AFF

I affirm Resolved: In the United States, colleges and universities

ought not consider standardized tests in undergraduate
admissions decisions.
 
 Method
The role of the ballot is to evaluate the simulated consequences of the aff
against a competitive post-fiat policy option or the status quo. To clarify – only
post-fiat consequences are relevant.
Realists dominate the argumentative frame – only this framework teaches
debaters how to speak in the language of real world people and experts which
solves cession of science and politics.
Hoppe 99 Robert Hoppe is Professor of Policy and knowledge in the Faculty of Management
and Governance at Twente University, the Netherlands. "Argumentative Turn" Science and
Public Policy, volume 26, number 3, June 1999, pages 201–210 works.bepress.com

ACCORDING TO LASSWELL (1971), policy

science is about the production and application of knowledge of
and in policy. Policy-makers who desire to tackle problems on the political agenda successfully, should
be able to mobilise the best available knowledge. This requires high-quality knowledge in policy.
Policy-makers and, in a democracy, citizens, also need to know how policy processes really
evolve. This demands precise knowledge of policy. There is an obvious link between the two: the more and
better the knowledge of policy, the easier it is to mobilise knowledge in policy . Lasswell expresses this
interdependence by defining the policy scientist's operational task as eliciting the maximum rational judgement of all those involved
in policy-making. For the applied policy scientist or policy analyst this implies the development of two skills. First, for the sake of
mobilising the best available knowledge in policy, he/she
should be able to mediate between different
scientific disciplines. Second, to optimise the interdependence between science in and of policy,
she/he should be able to mediate between science and politics. Hence Dunn's (1994, page 84) formal
definition of policy analysis as an applied social science discipline that uses multiple research
methods in a context of argumentation, public debate [and political struggle] to create, evaluate
critically, and communicate policy-relevant knowledge. Historically, the differentiation and successful
institutionalisation of policy science can be interpreted as the spread of the functions of knowledge organisation, storage,
dissemination and application in the knowledge system (Dunn and Holzner, 1988; van de Graaf and Hoppe, 1989, page 29).
Moreover, this scientification of hitherto 'unscientised' functions, by including science of policy explicitly, aimed to gear them to the
political system. In that sense, Lerner and Lasswell's (1951) call for policy sciences anticipated, and probably helped bring about, the
scientification of politics. Peter Weingart (1999) sees the development of the science-policy nexus as a
dialectical process of the scientification of politics/policy and the politicisation of science.
Numerous studies of political controversies indeed show that science advisors behave like any
other self-interested actor (Nelkin, 1995). Yet science somehow managed to maintain its functional
cognitive authority in politics. This may be because of its changing shape, which has been characterised as the emergence
of a post-parliamentary and post-national network democracy (Andersen and Burns, 1996, pages 227-251). National political
developments are put in the background by ideas about uncontrollable , but apparently inevitable,
international developments; in Europe, national state authority and power in public policy-making is
leaking away to a new political and administrative elite, situated in the institutional ensemble of
the European Union. National representation is in the hands of political parties which no longer
control ideological debate. The authority and policy-making power of national governments is
also leaking away towards increasingly powerful policy-issue networks, dominated by functional
representation by interest groups and practical experts . In this situation, public debate has become even more
fragile than it was. It has become diluted by the predominance of purely pragmatic, managerial and administrative argument, and
under-articulated as a result of an explosion of new political schemata that crowd out the more conventional ideologies. The new
schemata do feed on the ideologies; but in larger part they consist of a random and unarticulated 'mish-mash' of attitudes and
images derived from ethnic, local-cultural, professional, religious, social movement and personal political experiences. The
market-place of political ideas and arguments is thriving; but on the other hand, politicians and
citizens are at a loss to judge its nature and quality. Neither political parties, nor public officials,
interest groups, nor social movements and citizen groups, nor even the public media show any
inclination, let alone competency, in ordering this inchoate field. In such conditions, scientific
debate provides a much needed minimal amount of order and articulation of concepts, arguments
and ideas. Although frequently more in rhetoric than substance, reference to scientific 'validation' does provide
politicians, public officials and citizens alike with some sort of compass in an ideological
universe in disarray. For policy analysis to have any political impact under such conditions, it
should be able somehow to continue 'speaking truth' to political elites who are ideologically
uprooted, but cling to power; to the elites of administrators, managers, professionals and
experts who vie for power in the jungle of organisations populating the functional policy
domains of post-parliamentary democracy; and to a broader audience of an ideologically
disoriented and politically disenchanted citizenry.
 FW – the standard is maximize expected well
being
There are many moral theories and disagreement is widespread -> in case of
doubt we should air towards our base intuitions, that pleasure is good and pain
is bad.
Sinhababu Neil (National University of Singapore) “The epistemic argument for hedonism” http://philpapers.org/archive/SINTEA-3

