Framework

I value morality.
The standard is minimizing material violence.
Personal identity reductionism is true – if the hemispheres of my brain were
transplanted into 2 different people, neither would be me.
Parfit 84. Derek Parfit 1984, “Reasons and Persons”, Oxford Paperbacks
It is in fact true that one
hemisphere is enough. There are many people who have survived, when a stroke or
injury puts out of action one of their hemispheres. With his remaining hemisphere, such a person may need to re-learn
certain things, such as adult speech, or how to control both hands. But this is possible. In my example I am assuming that, as may be true of
certain actual people, both of my hemispheres have the full range of abilities. I could thus survive with either hemisphere, without any need for
re-learning.¶ I shall now combine these last two claims. I
would survive if my brain was successfully transplanted into
my twin's body. And I could survive with only half my brain, the other half having been destroyed. Given
these two facts, it seems clear that I would survive if half my brain was successfully transplanted into my twin's body, and the other half was
destroyed.¶ What if the other half was not destroyed? This is the case that Wiggins described: that in which a person, like an amoeba,
divides.40 To simplify the case, I assume that I am one of three identical triplets. Consider¶ My Division. My
body is fatally injured, as
are the brains of my two brothers. My brain is divided, and each half is successfully transplanted into the
body of one of my brothers. Each of the resulting people believes that he is me, seems to remember living my life, has my character,
and is in every other way psychologically continuous with me. And he has a body that is very like mine.¶ This case is likely to remain impossible.
Though it is claimed that, in certain people, the two hemispheres may have the same full range of abilities, this claim might be false. I am here
assuming that this claim is true when applied to me. I am also assuming that it would be possible to connect a transplanted half-brain with the
nerves in its new body. And I am assuming that we could divide, not just the upper hemispheres, but also the lower brain. My first two
assumptions may be able to be made true if there is enough progress in neurophysiology. But it seems likely that it would never be possible to
divide the lower brain, in a way that did not impair its functioning.¶ Does it matter if, for this reason, this imagined case of complete division
will always remain impossible? Given the aims of my discussion, this does not matter. This impossibility is merely technical. The one feature of
the case that might be held to be deeply impossible—the division of a person's consciousness into two separate streams—is the feature that
has actually happened. It would have been important if this had been impossible, since this might have supported some claim about what we
really are. It might have supported the claim that we are indivisible Cartesian Egos. It therefore matters that the division of a person's
consciousness is in fact possible. There seems to be no similar connection between a particular view about what we really are and the
impossibility of dividing and successfully transplanting the two halves of the lower brain. This
impossibility thus provides no
ground for refusing to consider the imagined case in which we suppose that this can be done. And
considering this case may help us to decide both what we believe ourselves to be, and what in fact we are. As Einstein's example showed, it can
be useful to consider impossible thought-experiments.¶ It may help to state, in advance, what I believe this case to show. It provides a further
argument against the view that we are separately existing entities. But the main conclusion to be hdrawn is that personal identity is
not what matters.¶ It is natural to believe that our identity is what matters. Reconsider the Branch-Line Case, where I have talked to my
Replica on Mars, and am about to die. Suppose we believe that I and my Replica are different people. It is then natural to assume that my
prospect is almost as bad as ordinary death. In a few days, there will be no one living who will be me. It is natural to assume that this is what
matters. In discussing My Division, I shall start by making this assumption.¶ In this case, each half of my brain will be successfully transplanted
into the very similar body of one of my two brothers. Both of the resulting people will be fully psychologically continuous with me, as I am now.
What happens to me?¶ There are only four possibilities: (1) I do not survive; (2) I survive as one of the two people; (3) I survive as the other; (4)
I survive as both.¶ The objection to (1) is this. I would survive if my brain was successfully transplanted. And people have in fact survived with
half their brains destroyed. Given these facts, it seems clear that I would survive if half my brain was successfully transplanted, and the other
half was destroyed. So how could I fail to survive if the other half was also successfully transplanted? How could a double success be a failure?¶
Consider the next two possibilities. Perhaps one success is the maximum score. Perhaps I shall be one of the two resulting people. The
objection here is that, in this case, each half of my brain is exactly similar, and so, to start with, is each resulting person. Given these facts, how
can I survive as only one of the two people? What can make me one of them rather than the other? ¶ These three possibilities cannot be
dismissed as incoherent. We can understand them. But, while we assume that identity is what matters, (1) is not plausible. My Division would
not be as bad as death. Nor are (2) and (3) plausible. There remains the fourth possibility: that I survive as both of the resulting people.¶ This
possibility might be described in several ways. I might first claim: ‘What we have called “the two resulting people” are not two people. They are
one person. I do survive this operation. Its effect is to give me two bodies, and a divided mind.’¶ This claim cannot be dismissed outright. As I
argued, we ought to admit as possible that a person could have a divided mind. If this is possible, each half of my divided mind might control its
own body. But though this description of the case cannot be rejected as inconceivable, it involves a great distortion in our concept of a person.
In my imagined Physics Exam I claimed that this case involved only one person. There were two features of the case that made this plausible.
The divided mind was soon reunited, and there was only one body. If
a mind was permanently divided, and its halves
developed in different ways, it would become less plausible to claim that the case involves only one
person. (Remember the actual patient who complained that, when he embraced his wife, his left hand pushed her away.)¶ The case of
complete division, where there are also two bodies, seems to be a long way over the borderline. After I have had this operation, the two
‘products’ each have all of the features of a person. Theycould live at opposite ends of the Earth. Suppose that they have poor
memories, and that their appearance changes in different ways. After many years, they might meet again, and fail even to
recognise each other. We might have to claim of such a pair, innocently playing tennis: ‘What you see out there is a single person,
playing tennis with himself. In each half of his mind he mistakenly believes that he is playing tennis with someone else.’ If we are not yet
Reductionists, we believe that there is one true answer to the questionwhether these two tennis-players are a single person. Given what we
mean by ‘person’, the answer must be No. It
cannot be true that what I believe to be a stranger, standing there
behind the net, is in fact another part of myself.

Reductionism justifies util.

Gruzalski 86. Bart Gruzalski 86 [UChicago], “Parfit's Impact on Utilitarianism”, Ethics, Vol. 96, No. 4, July 1986.
Parfit concludes his discussion of distributive moral principles by claiming that, “when
we cease to believe that persons are
separately existing entities, the Utilitarian view becomes more plausible. Is the gain in plausibility great, or small? My
argument leaves this question open” (p. 342). In contrast, I have argued that the Reductionist View strongly supports the
utilitarian account of desert and distributive justice. The argument has two aspects. One is the recognition of the utilitarian emphasis on
secondary rules, including principles of distributive justice and policies of desert. These rules, principles, and policies are treated within the
utilitarian account as if they have self-standing, whereas in fact they are justified on the principle of utility which alone has self-standing within
the utilitarian program. The other aspect of the argument involves the recognition that the utilitarian’s dual treatment of secondary principles
dovetails with the dual account of the nature of persons on the Reductionist View: persons exist, yet their existence just involves bodies and
interrelated mental and physical events, and a complete description of our lives need not claim that persons exist. Furthermore, a
body,
brain, and interrelated series of mental and physical events are more fundamental and basic than the
person whose existence just consists in them, much as the citizens and the territory are more fundamental and basic than the
nation whose existence just consists in them. This corresponds precisely with the utilitarian account, for
utilitarianism treats persons as fundamental and separate existents, while grounding this treatment on
the impersonal elements of pain, suffering, happiness, and contentment. Because util- itarianism
accurately reflects in this way the true nature of persons, it is much more plausible than has been
previously recognized. In addition, since many of the current competitors to utilitarianism presuppose that the
person is separate from the body, brain, and interrelated mental and physical events, it follows that
these views err by being too personal and are therefore implausible. It follows that when we cease to
believe that persons are separately existing entities, utilitarianism becomes significantly more plausible
than any of its person-centered theoretical competitors.

Prefer additionally:
1. States must use util.
Goodin 90. Robert Goodin 90, [professor of philosophy at the Australian National University college of arts and social sciences], “The
Utilitarian Response,” pgs 141-142 //RS

My larger argument turns on the proposition that there

is something special about the situation of public officials that
makes utilitarianism more probable for them than private individuals. Before proceeding with the large argument, I
must therefore say what it is that makes it so special about public officials and their situations that make it both more necessary and more
desirable for them to adopt a more credible form of utilitarianism. Consider, first, the argument from necessity. Publicofficials are
obliged to make their choices under uncertainty, and uncertainty of a very special sort at that. All choices –
public and private alike – are made under some degree of uncertainty, of course. But in the nature of things, private individuals will
usually have more complete information on the peculiarities of their own circumstances and on the
ramifications that alternative possible choices might have for them. Public officials, in contrast, are
relatively poorly informed as to the effects that their choices will have on individuals, one by one. What
they typically do know are generalities: averages and aggregates. They know what will happen most often to most
people as a result of their various possible choices, but that is all. That is enough to allow public policy-makers to use the
utilitarian calculus – assuming they want to use it at all – to choose general rules or conduct.

2. No intent-foresight distinction — if we foresee a consequence, then it becomes

part of our deliberation which makes it intrinsic to our action since we intend it to
happen.
3. Only consequentialism explains degrees of wrongness—if I break a promise to
meet up for lunch, that is not as bad as breaking a promise to take a dying person
to the hospital. Only the consequences of breaking the promise explain why the
second one is much worse than the first. Intuitions outweigh—they’re the
foundational basis for any argument and theories that contradict our intuitions are
most likely false even if we can’t deductively determine why.
4. No act-omission distinction – choosing to omit is an act itself – people
psychologically decide not to act which means being presented with the aff creates
a choice between two actions, neither of which is an omission.
5. Util is a lexical pre-requisite to any other framework: Threats to bodily security and
life preclude the ability for moral actors to effectively utilize and act upon other
moral theories since they are in a constant state of crisis that inhibit the ideal
moral conditions which other theories presuppose – so, util comes first and my
offense outweighs theirs under their own framework.
6. Reject calc indicts and util triggers permissibility arguments –
A. Empirically denied — both individuals and policymakers carry out effective
cost-benefit analysis which means even if decisions aren’t always perfect it’s
still better than not acting at all.
B. Theory — they’re functionally NIBs that everyone knows are silly but skew the
aff and move the debate away from the topic and actual philosophical debate,
killing valuable education.
C. Morally abhorrent – it would say we have no obligation to prevent genocide
and that slavery was permissible which is morally abhorrent and makes debate
unsafe for minority debaters.
 Plan
Plan Text: In the United States, colleges and universities ought to abolish admissions
tests in undergraduate admissions decisions. I’m willing to clarify or further specify in
CX – gives you stable ground and deters silly theory debates.
 Advantage 1
Colleges have placed more value on standardized testing in recent years – empirics
disprove media talk.
Belasco 18 (Andrew Belasco. A licensed counselor and published researcher, Andrew’s experience in the field of college admissions and
transition spans more than one decade. He has previously served as a high school counselor, consultant and author for Kaplan Test Prep, and
advisor to U.S. Congress, reporting on issues related to college admissions and financial aid. “Do standardized test scores really matter?”. 7-10-
2018. College Transitions. https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/do-standardized-test-scores-really-matter/) //TruLe

In the last decade, the idea that colleges no longer care that much about standardized test scores has become prevalent in the admissions
discourse. Many schools themselves like to brag about how they view test scores as just one of a multitude of factors in the admissions process.
Yet like a 7th grade boy who spends two hours in front of the mirror every morning trying to perfect his Justin Bieber bangs while
simultaneously proclaiming that he “doesn’t care what anyone thinks,” the facts about test scores quite simply belie the claim. Despite
media talk and institutional reports of the SAT and ACTs diminishing role, the data suggest that
standardized test scores have actually become more important in recent years. Rankings are still driven in part by
test scores. The admissions process at most institutions (with few exceptions like Reed College) is still beholden to and driven by the almighty
rankings. In
fact, for their 2018 rankings, standardized test scores accounted for 8% of U.S. News’ ranking
algorithm, which is a greater weight than factors such as a college’s graduation rate, how many students
were in the top 10% of their high school graduating class, and alumni giving (an indicator of graduate
satisfaction). Not surprisingly, the “top” schools remain the ones whose freshman classes have the
highest SAT scores. Even with over 1,000 schools now test-optional, over 82% of colleges still state that
test scores are important in their admissions decisions. Almost 55% of colleges consider them to be
“very important,” compared with just 46% of schools 25 years ago. As a general rule, larger schools rely
more on test scores than do smaller liberal arts colleges merely as a tool to pare down a massive
applicant pool. In a pragmatic sense, it would be difficult for admissions officers at a school like UCLA to wade through 113,000+
applications, sans SAT/ACT data, without feeling like a harried cashier in a Weimer Republic farmer’s market (“I’ll get you your cabbage as soon
as I finish counting your 200,000,000,000 marks!”).

