opportunities they have not seen since the 1980s. The most significant are in education, where the federal government has aggrandized its power, rendering states impotent. This overreach comes at the expense of two things very dear to the nation—our schoolchildren and our understanding of shared power.

Though the Trump administration will no doubt address the former problem, its means of doing so may very well exacerbate the latter. Too often, well-intentioned, conservative executives end up using federal power to heal the wounds caused by the very same bludgeon—federal power.

If President Trump is correct in his inaugural exhortation that “now is the hour of action,” then states—not federal bureaucrats—need to lead the charge on education policy.

Among the many problems facing American education, the most significant may be our schools’ and colleges’ utter failure to teach civic education. Two generations of American students have been taught precious little about the American Founding or the Constitution, let alone the philosophical foundation of the American system of government—federalism. That notion of shared power between the federal government and states has, as a result, withered.

How fitting, then, that Texas—where the American spirit of independence, work ethic, freedom and a vibrant notion of state power is palpable—take the lead in renewing federalism. And how fitting that it do so in the policy area where revitalized state power is most needed: education.

During the otherwise-bleak years of the previous administration, the Lone Star State has shined as a beacon of liberty, deregulation and restrained government authority. Harkening to Justice Louis Brandeis's early-20th-century comment that “states are the laboratories of democracy,” Texas-based initiatives have sprouted across the nation. It's no Texan braggadocio to observe that nationwide, efforts in tort reform, deregulation, tax reduction and criminal justice reform originated in Texas. The resulting “Texas Model” has become the blueprint for leaders in dozens of states.

And that is precisely how our system should work. Though we are all familiar with the legitimate claims based on state sovereignty and the Tenth Amendment, our Founders viewed those as mere baseline expectations. In the realm of public policy, they saw the states as taking the initiative, being so bold and innovative that the federal government would have to serve as a check on them—not the other way around, as the case has been in recent years.

As the Obama administration would be the first to say, Texas has led those efforts to check federal power. That defensive posture was necessary—and, for the Republic, crucial. But now Texas and other states must seize the field of education policy, exercising their own power with bold policy initiatives.

The timing for Texas policymakers is perfect. The state's biennial legislative session has just begun, and the momentum for an education overhaul has never been stronger. At the National School Choice Week rally earlier this week, both Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick gave rousing, full-throated endorsements of school choice reforms.

There are obstacles, to be sure, but even the defenders of the status quo recognize that it's hard to defend the mediocrity of the status quo.

Among the many school choice vehicles, the most far-reaching—for Texas and the United States—is an Education Savings Account (ESA). Built on the successes of early choice vehicles such as tax-credit scholarships, ESAs offer wider and easier usage, removing the barriers to access that have been foisted on choice programs by opponents. Parents may use an ESA to pay for a host of education-related expenses, including private school tuition, tutoring, special needs programs and books.

In sum, an ESA gives parents an unprecedented means for customizing their child’s education—the exact opposite of the conveyor-belt, cookie-cutter approach that has become modern American education.

Though some reformers have advocated for federal ESAs, the inefficiency inherent in the large federal bureaucracy begs for states to take the lead. Texas, the most populous state with a bent toward conservative, free-market reforms, has a unique opportunity to show that states, as our Founders expected, can be at the forefront of policy innovation.

There could not be more at stake. Our children deserve an end to zip-code discrimination, which dramatically limits their access to decent educational options. Furthermore, the civic health of our American Republic—in particular, the long-standing view that states, not the feds, would lead— hangs in the balance .

If there ever was a time for all Americans to summon the Spirit of 1836—the year of the Texas Revolution—now would be the time.

States Solve—School Lunches

Devolving to the states solve—the funds come from the same tax base, but states only have incentive to crack down on fraud if they’re in charge of the money—that turns aff solvency Edwards, 16 – director of tax policy studies at Cato (Chris, 5/26. “Food Subsidies.” https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/food-subsidies)

The following sections discuss the food stamp, school breakfast and lunch, and women, infants, and children (WIC) programs. These federal programs should be abolished, and each state should determine appropriate policies for its own residents. Some states may decide to fund existing food subsidies, while others may choose less costly approaches to providing aid. Devolving responsibilities to the states would result in more innovative approaches to helping people in need.

Food Stamps

The food stamp program aids lower-income families in purchasing food products at grocery stores, convenience stores, and other retail outlets. The program's official name is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and it will cost federal taxpayers $78 billion in 2016.2

There are 46 million food stamp recipients.3 The maximum monthly benefit in 2016 for a household of four is $649.4 Eligibility for food stamps is based on a recipient's level of assets and income, with the basic gross income cutoff set at 130 percent of the poverty level. However, nearly all states have expanded eligibility beyond the basic limits with various types of "categorical eligibility."5 Citizens and most legal noncitizens are eligible for the program.6

The first food stamp program was temporary, running from 1939 to 1943.7 The program issued stamps that could be used to purchase food that the USDA deemed surplus. After the temporary program ended, there were numerous attempts in subsequent years to reestablish a federal food stamp program.

Congress passed legislation authorizing food stamps in 1959, but the Eisenhower administration did not implement a program. The Kennedy administration initiated various food stamp pilot programs. Then the Johnson administration proposed making food stamps permanent, and Congress followed through with the Food Stamp Act of 1964. The new program had the dual goals of "improved levels of nutrition" and "strengthening the agricultural economy."8

The food stamp program was expanded during the 1970s, and the number of recipients soared from 4 million in 1970 to 21 million in 1980.9 Some restraints were added to the program during the 1980s in an effort to control rising costs. As a believer in federalism, President Ronald Reagan proposed that the food stamp program be transferred to state governments, but that reform was not enacted.

In 1996 Congress reformed the nation's main welfare program (now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) by turning it into a block grant for the states. The food stamp program was not substantially changed by the 1996 law, but as a side effect of declining welfare caseloads the number of food stamp recipients fell from 27 million in 1995 to 17 million by 2000.10

The 2002 farm bill reversed course and made changes that increased the costs of the food stamp program. The bill expanded eligibility to noncitizens, increased benefits for large families, and made administrative changes to make it easier to claim benefits.

The food stamp program ballooned in size during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. The number of recipients rose from 17 million in 2000 to 46 million by 2015.11 The program's cost quadrupled from $18 billion in 2000 to $78 billion in 2016.12

The food stamp program is run jointly by the USDA and state governments. Federal taxpayers pay for the program's benefits, but they share the program's administrative costs with state taxpayers. Food stamp administration costs about $9 billion a year.13 That means that about $9 billion of the "benefits" of the program go to government bureaucracies, not to low-income families. Those administrative costs are equal to about 13 percent of the value of food stamps distributed.14

Food stamp administration is expensive because officials need to keep detailed and up-to-date files on 46 million recipients. Caseworkers need to meet with or phone each recipient on his or her first application and to recertify the benefits for each recipient every year. Because food stamps are means-tested welfare benefits, administrators need to keep records on each recipient's income, expenses, assets, living arrangements, and other personal data.

Fraud and abuse have long been problems with food stamps. State officials are supposed to keep track of millions of individual recipients and verify that their information is accurate. And to prevent illegal trafficking, federal officials are supposed to keep tabs on the 259,000 retailers across the nation that deal in food stamps.15

The food stamp program has spawned a black market as recipients exchange their government benefits for cash. Law-breaking retailers have typically offered 50 cents on the dollar for food stamps. Thus an individual needing $100 in cash would go to a crooked retailer and get the cash in return for a $200 charge to his electronic food stamp card. The amount of such trafficking appears to have fallen in recent years, and the government claims that the rate of food stamp overpayments is only about 3 percent of total benefits, or about $2 billion annually.16

Are overpayments really that low? The overpayment rates for other large benefit programs are much higher — for the earned income tax credit the rate is more than 20 percent. With food stamps, the federal government is responsible for retailer fraud, but there are apparently only about 100 inspectors covering the 259,000 SNAP retailers.17 Investigations have found that about 10 percent of SNAP retailers are engaged in trafficking.18

State governments are supposed to weed out fraud by recipients, but it is difficult for them to keep track of the income and eligibility status of 46 million people. Some experts are skeptical that the mispayment rate is as low as claimed because the federal government does not have good data on recipient fraud within the states.19

Another concern with the food stamp program stems from the change in America's low-income population over time. Social conditions are vastly improved since the food stamp program was created. Today, just 5.6 percent of U.S. households report one or more episodes a year during which food intake is reduced due to a lack of resources, which is called "very low food security."20 Harvard University's Robert Paarlberg notes that on any typical day less than 1 percent of households face this situation.21 By contrast, about 18 percent of U.S. households receive food stamps.22

The main food-related health problem for the low-income population today is not hunger, but obesity.23 Welfare scholar Douglas Besharov argues, "Today, instead of hunger, the central nutritional problem facing the poor, indeed all Americans, is not too little food, but rather too much — or at least too many calories."24 Today, 70 percent of American adults are "overweight" or "obese," up from 56 percent in the late 1980s.25 On average, people with lower incomes are more overweight and more obese than people with higher incomes.26 Children age 6 to 11 in low-income families are almost twice as likely to be obese than children in high-income families.27 In general, low-income Americans are suffering not from too little food, but from too much of the wrong kinds of food. 28

Food stamps can be used to purchase just about any edible item in grocery and convenience stores other than alcohol, vitamins, and hot food. In its guidelines, the USDA lists the few food items that are not allowed, and then essentially says that anything else goes, including "soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream."29 It is likely that many billions of taxpayer dollars for food stamps are being spent on junk food.