So saying he made a ship's cable fast to one of the bearing-posts that supported the roof of the domed room, and secured it all around the building, at a good height, lest any of the women's feet should touch the ground; and as thrushes or doves beat against a net
that has been set for them in a thicket just as they were getting to their nest, and a terrible fate awaits them, even so did the women have to put their heads in nooses one after the other and die most miserably. Their feet moved convulsively for a while, but not for

very long. 11 The Odyssey's treatment of these events demonstrates how dramatically ancient Greek moral intuitions differ from ours. It doesn't dwell on the brutality of Telemachus, who killed twelve women for the trivial reasons he
states, making them suffer as they die. While gods and men seek vengeance for other great and small offenses in the Odyssey, no one finds this mass murder worth avenging. It's a minor event in the denouement to a happy ending in which Odysseus (who first
proposes killing the women) returns home and Telemachus becomes a man. That the Greeks could so easily regard these murders as part of a happy ending for heroes shows how deeply we disagree with them. It's as if we gave them a trolley problem with the 12
women on the side track and no one on the main track, and they judged it permissible for Telemachus to turn the trolley and kill them all. And this isn't some esoteric text of a despised or short-lived sect, but a central literary work of a long-lived and influential

history offers
culture. Human striking disagreement on a variety of topics. These include sexual morality;
similarly examples of

the treatment of animals; the treatment of other ethnicities, families, and social classes ; the consumption of intoxicating
substances; whether and how one may take vengeance; slavery; whether public celebrations are acceptable; and gender roles.12 Moral obligations to commit genocide were accepted not only by some 20th century Germans, but by much of the ancient world,
including the culture that gave us the Old Testament. One can only view the human past and much of the present with horror at the depth of human moral error and the harm that has resulted. One might think to explain away much of this disagreement as the
result of differing nonmoral beliefs. Those who disagree about nonmoral issues may disagree on the moral rightness of a particular action despite agreeing on the fundamental moral issues. For example, they may agree that healing the sick is right, but disagree
about whether a particular medicine will heal or harm. This disagreement about whether to prescribe the medicine won't be fundamentally about morality, and won't support the argument from disagreement. I don't think the moral disagreements listed above are
explained by differences in nonmoral belief. This isn't because sexists, racists, and bigots share the nonmoral views of those enlightened by feminism and other egalitarian doctrines – they don't. Rather, their differing views on nonmoral topics often are
rationalizations of moral beliefs that fundamentally disagree with ours.13 Those whose fundamental moral judgments include commitments to the authority of men over women, or of one race over another, will easily accept descriptive psychological views that
attribute less intelligence or rationality to women or the subjugated race.14 Moral disagreement supposedly arising from moral views in religious texts is similar. Given how rich and many-stranded most religious texts are, interpretive claims about their moral
teachings often tell us more about the antecedent moral beliefs of the interpreter than about the text itself. This is why the same texts are interpreted to support so many different moral views. Similar phenomena occur with most moral beliefs. Environmentalists
who value a lovely patch of wilderness will easily believe that its destruction will cause disaster, those who feel justified in eating meat will easily believe that the animals they eat don't suffer greatly, and libertarians who feel that redistributing wealth is unjust will
easily believe that it raises unemployment. We shouldn't assume that differing moral beliefs on practical questions are caused by fundamental moral agreement combined with differing nonmoral beliefs. Often the differing nonmoral beliefs are caused by
fundamental moral disagreement. As we have no precise way of quantifying the breadth of disagreement or determining its epistemic consequences, it's unclear exactly how much disagreement the argument requires. While this makes the argument difficult to
evaluate, it shouldn't stop us from proceeding, as we have to use the unclear notion of widespread disagreement in ordinary epistemic practice. If 99.9% of botanists agree on some issue about plants, non-botanists should defer to their authority and believe as most
of them do. But if disagreement between botanists is suitably widespread, non-botanists should remain agnostic. A more precise and systematic account of when disagreement is widespread enough to generate particular epistemic consequences would be very
helpful. Until we have one, we must employ the unclear notion of widespread disagreement, or some similar notion, throughout epistemic practice. Against the background of widespread moral disagreement, there may still be universal or near-universal agreement
on some moral questions. For example, perhaps all cultures agree that one should provide for one’s elderly parents, even though they generally disagree elsewhere. How do these narrow areas of moral agreement affect the argument? This all depends on whether
the narrow agreement is reliably or unreliably caused. If narrow agreement results from a reliable process of belief-formation, it lets us avoid error, defeating the argument from disagreement. But widely accepted moral beliefs may result from widely prevailing
unreliable processes leading everyone to the same errors. There's no special pressure to explain agreement in terms of reliable processes when disagreement is widespread. Explaining agreement in terms of reliable processes is preferable when we have some