Best empirics prove minority students have lower scores on standardized admissions
tests compared to white students.
Reeves and Halikias 17 (Richard V. Reeves and Dimitrios Halikias. Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow in Economic Studies, where
he holds the John C. and Nancy D. Whitehead Chair. Richard is Director of the Future of the Middle Class Initiative and co-director of the Center
on Children and Families. His research focuses on the middle class, inequality and social mobility. Dimitri Halikias is a PhD candidate in theory at
Harvard University. His research interests broadly cover topics in moral philosophy, political theory, and the history of political thought. Dimitri
earned a BA in ethics, politics, and economics from Yale University and has worked as a research assistant at the Brookings Institution. He was a
Mercatus Center Adam Smith fellow during the 2017-2018 academic year. “Race gaps in SAT scores highlight inequality and hinder upward
mobility”. 2-1-2017. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/research/race-gaps-in-sat-scores-highlight-inequality-and-hinder-upward-
mobility/) //TruLe

Taking the SAT is an American rite of passage. Along with the increasingly popular ACT, the SAT is critical in identifying student readiness for
college and as an important gateway to higher education. Yet despite efforts to equalize academic opportunity, large racial gaps in SAT scores
persist. THE GREAT SCORE DIVIDE The SAT provides a measure of academic inequality at the end of secondary schooling. Moreover, insofar as
SAT scores predict student success in college, inequalities in the SAT score distribution reflect and reinforce racial inequalities across
generations. In this paper, we analyze racial differences in the math section of the general SAT test, using publicly available College Board
population data for all of the nearly 1.7 million college-bound seniors in 2015 who took the SAT. (We do not use the newest data released for
the class of 2016, because the SAT transitioned mid-year to a new test format, and data has so far only been released for students who took the
older test.) Our analysis uses both the College Board’s descriptive statistics for the entire test-taking class, as well as percentile ranks by gender
and race. (The College Board has separate categories for “Mexican or Mexican American” and “Other Hispanic, Latino, or Latin American.” We
have combined them under the term Latino.) The mean score on the math section of the SAT for all test-takers is 511 out of 800, the average
scores for blacks (428) and Latinos (457) are significantly below those of whites (534) and Asians (598). The scores of black and Latino students
are clustered towards the bottom of the distribution, while white scores are relatively normally distributed, and Asians are clustered at the top:
Race gaps on the SATs are especially pronounced at the tails of the distribution. In a perfectly equal distribution, the racial breakdown of scores
at every point in the distribution would mirror the composition of test-takers as whole i.e. 51 percent white, 21 percent Latino, 14 percent
black, and 14 percent Asian. But
in fact, among top scorers—those scoring between a 750 and 800—60 percent
are Asian and 33 percent are white, compared to 5 percent Latino and 2 percent black. Meanwhile, among
those scoring between 300 and 350, 37 percent are Latino, 35 percent are black, 21 percent are white, and 6 percent are Asian: The College
Board’s publicly available data provides data on racial composition at 50-point score intervals. We
estimate that in the entire
country last year at most 2,200 black and 4,900 Latino test-takers scored above a 700. In comparison,
roughly 48,000 whites and 52,800 Asians scored that high. The same absolute disparity persists among
the highest scorers: 16,000 whites and 29,570 Asians scored above a 750, compared to only at most
1,000 blacks and 2,400 Latinos. (These estimates—which rely on conservative assumptions that maximize the number of high-
scoring black students, are consistent with an older estimate from a 2005 paper in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, which found that
only 244 black students scored above a 750 on the math section of the SAT.) A STUBBORN BLACK-WHITE GAP Disappointingly, the
black-white achievement gap in SAT math scores has remained virtually unchanged over the last fifteen
years. Between 1996 and 2015, the average gap between the mean black score and the mean white score has been .92 standard deviations.
In 1996 it was .9 standard deviations and in 2015 it was .88 standard deviations. This means that over the last fifteen years,
roughly 64 percent of all test-takers scored between the average black and average white score. These gaps
have a significant impact on life chances, and therefore on the transmission of inequality across generations. As the economist Bhashkar
Mazumder has documented, adolescent cognitive outcomes (in this case, measured by the AFQT) statistically account for most of the race gap
in intergenerational social mobility. COULD THE GAP BE EVEN WIDER? There are some limitations to the data which may mean that, if anything,
the race gap is being understated. The
ceiling on the SAT score may, for example, understate Asian achievement.
If the exam was redesigned to increase score variance (add harder and easier questions than it currently
has), the achievement gap across racial groups could be even more pronounced. In other words, if the math
section was scored between 0 and 1000, we might see more complete tails on both the right and the left. More Asians score between 750 and
800 than score between 700 and 750, suggesting that many Asians could be scoring above 800 if the test allowed them to. A standardized test
with a wider range of scores, the LSAT, offers some evidence on this front. An
analysis of the 2013-2014 LSAT finds an
average black score of 142 compared to an average white score of 153. This amounts to a black-white
achievement gap of 1.06 standard deviations, even higher than that on the SAT. This is of course a deeply
imperfect comparison, as the underlying population of test-takers for the LSAT (those applying to law school) is very different from that of the
SAT. Nonetheless the LSAT distribution provides yet another example of the striking academic achievement gaps across race: Another
important qualification is that the SAT is no longer the nationally dominant college-entrance exam. In recent years, the ACT has surpassed the
SAT in popularity. If the distributions of students taking the two exams are significantly different, focusing on one test alone won’t give a
complete picture of the racial achievement gap. A
cursory look at the evidence, however, suggests that race gaps on
the 2016 ACT are comparable to those we observe for the SAT. In terms of composition, ACT test-takers
were 54 percent white, 16 percent Latino, 13 percent black, and 4 percent Asian. Except for the substantially
reduced share of Asian test-takers, this is reasonably close to the SAT’s demographic breakdown. Moreover, racial achievement gaps across the
two tests were fairly similar. The
black-white achievement gap for the math section of the 2015 SAT was roughly
.88 standard deviations. For the 2016 ACT it was .87 standard deviations. Likewise, the Latino-white achievement
gap for the math section of the 2015 SAT was roughly .65 standard deviations; for the 2016 ACT it was .54 standard deviations. OR COULD THE
GAP BE NARROWER THAN IT LOOKS? On the other hand, there is a possibility that the SAT is racially biased, in which case the observed racial
gap in test scores may overstate the underlying academic achievement gap. But most of the concerns about bias relate to the verbal section of
the SAT, and our analysis focuses exclusively on the math section. Finally, this data is limited in that it doesn’t allow us to disentangle race and
class as drivers of achievement gaps. It is likely that at least some of these racial inequalities can be explained by different income levels across
race. Unfortunately, publicly available College Board data on class and SAT scores is limited. The average SAT score for students who identify as
having parents making between $0 and $20,000 a year is 455, a score that is actually .2 standard deviations above the average score for black
students (428). These numbers are fairly unreliable because of the low rates of student response; some 40 percent of test-takers do not list
their household income. In comparison, only 4 percent of test-takers fail to provide their racial identification. However,a 2015
research paper from the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley
shows that between 1994 and 2011, race has grown more important than class in predicting SAT scores
for UC applicants. While it is difficult to extrapolate from such findings to the broader population of SAT test-takers, it is unlikely that the
racial achievement gap can be explained away by class differences across race. DOWN WITH STANDARDIZED TESTS? Given the reliance of
colleges on test scores for admissions, the gaps in SAT math performance documented here will continue to reproduce patterns of inequality in
American society. It seems likely, however, that colleges rely too heavily on such tests. Research from William Bowen, Matthew Chingos, and
Michael McPherson suggests that high school grades may have more incremental predictive power of college grades and graduation rates. The
SAT may not be a good measure of student potential. Even to the extent that SAT scores do predict college success, it is far from clear that
universities are justified in basing admissions so strongly on the exam. After all, a wide range of other morally relevant considerations—
questions of distributive justice, for example—may well need to be weighed alongside considerations of academic preparation. Significant racial
and class inequalities much earlier in life explain persistent obstacles to upward mobility and opportunity. The extensive racial gaps in academic
achievement and college preparation across high school seniors are symptomatic of those deeper drivers of inequality. Accordingly, policy
efforts may be more effective if they target underlying sources of these achievement gaps. That means experimenting with earlier childhood
interventions of the sort we have described elsewhere: increasing cash transfers to disadvantaged parents with young children, improving
access to quality preschool programs, pursuing paid leave policies to allow for more quality parent investment during the first years of life,
teaching parents the skills they need to effectively raise their children, and so on. It is also important to bear in mind that despite persistent
gaps in test scores, racial gaps in college enrollment have actually been closing in recent years. In fact, the college enrollment gap by income is
now significantly larger than by race. The challenge now is about college graduation rates (where race gaps have not closed) as much as college
enrollment: for graduation rates, race gaps remain larger than income gaps. It is also clear, however, that when such large gaps have opened up
by the end of the high school years, equalizing outcomes at the college level will be an almost impossible task. Interventions at the end of the K-
12 years, or in the early stages of college, can often be too little, too late. Debates over the fairness, value and accuracy of the SAT are sure to
continue. The evidence for a stubborn race gap on this test does meanwhile provide a snapshot into the extraordinary magnitude of racial
inequality in contemporary American society. Standardized tests are often seen as mechanisms for meritocracy, ensuring fairness in terms of
access. But test scores reflect accumulated advantages and disadvantages in each day of life up the one on which the test is taken. Race gaps on
the SAT hold up a mirror to racial inequities in society as a whole. Equalizing educational opportunities and human capital acquisition earlier is
the only way to ensure fairer outcomes.