How much? We do not know because the government will not release detailed data on food stamp spending. The public pays the cost of the $78 billion food stamp program, but the government will not tell the public know how their tax dollars are being spent.

Leaders of the Association of Health Care Journalists argue that the government should provide information on what products food stamps buy and at which retailers food stamps are spent.30 The association argues that the program's secrecy "runs contrary to President Obama's promise of government transparency, and stands in sharp contrast with practices at other federal agencies….With any federal program, but especially one as large as SNAP, records should be public unless there is a compelling reason to hide them."31

In 2015 the USDA did release a study showing that 40 percent of food stamp recipients were obese compared to 32 percent of low-income individuals not on food stamps.32 Both adults and children in food stamp families are more obese than other Americans.

The USDA has also found that food stamp recipients scored lower on a "healthy eating index" than other individuals with low incomes, and also individuals with higher incomes.33 Food stamp recipients are less likely to consume whole grains and raw vegetables, and are more likely to consume regular soda than other people.34 So it is ironic that the SNAP program is called a "nutrition" program.

Some policymakers and health experts favor prohibiting junk food purchases with food stamps, and there are efforts in some states to do that. An advantage of banning junk food in SNAP is that it would reduce demand for the program, and thus reduce taxpayer costs. If policymakers decided that food stamps could only be used to buy items such as fresh vegetables, fewer people would use the program, which would be a good thing.

The way to reform the food stamp program is to end federal involvement and transfer the full funding and administration to the states. Each state could decide to provide benefits either more or less generous than current benefits, and each state could decide whether or not taxpayers should subsidize "soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream."

School Breakfast and Lunch

The federal government funds school lunch and breakfast programs at about 100,000 public schools and nonprofit private schools across the nation. The lunch program covers 31 million children, while the breakfast program covers 14 million children.35 The two programs, which provide free and reduced-price meals, will cost $22 billion in 2016.36 School lunch and breakfast benefits are available without regard to immigration status.37

The programs had their origins in the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation established in 1935. That entity distributed "surplus" meat, dairy, and grain products to the needy, including children in schools. An official history of the school lunch program says that farm policies of the 1930s aimed "to remove price-depressing surplus foods from the market," and that "many needy school children could not afford to pay for lunches."38 Apparently it did not occur to the historian, or to policymakers in the 1930s, that some children could not afford lunches because the government was pushing up food prices by restricting supply.

The official history describes how, prior to the 1930s, local governments and private charities in city after city provided food aid to their schools. However, "aid from federal sources became inevitable" because local governments "could not provide the funds necessary to carry the increasing load."39 But that justification for federal intervention makes no sense. The federal government has no funds of its own — it gets all of its money from taxes paid by people who live in local communities.

The modern school lunch program dates to the National School Lunch Act of 1946. The program covered 7 million children in its first year and was expanded to 22 million children by 1970. The number of recipients was trimmed during the 1980s, but has risen since the 1990s. Congress

began the school breakfast program as a pilot program in 1966 and made it permanent in 1975. Congress added an after-school snack program in 1998.

The school lunch and breakfast programs are not just for low-income families. Any child at participating schools is allowed to receive meals under the programs. Families with incomes below 130 percent of the poverty level receive free meals, while those between 130 and 185 percent of the poverty level receive reduced-price meals. Families above 185 percent pay "full price," but that price is also subsidized to an extent. In 2015, 65 percent of the meals were free, 7 percent were reduced price, and 28 percent were full price.40

Like the food stamp program, the school breakfast and lunch programs were designed to reduce hunger. But the low-income population has changed over the decades, and excess weight and obesity have become serious problems among children. The school lunch and breakfast programs may contribute to the weight problems experienced by young people from low-income families.

The school lunch and breakfast programs are subject to widespread fraud and abuse. The official rate of improper payments for the school lunch program is 16 percent, while the rate for the breakfast program is 25 percent.41 Local governments do relatively little verification of recipient eligibility, and so large shares of free and reduced-price meals are taken improperly by families with incomes above the cutoff levels.

No proof of income, such as a paystub or W-2 form, is needed for school lunch applications, and federal rules restrict school districts from an upfront verification of eligibility.42 But when federal auditors have examined samples of applications in detail, they find that about half require downward adjustments in benefit levels because incomes are misreported.43 The USDA Inspector General has recommended that applicants provide proof of income, which would be a basic check on abuse.44

A pattern of abuse by teachers and officials discovered in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is indicative of the problems. The Chicago Tribune reported:

At the West Side school, more than a dozen CPS and city employees had submitted false applications for free or reduced-price lunches, according to James Sullivan, Chicago Public Schools' inspector general. The alleged offenders included teachers, teachers assistants, district employees, a security officer and two people in law enforcement, some of them earning six-figure salaries.

The findings led Sullivan to conclude in his report that the National School Lunch Program, meant to provide basic nutrition to needy students, was "ripe for fraud and abuse" because of layers of bureaucracy, incentives for high enrollment, and minimal checks and balances.

School districts reap rewards for enrolling as many students as possible in the lunch program, in part because those numbers help determine funding tied to poverty levels. At the same time, federal law allows school officials to vet only a fraction of the lunch applications they receive — in the case of CPS, fewer than 1 percent."45

Other articles suggest similar sorts of abuses across the country.46 Local governments have incentives to maximize the number of program recipients, and so reducing abuse is not a priority for them. In effect, the school lunch and breakfast programs operate largely on the "honor system," as the Tribune story noted. Sadly, the honor system is not good enough these days when so many people are willing to swindle government programs.

Congress should end the school lunch and breakfast programs. If state and local governments wanted to take over the programs and fund them, they could do so. The states would have a stronger incentive to limit the abuse if it was their own taxpayer money that they were spending.

The CP enables tailored school meals that respond to the needs of individual communities—federal one-size-fits-all policies disrespect parents and school officialsSheffield, 17 – focuses on welfare, marriage and family, and education as policy analyst in the DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation (Rachel, 1/4. “3 Steps Lawmakers Could Take to Roll Back Government Control of School Lunches.” http://dailysignal.com/2017/01/04/3-steps-lawmakers-could-take-to-roll-back-government-control-of-school-lunches/)

Congress should now take the opportunity to create child nutrition policy that rolls back the big-government policies currently in place, even if it means doing so before a reauthorization bill is considered.

Congress can and should work to undo three particularly problematic provisions from the 2010 law: prohibitive government school meal standards, the community eligibility provision (which expanded free meals for students), and the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer program (a de facto expansion of the food stamps program).

School Nutrition Standards

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act instituted extremely prescriptive school meal standards, disrespecting both local school officials and parents. It set forth calorie limits, strict nutrient requirements, and portion size restrictions.

For example, children under this law are required to take fruits and vegetables, even if they don’t want them, and schools are told what types and colors of vegetables they must serve, as well as the type and amount of milk they are allowed to provide to students. The result has been public outcry, more waste in school cafeterias, and increased costs for schools.

Policymakers should end this federal overreach into school cafeterias by rolling back these heavy-handed standards and allowing school districts to develop their own standards. This would allow local officials to tailor school meals to the needs of their communities and better respond to the demands of parents and students.

Community Eligibility Provision

The community eligibility provision, also part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, tries to expand welfare to middle-class and wealthy families. It inappropriately expands free meals to all students regardless of family income. Essentially, it’s a backdoor approach to universal school meals.