reason to think that the processes involved are generally reliable. Then we would want to understand cases of agreement in line with the general reliability of processes producing moral belief. But if disagreement is
widespread, error is too. Since moral beliefs are so often false, invoking unreliable processes to explain them is better than invoking reliable ones. The next two sections discuss this in more detail. We have many plausible explanations of narrow agreement on which moral beliefs are
unreliably caused. Evolutionary and sociological explanations of why particular moral beliefs are widely accepted often invoke unreliable mechanisms.15 On these explanations, we agree because some moral beliefs were so important for reproductive fitness that natural selection made them innate in us, or so important to the interests controlling moral
education in each culture that they were inculcated in everyone. For example, parents' influence over their children's moral education would explain agreement that one should provide for one's elderly parents. Plausible normative ethical theories won't systematically connect these evolutionary and sociological explanations with moral facts. If
disagreement and error are widespread, they'll provide useful ways to reconcile unusual cases of widespread agreement with the general unreliability of the processes producing moral belief. 1.3 If there is widespread error about a topic, we should retain only those beliefs about it formed through reliable processes Now I'll defend 3. First I'll show how
the falsity of others' beliefs undermines one's own belief. Then I'll clarify the notion of a reliable process. I'll consider a modification to 3 that epistemic internalists might favor, and show that the argument accommodates it. I'll illustrate 3's plausibility by considering cases where it correctly guides our reasoning. Finally, I'll show how 3 is grounded in the
intuitive response to grave moral error. First, a simple objection: “Why should I care whether other people have false beliefs? That's a fact about other people, and not about me. Even if most people are wrong about some topic, I may be one of the few right ones, even if there's no apparent reason to think that my way of forming beliefs is any more
reliable.” While widespread error leaves open the possibility that one has true beliefs, it reduces the probability that my beliefs are true. Consider a parallel case. I have no direct evidence that I have an appendix, but I know that previous investigations have revealed appendixes in people. So induction suggests that I have an appendix . Similarly, I know on
the basis of 1 and 2 that people's moral beliefs are, in general, rife with error. So even if I have no direct evidence of error in my moral beliefs, induction suggests that they are rife with error as well. 3 invokes the reliability of the processes that produce our beliefs. Assessing processes of belief-formation for reliability is an important part of our epistemic
practices. If someone tells me that my belief is entirely produced by wishful thinking, I can't simply accept that and maintain the belief. Knowing that wishful thinking is unreliable, I must either deny that my belief is entirely caused by wishful thinking or abandon the belief. But if someone tells me that my belief is entirely the result of visual perception, I'll
maintain it, assuming that it concerns sizable nearby objects or something else about which visual perception is reliable. While providing precise criteria for individuating processes of belief-formation is hard, as the literature on the generality problem for reliabilism attests, individuating them somehow is indispensable to our epistemic practices.16
Following Alvin Goldman's remark that “It is clear that our ordinary thought about process types slices them broadly” (346), I'll treat cognitive process types like wishful thinking and visual perception as appropriately broad.17 Trusting particular people and texts, meanwhile, are too narrow. Cognitive science may eventually help us better individuate
cognitive process types for the purposes of reliability assessments and discover which processes produce which beliefs. Epistemic internalists might reject 3 as stated, claiming that it isn't widespread error that would justify giving up our beliefs, but our having reason to believe that there is widespread error. They might also claim that our justification for