Even College Board’s newest tool in combatting privilege is just another weapon for
rich people to widen the gap.
Newton 19 (Derek Newton. Newton writes about education including education technology (edtech) and higher education. I've written
about these topics and others in a variety of outlets including The Atlantic, Quartz and The Huffington Post. I served as vice-president at The
Century Foundation, a public policy think tank with an emphasis on education and worked for an international education nonprofit teaching
entrepreneurship. I also served as a speech writer for a governor of Florida, worked in the Florida legislature and attended Columbia University
in New York City. I'm a member of the Education Writers Association. “Why The S.A.T. Adversity Score Is Worse Than No Score At All”. 5-27-
2019. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereknewton/2019/05/27/why-the-s-a-t-adversity-score-is-worse-than-no-score-at-
all/#7b7c1af61ab5) //TruLe

The Wall Street Journal and others reported recently that the SAT, the bell cow of academic assessment,
would add an “adversity score” to its results, providing more context for assessing the relative strengths
of applicants. The new score will add a helpful sense of distance traveled to an otherwise flat assessment of the place of arrival. On the
surface, the new policy is a major concession to the obvious, nasty correlation between impressive scores and affluence and other privileges. As
such, it’s a probably a good, right-hearted idea and few would argue that knowing more about a student is a bad idea. Nonetheless, the
addition of the adversity score has many serious flaws. The
most noted of which is that the information used to
calculate the scores – reported to include factors such as neighborhood crime rate, neighborhood
poverty rate and high school performance – cannot possibly be a serious proxy for any one student’s
actual circumstances. Conceding these flaws, my former colleague Rick Kahlenberg, argued in The Atlantic that, “even an imperfect
adversity score is better than failing to account for the difficulty so many students overcome.” I wish I could agree. Kahlenberg and others see
half a loaf, and there are a great many occasions in which half a loaf is better than none. But my issue with the SAT’s attempts to point out the
legitimate struggles of some test-takers is not that it’s incomplete, which it is, it’s that even this unsatisfying meal will end up on the wrong
table. The New York Times, in reporting on the new score, quoted a college admissions coach saying “he had received emails from parents
asking whether their children’s hard work in preparing for the SAT ‘would be completely negated just because we happen to have some
means.’” In other words, many families with “means” will see the adversity score as a slight, an attempt to undercut and minimize their
advantages. They are not wrong. That is exactly what the new score aims to do. And if you think those families are going to just accept that, you
should refresh your SAT vocabulary skills by listing every synonym you can think of for denial. As sure as the path of the sun is
known, wealthy parents will fudge their children’s enrollments and shade their advantages simply to
boost their adversity scores. And based on what we already know about what the SAT will count in its
scoring, that’s going to be embarrassingly easy to do. If being enrolled in a below-average high school
will boost your scores, what do you think wealthy parents are going to do days before the SAT
registration deadline? If an official address in a poor neighborhood will get you a bump, there’s going to
be a raft of suspicious and conveniently timed address changes. It’s only a matter of time before highly-resourced,
expensive, elite prep schools establish satellites with official addresses in communities with high adversity scores. If there’s anything at
all that this year’s college admissions cheating and bribery scandal showed it’s that rich people will do
anything, even illegal things, to protect their “hard work” and get their spoiled kids into elite colleges. And
since changing addresses or enrollments is not even illegal, that’s absolutely going to happen; book it. When that happens, the SAT adversity
score will default to another way some families can game the college admissions system. Like private schools, tutors and SAT prep classes, it
won’t be long before enrolling in a private school with an advantageous adversity address will be seen as an investment in success, not
cheating. But
this will be even worse because carpetbagging for adversity scores will swipe the
opportunities intentionally designed for those who cannot game the system already. And by not looking at
student-by-student circumstances, which is probably impossible anyway, the SAT won’t be able to stop it because it won’t be able to see it. The
SAT folks are unquestionably right to recognize the outsized role adversity plays in the assessment process. But
what they’ve probably
done is hand another tool to people who already have an overflowing toolbox, dangerously
underestimating the motivations of those with means to protect what they think they’ve earned.

The plan solves – only complete abolition can rectify generations of discrimination.
Hernandez 18 (Theresa E. Hernandez. Theresa E. Hernandez is a scholar of higher education policy working toward her doctorate at
the University of Southern California. Her research examines issues of race, gender, class and intersectional equity in academia. “Abolish
Standardized Testing For College Admissions”. 5-22-2018. Huff Post. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/abolish-standardized-testing-for-college-
admissions_n_5b045869e4b003dc7e470ee3) //TruLe

A new study from the National Association for College Admission Counseling provides evidence that test-optional policies ― a variety of policies
that allow students not to submit scores on standardized tests like the SAT or GRE during the admissions process ― can help colleges improve
their diversity without sacrificing academic quality. The
study found that schools that do not require the SAT/ACT saw
an increased enrollment of underrepresented students of color relative to comparable institutions that
require a test score and that admitted students who did not submit scores were just as likely to
graduate as admitted students who did. The report also found that high school grade point average
(GPA) was a better predictor of success in college GPA than test scores for non-submitters. As of January
2018, over 1,000 colleges and universities have stopped requiring SAT or ACT scores for undergraduate applicants. The conversation also
extends to the graduate level, where institutions are grappling with whether to use standardized tests, which ones and how. In particular, the
Inclusive Graduate Education Network and the Alliance for Multicampus, Inclusive Graduate Admissions, are promoting and studying the effects
of inclusive holistic review practices. These projects are also exploring what factors of an application are most important for admission to
graduate school versus success in graduate school. (Full disclosure: I am affiliated with IGEN and AMIGA, but the opinions here are mine and do
not necessarily represent these projects or anyone affiliated with them.) The NACAC report contrasts with Measuring Success: Testing, Grades,
and the Future of College Admissions, a recent book published by scholars tied to the testing industry, which argues test-optional policies are
either ineffective at increasing diversity or do no better than similar institutions that require these tests. Unfortunately, this debate sidesteps a
serious issue: the urgent need to seek solutions beyond the ways that selective college admissions are conducted today. We need to pay
attention to the deeper purposes that selection criteria serve — and for whom. The use of standardized tests in admissions disproportionately
exclude people of color and other marginalized groups. The truth is that overwhelming research has shown that
performance on these tests is better at predicting demographic characteristics like class, gender and
race than educational outcomes. This disproportionately excludes racial minorities, women and low-income persons from selective
colleges. For many practitioners in higher education, these tests are simply the most efficient and common metric for evaluating students. But
efficiency can no longer be an excuse for maintaining a flawed system. The only result we can expect from that
course of action is efficiently maintaining the status quo of inequality. The makers and advocates of standardized tests promote the notion that
equality requires we use a singular metric to evaluate everyone in the same way. But
one common tool cannot equitably
measure the potential of people who have been afforded different chances in life. Our limited resources must be
redirected to finding better ways to reach equitable outcomes, which will require offsetting prior inequality of opportunity and resources. As of
January 2018, over 1,000 colleges and universities have stopped requiring SAT or ACT scores for undergraduate applicants. From
academics to policymakers, people mistakenly believe that standardized tests are better at predicting
college outcomes, like grades and graduation, than they really are. This uncritical belief in the current
system of admissions allows those who have benefited to feel that they earned their position
completely on their own. In reality, our success is a combination of our effort, our opportunities and the
resources to make the most of both. This misplaced faith also makes us complicit in the exclusion of
those who have not had our same privileges. Even if standardized tests perfectly predicted achievement,
they would be doing so on the basis of accumulated resources that have helped children from privileged
backgrounds to reach the levels of success that they have by the time they take the test. These testing
disparities do not represent students’ potential to learn and achieve. As Jerome Karabel documented in The Chosen: The Hidden History of
Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, standardized tests played a devious role in the history of admissions at selective
institutions. Selection criteria like the SAT/ACT and GRE come out of historical actions that have defined merit purposefully to exclude students
based on their social identities, including religious affiliation. Add
to that history generations of underfunded schools and
a bevy of other racial and class-based discriminations that continue to hamper the achievements of
racially minoritized and low-income students. To accept any “predictive” measure that perpetuates
these inequalities, even indirectly, is a disservice to communities of color and poor people today and
robs future generations of their potential. For the United States to live up to its highest potential, we have to stop turning away
students from the possibilities of higher education just because their backgrounds have not afforded them the same opportunities or the
resources needed to take advantage of earlier opportunities. To that end, researchers like Estela Bensimon highlight the responsibility of our
educators and educational institutions to better serve marginalized students in order to support the success of all students. So how do we
move forward? Some research indicates that holistic review may be better at judging a student’s potential given the context of their prior
experiences. Many highly selective institutions such as Harvard, Yale and Columbia already claim to practice a version of holistic review due to
the U.S. Supreme Court’s backing of this approach in affirmative action cases. However, these options are largely used and researched in
tandem with standardized tests that produce racially and class-based disparate outcomes. We have inherited a society built on grave injustices,
and we perpetuate them through both intentional acts and failures to redress what has been done. Higher education, from college to graduate
school, can provide the opportunities and resources for people to make the most of their potential but only if we make access to it more
equitable. The only way forward is to enact policies and practices, especially in education, that are corrective and redistributive. The
time
has come to end the perpetuation of systemic inequity through institutional practices that appear
facially neutral, but which have a disparate impact by race and class. Ending the use of standardized
tests at all levels of admissions is one of the ways we can do so.

Hampshire College proves abolition allows for equitable, accurate, and complete
admissions – prefer our ev, they actually passed the plan and it’s a top-tier college.
Lash 15 (Jonathan Lash. Jonathan Lash, President of Hampshire College, is also a Director of World Resources Institute, a DC-based
environmental think tank, where he previously served as president. Jonathan is a widely recognized environmental leader who chaired
President Bill Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development and was the State of Vermont’s Environmental Secretary and Commissioner. He
holds a law degree and master’s degree in education from Catholic University of America and a bachelor’s from Harvard College. “Results of
Removing Standardized Test Scores from College Admissions”. 9-21-2015. Hampshire College.
https://www.hampshire.edu/news/2015/09/21/results-of-removing-standardized-test-scores-from-college-admissions) //TruLe

We completely dropped standardized tests from our application as part of our new mission-driven
admissions strategy, distinct from the “test-optional” policy that hundreds of colleges now follow. If we
reduce education to the outcomes of a test, the only incentive for schools and students to innovate is in the form of improving test-taking and
scores. Teaching to a test becomes stifling for teachers and students, far from the inspiring, adaptive education which most benefits students.
Our greatly accelerating world needs graduates who are trained to address tough situations with innovation, ingenuity,
entrepreneurship, and a capacity for mobilizing collaboration and cooperation. We weighed other factors in our decision: Standardized test
scores do not predict a student’s success at our college. SATs/ACTs are strongly biased against low-income students and students of color, at a
time when diversity is critical to our mission. We surveyed our students and learned not one of them had considered rankings when choosing to
apply to colleges; instead they most cared about a college’s mission. Some good students are bad test takers, particularly under stress, such as
when a test may grant or deny college entry; Multiple-choice tests don't reveal much about a student. We’ve developed much better, fairer
ways to assess students who will thrive at our college. In
our admissions, we review an applicant’s whole academic and
lived experience. We consider an applicant’s ability to present themselves in essays and interviews,
review their recommendations from mentors, and assess factors such as their community engagement
and entrepreneurism. And yes, we look closely at high school academic records, though in an unconventional manner. We look for
an overarching narrative that shows motivation, discipline, and the capacity for self-reflection. We look
at grade point average (GPA) as a measure of performance over a range of courses and time, distinct
from a one-test-on-one-day SAT/ACT score. A student’s consistent "A" grades may be coupled with
evidence of curiosity and learning across disciplines, as well as leadership in civic or social causes.
Another student may have overcome obstacles through determination, demonstrating promise of
success in a demanding program. Strong high school graduates demonstrate purpose, a passion for
authenticity, and commitment to positive change. We’re seeing remarkable admissions results since disregarding
standardized test scores: Our yield, the percentage of students who accepted our invitation to enroll, rose in a
single year from 18% to 26%, an amazing turnaround. The quantity of applications went down but the quality went up,
likely because we made it harder to apply, asking for more essays; Our applicants collectively were more motivated,
mature, disciplined and consistent in their high school years than past applicants. Class diversity
increased to 31% students of color, the most diverse in our history, up from 21% two years ago. The
percentage of students who are the first-generation from their family to attend college rose from 12%
to 18% in this year’s class. Our “No SAT/ACT policy” has also changed us in ways deeper than data and demographics: Not once did we
sit in an Admissions committee meeting and "wish we had a test score." Without the scores, every other detail of the
student’s application became more vivid. Their academic record over four years, letters of recommendation, essays, in-person
interviews, and the optional creative supplements gave us a more complete portrait than we had seen before. Applicants gave more attention
to their applications including the optional components, putting us in a much better position to predict their likelihood of success here. This
move away from test scores and disqualification from the U.S. News rankings has allowed us to innovate in ways we could not before. In other
words, we are free to innovate rather than compromise our mission to satisfy rankings criteria: We no longer chase volumes of applications to
superficially inflate our "selectivity" and game the U.S. News rankings. We no longer have to worry that any applicant will "lower our average
SAT/ACT scores" and thus lower our U.S. News ranking. Instead we
choose quality over quantity and focus attention
and resources on each applicant and their full portfolio. At college fairs and information sessions, we don’t spend time
answering high school families’ questions about our ranking and test score "cut-offs." Instead we have conversations about the things that
matter: What does our unique academic program look like and what qualities does a student need to be successful at it? An unexpected
benefit: this shift has saved us significant time and operational expense. Having a smaller but more targeted, engaged, passionate, and robust
applicant pool, we are able to streamline our resources. How can U.S. News rankings reliably measure college quality when their data-points
focus primarily on the high school performance of the incoming class in such terms as GPA, SAT/ACT, class rank, and selectivity? These
measures have nothing to do with the college’s results, except perhaps in the college’s aptitude for marketing and recruiting. Tests
and
rankings incentivize schools to conform to test performance and rankings criteria, at the expense of
mission and innovation. Our shift to a mission-driven approach to admissions is right for Hampshire College and the right thing to do.
We fail students if we reduce them to a standardized test number tied more to their financial status
than achievement. We fail students by perpetuating the myth that high standardized test scores signal "better" students. We are in
the top one percent of colleges nationwide in the percentage of our undergraduate alumni who go on to
earn advanced degrees—this on the strength of an education where we assess their capabilities
narratively, and where we never, not once, subject them to a numerical or letter grade on a test or
course. At Hampshire College, we face the same financial challenges as many colleges. But these challenges provide an opportunity to think
about who we are and what matters to us. We can not lose sight of our mission while seeking revenues or chasing rankings. We are committed
to remaining disqualified from the U.S. News rankings. We’re done with standardized testing, the SAT, and ACT.
 Advantage 2
Standardized testing creates structural barriers against students with learning
disabilities.
FairTest 17 (The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) works to end the misuses and flaws of standardized testing and to
ensure that evaluation of students, teachers and schools is fair, open, valid and educationally beneficial., "Standardized Testing And Students
With Disabilities", 3-30-2017, FairTest, https://www.fairtest.org/standardized-testing-and-students-disabilities) // dl