No longer does a child need to be low-income to receive free meals. Under this provision, if 40 percent of students in a school, group of schools, or school district are identified as eligible for free meals because they receive benefits from another means-tested welfare program like food stamps, then all students can receive free meals.

Moreover, by being able to group wealthy schools with high-poverty schools when calculating the threshold for eligibility, some schools could provide free meals to all students even if there’s s not a single child in that school who is low-income.

Congress should stop allowing a means-tested welfare program to be distorted so much that the federal government no longer has to assess the “means” of families. It should eliminate the community eligibility provision and bring common sense back to school meal programs.

Only low-income students should be able to receive free or reduced-price lunches, as was the case before this indefensible provision was added to the law. Doing so would restore integrity to school meal programs by ensuring that this welfare program serves those in need instead of simply transferring taxpayer money to those who don’t need assistance.

Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer Program

The Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer program is a pilot program that provides low-income families with funds via a debit card to pay for food during the summer months when children are out of school.

Proponents claim that this program is necessary to ensure that children are fed when they are on summer vacation. The House and Senate child nutrition bills would have either continued this pilot program or made it permanent.

Another government food assistance program is not the answer. Funding for child nutrition has doubled since 1990 (in constant dollars) and the federal government already operates about a dozen food assistance programs, including a summer food program for children.

The Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer program is, in essence, a de facto expansion of the food stamps program rather than a child nutrition program—both provide households a debit card in order to purchase food, allowing both children and adults to receive the benefits.

Policymakers should end this program rather than permanently adding it to the long list of federal food assistance programs.

Serious child nutrition reauthorization would address these deeply flawed policies. Congress should steer away from the failed policies of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act and toward policies that respect parents and local leaders, avoid extending the welfare state to middle-class and wealthy families, and do not add to the already massive means-tested welfare system.

No warrants for federal control—states can adapt standards to meet local needsDaren Bakst, 14 – research fellow at The Heritage Foundation (9/16, “Parents, not bureaucrats, should decide what kids eat.” http://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/parents-not-bureaucrats-should-decide-what-kids-eat)

The assumption underlying these new standards is that the federal government must control nutritional policy in the schools because parents can’t be trusted to teach their children how to make dietary choices that meet their unique needs.

Proponents claim that parents need help because they can’t ensure their kids are eating properly at school. Of course, parents can’t know every single thing that their children eat at school, but this doesn’t mean parents haven’t provided their children with the necessary knowledge to make informed choices. Even assuming that schools need to limit food choices, this doesn’t justify federal control .

Parents concerned about the food provided to their children at school are much better off going to local officials to address these issues. They will generally get the chance to meet with the officials and have their voices heard.

Parents aren’t going to get very far trying to convince D.C. bureaucrats about their specific concerns. Local officials who would like to help have their hands tied with these new standards because they don’t have the necessary flexibility to address many concerns.

If the new standards provided greater flexibility to states and local authorities, it would help officials better meet the needs of their students and empower parents by giving them a greater say in the food provided through meal programs.

The federal standards have encountered a lot of criticism from nutrition officials as well as students. The independent Government Accountability Office surveyed state nutrition officials and found that local school food authorities had a slew of real-world concerns about the lunch standards, ranging from “increased plate waste” — bureaucrat speak for uneaten food — to the costs of meeting the new federal dietary code.

The School Nutrition Association has echoed these concerns. The National School Board Association cautioned, “School boards cannot ignore the higher costs and operational issues created by the rigid mandates of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.” The mandates are so excessive that some schools have reportedly raided their teaching budgets to cover the extra costs.

Worse, students are disgusted by the food provided to them. According to the GAO report, students in one district held a three-week boycott against school lunches. Students are posting their anger over the program using Twitter at “#ThanksMichelle.”

The first lady and other proponents of the standards have turned a deaf ear to the complaints. They’ve even opposed giving some financially struggling schools a one-year reprieve from complying with the standards. Nothing, it seems, not even the mounting evidence of the program’s failure, will be allowed to slow its implementation.

And that’s a shame. Washington always hungers for power, but these federal meal standards aren’t fit for public consumption. They need to be scrapped.

States Solve—Education

States solve—empirics—all school-reform milestones came from state leadershipKen James, 10 – Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, America’s Choice (3/18, “Contrary to Conventional Wisdom, States Are Leading the Way in Education Reform.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ken-james/contrary-to-conventional_b_334636.html)

The Obama administration made a big splash with its decision to spend $100 billion in stimulus funding on education, including $5 billion specifically targeted to educational innovation in the states. These federal resources are welcome and necessary, but they may give the false impression that up until now states have been lagging on reform.

The truth is exactly the opposite. While the federal government is a relative newcomer to education reform, states have been demanding and driving change for decades.

The biggest milestones in school reform all have the mark of state leadership. For instance, in the 1990s governors and state school chiefs implemented vigorous accountability and academic achievement plans that have helped states identify student achievement gaps and move swiftly to close them.

More recently, states have focused their efforts on college readiness, working to ensure that every student graduates high school with the skills necessary to compete in the 21st century global economy. While not every high school graduate will attend college, every student will benefit from a strong curriculum that emphasizes subject-matter proficiency, critical thinking skills, and an understanding of the global nature of society and the economy.

We still have a long way to go. According to data from educational testing and research organization ACT, fewer than 20 percent of 8th-grade students are on track to be college ready in the four core subject areas of English, math, reading, and science.

Those statistics are unacceptable, and governors and education chiefs are working harder than anyone to improve them.

As the former schools chief in Arkansas and president of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the organization that represents state education leaders, I’ve had the opportunity to lead and to observe state-led reform efforts.

In Arkansas, we increased per-pupil spending and consolidated school districts to make education spending more effective, eliminate bureaucracy, and bring innovation to more schools.

We also made it a priority to raise standards and focus on college readiness. We increased the number of students taking Advanced Placement courses and Arkansas became one of ten states implementing the rigorous Smart Core curriculum, which includes four years each of math and

English and three years each of science and social studies to prepare students for the rigors of college.

The improvements we made in Arkansas reflect the work being done in many states.

For instance, Massachusetts, which is consistently a top performer on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), has set its sights on international competition, benchmarking elementary math performance against Singapore.

West Virginia recently revamped its student standards with a focus on 21st century skills development, to ensure that students are ready for national and global competition. Similarly, Colorado strengthened its state standards and is in the process of implementing end-of-course exams.

And in Maine, state education officials are incorporating technology throughout the curriculum. All middle school students are issued laptops and the effort is expanding to include high schools.

States are also working together, with support from the National Governors Association and CCSSO, to develop uniform educational standards and common curriculum goals. It is past time for all of us to agree on what it means to be proficient in math and reading. Every child in America needs a strong foundation in these subjects, regardless of where he or she lives. Forty-seven states and three territories have signed on to the effort to develop common standards and they’re making encouraging progress.

As education reform advances, state leaders are making improvement of struggling schools a top priority. That includes recruiting turnaround leaders, building partnerships with community stakeholders, and clearing away barriers to effective teaching and leadership. We also must enhance teachers’ ability to make progress in the classroom, build data systems that connect schools from preschool through college, and use data for policymaking and improvement.

Education is inherently comprised by state policies—federal reforms inevitably get tweaked at the state level Ravitch, 2K – Brown Chair in Education Studies at the Brookings Institution, Ph.D. in the history of education fom Columbia University (Diane, with Tom Loveless, 3/1. “Broken Promises: What the Federal Government Can Do To Improve American Education.” https://www.brookings.edu/articles/broken-promises-what-the-federal-government-can-do-to-improve-american-education/)

Federal government responsibilities in education have always been limited. The word “education” does not even appear in the U.S. Constitution. States and local school districts have always made the day-to-day decisions about instruction, teachers, textbooks, and the like. For most of the nation’s history, Washington confined itself to collecting data on school systems and disseminating information on the progress of education. Until 1965, when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed, federal support for K-12 education was minimal. Today the federal government foots only about 7 percent of the nation’s K-12 education bill, and its share has never exceeded 10 percent.

The small slice of federal funding for education goes mostly to “categorical” programs. The two largest serve poor (Title I) and handicapped (special education) students. The vast majority of American children do not qualify for these or any other categorical program. For most students in most schools, only a penny or two of each education dollar can be traced back to Washington.

The most significant limit on federal influence arises from the sheer distance between Washington and the classroom. Federal programs typically travel first to the 50 state departments of education, which send them to local school districts, then to administrators at school sites, and finally, perhaps, to classroom teachers. At each stop, money is drained off to support a bureaucracy. Regulations are tweaked and molded to fit local priorities. On reaching the classroom, federal policy bears as much resemblance to its original form as a bird to a dinosaur, its evolutionary ancestor.