believing the outputs of some process depends not on its reliability, but on what we have reason to believe about its reliability. The argument will still go forward if 3 is modified to suit internalist tastes, changing its antecedent to “If we have reason to believe that there is widespread error about a topic” or changing its consequent to “we should retain
only those beliefs about it that we have reason to believe were formed through reliable processes.” While 3's antecedent might itself seem unnecessary on the original formulation, it's required for 3 to remain plausible on the internalist modification. Requiring us to have reason to believe that any of our belief-formation processes are reliable before
retaining their outputs might lead to skepticism. The antecedent limits the scope of the requirement to cases of widespread error, averting general skeptical conclusions. The argument will still attain its conclusion under these modifications. Successfully defending the premises of the argument and deriving widespread error (5) and unreliability (7) gives
those of us who have heard the defense and derivation reason to believe 5 and 7. This allows us to derive 8. (Thus the pronoun 'we' in 3, 6, and 8.) 3 describes the right response to widespread error in many actual cases. Someone in the 12th century, especially upon hearing the disagreeing views of many cultures regarding the origins of the universe,
would do well to recognize that error on this topic was widespread and retreat to agnosticism about it. Only when modern astrophysics extended reliable empirical methods to cosmology would it be rational to move forward from agnosticism and accept a particular account of how the universe began. Similarly, disagreement about which stocks will
perform better than average is widespread among investors, suggesting that one's beliefs on the matter have a high likelihood of error. It's wise to remain agnostic about the stock market without an unusually reliable way of forming beliefs – for example, the sort of secret insider information that it's illegal to trade on. 3 permits us to hold onto our
moral beliefs in individual cases of moral disagreement, suggesting skeptical conclusions only when moral disagreement is widespread. When we consider a single culture's abhorrent moral views, like the Greeks' acceptance of Telemachus and Odysseus' murders of the servant women, we don't think that maybe the Greeks were right to see nothing
wrong and we should reconsider our outrage. Instead, we're horrified by their grave moral error. I think this is the right response. We're similarly horrified by the moral errors of Hindus who burned widows on their husbands' funeral pyres, American Southerners who supported slavery and segregation, our contemporaries who condemn homosexuality,
and countless others. The sheer number of cases like this requires us to regard moral error as a pervasive feature of the human condition. Humans typically form moral beliefs through unreliable processes and have appendixes. We are humans, so this should reduce our confidence in our moral judgments. The prevalence of error in a world full of moral
disagreement demonstrates how bad humans are at forming true moral beliefs, undermining our own moral beliefs. Knowing that unreliable processes so often lead humans to their moral beliefs, we'll require our moral beliefs to issue from reliable processes. 1.4 If there is widespread error about morality, there are no reliable processes for forming
moral beliefs A reliable process for forming moral beliefs would avert skeptical conclusions. I'll consider several processes and argue that they don't help us escape moral skepticism. Ordinary moral intuition, whether it involves a special rational faculty or our emotional responses, is shown to be unreliable by the existence of widespread error. The
argument from disagreement either prevents reflective equilibrium from generating moral conclusions or undermines it. Conceptual analysis is reliable, but delivers the wrong kind of knowledge to avert skepticism. If all our processes for forming moral beliefs are unreliable, moral skepticism looms. 4 is false only because of one process – phenomenal
introspection, which lets us know of the goodness of pleasure, as the second half of this paper will discuss. Widespread error guarantees the unreliability of any process by which we form all or almost all of our moral beliefs. While widespread error allows some processes responsible for a small share of our moral beliefs to predominantly create true