Does Inclusion in Testing Mean Inclusion in Meaningful Learning? Federal law requires 95% test participation, including for the vast majority of
students with disabilities. (One percent of all students may be assessed to alternative standards with alternative assessments. Federal law
leaves it up to each state to decide what to do if a school or district does not test 95%.) The
theory is that full inclusion in testing
will drive full inclusion in learning the “standard” academic curriculum. But for some students with
significant disabilities, state standardized tests are cognitively inappropriate. They may become a grueling and
traumatic exercise, wasting time that could be spent working to make progress on their individual learning goals. For some, the testing borders
on (or crosses the line) into abuse. For example, the mother of a profoundly disabled Florida student described how her son got pressure sores
and developed respiratory infections after long test sessions in his wheelchair. A
focus on including Students with Disabilities
(SWDs) in standardized testing puts the cart of testing before the horse of delivering appropriate
instruction, services and supports. Special educators and advocates note that access to the latter is increasingly limited by budget
and staffing cuts, especially in high-poverty districts, while investments in test development and administration, and associated technology,
continue to grow. Barriers
to success on standardized exams for SWDs include lack of access to learning the
material on the tests. This sometimes results from “restrictive” placements, in which children with
disabilities are separated from other students, then not given full access to the mainstream curriculum.
Research indicates that states with high school graduation tests are more likely to place SWDs in more
restrictive settings. This runs counter to a pillar of special education law, which calls for students to be
placed in the “least restrictive environment” possible. Students often do not receive services during test
time because teachers are supervising the testing. Other barriers to success include lack of access to
accommodations that are sometimes helpful. These include extra time, text-to-speech tools and Braille
(see more below). Another problem for students with disabilities is the overreliance on standardized test scores to make important
decisions about student placement, advancement from grade to grade and graduation. All these policies have been shown to have negative
consequences for students in general. However, the harms tend to be greatest for this student subgroup, including an extreme narrowing of
curriculum to little more than test preparation. SWDs and English Language Learners are the groups most likely to be denied high school
diplomas as a result of failing high school graduation tests. Many
commonly used test accommodations, such as extra
time, can be a double-edged sword. Extra time may help some SWDs do better. Often, however, it leads
to such students spending many hours working to complete a flawed standardized exam instead of
focusing on their individual learning goals, without any score gain. Updated accommodations developed for Common
Core tests like SBAC have not fulfilled their promise of giving SWDs better access to the tested material. For example, teachers described a
dictation tool for SBAC testing that read the text rapidly in a robotic voice, leaving students baffled and unable to answer test questions.
Computer-adaptive testing (CAT) can create added hurdles for SWDs. CAT adjusts the level of difficulty up or down, depending on whether or
not students answer correctly. But special educators warn that a SWD who is “rewarded” for getting the right answer with a more difficult test
question could become overwhelmed by the increased difficulty and shut down, or stop trying. On the other hand, students who recognize that
they are being given easier and easier questions may internalize the message that they are not “smart,” or not capable learners. When students
with disabilities are subject to high-stakes decisions based on standardized test results, they are at higher risk of negative consequences such as
repeating a grade, dropping out, or completing school with something other than a full-fledged high school diploma, such as a certificate of
completion. The latter has little value in terms of the opportunities to pursue higher education or obtain employment. Multiple measures of
student knowledge and skills are the best, most fair and accurate approach to assessment for all students, especially for students with
disabilities. The priority should be on high-quality, teacher-led classroom assessments that provide multiple ways and opportunities for
students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills.
Study proves a huge score gap between learning-disabled and non-disabled students
regardless of time accommodations.
Mandinach et al 05 (Ellen B. Mandinach is associate director for research at EDC Center for Children and Technology and was
formerly a senior research scientist at Educational Testing Service. Brent Bridgeman is principal research scientist at Educational Testing Service.
Cara Cahalan-Laitusis is a research scientist at Educational Testing Service. Catherine Trapani is a research data analyst at Educational Testing
Service., " The Impact of Extended Time on SAT® Test Performance", 2005, College Board, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED563027.pdf) // dl

The exams causes some to be left behind, widening the gap between learning-disabled
and non-disabled students.
Alex 16 ("How Do Standardized Tests Put Certain Students At A Disadvantage?", 4-14-2016, Penn State University,
https://sites.psu.edu/alexaugustcivicissues/2016/04/14/how-do-standardized-tests-put-certain-students-at-a-disadvantage/) // dl

The most prominent reason why people support keeping standardized testing the way that it is now is that it provides a seemingly fair way to
test students on their general knowledge and preparedness level. If each student goes to class, is taught the same material, and studies that
material to the point of understanding, then all students should be equally prepared for the tests, and should do relatively well. Success
is
seen as a matter of effort: the more time a student dedicates to studying and understanding the
material provided for them in the classroom, the better they will do on the exams, demonstrating a
higher preparedness for the next level of education. If a student is struggling to understand material or scoring on the lower
end of the spectrum, then the only solution is to dedicate more time to studying, and simply try harder. This, however, is not the
case when it comes to certain students. Learning disabilities such as ADHD and dyslexia greatly inhibit a
student’s abilities to perform well on these tests, which has nothing to do with the amount of effort that
the student is putting into learning and understanding material. Although there are federal laws in place
that require students with learning disabilities to receive certain accommodations and auxiliary aids that
should help them to perform better on these examinations, the specific accommodations are a source of
contention, and students often don’t receive all of the aid that they should. Regulations are uneven across states,
and legal challenges are constantly being made on behalf of students who suffer from learning disabilities to bring about more reasonable
accommodations on high-stakes standardized tests. There are also no cost-effective opportunities for remediation in place for when a student
fails to pass one of these tests. Studies
have shown that the economic costs of helping students with learning
deficits to pass tests such as the SATs and ACTs are often overlooked, and, in reality, can be cripplingly
high. It is shown that, without any real mastery of a subject, scores can increase with repetition, so remediation should be targeted to the skill
and knowledge deficit that is reflected in the exam, so that understanding can increase and a mastery of the subject can be accomplished.
Students in urban areas are also at a disadvantage, since they often have access to fewer resources when it comes to test preparation in
general. Schools in these areas are, under the No Child Left Behind Act, the ones that must achieve the largest increase in test scores, and
therefore must designate more and more in-class time to standardized test preparation each year, which forces teachers to teach according to
the test, and forces students to make a substantially larger commitment to preparation and studying than their suburban counterparts, both in
and outside of the classroom. This sentiment is best represented by a quote by Robert Schaeffer, the public education director at the National
Center for Fair and Open Testing: he says “in those kinds of schools, the curriculum becomes test prep: doing worksheets and practice tests and
getting ready for the big test.” A recent report released by the Center for American Progress has shown that students in these areas spend as
much as 266 percent more time studying and preparing for tests, a commitment that many students cannot make. There is only so much class
time that can be dedicated to test prep, and at the cost of the quality of the student’s education, no less. So, in short, standardized tests can, in
no way, be considered to be an equal playing field, since it places so many subgroups of students at a disadvantage, and fails to provide them
with the resources that would allow them to achieve higher scores. These examples show that certain
groups of students are left
behind by standardized tests: they are unable to keep up with other students, and therefore fall behind.
They are then faced with another challenge when they are forced to take the same tests as students
that are doing perfectly well in school and can understand the material well. They are therefore sort of
left behind twice, once in the classroom, and then again when they are faced with standardized tests.

Testing accommodations fail and disproportionately benefit the wealthy – only

abolition solves.
Goldstein and Patel 19 (Dana Goldstein is a national correspondent for The New York Times and a two-time finalist for The
Livingston Award. Jugal K. Patel is a correspondent for The New York Times, "Need Extra Time On Tests? It Helps To Have Cash", 7-30-2019, No
Publication, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/us/extra-time-504-sat-act.html) // dl