Candidates for office—whether running for president or for Congress—should recognize these realities. The current political climate, however, makes it difficult for politicians to acknowledge Washington’s limited role. Education, they know from opinion polls, is the public’s number one concern. In recent years, Democrats and Republicans alike have supported dramatically extending the federal reach into schools. Placing more technology in classrooms, establishing school disciplinary codes, deciding how reading will be taught, recruiting new teachers and determining their qualifications, launching after-school programs, selecting exemplary math textbooks—these are just a few areas that were once the sole responsibility of state and local school officials but that now seem to be regarded as the proper subject of federal action.

An Appropriate Federal Role

The public’s desire to improve public schools, though laudable, does not justify expanding the federal government’s role in education. There is scant evidence that existing federal programs are accomplishing their goals; indeed, most evaluations of the major federal categorical programs suggest that they are failing to make a dent in the problems they were designed to solve. Even Head Start, probably the most popular federal initiative, has been unable to close the large gaps in achievement between poor children and their advantaged peers. Yet Congress has been consistently unwilling to overhaul or discontinue any education program, regardless of its lack of effectiveness. Every federal program can mobilize a devoted constituency on its behalf, and even the smallest programs have kept their federal funds flowing.

Here is a suggestion for the candidates: fix existing federal education programs before telling school boards, principals, teachers, and parents how to run local schools. There is no reason to believe that the president or Congress is well-suited to decide who should teach, what should be taught, or how schools should be organized. Nor do we know of any evidence that the U.S. Department of Education is in a better position to direct local schools than the people who work in them and send their children to learn there. And, frankly, taking on vast new responsibilities before fulfilling existing obligations is indefensible for any government at any level.

States solve and federal involvement fails—key education policy innovations get rejected when centralizedWRI 7 (World Resources Institute, “CLIMATE POLICY IN THE STATE LABORATORY How States Influence Federal Regulation and the Implications for Climate Change Policy in the United States”, 2007, http://pdf.wri.org/climate_policy_in_the_state_laboratory.pdf)

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), signed in January 2002 by President George W. Bush, marks the most sig- nificant expansion of the federal role in education in U.S. history. The act requires the states to establish an account- ability framework to assess, by means of annual testing, the performance of all students in grades 3 through 8 based on state standards. Assessment results and state progress objectives must be distinguished by poverty, race, ethnic- ity, disability, and limited English proficiency to “ensure that no group is left behind.” School districts and schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward statewide proficiency goals will, over time, be subject to improvement, corrective action, and restructuring mea- sures aimed at getting them back on course to meet state standards. Local school districts must give students attend- ing schools identified for improvement the opportunity to attend a better public school or to use federal funds to obtain supplemental education. Schools with persistent shortfalls in testing face restructuring under state guidance.

The impetus for reform was the competition from party leaders for leadership in education. Although President George H. W. Bush pledged to be an education president in his 1988 campaign, in the 1990s Republicans retreated and denounced federal activism in education. The House Republicans who took over in 1995 made abolishing the Department of Education one of their signature themes, a slogan that was repeated in the 1996 elections by the Re- publican presidential nominee, Senator Robert Dole (KS).

Conservative Republicans saw any increase in federal involvement as a threat to local control of the schools and tried to minimize the intrusiveness of federal directives and enforcement efforts. Although they supported standards, testing, and accountability reforms, they believed that they should be established at the state rather than the federal level. But the Democrats tried to keep the federal role centered on school inputs rather than on school outputs or governance issues.

In the late 1990s, political pressures pushed the two parties closer to the center. All the polls showed that the pub-lic saw Republicans as against education, even though it was becoming a more important national political issue. As a result, in the late 1990s, congressional Republicans dropped their proposals to eliminate the Department of Education and to cut federal education spending, and put forward their own vision of federal educational leadership. In an effort to appear more progressive to voters, Repub- licans also appropriated more money for education than President Bill Clinton had requested, and between 1996 and 2001 federal spending on grades K through 12 educa- tion rose higher than it had been since the 1960s.

Republican activism represented a major political and policy challenge for the Democrats, who for the first time were forced to respond to a comprehensive alternative national reform plan. The Democrats’ response was shaped by a growing recognition that money was a necessary but not a sufficient consideration for improving education and that the voters wanted more

meaningful reform. The Democratic Party moved away from its focus on inputs and equity and toward a focus on standards, accountability, and public choice.

This confluence of political developments ended the debate over whether the federal government should have a role in education and created an opening—a “policy win- dow” in John Kingdon’s terms—for bipartisan discussions about a centrist compromise that would establish a new reform-oriented federal education policy regime (Kingdon 1995). Actually, many of the reform ideas that later formed the core of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act—such as standards, assessments, adequate yearly progress, school report cards, and corrective action—can be found in the 1994 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Amendments. The ambitious requirements of this act were not, however, successfully enforced or implemented by the states.

Scholars trace the roots of the NCLB to earlier state educa- tion reform efforts. One observer, Paul Manna, offered a “bottom-up agenda setting” model to explain the passage of the NCLB and argued that the states’ activity on educa- tion reform put pressure on the federal government to em- brace standards, accountability, and choice (Manna 2006).

In 2000, forty-eight states had standards and tests in place, and thirteen states were testing students between the third and eighth grades every year in reading and math. By 1997, thirty-one states had established standards in the core areas of English, mathematics, science, and social studies. By 2001, only three states had not adopted academic- content standards in the four subject areas (Wong 2006). The states’ increasing activity prompted the governors to support national standards and testing as early as 1990 at a Charlottesville, Virginia, summit with President George H. W. Bush. Their decision was partly due to national politi- cal ambitions and desire to replicate state policies on the national stage. Many governors also hoped that national standards would bolster the support of their state legisla- tures for state accountability models.

State innovations are transferred to the federal level more directly when state officials become national leaders. For example, while he was governor, President George W. Bush became convinced of the efficacy of accountability in reforms in education while observing the effect of TASS (Texas Assessment of Academic Skills) tests.

The national business community shared the governors’ enthusiasm for national standards and joined them at the Charlottesville summit and other forums to strategize how to enhance accountability in education at the national and state levels. Business depends on schools to help lure and retain employees and to train its next generation of em- ployees and customers. Concerned about the low quality of the workforce and motivated to create a more attractive business environment in their communities and states, business groups viewed accountability as a linchpin of school improvement.

The laboratories model may also help explain how state ac- countability models expanded to the federal level. On the one hand was evidence that federal spending and programs had failed to improve the performance of disadvantaged students and that the performance of mainstream students had deteriorated. On the other hand, a high-profile study of state National Assessment

of Educational Progress re- sults suggested that states with standards and testing, such as Texas and North Carolina, were able to raise their test scores higher than the scores in other states.

Although the federal policy drew its inspiration and design from state reforms, this by no means guaranteed that it would reflect the states’ policies. In fact, even in those states that had standards and tests in place, there were few consequences for schools that failed to perform well. While building on state models, the NCLB went well beyond the states’ own programs, imposing significant new intergovernmental burdens and tensions in state education programs. Eventually the enthusiasm for a new national commitment to education reform championed by the governors soured when the partnership reflected in the Charlottesville summit was transformed into a centralizing federal policy initiative, replete with regulatory constraints on and mandates for states accepting federal funds.

During the implementation of the NCLB, the intergovern- mental community has become increasingly concerned about federal standards and insufficient funding. Opposi- tion to the law has been most pronounced among those states (such as Virginia) that had most aggressively adopted standards-based reforms. Even during the development of the NCLB, local officials opposed national regulation; teachers’ unions opposed testing; and conservatives op- posed the omission of vouchers. State officials protested that the law did not give the states enough federal money to meet the educational goals. In 2005, the National Edu- cation Association and school districts in Michigan, Texas, and Vermont filed suit against the federal government, claiming that the NCLB was an unfunded mandate. And the state legislatures in Utah, Vermont, New Hampshire, Hawaii, and Maine prohibited their states from spend- ing any of their own funds to implement NCLB (Janofsky 2005).