The boom began about five years ago, said Kathy Pelzer, a longtime high school counselor in an affluent part of Southern California. More
students than ever were securing disability diagnoses, many seeking additional time on class work and
tests. A junior taking three or four Advanced Placement classes, who was stressed out and sleepless. A sophomore whose grades were
slipping, causing his parents angst. Efforts to transfer the children to less difficult courses, Ms. Pelzer said, were often a nonstarter for their
parents, who instead turned to private practitioners to see whether a diagnosis — of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, perhaps, or
anxiety or depression — could explain the problem. Such psychological assessments can cost thousands of dollars, and
are often not covered by insurance. For some families, the ultimate goal was extra time — for classroom
quizzes, essays, state achievement tests, A.P. exams and ultimately the SAT and ACT. “You’ll get what
you’re looking for if you pay the $10,000,” Ms. Pelzer said, citing the highest-priced evaluations. “It’s a complicated mess.” From
Weston, Conn., to Mercer Island, Wash., word has spread on parenting message boards and in the stands at home games: A federal
disability designation known as a 504 plan can help struggling students improve their grades and test
scores. But the plans are not doled out equitably across the United States. In the country’s richest
enclaves, where students already have greater access to private tutors and admissions coaches, the
share of high school students with the designation is double the national average. In some communities,
more than one in 10 students have one — up to seven times the rate nationwide, according to a New
York Times analysis of federal data. In Weston, where the median household income is $220,000, the
rate is 18 percent, eight times that of Danbury, Conn., a city 30 minutes north. In Mercer Island, outside Seattle, where the median
household income is $137,000, the number is 14 percent. That is about six times the rate of nearby Federal Way, Wash., where the median
income is $65,000. Students in every ZIP code are dealing with anxiety, stress and depression as academic competition grows ever more
cutthroat. But the sharp disparity in accommodations raises the question of whether families in moneyed communities are taking advantage of
the system, or whether they simply have the means to address a problem that less affluent families cannot. While experts say that known cases
of outright fraud are rare, and that most disability diagnoses are obtained legitimately, there is little doubt that the process is
vulnerable to abuse. Some of the learning differences exist in diagnostic gray areas that can make it difficult to determine whether a
teenager is struggling because of parental and school pressure or because of a psychological impairment. And private mental health
practitioners operate with limited oversight, either from school systems or from within their own professions. Many
Americans got
their first look at disability accommodations in the wake of the college admissions scandal, in which
affluent parents were accused of hiring a consultant, William Singer, to cheat their children’s way into
prestigious universities through a variety of schemes. According to court papers, Mr. Singer directed families to a
handpicked psychologist in Los Angeles, telling one of his clients, a powerful Connecticut lawyer, that his daughter should “be stupid” during
the psychologist’s evaluation. The goal was for her to receive an accommodation that would enable her to take the ACT in a private room,
before a proctor in his employ would correct her answer sheet. In a phone call recorded by the F.B.I., Mr. Singer assured the student’s father
that “all the wealthy families” were shopping for diagnoses. “The playing field is not fair,” he said. An Unequal Diagnosis In Washington, D.C.,
one mother said she had spent about $7,000 on neuropsychological evaluations for her son, now 17. She had little doubt that he needed extra
help but she acknowledged that her family had resources that others in similar situations did not. “It’s totally unfair,” said the mother, who
works in political communications and asked not to be named because she wanted to keep her child’s medical history private. “I know how to
advocate for my kid. We made sure he got what he needed and it wasn’t always clear. We bring that privilege to the table.” In early childhood,
her son had delays in speech, language and fine motor skills, struggling to sound out words and hold a pencil. By middle school, he had A.D.H.D.
and anxiety diagnoses. His charter high school gave him a 504 plan, which offered extra time on tests and the use of a keyboard to type
answers and take notes in class. He was also able to avoid filling in bubble sheets. The 504 plans, which get their name from Section 504 of the
Rehabilitation Act of 1973, are intended to help people who have a physical or mental impairment that “substantially limits” learning or other
activities. They offer students such accommodations as a seat at the front of the classroom or a private room for exams, free of distractions.
One of the most common accommodations is extra time on classroom tests, which the two main college admissions testing companies, the
College Board and ACT, look for when determining whether to grant students additional time for their exams. Many students struggle to
complete standardized tests in the allotted minutes, and research has found that having more time can raise scores for students who have a
decent grasp of the test material, whether or not they have a disability. The testing agencies also look for detailed diagnostic evaluations
conducted within the last several years. The Washington student, who was thriving in his advanced classes, was repeatedly evaluated both by
his public schools, for free, and by private practitioners hired by his parents, one of whom provided a 32-page report that the family and school
submitted to ACT and the College Board. He got extended time on the ACT, and scored a 35 out of 36. The College Board allowed him to circle
answers in his SAT booklet instead of filling in bubbles, but rejected his request for more time, even though his parents appealed the decision
twice. He still scored a 1560 out of 1600, and will attend a Midwestern liberal arts college in the fall. In an analysis of Department of Education
data, The Times looked at students with 504 designations at more than 11,000 high schools across the country. It did not include students who
are served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a further-reaching program that can also offer extra testing time, but is
generally meant for students more severely affected by disabilities. The
Times found a glaring wealth gap in 504
designations. At high schools in the richest school districts — the top 1 percent as measured by census
income data — 5.8 percent of students held a 504 plan, more than double the national average of 2.7
percent. Some wealthy districts had 504 rates of up to 18 percent. Public high schools in the nation’s
richest districts have a higher share of 504 students, on average, than most other schools. There were
also racial disparities, The Times found. A larger percentage of white students held a 504 plan than students
of any other race. The Cleveland Metropolitan School District, one of the poorest in the country, had a
504 rate of less than 1 percent, though a fifth of the district’s students had disabilities with needs that
were generally too severe to be covered solely by 504 accommodations, said Jessica Baldwin, the district’s executive
director of intervention services. “The impact of poverty can’t be understated here,” Ms. Baldwin said.
 Underview
1. 1AR theory –
A. AFF gets it because otherwise the neg can engage in infinite abuse, making
debate impossible.
B. Drop the debater – the short 1AR irreparably skewed from abuse on substance
and time investment on theory.
C. No RVIs – the 6-minute 2nr can collapse to a short shell and get away with
infinite 1nc abuse via sheer brute force and time spent on theory.
2. RVIs —
A. Skew – there’s no 2AC to develop carded offense and the 1AR has to over-cover
since the 6 minute 2NR is devastating which encourages them to under-develop
T in the NC and over-develop in the NR – need the RVI to develop good, in-
depth T offense
B. Reciprocity – T is a unique avenue to the ballot that the aff can’t access – makes
T structurally unfair without the RVI.
3. Reasonable aff interps —
A. There are multiple T interps the 1NC can read, like spec good or spec bad, which
the aff will always violate —if the interp the aff picked is okay, you should
default to substance – outweighs – topic ed is unique to this resolution – where
the majority of debate education occurs
B. There’s only 4 minutes for the 1AR to generate offense, answer standards, and
weigh while still covering all substance—reasonable aff interps allow us to
actually get education
4. Drop the neg, but not the aff:
A. If the neg runs abusive arguments, I have to be able to go all on in theory
against those arguments in the 3-minute 2AR which I can’t do if it’s only drop
the argument, but the neg has a 6-minute 2NR, so they don’t need to be able to
collapse.
B. Drop the arg solves for the negative – they can read multiple offs against the aff
and can always crystallize.
5. Semantics are racist – vote them down to deter violent practices.
Niemi 15. Rebar Niemi (Premier Debate Today is the online hub for national circuit Lincoln-Douglas Debate. The partner site
of the Premier Debate Institute, Premier Debate Today hosts the TOC Bid List, a video hub, a job board for students and coaches, a tournament
schedule, a journal for debate articles, and tournament results as fast as we know them.), 9-22-2015, "Nebel T," Premier Debate Today,
http://premierdebatetoday.com/2015/09/22/nebel-t-i-sip-it/ //RS

Though I believe Mr. Nebel to be fundamentally wrong on the debate theoretical level, I have a more serious objection. I will make this claim in
the strongest terms I possibly can. Correctness is racism. Correctness is “you must be either a boy or a girl or you
are wrong.” Correctness is “the ideal functioning body versus all others.” Correctness is one kind of
person having access to The Truth and others lacking it. Correctness is “sit down and shut up.” Correctness is “your kind
aren’t welcome here.” Any debater who runs so called “Nebel T” and any judge who votes for this argument
must acknowledge that they are situationally and strategically embracing a perspective from which
there is an implicit or explicit metric of what it means to be a competent english speaker. What is the
logical conclusion of speaking competent english? The notion that “mongrel” forms of english are
inferior, diminished, unpersuasive, and should not have access to the ballot. Quite possibly the notion that those
who can’t live up to these standards should not be involved in debate. After all, their dialects are not what
resolutions are written in – it is people like Mr. Nebel whose dialect prescribes correct resolutional meaning. You
may say that “competent speakers” was a rhetorical flourish, I am nitpicking, and that Mr. Nebel should certainly be allowed to take back his
offensive speech. I will say this: the competent english speaker, aka the correct type of thinking and being, is the fundamental goal and top-
level value that Mr. Nebel appeals to throughout his articles. If this is “not what he meant” then he did not mean that debaters should pay any
attention to nor follow his logic. Either he defends correctness or he concedes the irrelevance and negative impacts to fairness and education
of his position. Nebel may appeal to pragmatics as a way out of the appeal to correctness, but in fact, his
pragmatic claims are a pragmatic justification for correctness. This concedes pragmatics first anyway, and that so to
speak, is a flow I can win on. It is my opinion that there is no in or out of round benefit that correctness could provide
sufficient to outweigh the toxicity of its implementation and rhetorical methodology. Conclusion: Your
generic is someone else’s oppressor In one sense we should be thankful that Mr. Nebel has let the cat out of the bag: T arguments
from the perspective of correctness have always been the vehicle for racism and exclusion of all sorts. I cannot imagine a construction of
competent english or correct grammar that is not racialized, gendered, and further influenced by its origins. To me it is impossible to endorse
the claim to correctness without conceding that one is invested in a justification of domination (of course they won’t call it that) stretching
across axes of class, race, gender, flesh, and cultural origin. The one place where Mr. Nebel speaks to this question, he dismisses it by claiming
that specific examples are insufficient to deal with the bare plurality of his arguments. Mr. Nebel is kind to differentiate for us that there is
“generic” or “competent” english, and that is its own dialect, where as these other dialects or ways of speaking are simply different
uncomparable dialects. This truly tests my credulity. Are higher pitched so-called “feminine” voices less competent speakers of english? Are
those who have read words in books but never heard them pronounced due to lack of high-grade prep school educations less competent?
What about those who speak in accents, vernaculars, or dialects of english? For that matter, what about overlaps and points of connection
between those ways of speaking and “generic english?” We can easily assume what Mr. Nebel thinks about speech impediments, or those who
are unfamiliar with formal usage of grammar. Perhaps even run on sentences disqualify one from being a competent english speaker? Or an
overabundance of rhetorical questions? Does anyone have memorized the full and formal set of rules for speaking competent or proper
english? Does anyone actually trust that all those rules aren’t implicitly ideological? It is hard to believe that Mr. Nebel is blind to the values he
endorses. Perhaps we should accurately hold him to them. I am proud to be an incompetent english speaker. No way will I speak correct english
for Mr. Nebel, and no way will I designate any student the worse debater for failing to live up to a standard that is entirely dependent on a
single way of interpreting how to speak, think, and be in the world. Mr. Nebel has read too much of his neighbors in analytic philosophy and not
enough James, either C.L.R. or William. The only impact to semantic difference is a pragmatic one or it is merely a claim that “the rules are the
rules.” Truth has no value if it does not “work” in the world or is actively opposed to what does work. His claim to lexical priority is false
generally and specifically in debate. He does not understand how a T debate should work. More disturbingly, he is wholly disconnected from
the concrete history of violence that correctness in language embraces and grows out of. In Mr. Nebel’s neighborhood, we had (and have to)
kill the indian to save the person. In Mr. Nebel’s neighborhood of debate, all the folks are the same, equally well off, and nobody says y’all.

6. Comparative worlds –
A. Resolvability – truth claims can’t be easily weighed against each other.
Mangus 8 Mangus, Michael [Former debater who got to quarters of TOC, neuroscientist] “Value Comparison” The Lincoln Douglas
Debate Journal, April 2008. RP

3. irresolvable debates. instead of reaching a sortof strategically- skewed synthesis, these two forces
instead create debates that leave judges dumbfounded. the affirmative will drop an overview that
“proves” the resolution contradictory while the negative will drop a spike that “proves” the resolution
tautological. if the judge is lucky, one of these arguments will somehow respond to or undermine the other and a decision can be rendered
with some degree of fairness. oftentimes, however, there is no comparison between the arguments and no
obvious interaction between them. even in the first case, this is not the pinnacle of substantive debate.
in the latter case, it is a direct invitation for judge intervention. this is not isolated to the lower brackets of tournaments
either – many high-powered prelims and elimination rounds feature these strategies.

B. Advocacy skills – debaters are trained just to question truths or falsities but not
to compare different visions of the world.
Mangus 2 Mangus, Michael [Former debater who got to quarters of TOC, neuroscientist] “Value Comparison” The Lincoln Douglas
Debate Journal, April 2008. RP

4. defense-only strategies. especially

on the negative, debaters increasingly defend that their opponent is
wrong, not that they are right. after all, the neg gets to defend ~p. even on the affirmative, many
affirmatives tend to win debates with defensive arguments: ~~p <=> p. under this framework, debaters
are trained as sophists, not advocates. this also leads to debates that are difficult to adjudicate and,
frankly, boring – if neither side is winning a clear impact to why their side is good (or true, under the
dominant paradigm), its difficult to evaluate the winner of the round in a non-arbitrary way.

7. Nothing in the aff triggers presumption or permissibility, but they affirm:

A. The skewed 4min 1AR has to answer 7min of offense and hedge against a 6min
2nr collapse, if the neg can’t prove the aff false you should presume its true
B. You presume statements true unless proven false – If I tell you my name is
Truman you believe me unless you have evidence to the contrary
C. Presuming statements are false is impossible – we can’t operate in the world if
we can’t trust anything we hear
D. Triggers kill substantive education and force a 1ar restart so you should punish
them for doing so
E. Allow 2ar responses to blippy 1nc tricks—key to protect time-crunched 1ars and
disincentivize blip-storms that aren’t complete arguments. Evaluate every
speech in the debate—key to assessing the better debater otherwise the neg
always will
 Method
1. Reject absurd political scenarios – hidden assumptions, lack of credible authors
supporting entire chains, and future political developments mean we don’t need to
win more uncertainty to prove case outweighs.
Cohn 13. Nate Cohn covers elections, polling and demographics for The Upshot, a Times politics and policy site. Previously, he was a staff
writer for The New Republic. Before entering journalism, he was a research assistant and Scoville Fellow at the Stimson Center, 2013,
"Improving the Norms and Practices of Policy Debate," http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php?topic=5416.0;wap2 //RS

“Improving the Norms and Practices of Policy Debate,” Nov 24, So let me offer another possibility: the problem isn’t the topic, but modern
policy debate. The unrealistic scenarios, exclusive focus on policy scholarship, inability to engage systemic impacts and philosophical questions.
And so long as these problems characterize modern policy debate, teams will feel compelled to avoid it.¶ It might be tempting to assign the
blame to “USFG should.” But these are bugs, not features of plan-focused, USFG-based, active voice topics. These bugs result from practices
and norms that were initially and independently reasonable, but ultimately and collectively problematic. I also believe that these norms can and
should be contested. I
believe it would be possible for me to have a realistic, accessible, and inclusive
discussion about the merits of a federal policy with, say, Amber Kelsie. Or put differently, I’m not sure I agree with
Jonah that changing the topic is the only way to avoid being “a bunch of white folks talking about nuke war.”¶ The fact that policy debate is
wildly out of touch—the fact that we are “a bunch of white folks talking about nuclear war”—is a damning indictment of nearly every coach in
this activity. It’s a serious indictment of the successful policy debate coaches, who have been content to continue a pedagogically unsound
game, so long as they keep winning. It’s a serious indictment of policy debate’s discontents who chose to disengage. ¶ That’s not to say there
hasn’t been any effort to challenge modern policy debate on its own terms—just that they’ve mainly come from the middle of the bracket and
weren’t very successful, focusing on morality arguments and various “predictions bad” claims to outweigh. ¶ Judges
were receptive to
the sentiment that disads were unrealistic, but negative claims to specificity always triumphed over
generic epistemological questions or arguments about why “predictions fail.” The affirmative rarely introduced
substantive responses to the disadvantage, rarely read impact defense. All considered, the negative generally won a significant risk that the
plan resulted in nuclear war. Once that was true, it was basically impossible to win that some moral obligation outweighed the (dare I say?)
obligation to avoid a meaningful risk of extinction.¶ There were other problems. Many of the small affirmatives were unstrategic—teams rarely
had solvency deficits to generic counterplans. It
was already basically impossible to win that some morality argument
outweighed extinction; it was totally untenable to win that a moral obligation outweighed a meaningful
risk of extinction; it made even less sense if the counterplan solved most of the morality argument. The combined effect was
devastating: As these debates are currently argued and judged, I suspect that the negative would win
my ballot more than 95 percent of the time in a debate between two teams of equal ability.¶ But even if a
“soft left” team did better—especially by making solvency deficits and responding to the specifics of the disadvantage—I still think they would
struggle. They could compete at the highest levels, but, in most debates, judges would still assess a small, but
meaningful risk of a large scale conflict, including nuclear war and extinction. The risk would be small,
but the “magnitude” of the impact would often be enough to outweigh a higher probability, smaller
impact. Or put differently: policy debate still wouldn’t be replicating a real world policy assessment, teams reading small
affirmatives would still be at a real disadvantage with respect to reality. . ¶ Why? Oddly, this is the unreasonable
result of a reasonable part of debate: the burden of refutation or rejoinder, the responsibility of debaters to “beat” arguments. If I
introduce an argument, it starts out at 100 percent—you then have to disprove it. That sounds like a
pretty good idea in principle, right? Well, I think so too. But it’s really tough to refute something down to
“zero” percent—a team would need to completely and totally refute an argument. That’s obviously tough to do,
especially since the other team is usually going to have some decent arguments and pretty good cards defending each component of their
disadvantage—even the ridiculous parts. So
one of the most fundamental assumptions about debate all but
ensures a meaningful risk of nearly any argument—even extremely low-probability, high magnitude
impacts, sufficient to outweigh systemic impacts. ¶ There’s another even more subtle element of debate practice at play.
Traditionally, the 2AC might introduce 8 or 9 cards against a disadvantage, like “non-unique, no- link, no-impact,” and then go for one and two.
Yet in
reality, disadvantages are underpinned by dozens or perhaps hundreds of discrete assumptions,
each of which could be contested. By the end of the 2AR, only a handful are under scrutiny; the majority of
the disadvantage is conceded, and it’s tough to bring the one or two scrutinized components down to “zero.”¶ And then there’s
a bad
understanding of probability. If the affirmative questions four or five elements of the disadvantage, but
the negative was still “clearly ahead” on all five elements, most judges would assess that the negative
was “clearly ahead” on the disadvantage. In reality, the risk of the disadvantage has been reduced
considerably. If there was, say, an 80 percent chance that immigration reform would pass, an 80 percent
chance that political capital was key, an 80 percent chance that the plan drained a sufficient amount of
capital, an 80 percent chance that immigration reform was necessary to prevent another recession, and
an 80 percent chance that another recession would cause a nuclear war (lol), then there’s a 32 percent
chance that the disadvantage caused nuclear war. ¶ I think these issues can be overcome. First, I think teams
can deal with the “burden of refutation” by focusing on the “burden of proof,” which allows a team to
mitigate an argument before directly contradicting its content. ¶ Here’s how I’d look at it: modern policy debate has
assumed that arguments start out at “100 percent” until directly refuted. But few, if any, arguments are supported by
evidence consistent with “100 percent.” Most cards don’t make definitive claims. Even when they do, they’re
not supported by definitive evidence—and any reasonable person should assume there’s at least some
uncertainty on matters other than few true facts, like 2+2=4.¶ Take Georgetown’s immigration uniqueness evidence
from Harvard. It says there “may be a window” for immigration. So, based on the negative’s evidence, what are the odds that immigration
reform will pass? Far less than 50 percent, if you ask me. That’s not always true for every card in the 1NC, but sometimes it’s even worse—like
the impact card, which is usually a long string of “coulds.” If you apply this very basic level of analysis to each element of a disadvantage, and
correctly explain math (.4*.4*.4*.4*.4=.01024), the risk of the disadvantage starts at a very low level, even before the affirmative offers a direct
response. ¶ Debaters
should also argue that the negative hasn’t introduced any evidence at all to defend a
long list of unmentioned elements in the “internal link chain.” The absence of evidence to defend the
argument that, say, “recession causes depression,” may not eliminate the disadvantage, but it does raise
uncertainty—and it doesn’t take too many additional sources of uncertainty to reduce the probability of
the disadvantage to effectively zero—sort of the static, background noise of prediction.¶ Now, I do think it would be nice if a good
debate team would actually do the work—talk about what the cards say, talk about the unmentioned steps—but I think debaters can make
these observations at a meta-level (your evidence isn’t certain, lots of undefended elements) and successfully reduce the risk of a nuclear war
or extinction to something indistinguishable from zero. It would not be a factor in my decision.¶ Based on my conversations with other policy
judges, it may be possible to pull it off with even less work. They might be willing to summarily disregard
“absurd” arguments, like
politics disadvantages, on the grounds that it’s patently unrealistic, that we know the typical burden of
rejoinder yields unrealistic scenarios, and that judges should assess debates in ways that produce realistic assessments. I don’t
think this is too different from elements of Jonah Feldman’s old philosophy, where he basically said “when I assessed 40 percent last year, it’s
10 percent now.”¶ Honestly, I was surprised that the few judges I talked to were so amenable to this argument. For me, just saying “it’s absurd,
and you know it” wouldn’t be enough against an argument in which the other team invested considerable time. The more developed argument
about accurate risk assessment would be more convincing, but I still think it would be vulnerable to a typical defense of the burden of
rejoinder. ¶ To be blunt: I want debaters to learn why a disadvantage is absurd, not just make assertions that conform to their preexisting
notions of what’s realistic and what’s not. And perhaps more importantly for this discussion, I could not coach a team to rely exclusively on this
argument—I’m not convinced that enough judges are willing to discount a disadvantage on “it’s absurd.” Nonetheless, I think this
is a
useful “frame” that should preface a following, more robust explanation of why the risk of the
disadvantage is basically zero—even before a substantive response is offered.¶ There are other, broad genres of argument that can
contest the substance of the negative’s argument. There are serious methodological indictments of the various forms of knowledge production,
from journalistic reporting to think tanks to quantitative social science. Many of our
most strongly worded cards come from
people giving opinions, for which they offer very little data or evidence. And even when “qualified” people
are giving predictions, there’s a great case to be extremely skeptical without real evidence backing it up.
The world is a complicated place, predictions are hard, and most people are wrong. And again, this is before contesting the substance of the
negative’s argument(!)—if deemed necessary.¶ So, in my view, the low probability scenario is waiting to be eliminated from debate, basically as
soon as a capable team tries to do it.¶ That would open to the door to all of the arguments, previously excluded, de facto, by the prevalence of
nuclear war impacts. It’s
been tough to talk about racism or gender violence, since modest measures to
mitigate these impacts have a difficult time outweighing a nuclear war. It’s been tough to discuss ethical policy
making, since it’s hard to argue that any commitment to philosophical or ethical purity should apply in the face of an existential risk. It’s been
tough to introduce unconventional forms of evidence, since they can’t really address the probability of nuclear war.

2. Using the state as a heuristic means we defend the state without being statist. It
won’t inculcate dominant norms and is key to their movement working.
Zanotti 14. Dr. Laura Zanotti is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech. Her research and teaching include critical
political theory as well as international organizations, UN peacekeeping, democratization and the role of NGOs in post-conflict
governance.“Governmentality, Ontology, Methodology: Re-thinking Political Agency in the Global World” – Alternatives: Global, Local, Political
– vol 38(4):p. 288-304,. A little unclear if this is late 2013 or early 2014 – The Stated “Version of Record” is Feb 20, 2014, but was originally
published online on December 30th, 2013. Obtained via Sage Database.