States Solve—AT: Funding

State-based funding is more effective than federal—money from the fed gets misallocated and wasted Albright, 15 – director of fiscal studies for Capital Policy Analytics (Logan, 11/3. “Throwing Money at Education a Proven Failure.” http://www.freedomworks.org/content/throwing-money-education-proven-failure)

Leave it government to never, ever learn from its mistakes. Since the establishment of the U.S. Department of Education in 1979, the go-to solution for all things education related has been federal dollars piled atop more federal dollars. But for a Department so fixated on testing and results, it's remarkable how demonstrable failures are either extended or replicated without end. Race to the Top, Head Start, and No Child Left Behind have poured billions into schooling, without the promised improvements in student achievement. Across the country, the school districts that spend the most per child have the worst results, with the District of Columbia being among the worst offenders.

In a recent piece, Politico reports on how outgoing Education Secretary Arne Duncan's plan to pump billions of dollars of stimulus money into the nation's worst schools was a complete failure. After six years, the schools showed virtually no improvement compared with the ones that received no extra money, while a third of the targeted schools actually got worse. Why, then, does public policy continue to fail the American education system?

There are really two things at work here: the inherent problem with central control, and a basic misunderstanding of how children learn. The first is a staple of conservative and libertarian thought that, at this point, requires little explanation. The more remote a problem is from those trying to solve it, the more difficulty will be had. A central bureaucracy operating out of Washington, DC is simply not capable of addressing the individual needs of states, to say nothing of cities, school districts, schools, and individual students. Since these decision makers can't possibly have the knowledge necessary to know where and how money should be spent at the local level, it inevitably gets misallocated and wasted .

The second problem is that there is a belief among regulators that the best way to teach children is uniformity; cramming them into a featureless, windowless room where they are made to memorize the same facts as every other student in the country, and then testing them over and over again until their eyes bleed. If students fail to perform well in this environment, the reason must be that they are not tested enough, that the tests are not rigorous enough, or that expensive technology, like iPads, might somehow be helpful in a vague sort of way if only we can pay for them.

It's all nonsense of course. Children are people. They're individuals, and they learn in different ways. Uniformity doesn't work, learning must instead be a journey of discovery that allows flexibility for the child to pursue his own interests at his own pace. Until the government accepts this, we can expect more taxpayer dollars fritter fruitlessly away.

In the meantime, since federal money doesn't do local schools any good anyway, more governors should be willing to cut the strings imposed by the Department of Education, and opt out of failed programs like Common Core. There's no point in accepting federal aid that doesn't actually aid anyone.

State funding is effective—most education money comes from the statesBaron, 16 – senior writer, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Kathryn, 12/16. “Finding a Balance for the Federal Role in Education Policy.” https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/blog/finding-a-balance-for-the-federal-role-in-education-policy/)

Noting that much of what has been written on education policy involves where the federal government should stay out of education governance, the Brookings Institution sought to initiate a public conversation on what the federal government can and should do. The result is Memos to the President on the Future of Education Policy, a series of 12 articles written by education leaders and policymakers with diverse perspectives that are intended to make “an affirmative case for an important but limited federal role” in education policy.

The preface to the series, A principled federal role in PreK-12 education, explores the history and evolution of federal policy around public education in the period soon after the Revolutionary War. The authors begin in 1791 with ratification of the Tenth Amendment, which gave states jurisdiction over all powers not reserved for the federal government in the U.S. Constitution, including education, and continues to current programs aimed at providing equal access to quality education for all students regardless of race, income, gender, ethnicity, language, and immigration status.

The civil rights movement has been a major force in periods of heightened federal involvement. The U.S. Supreme Court ushered in this era with its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. A decade later, driven by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s bold vision for a “Great Society,” Congress approved two unprecedented pieces of legislation: The Civil Rights Act of 1964, followed in 1965 by the first Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

A supporting role

The fundamental question in this and the other papers is what can the federal government do to encourage and support states and districts in their work to improve learning for all students? The authors derived a common set of four proactive principles, which recommend that the federal government should:

ensure that no student is denied the right to equal educational opportunity based on race, ethnicity, gender, disability, or other protected status;

provide compensatory funding to facilitate access to educational opportunity for high-need students, including, but not limited to, students living in poverty and students with disabilities;

support education research and development, and the gathering and dissemination of information about the scope and quality of the nation’s education system, to inform policy and practice at the state and local levels; and

in a manner consistent with both its unique advantages and limited capacity, support the development and conditions to promote continuous improvement of state and local education systems.

The overall message here is that the federal government has the responsibility to insure the right to a free and high quality education for all K-12 students by protecting their civil rights and by providing resources for the most in need, using public data and high quality research, and by providing support and infrastructure for schools, districts, and states to help them continuously improve in their work.

That’ll do it

The paper does not recommend a huge increase in funding for education. Given the discord over federal involvement in public education, it may seem like Capitol Hill has a controlling interest in school financing. Yet, the federal share of total school funding is a sliver – about 10 percent of the more than $600 billion spent annually on public elementary and secondary schools. The bulk of that is designated for equal access to education through two pieces of legislation: Title I, part of President Johnson’s 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, provides funds to schools to provide additional resources and academic services for poor students; and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), enacted in 1975 to support special education.

It wasn’t until a quarter century later, when President George W. Bush signed the reauthorization of ESEA, known as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, that the federal government would assert itself so deeply in local education policy. President Obama’s policies continued to support this. In reaction, many states objected to what they viewed as onerous accountability demands in the law and, in December 2015, Congress reduced the federal reach into education with passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the most recent incarnation of ESEA.

Understanding the limits of the federal role in education is as important as acknowledging its beneficial actions. “The federal government is poorly positioned to dictate the details of state and local efforts to improve their schools,” write the authors. They also point out that strict accountability regulations based solely on test scores did little to improve student achievement and may have had the unintended consequence of inducing “educators to focus on compliance over student success.”

States Solve—AT: Uniformity Key

This isn’t offense for the aff—federal uniformity still causes variation at the state level—NCLB provesRich, 13 – Tokyo bureau chief for The New York Times. She has been a reporter with The Times since 2003, and has covered real estate, publishing, economics and education (Mokoto, 2/9. “Holding States and Schools Accountable.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/education/debate-over-federal-role-in-public-school-policy.html)

Critics have argued that the Obama administration has been too prescriptive in these waiver requirements, and that a new education law should leave most decisions about schooling up to states and districts.

Dictating education policy from Washington can engender unintended consequences. At the Senate hearing, Education Secretary Arne Duncan noted that 19 states had “dummied down standards” under the No Child Left Behind law. Critics also say the law has compelled educators to teach to the tests and set off a spate of cheating scandals.

In addition, huge gaps remain between the performance of poor and minority children and more affluent and white children. And while some states have raised scores on reading and math tests, others have shown little progress.

“Even with the rigor of No Child Left Behind, the difference in improvement by the states is vast,” said John E. Chubb, the interim chief executive of Education Sector, a nonpartisan policy group. “ The federal government has not found the right tools as yet.”

Variation is good—makes the states laboratories of democracy and enables federal modeling WRI 7 (World Resources Institute, “CLIMATE POLICY IN THE STATE LABORATORY How States Influence Federal Regulation and the Implications for Climate Change Policy in the United States”, 2007, http://pdf.wri.org/climate_policy_in_the_state_laboratory.pdf)

The background of this study is the evolving role of the states and their relationship with the federal government. In promoting what he called the “compound republic” in the U.S. Constitution, James Madison observed in the Fed- eralist Papers that the federal system contemplated by the founders would check the potential for “usurpations” by dividing public authority among several levels of govern- ment. While serving as a check on unlimited government power, the federal system is also touted as a vehicle for changing policy from the “bottom up.” Over a century later, Louis Brandeis observed that states can become the “laboratories of democracy” by testing new ideas and policy proposals, gradually building a record of policy innovation that can be tapped by national officials when the time is ripe (New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann 1932). In ad- dition, the states’ use of litigation to induce federal action has been, and continues to be, another means of promot- ing policy. For example, the recent case of Massachusetts vs. EPA4, settled by the Supreme Court in favor of the states, is an

important milestone in an effort by states to force the federal government to follow suit with strong regulations to address climate change.

The states’ ability to innovate and affect policy in the feder- alist system is not a panacea, however. In many instances, a federal solution may be both necessary and preferable, based on the specific federal powers granted under the U.S. Constitution and on the efficiency and cost-effectiveness that may be gained under a federal program, as opposed to many states working on the same problem concurrently. Although the federalist system encourages innovation, it also invites inefficiency. State and federal policymakers often must consider the same policy problem at the same time. As various social and economic problems arise, the concern and awareness of the public and the news media will also rise, compelling a search for answers at all lev- els of government, academia, business, and civil society. Indeed, many of these actors may collaborate. In many cases in which the states appear to be leading, the federal government may in fact be busy at work yet have few or no results to show at the time. The reasons why a federal response requires more time to develop may be valid and include the scale and complexity of the nation and its di- verse political interests, as compared with those of a single state.