By questioning substantialist representations of power and subjects, inquiries on the possibilities of political agency are reframed in a way that
focuses on power and subjects’ relational character and the contingent processes of their (trans)formation in the context of agonic relations.
Options for resistance to governmental scripts are not limited to ‘‘rejection,’’ ‘‘revolution,’’ or ‘‘dispossession’’ to
regain a pristine ‘‘freedom from all constraints’’ or an immanent ideal social order. It is found instead in multifarious and contingent
struggles that are constituted within the scripts of governmental rationalities and at the same time exceed and
transform them. This approach questions oversimplifications of the complexities of liberal political
rationalities and of their interactions with non-liberal political players and nurtures a radical skepticism about identifying
universally good or bad actors or abstract solutions to political problems. International power interacts in
complex ways with diverse political spaces and within these spaces it is appropriated, hybridized, redescribed, hijacked, and
tinkered with. Governmentality as a heuristic focuses on performing complex diagnostics of events. It invites historically situated
explorations and careful differentiations rather than overarching demonizations of ‘‘power,’’
romanticizations of the ‘‘rebel’’ or the ‘‘the local.’’ More broadly, theoretical formulations that conceive the subject in non-
substantialist terms and focus on processes of subjectification, on the ambiguity of power discourses, and on hybridization as the terrain for
political transformation, open ways for reconsidering political agency beyond the dichotomy of oppression/rebellion. These alternative
formulations also foster
an ethics of political engagement, to be continuously taken up through plural and uncertain
practices, that demand continuous attention to ‘‘what happens’’ instead of fixations on ‘‘what ought to
be.’’83 Such ethics of engagement would not await the revolution to come or hope for a pristine ‘‘freedom’’ to be
regained. Instead, it would constantly attempt to twist the working of power by playing with whatever cards
are available and would require intense processes of reflexivity on the consequences of political choices.
To conclude with a famous phrase by Michel Foucault ‘‘my point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not
exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but
to hyper- and pessimistic activism.’’84

3. Particularism is key – overarching theories ignore material injustice.

Pappas 16. (Gregory Fernando Pappas [Texas A&M University] “The Pragmatists’ Approach to Injustice”, The Pluralist Volume 11,
Number 1, Spring 2016, BE

The pragmatists’ approach should be distinguished from nonideal theories whose starting point seems
to be the injustices of society at large that have a history and persist through time, where the task of political
philosophy is to detect and diagnose the presence of these historical injustices in particular situations of injustice. For example, critical theory
today has inherited an approach to social philosophy characteristic of the European tradition that goes back to Rousseau, Marx, Weber, Freud,
Marcuse, and others. Accord- ing to Roberto Frega, this tradition takes society to be “intrinsically sick” with a malaise that requires adopting a
critical historical stance in order to understand how the systematic sickness affects present social situations. In other words, this
approach
assumes that¶ a philosophical critique of specific social situations can be accomplished only under the
assumption of a broader and full blown critique of soci- ety in its entirety: as a critique of capitalism, of
modernity, of western civilization, of rationality itself. The idea of social pathology becomes intelligible only against the
background of a philosophy of history or of an anthropology of decline, according to which the distortions of actual social life are but the
inevitable consequence of longstanding historical processes. (“Between Pragmatism and Critical Theory” 63)¶ However, this particular approach
to injustice is not limited to critical theory. It is present in those Latin American and African American political philosophies that have used and
transformed the critical intellectual tools of ¶ critical theory to deal with the problems of injustice in the Americas. For instance, Charles W.
Mills claims that the starting point and alternative to the abstractions of ideal theory that masked injustices is to diagnose and rectify a history
of an illness—the legacy of white supremacy in our actual society.11 The critical task of revealing this illness is achieved by adopting a historical
perspective where the injustices of today are part of a larger historical narrative about the development of modern societies that goes back to
how Europeans have progressively dehumanized or subordinated others. Similary, radical feminists as well as Third World scholars, as reaction
to the hege- monic Eurocentric paradigms that disguise injustices under the assumption of a universal or objective point of view, have stressed
how our knowledge is always situated. This may seem congenial with pragmatism except the locus of the knower and of injustices is often
described as power structures located in “global hierarchies” and a “world-system” and not situations.12¶ Pragmatism only questions that
we live in History or a “World-System” (as a totality or abstract context) but not that we are in history (lowercase): in a present situation
continuous with others where the past weighs heavily in our memories, bodies, habits, structures, and communities. It also does
not deny
the importance of power structures and seeing the connections be- tween injustices through time, but
there is a difference between (a) inquiring into present situations of injustice in order to detect, diagnose, and cure an injustice (a social
pathology) across history, and (b) inquiring into the his- tory of a systematic injustice in order to facilitate inquiry into the present unique,
context-bound injustice. To
capture the legacy of the past on present injustices, we must study history but also
seek present evidence of the weight of the past on the present injustice.¶ If injustice is an illness, then the
pragmatists’ approach takes as its main focus diagnosing and treating the particular present illness, that
is, the particular situation-bound injustice and not a global “social pathology” or some single
transhistorical source of injustice. The diagnosis of a particular injustice is not always dependent on adopting a broader critical
standpoint of society in its entirety, but even when it is, we must be careful to not forget that such standpoints are useful only for
understanding the present evil. The concepts and categories “white supremacy” and “colonialism” can be great tools
that can be of planetary significance. One could even argue that they pick out much larger areas of people’s lives and injustices than the
categories of class and gender, but in spite of their reach and explanatory theoretical value, they are
nothing more than tools to
make reference to and ameliorate particular injustices experienced (suffered) in the midst of a particular
and unique re- lationship in a situation. No doubt many, but not all, problems of injustice are a consequence of being a member
of a group in history, but even in these cases, we cannot a priori assume that injustices are homogeneously equal for all members of that group.
Why is this important? The possible pluralism and therefore complexity of a problem of injustice does not always stop at
the level of being a member of a historical group or even a member of many groups, as insisted on by
intersectional analysis. There may be unique cir- cumstances to particular countries, towns,
neighborhoods, institutions, and ultimately situations that we must be open to in a context-sensitive
inquiry. If an empirical inquiry is committed to capturing and ameliorating all of the harms in situations of injustice in their raw pretheoretical
complexity, then this requires that we try to begin with and return to the concrete, particular, and unique experiences of injustice.¶ Pragmatism
agrees with Sally Haslanger’s concern about Charles Mills’s view. She writes: “The goal is not just a theory that is historical (v. ahistori- cal), but
is sensitive to historical particularity, i.e., that resists grand causal narratives purporting to give an account of how domination has come about
and is perpetuated everywhere and at all times” (1). For “the
forces that cause and sustain domination vary
tremendously context by context, and there isn’t necessarily a single causal explanation; a theoretical
framework that is useful as a basis for political intervention must be highly sensitive to the details of the particular social context” (1).13¶
Although each situation is unique, there are commonalities among the cases that permit inquiry about common causes. We can “formulate
tentative general principles from investigation of similar individual cases, and then . . . check the generalizations by applying them to still
further cases” (Dewey, Lectures in China 53). But Dewey insists that the focus should be on the indi- vidual case, and was critical of how so
many sociopolitical theories are prone to starting and remaining at the level of “sweeping generalizations.” He states that they “fail
to
focus on the concrete problems which arise in experience, allowing such problems to be buried under
their sweeping generalizations” (Lectures in China 53).¶ The lesson pragmatism provides for nonideal theory today is that it must be
careful to not reify any injustice as some single historical force for which particular injustice problems are its manifestation or evidence for its
exis- tence. Pragmatism welcomes the wisdom and resources of nonideal theories that are historically grounded on actual injustices, but it
issues a warning about how they should be understood and implemented. It is, for example, sympathetic to the critical resources found in
critical race theory, but with an important qualification. It understands Derrick Bell’s valuable criticism as context-specific to patterns in the
practice of American law. Through his inquiry into particular cases and civil rights policies at a particular time and place, Bell learned and
proposed certain general principles such as the one of “interest convergence,” that is, “whites will promote racial advantages for blacks only
when they also promote white self-interest.”14 But, for pragma- tism, these principles are nothing more than historically
grounded tools to use in present problematic situations that call for our analysis, such as deliberation in
establishing public policies or making sense of some concrete injustice. The principles are falsifiable and open to revision as we
face situation-specific injustices. In testing their adequacy, we need to consider their function in making us see aspects of injustices we would
not otherwise appreciate.15

4. Abstract questioning is useless – re-creates violence.

Bryant 12 [(EDITED FOR GENDERED LANGUAGE – the author said “she” and it was replaced with the word “to” – Levi Bryant is currently a
Professor of Philosophy at Collin College. In addition to working as a professor, Bryant has also served as a Lacanian psychoanalyst. He received
his Ph.D. from Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois, where he originally studied 'disclosedness' with the Heidegger scholar Thomas Sheehan.
Bryant later changed his dissertation topic to the transcendental empiricism of Gilles Deleuze, “Critique of the Academic Left”,
http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/underpants-gnomes-a-critique-of-the-academic-left/)]

I must be in a mood today– half irritated, half amused –because I find myself ranting. Of course, that’s not entirely unusual. So this afternoon I came across a post
by a friend quoting something discussing the environmental movement that pushed all the right button. As the post read, For mainstream environmentalism–
conservationism, green consumerism, and resource management –humans are conceptually separated out of nature and mythically placed in privileged positions of
authority and control over ecological communities and their nonhuman constituents. What emerges is the fiction of a marketplace of ‘raw materials’ and ‘resources’
through which human-centered wants, constructed as needs, might be satisfied. The mainstream narratives are replete with such metaphors [carbon trading!].
Natural complexity, mutuality, and diversity are rendered virtually meaningless given discursive parameters that reduce nature to discrete units of exchange
measuring extractive capacities. Jeff Shantz, “Green Syndicalism” While finding elements this description perplexing– I can’t say that I see many environmentalists
treating nature and culture as distinct or suggesting that we’re sovereigns of nature –I do agree that we conceive much of our relationship to the natural world in
economic terms (not a surprise that capitalism is today a universal). This, however, is not what bothers me about this passage. What I wonder is just what we’re
supposed to do even if all of this is true? What, given existing conditions, are we to do if all of this is right? At least green consumerism, conservation, resource
management, and things like carbon trading are engaging in activities that are making real differences. From this passage–
and maybe the entire text would disabuse me of this conclusion –it sounds like we are to reject all of
these interventions because they remain tied to a capitalist model of production that the author (and
myself) find abhorrent. The idea seems to be that if we endorse these things we are tainting our hands
and would therefore do well to reject them altogether. The problem as I see it is that this is the worst
sort of abstraction (in the Marxist sense) and wishful thinking. Within a Marxo-Hegelian context, a thought is abstract
when it ignores all of the mediations in which a thing is embedded. For example, I understand a robust
tree abstractly when I attribute its robustness, say, to its genetics alone, ignoring the complex relations to
its soil, the air, sunshine, rainfall, etc., that also allowed it to grow robustly in this way. This is the sort of
critique we’re always leveling against the neoliberals. They are abstract thinkers. In their doxa that individuals are entirely responsible for themselves
and that they completely make themselves by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, neoliberals ignore all the mediations belonging

to the social and material context in which human beings develop that play a role in determining the
vectors of their life. They ignore, for example, that George W. Bush grew up in a family that was highly connected to the world of business and
government and that this gave him opportunities that someone living in a remote region of Alaska in a very different material infrastructure and set of family
relations does not have. To think concretely is to engage in a cartography of these mediations, a mapping of
these networks, from circumstance to circumstance (what I call an “onto-cartography”). It is to map assemblages, networks, or
ecologies in the constitution of entities. Unfortunately, the academic left falls prey to its own form of abstraction. It’s good