Even though federal policymakers may work on issues concurrently with state policymakers, political gridlock, the dominance of a certain political ideology, and other mac- ropolitical circumstances at the national level may prevent the federal government’s adoption of state policies. Such circumstances increase the importance of state laboratories, as they can serve not only as a source of new policy ideas but also as holding tanks for policies that may not yet be politically feasible at the federal level. Indeed, it has been argued that states function as a policy “balance wheel,” with the states acting as an outlet for positive policy ini- tiative during periods when the national government is either mired in gridlock or, with regard to particular issues, limited by the presence of an ideological policy regime. In these cases, the nation itself retains the capacity for policy action through the federal system even when it cannot muster the requisite consensus or resolve problems at the national level (Nathan 2005). In the event that the politi- cal winds change, whether owing to a change of the party in power, a natural disaster, a national emergency, or some other exogenous event, the resulting “policy windows” can offer a rapid diffusion of policies that may have been active for years at the state level (Kingdon 1995).

On many issues, the states are often positioned to reach agreement and action on a policy well ahead of national policymakers. Compared with the national policymaking process, the political interests of most states are relatively cohesive and homogenous, thereby enabling them to achieve consensus on policy action more quickly. Again, Madison presciently observed that smaller units of gov- ernment would be quicker to act and that extending the “sphere” to the federal level would make it more difficult to act in unison, because of the greater number of interests and parties.

The U.S. federal system has always played this role. The constitutional responsibility for providing education, pub- lic health and safety, among other basic domestic services, ensures that states and local governments often address emerging public issues and problems in their formative stages. Indeed, the states have served as policy incubators as far back as the

nineteenth century, hatching reforms in child labor, public assistance, and workmen’s compensa tion that were later nationalized during the Progressive Era and the New Deal (Nathan 2005).

Over the past fifty years, structural and political reforms such as reapportionment of legislatures, the growth of professional staffs, and enhanced revenue systems have transformed the states’ decision-making processes. As the states became more discerning in implementing the grow- ing array of federal domestic programs, national advocacy groups joined the ranks of business and other traditional interest groups in organizing a state presence (Thomas and Hrebena 1999). Thanks to many of these changes, ambi- tious state political leaders have become policy activists, often competing with one another to champion the early adoption of many emerging policy ideas, including uni- versal health care, nonsmoking ordinances, and prohibi- tions on driving while intoxicated. Not all states are equal, however, and those with the most resources and greatest activist tendencies are more likely to undertake the analysis and implementation of complex policies and regulation and consequently have a greater impact on the develop- ment of federal policy.

States Solve—AT: International Signal Solvency Deficit

States send a better international signal—increase global awarenessGoldsmith 97 (Jack, Associate Professor – University of Chicago, “Federal Courts, Foreign Affairs, and Federalism”, Virginia Law Review, November, 83 Va. L. Rev. 1617, Lexis)

This analysis casts doubt on the widely held view that the states have no legitimate interest in the

regulation of foreign relations. Many who hold this view are misled by the label "foreign relations," which is invariably associated with traditional foreign relations issues and thus with exclusive federal control. But the issues implicated by the federal common law of foreign relations - state common and criminal law, choice of law, procedural law, nondiscriminatory international

economic activities, and state human rights activities - differ significantly from traditional foreign relations matters. Concurrent authority over these nontraditional foreign relations matters are much less likely to undermine the United States' ability to participate in international affairs, and much less likely to harm the national foreign

relations interest. And, in contrast to state activities in traditional foreign relations contexts, many affirmative benefits accrue from the decentralization of these new foreign relations functions. For example , nontraditional state

foreign relations activities such as international trade activity and involvement in the international human rights movement

assist both the U.S. government and third parties. 248 Subnational foreign relations initiatives increased awareness about the United States' economic policies against oppressive regimes in South Africa and Myanmar. 249

[*1678] Similarly, the State and Commerce Department s approve of the manifold state international economic activities

presumably because they find that decentralization of these activities serves U.S. interests more effectively than centralized federal control. 250

Fed Fails

Federal reform structurally failsMirel, 9 – David L. Angus Collegiate Professor of Education and Professor of History at the University of Michigan (Jeffrey E., with Maris A. Vinovskis. “Perennial Problems with Federal Education Reform in the United States.” https://www.cairn.info/revue-politique-americaine-2009-3-page-11.htm)

At the same time, it is also worth noting that any federal initiatives will not substantially improve American education quickly. There are no simple or easy solutions for the complex and daunting challenges facing U.S. education. The exaggerated promises of Goals 2000 and No Child Left Behind were unrealistic and unattainable in 10-12 years. In light of the severe budgetary constraints on new federal aid to public schools, most of the education funding probably will have to be provided by states and local communities, both of which now are facing reduced revenues and other rising costs. The difficulties encountered by many U.S. students also stem in large part from the economic and social disadvantages that many of their families continue to experience. Nevertheless, we can facilitate the gradual improvement of U.S. education by investing more wisely in long-term, rigorous research as well as developing more challenging, uniform education standards.

38

Given that President Obama has been in office for less than a year, whether he will make major changes in federal education policy still remains to be seen. What we can be certain about, however, is that whatever he attempts to do in regards to federal education policy will be mitigated by the two factors that we have used to structure this essay – the lack of a strong body of research about what can work to enhance the quality of education for poor and minority students and the ungainly “system” of educational power and authority in the U.S. that was designed to make the implementation of federally mandated education reforms an exceedingly difficult endeavor. How Obama will address these challenges will be one of the most intriguing political questions to be answered in the next three years.

Fed Fails—School Lunches

Federal changes cause schools to drop outJalonick, 13 – writer for the Associated Press (Mary Clare, 9/30. “524 schools drop out of the national school lunch program.” http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/524-schools-drop-out-of-the-national-school-lunch-program-over-new-standards/)

WASHINGTON — The Agriculture Department says 524 schools — out of about 100,000 — have dropped out of the federally subsidized national school lunch program since the government introduced new standards for healthier foods last year.

The new standards have met with grumbling from school nutrition officials who say they are difficult and expensive to follow, conservatives who say the government shouldn’t be dictating what kids eat and — unsurprisingly — from some children who say the less-greasy food doesn’t taste as good. But USDA says the vast majority of schools are serving healthier food, with some success.

Data to be released Monday by the department shows that 80 percent of schools say they have already met the requirements, which went into place at the beginning of the 2012 school year. About one-half percent have dropped out of the program.

In an effort to stem high childhood obesity levels, the new guidelines set limits on calories and salt, and they phase in more whole grains in federally subsidized meals served in schools’ main lunch line. Schools must offer at least one vegetable or fruit per meal and comply with a variety of other specific nutrition requirements. The rules aim to introduce more nutrients to growing kids and also to make old favorites healthier — pizza with low-fat cheese and whole-wheat crust, for example, or baked instead of fried potatoes.

If schools do not follow the rules, or if they drop out, they are not eligible for the federal dollars that reimburse them for free and low-cost meals served to low-income students. That means wealthier schools with fewer needy students are more likely to be able to operate outside of the program.

According to the USDA data, gathered from the states that administer the programs, 90 of the 524 schools that dropped out of the program said specifically that they did so because of the new meal-plan requirements. Most of the rest did not give a reason.

Some school nutrition officials have said buying the healthier foods put a strain on their budgets. A study by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Kids’ Safe and Healthful Foods Project, also expected to be released Monday, said that 91 percent of school food officials the group surveyed said they face challenges in putting the standards in place, including problems with food costs and availability, training employees to follow the new guidelines, and a lack of the proper equipment to cook healthier meals.

But that study says 94 percent of the more than 3,300 officials surveyed said they expect to be able to meet all of the requirements by the end of this school year.

“It shows that this is certainly doable,” said Jessica Donze Black, director of the Pew project, which has lobbied for healthier foods.

Leah Schmidt, president of the School Nutrition Association and director of nutrition programs at a Kansas City, Mo. school district, said any schools that would consider forgoing the federal funds would have to have very few students eating the free and reduced-cost meals.

She agreed that many schools have met challenges in trying to meet the new standards, but she said that is to be expected.

“Any time you have something new, you’re going to have some growing pains,” she said.

As some schools struggled to follow the new guidelines at the beginning of the last school year, USDA relaxed some of the original requirements. In December, the department did away with daily and weekly limits on meats and grains that school nutrition officials said were too hard to follow.