at carrying out critiques that denounce various social formations, yet very poor at proposing any sort of
realistic constructions of alternatives. This because it thinks abstractly in its own way, ignoring how
networks, assemblages, structures, or regimes of attraction would have to be remade to create a
workable alternative. Here I’m reminded by the “underpants gnomes” depicted in South Park: The underpants gnomes have a plan for achieving profit
that goes like this: Phase 1: Collect Underpants Phase 2: ? Phase 3: Profit! They even have a catchy song to go with their work: Well this is sadly how it often is with
the academic left. Our
plan seems to be as follows: Phase 1: Ultra-Radical Critique Phase 2: ? Phase 3:
Revolution and complete social transformation! Our problem is that we seem perpetually stuck at
phase 1 without ever explaining what is to be done at phase 2. Often the critiques articulated at phase 1
are right, but there are nonetheless all sorts of problems with those critiques nonetheless. In order to
reach phase 3, we have to produce new collectives. In order for new collectives to be produced, people need to be able
to hear and understand the critiques developed at phase 1. Yet this is where everything begins to fall
apart. Even though these critiques are often right, we express them in ways that only an academic with
a PhD in critical theory and post-structural theory can understand. How exactly is Adorno to produce an effect in the world if
only PhD’s in the humanities can understand him? Who are these things for? We seem to always ignore these things and then look down our noses with disdain at
the Naomi Kleins and David Graebers of the world. To make matters worse, we publish our work in expensive academic journals
that only universities can afford, with presses that don’t have a wide distribution, and give our talks at
expensive hotels at academic conferences attended only by other academics. Again, who are these
things for? Is it an accident that so many activists look away from these things with contempt, thinking their more about an academic industry and tenure,
than producing change in the world? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, it doesn’t make a sound! Seriously dudes and dudettes, what are you
doing? But finally, and worst of all, us Marxists and anarchists all too often act like assholes. We
denounce others, we condemn them, we
berate them for not engaging with the questions we want to engage with, and we vilify them when they
don’t embrace every bit of the doxa that we endorse. We are every bit as off-putting and unpleasant as the fundamentalist minister
or the priest of the inquisition (have people yet understood that Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus was a critique of the

French communist party system and the Stalinist party system, and the horrific passions that arise out of
parties and identifications in general?). This type of “revolutionary” is the greatest friend of the
reactionary and capitalist because they do more to drive people into the embrace of reigning ideology
than to undermine reigning ideology. These are the people that keep Rush Limbaugh in business. Well done! But this isn’t where our most
serious shortcomings lie. Our most serious shortcomings are to be found at phase 2. We almost never make concrete proposals for

how things ought to be restructured, for what new material infrastructures and semiotic fields need to
be produced, and when we do, our critique-intoxicated cynics and skeptics immediately jump in with an
analysis of all the ways in which these things contain dirty secrets, ugly motives, and are doomed to fail.

5. Reps focus distracts us from material violence.

Tuathail 96. Tuathail 96 (Gearoid, Department of Georgraphy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Political Geography, 15(6-7), p. 664,
science direct)

While theoretical debates at academic conferences are important to academics, the discourse and
concerns of foreign-policy decision- makers are quite different, so different that they constitute a
distinctive problem- solving, theory-averse, policy-making subculture. There is a danger that academics assume
that the discourses they engage are more significant in the practice of foreign policy and the exercise of
power than they really are. This is not, however, to minimize the obvious importance of academia as a general institutional structure
among many that sustain certain epistemic communities in particular states. In general, I do not disagree with Dalby’s fourth point about
politics and discourse except to note that his statement-‘Precisely because reality could be represented in particular
ways political decisions could be taken, troops and material moved and war fought’-evades the important question of agency
that I noted in my review essay. The assumption that it is representations that make action possible is
inadequate by itself. Political, military and economic structures, institutions, discursive networks and
leadership are all crucial in explaining social action and should be theorized together with
representational practices. Both here and earlier, Dalby’s reasoning inclines towards a form of idealism. In response to Dalby’s fifth
point (with its three subpoints), it is worth noting, first, that his book is about the CPD, not the Reagan administration. He analyzes certain CPD
discourses, root the geographical reasoning practices of the Reagan administration nor its public-policy reasoning on national security. Dalby’s
book is narrowly textual; the general contextuality of the Reagan administration is not dealt with. Second, let me simply note that I find that
the distinction between critical theorists and post- structuralists is a little too rigidly and heroically drawn by Dalby and others. Third, Dalby’s
interpretation of the reconceptualization of national security in Moscow as heavily influenced by dissident peace researchers in Europe is
highly idealist, an interpretation that ignores the structural and ideological crises facing the Soviet elite at that time. Gorbachev’s reforms and
his new security discourse were also strongly self- interested, an ultimately futile attempt to save the Communist Party and a discredited
regime of power from disintegration. The issues raised by Simon Dalby in his comment are important ones for all those interested in the
practice of critical geopolitics. While I agree with Dalby that questions of discourse are extremely important ones for political geographers to
engage, there
is a danger of fetishizing this concern with discourse so that we neglect the institutional
and the sociological, the materialist and the cultural, the political and the geographical contexts within
which particular discursive strategies become significant. Critical geopolitics, in other words, should not be a prisoner of
the sweeping ahistorical cant that sometimes accompanies ‘poststructuralism nor convenient reading strategies like the identity politics
narrative; it needs to always be open to the patterned mess that is human history.
6. Role playing as public actors shatters apathy and political alienation which is
critical to check oppression
Mitchell 2000. Gordon Mitchell, Associate Professor of Communication at University of Pittsburgh, Winter 2000, “Stimulated Public
Argument As Pedagogical Play on Worlds”, Argumentation and Advocacy, vol 36, no 3, pq

When we assume the posture of the other in dramatic performance, we tap into who we are as persons,
since our interpretation of others is deeply colored by our own senses of selfhood. By encouraging
experimentation in identity construction, role-play "helps students discover divergent viewpoints and
overcome stereotypes as they examine subjects from multiple perspectives..." (Moore, p. 190). Kincheloe points to the
importance of this sort of reflexive critical awareness as an essential feature of educational practice in postmodern times. "Applying the notion of the postmodern analysis of the self, we come
to see that hyperreality invites a heteroglossia of being," Kincheloe explains; "Drawing upon a multiplicity of voices, individuals live out a variety of possibilities, refusing to suppress particular

men and women appropriate the various forms of expression, they are empowered to uncover
voices. As

new dimensions of existence that were previously hidden" (1993, p. 96). This process is particularly crucial in
the public argument context, since a key guarantor of inequality and exploitation in contemporary
society is the widespread and uncritical acceptance by citizens of politically inert self-identities. The problems of
political alienation, apathy and withdrawal have received lavish treatment as perennial topics of scholarly analysis (see e.g. Fishkin 1997; Grossberg 1992; Hart 1998; Loeb 1994).

nately, comparatively less energy has been devoted to the development of pedagogical strategies
Unfortu

for countering this alarming political trend. However, some scholars have taken up the task of theorizing
emancipatory and critical pedagogies, and argumentation scholars interested in expanding the learning
potential of debate would do well to note their work (see e.g. Apple 1995, 1988, 1979; Britzman 1991; Giroux 1997, 1988, 1987; Greene 1978;
McLaren 1993, 1989; Simon 1992; Weis and Fine 1993). In this area of educational scholarship, the curriculum theory of currere, a method of teaching pioneered by Pinar and Grumet (1976),
speaks directly to many of the issues already discussed in this essay. As the Latin root of the word "curriculum," currere translates roughly as the investigation of public life (see Kincheloe 1993,
p. 146). According to Pinar, "the method of currere is one way to work to liberate one from the web of political, cultural, and economic influences that are perhaps buried from conscious view

By
but nonetheless comprise the living web that is a person's biographic situation" (Pinar 1994, p. 108). The objectives of role-play pedagogy resonate with the currere method.

opening discursive spaces for students to explore their identities as public actors, simulated public
arguments provide occasions for students to survey and appraise submerged aspects of their political
identities. Since many aspects of cultural and political life work currently to reinforce political passivity, critical argumentation pedagogies that highlight this component of students'
self-identities carry significant emancipatory potential.

7. Pure criticism fails – only combination of contradictory ideas solves

Walt 98, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, ’98 (Stephen, March 22, “International Relations: One World, Many
Theories” Foreign Policy, www.foreignpolicy.com/Ning/archive/archive/110/irelations.pdf)

No single approach can capture all the complexity of contemporary world politics. Therefore, we are
better off with a diverse array of competing ideas rather than a single theoretical orthodoxy.
Competition between theories helps reveal their strengths and weaknesses and spurs subsequent
refinements, while revealing flaws in conventional wisdom. Although we should take care to emphasize inventiveness
over invective, we should welcome and encourage the heterogeneity of contemporary scholarship.

8. A focus on materiality is key – vague calls to action create totalitarian states –

turns the K.
Condit 15. Celeste M. Condit, 2-4-2015, "Multi-Layered Trajectories for Academic Contributions to Social Change," Taylor &amp; Francis,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00335630.2015.995436 //RS

Because neither biology nor symbolics are deterministic systems, this fantasy theme is avoidable, even if it is powerfully attractive. Because
both biology and symbolics are material, however, specific kinds of work are necessary in order to avoid the lure of that predisposition. This
point is crucial, because it invalidates the twentieth century (idealist) approaches to social change, which envisioned a single (violent) leap away
from the social as sufficient to create and maintain better worlds. Thus,
when Žižek and others urge us to “Act” with
violence to destroy the current Reality, without a vision of an alternative, on the grounds that the links
between actions and consequences are never certain, we can call his appeal both a failure of
imagination and a failure of reality. As for reality, we have dozens of revolutions as models, and the
historical record indicates quite clearly that they generally lead not to harmonious cooperation (what I call
“AnarchoNiceness” to gently mock the romanticism of Hardt and Negri) but instead to the production of totalitarian states
and/or violent factional strife. A materialist constructivist epistemology accounts for this by predicting
that it is not possible for symbol-using animals to exist in a symbolic void. All symbolic movement has a trajectory,
and if you have not imagined a potentially realizable alternative for that trajectory to take, then what
people will leap into is biological predispositions—the first iteration of which is the rule of the strongest
primate. Indeed, this is what experience with revolutions has shown to be the most probable outcome of a
revolution that is merely against an Evil. The failure of imagination in such rhetorics thereby reveals itself to be critical, so it is
worth pondering sources of that failure. The rhetoric of “the kill” in social theory in the past half century has repeatedly reduced to the leap
into a void because the symbolized alternative that the context of the twentieth century otherwise predispositionally offers is to the binary
opposite of capitalism, i.e., communism. That rhetorical option, however, has been foreclosed by the historical discrediting of the readily
imagined forms of communism (e.g., Žižek9[9] Žižek, Welcome, 85.View all notes). The
hard work to invent better alternatives
is not as dramatically enticing as the story of the kill: such labor is piecemeal, intellectually difficult,
requires multi-disciplinary understandings, and perhaps requires more creativity than the typical
academic theorist can muster. In the absence of a viable alternative, the appeals to Radical Revolution seem to have been sustained
by the emotional zing of the kill, in many cases amped up by the appeal of autonomy and manliness (Žižek uses the former term and deploys
the ethos of the latter). But
if one does not provide a viable vision that offers a reasonable chance of leaving
most people better off than they are now, then Fox News has a better offering (you'll be free and you'll get rich!).
A revolution posited as a void cannot succeed as a horizon of history, other than as constant local scale violent actions, perhaps connected by
shifting networks we call “terrorists.” This analysis of the geo-political situation, of the onto-epistemological character of language, and of the
limitations of the dominant horizon of social change indicates that the
focal project for progressive Left Academics should
now include the hard labor to produce alternative visions that appear materially feasible. The most widely
circulating alternative to violent Revolution, AnarchoNiceness, fails to reach that standard. AnarchoNiceness provides an appealing vision
(everyone is good to everyone, and everyone is treated fairly). But it is not a materially viable vision (alas!), because it does not take into
account the developmental bio-symbolic character of human beings.