Congress has also had its say on the new guidelines. In 2011, after USDA first proposed them, Congress prohibited USDA from limiting potatoes and French fries and allowed school lunchrooms to continue counting tomato paste on pizza as a vegetable.

The school lunch rules apply to federally subsidized lunches served at reduced or no cost to low-income children. Those meals have always been subject to nutritional guidelines because they are partially paid for by the federal government, but the new rules put broader restrictions on what could be served as childhood obesity rates have skyrocketed.

AT: Perm—Do Both

1. Links to the net benefits – [write your own explanation based on the net benefits you are extending]

2. Federal policies crowd out the states—reduces demand for state actionAdler 7 (Jonathan H – Professor of Law and Co-Director, Center for Business Law and Regulation, Case Western Reserve University School of Law, “WHEN IS TWO A CROWD? THE IMPACT OF FEDERAL ACTION ON STATE ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION”, 31 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 67, Lexis)

A second potential negative indirect effect of federal regulation on state regulatory choices is crowding out. This occurs because federal regulation may serve as a substitute for state-level regulation, thereby reducing the benefits of adopting or maintaining state-level protections. Insofar as voters in a given state demand a certain level of environmental protection, there is no reason to expect states to duplicate

federal efforts when a federal program satisfies that demand, particularly if a state has not already created such a program. If the federal floor is greater than or equal to the level of environmental protection demanded by a state's residents, that state has no reason to adopt environmental regulations of its own once the federal government has acted. To the extent that this effect occurs, it is separate from--perhaps even in addition to--the signaling effect described above. The claim here is not simply that states regulate less than they would absent federal regulation--

although this claim is almost certainly true. Rather, the claim is that some states that would adopt regulations more protective than the federal floor, absent the imposition of federal regulation, have not done so due to federal regulation and may not do so in the future. If this hypothesis is correct, the net effect of federal

environmental regulation in at least some states could be less environmental protection than would have been adopted had the federal government not intervened. To see how this could occur, recall that the demand for environmental regulation in any given jurisdiction tends to increase over time as wealth, [*99] technical capability, scientific knowledge, and environmental impacts increase. n131 In any given state (as in the nation as a whole), there is an initial period ("Period A") during which the demand for a given type of environmental protection is relatively low. The costs of adopting environmental regulations in this period are greater than the benefits of adopting any such protections. These costs include the costs of developing, drafting, and passing legislation; the costs of creating a new policy program, drafting and implementing regulations, defending the regulations from any potential legal or administrative challenges, creating a means to monitor and enforce regulatory compliance; and so on. In addition, there are opportunity costs of devoting state resources and political capital to the cause of environmental protection as opposed to some other policy goal. As discussed earlier, the demand for environmental protection has tended to increase over time along with increases in living standards. n132 At the same time, increases in technical knowledge and administrative efficiency may lower the costs of a given regulatory program. Eventually, a state will enter a second period ("Period B") in which the benefits of a given

environmental regulatory program are greater than the costs of initiating, implementing, and operating such a program. Absent any federal interference, the hypothetical state will not adopt environmental regulations in Period A, but will

adopt such regulations in Period B. See Figure 3. This is the environmental transition discussed in Part I. In Period A, the demand for environmental protection is insufficient to justify the costs of implementing environmental protection measures. By Period B, however, the demand for environmental protection has risen due to increases in wealth and knowledge, among other factors. At the same time, increases in technical capacity and scientific understanding have reduced the cost of adopting environmental protections. As a result, in Period B a state will adopt Q[B] amount of environmental protection. n133 [*100] The

timing of Period A and Period B will vary from state to state. This is clearly the case as different states have enacted different environmental regulatory measures at different times--some before the adoption of federal environmental regulation, some after, and some not at all. Looking at the history of various environmental concerns, such as air quality, water quality, or wetlands, it is clear that many states moved from Period A to Period B for these environmental concerns at various times prior to the onset of federal regulations in the 1970s. In many other states, however, a federal regulatory floor was adopted before the onset of Period B. [*101] For states that went through their environmental transition and entered Period B prior

to the enactment of federal environmental protection, whether the adoption of a federal regulatory floor increased the aggregate level of environmental protection in that state depended upon whether preexisting state policies offered greater or lesser levels of protection than the relevant federal policies. For states in which the onset of Period B begins after the adoption of federal regulations, the enactment of a federal regulatory floor will, at the time of enactment, increase the aggregate level of environmental protection in that state. However, this may not be the case over time. In states that desire a greater level of protection than that provided by the relevant federal regulations, it is not clear that the existence of the federal regulatory floor will result in an equal or

greater level of protection than would be adopted were it not for the federal regulations. This is because federal regulation will, to some extent, act as a substitute for state regulation . As a result, the adoption of federal regulation has the potential to reduce the demand for state regulation and, in some instances, even result in less aggregate regulation in a given state than would have been adopted absent federal

intervention. In short, federal regulation can crowd out state regulation. The potential for such a crowding-out effect is illustrated in Figure 4. The existence of federal regulation will reduce the demand for state regulation by an amount equal to the extent to which federal regulation is a substitute for state regulation of the same environmental concern (Q[FReg]). This substitution effect will reduce the net benefit of adopting state-level environmental regulations from OCQ[B] to OC'Q'[B]. By reducing the net benefits of state-level environmental regulation in this manner, federal regulation has the potential to crowd out state-level environmental protections, even if the quantity of environmental protection demanded in the state is greater than that provided by the federal government. In such cases, the aggregate level of environmental protection will be lower with federal regulation than it would be without it. [*102]

3. The perm doesn’t solveZimmerman 1 (Joseph F., Professor of Political Science – State University of New York at Albany, Publius, Spring, p 16)

Examining this list, it becomes apparent that different institutional features of the federal structure are more or less important for securing these different values. Some of the values - diversity, competition, and experimentalism - appear to depend significantly on the existence of many states pursuing unique regulatory agendas . If all of the states pursued identical regulatory strategies, or were prevented from instituting meaningful agendas altogether, these values, as a logical matter, could not be promoted. Obviously there would be no regulatory diversity, because all of the states would structure the lives of their citizens in the same way. Moreover, this uniformity would prevent state competition and experimentation: people would have no incentive to "vote with their feet" if each state provided the same package of public goods, and experimentation by definition requires that different states attempt different solutions to the same social problems.

Aff

Perm—Do Both—School Lunches

Perm—do both—it’s fiscal federalismDavidson, 7 – Associate Professor, University of Colorado Law School (Nestor M., June. “ARTICLE: COOPERATIVE LOCALISM: FEDERAL-LOCAL COLLABORATION IN AN ERA OF STATE SOVEREIGNTY.” Virginia Law Review, 93 Va. L. Rev. 959. Lexis.)

n51. Many instances of federal-local interaction involve both fiscal and regulatory federalism. Consider the example of primary and secondary education, a quintessential aspect of local governance. The federal government has long played a role in financing local education. Indeed, grants-in-aid from the central government to local governments for education predate the Constitution. See Bernard J. Frieden, Advisory Comm'n on Intergovernmental Relations, Metropolitan America: Challenge to Federalism 120 (1966) (discussing the Ordinance of 1785, by which the Congress of the Confederation authorized land grants to local governments for schools). While local education continues to be funded at least in part through federal land grants, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act provides approximately twenty-four billion dollars per year to local school districts. See U.S. Dep't of Educ., Fiscal Year 2007 Budget Summary and Background Information 3 (2006), http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget07/summary/07summary.pdf. Other federal assistance includes programs such as Head Start and school lunches. Federal influence on local education, however, is hardly limited to fiscal federalism. See generally Richard W. Riley, The Role of the Federal Government in Education - Supporting a National Desire for Support for State and Local Education, 17 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 29, 36-42 (1997). Federal standards provide a national floor to govern civil rights for local school systems. See, e.g., Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d (2000) (prohibiting race, color, and national origin discrimination); Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681 (2000) (prohibiting sex discrimination); Rehabilitation Act of 1973 § 504, 29 U.S.C. § 794 (2000) (prohibiting disability discrimination); Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 42 U.S.C. § 12132 (2000) (same). Also note that the leading educational focus of the current administration - the controversial No Child Left Behind Act, Pub. L. No. 107-110, 115 Stat. 1425 (2001) - sets national standards for core educational competencies backed by a regime of mandatory testing largely implemented at the local level.

States Fail—General

States can’t substitute for the federal government—causes piecemeal effortsMorgan and Zietlow, 5 – professor of law at NYU and professor at the University of Toledo Law School (Denise and Rebecca, Summer. Lexis.)

The limitations that the Supreme Court has placed on Congress's powers in the name of states' rights have severely weakened the one institution that has a constitutional mandate to create a nationally uniform baseline of rights of belonging and the ability to do so. Although state legislatures have played--and should continue to play--an important role in more fully developing our national understanding of what rights are necessary to belong to America, state legislation is simply not an adequate substitute for federal legislation because it must necessarily be piecemeal and varied . In contrast, Congress has greater institutional competence to determine when there is a need for rights of belonging than individual state legislatures have, only Congress can create a nationally uniform baseline of rights, and a shared understanding of rights of belonging reinforces those rights and strengthens our political community. Accordingly, the Supreme Court should not attempt to delegate Congress's role in protecting rights of belonging to state governments based on the assumption that there is parity between the institutions.

States Fail—School Lunches

States uniquely fail for school lunch provision—they’re unreliable agents for distributing resources to indigent families Hills, 12 – William T. Comfort III Professor of Law, New York University Law School (Roderick M., Jr., June. “SYMPOSIUM: EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION AND THE LAW: THE CASE FOR EDUCATIONAL FEDERALISM: PROTECTING EDUCATIONAL POLICY FROM THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT'S DISECONOMIES OF SCALE.” Notre Dame Law Review, 87 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1941. Lexis.)

That the national government has a role to play in supplying national public educational goods has been recognized at least since the federal government created the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1802. A national public good is simply a good the benefits of which transcend subnational boundaries such that no single unit of subnational government - a household, township, municipality, county, or state - has sufficient incentive to produce the benefit in sufficient quantity. n79 Military technology like engineering is an obvious example: fearful that the nation would be dependent on foreign engineers for its military needs, Jefferson created the West Point Academy despite his general philosophy of limiting federal power. The private market for engineering services would not likely motivate parents or school districts to finance human capital in the arcana of civil engineering in sufficient quantity to supply the army's military need, simply because those needs reflect the non-excludable benefits of domestic defense that no private market actor can capture. It is easy enough mutatis mutandis to justify many other national educational programs that subsidize national public goods under-supplied by subnational government. Whenever the benefits of an educational program exceed the boundaries of a state, there is a theoretical case for a federal grant program to encourage state production of the program.

The boundary-crossing benefits of a program are not merely the result of the program's inherent characteristics but also the constitutional ground rules that prohibit state interference with the movement of goods and persons across state lines. Take, for example, unemployment insurance and aid to indigent households more generally. Because states are prohibited from excluding or taxing goods manufactured in other states, states cannot easily charge their own manufacturers with the costs of unemployment insurance for fear that those businesses will be put out of business by non-resident firms constitutionally immune from such charges but nevertheless importing cheap goods into the state. Fear of such competition from Southern states deterred Northern states from offering unemployment insurance programs despite then-Governor Franklin Roosevelt's efforts to organize cooperative action among the states. n80 Precisely such worries about the interstate mobility of capital led the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the Social Security Act's unemployment insurance program in [*1968] Steward Machine Co. v. Davis. n81 Thus, subsidies for unemployment insurance are a national public good, because the benefits of income smoothing transcend the boundaries of any single state.

Likewise, redistribution of wealth to insure a national minimum of income for U.S. citizens constitutes a national public good, because, given the constitutionally guaranteed mobility of

indigent citizens, n82 any single state's efforts to supply such a national minimum will encourage other states to export their indigent households to the generous state. n83 Subsidizing education is an especially attractive mechanism for redistributing income, because educational subsidies avoid the perception of moral hazard that dampens well-heeled citizens' willingness to part with their own cash to insure a national welfare minimum. Federal aid for free school lunch, Head Start pre-kindergarten childcare, and aid under the ESEA program are all examples of such federal aid for indigent households, justified by the national scope of redistributive programs' benefits, a scope insured by interstate mobility of indigency.

These familiar general points regarding redistribution of wealth apply with special force to education: subnational governments are notoriously unreliable agents of indigent households when providing educational services, because the usual devices that induce constituents to lobby for educational improvement - capitalization of schools into home values and school-based social networks of child-rearing households - fail where indigent households are concerned. Capitalization fails, because attracting indigent homebuyers generally does not improve "homevoters'" home values. n84 School-based networks fail whenever indigency erodes the bonding social capital that allows other households to dominate the educational process. It is a familiar point that such social capital is closely related to educational attainment and reduced by crime. Single parents are also much less capable of networking to advance their children's interests. Given that crime, single parenthood, and lack of a high school diploma are [*1969] closely correlated with indigency, it is no surprise that indigent households do not make superlative monitors of their educational providers.

That the federal government would intervene to supplement and control educational services in jurisdictions containing a high percentage of indigent households, therefore, would seem to follow naturally from the logic of educational federalism. This is analogous to the logic described in Part I.B above that leads the subnational government to intervene when the internal governance of the household itself collapses as a result of poverty, low educational attainment, divorce, etc. Just as such households are not such reliable providers of childcare that the state can easily defer to their judgments about education, so too, jurisdictions dominated by such households are unlikely to be reliable providers of educational services.

Federal Government Key/States Fail

States fail—shifts power to the wealthiest and reduces accountability Strauss, 15 – the Washington Post education writer (Valerie, 1/13. “U.S. education policy: Federal overreach or reaching for the wrong things?” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/01/13/u-s-education-policy-federal-overreach-or-reaching-for-the/?utm_term=.11054aa2f489)

Federal overreach in education is under attack from multiple quarters and will likely be diminished in any overhaul of the No Child Left Behind Act, the current law governing national education policy. As a result, the powerful influence of nationally funded assessments and the Common Core State Standards may be reduced. However, the devolution of decision-making power to local or state levels will not ensure inclusively developed, thoughtfully crafted, age-appropriate or properly-specified standards for student learning. It will not ensure a shift away from over-testing or misuse of assessment data. It will not ensure a reasonable level of teacher professional autonomy.

A shift in who wields power and in what location does not necessarily mean better policies. It is more likely that a shift away from federal authority in education will increase the influence those with power and money, rather than enhancing democratic participation of average citizens. Recent indicators of this trend include the emergence of large contributions from external donors to candidates in local school board elections, the increasing influence of private philanthropy on policy decisions and shifts in authority from taxpayer elected school boards to private charter school boards that do not answer to the public.

In the absence of a broadly based, values-driven movement for a more just and equitable society, the diminution of a federal role in education is likely to undermine efforts to support the nation-wide, democratically governed public education system that is essential to successfully prepare all students for life, work and citizenship.

It is the unevenness of K-12 education in the United States that sets it apart from countries to which it is often unfavorably compared. This performance disparity is associated with enormous inequity in U.S. school funding within and across districts and states, vast social and economic inequality across families, underinvestment in teacher preparation and development, and low-status for the teaching profession. A wholesale turn away from a substantive federal role in education– the likely goal of the Republican congressional majority– will exacerbate rather than mediate these problems.

Great advances for economic and social justice, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and civil rights laws are the result of federal legislation and Supreme Court decisions . All of these benchmarks of progress been initiated by local social and political action, but they have been achieved nationally. In effect, the emergence of national progressive movements pushed federal authorities to impose its will on pockets of local resistance while redistributing resources. Now, however, virtually unlimited political contributions and lobbying, the growing

influence of wealthy foundations and recent undermining of voting rights have all eroded progressive equity-focused federal, state and local-level policies.

The unemployment and underemployment, which undermine families’ lives and their children’s readiness to learn and succeed in school, cannot be addressed locally. Because state and local capacity to mediate local tax base divergence is constrained funding and resource inequity cannot be addressed locally.

The problem over the last several decades of education policy is not overreach . It is that the federal government has been reaching for the wrong things in the wrong places with the wrong policy levers. For example, the nation has largely abandoned efforts to end segregation, arguably a prime driver of education inequity. The large-scale, community-building infrastructure and WPA and CCC employment efforts of the Great Depression have given way to the limited escape from poverty marketing pitch of education policy following the Great Recession. Whereas the 1960s War on Poverty targeted community resource issues, current education efforts target the behavior of individual teachers and pits parents against one in other in competition for admission to selected schools.

It cannot be repeated often enough: No country that has made significant improvement in its education system has done so through test-based accountability, teacher evaluation systems, charter schools or other school choice schemes. Improvements will only come from a national commitment to the values of equity, democracy, empathy, respect and community responsibility and by providing the funding for solutions based on those values.