beliefs, it implies that any process generating a very large share of moral belief must be highly error-prone. Since the process produced so many of our moral beliefs, and so many of them are erroneous, it must be responsible for a large share of the error. If more of people's moral beliefs were true, things would be otherwise. Widespread truth would
support the reliability of any process that produced most or all of our moral beliefs, since that process would be responsible for so much true belief. But given widespread error, ordinary moral intuition must be unreliable. This point provides a forceful response to Moorean opponents who insist that we can't give up the reliability of a process by which
we form all or nearly all of our beliefs on an important topic, since this would permit counterintuitive skeptical conclusions. Even if this Moorean response helps against external world skeptics who employ counterfactual thought experiments involving brains in vats, it doesn't help against moral skeptics who use 1 and 2 to derive widespread actual error.
Once we accept that widespread error actually obtains, a great deal of human moral knowledge has already vanished. Insisting on the reliability of the process then seems implausible and pointless. I'll briefly consider two conceptions of moral intuition – as a special rational faculty by which we grasp non-natural moral facts, and as a process by which our
emotions lead us to form moral beliefs – and show how widespread error guarantees their unreliability. Some philosophers regard moral intuition as involving a special rational faculty that lets us know non-natural moral facts.18 They argue that knowledge on many topics including mathematics, logic, and modality involves this rational faculty, so moral
knowledge might operate similarly. This suggests a way for them to defend the reliability of moral intuition in the face of widespread error: if intuition is reliable about these other things, its overall reliability across moral and nonmoral areas allows us to reliably form moral beliefs by using it. This defense won't work. When an epistemic process is
manifestly unreliable on some topic, as widespread error shows any process responsible for most of our moral beliefs to be, the reliability of that process elsewhere won't save it on that topic. Even if testimony is reliable, this doesn't imply the reliability of compulsive gamblers' testimony about the next spin of the roulette wheel. Even if intuition
remains reliable elsewhere, widespread disagreement still renders it unreliable in ethics. I see ordinary moral intuition as a process of emotional perception in which our feelings cause us to form moral beliefs.19 Just as visual experiences of color cause beliefs about the colors of surfaces, emotional experiences cause moral beliefs. Pleasant feelings like
approval, admiration, or hope in considering actions, persons, or states of affairs lead us to believe they are right, virtuous or good. Unpleasant emotions like guilt, disgust, or horror in considering actions, persons, or states of affairs lead us to believe they are wrong, vicious, or bad. We might have regarded this as a reliable way to know about moral
facts, just as visual perception is a reliable way to know about color, if not for widespread error. But because of widespread error, we can only see it as an unreliable process responsible for our dismal epistemic situation. Reflective equilibrium is the prevailing methodology in normative ethics today. It involves modifying our beliefs about particular cases
and general principles to make them cohere. Whether or not nonmoral propositions like the premises of the argument from disagreement are admissible in reflective equilibrium, widespread error prevents reflective equilibrium from reliably generating a true moral theory, as I'll explain. If the premises of the argument from disagreement are admitted
into reflective equilibrium, the argument can be reconstructed there, and reflective equilibrium will dictate that we give up all of our moral beliefs. To avoid this conclusion, the premises of the argument from disagreement would have to be revised away on moral grounds. These premises are a metaethical claim about the objectivity of morality which
seems to be a conceptual truth, an anthropological claim about the existence of disagreement, a very general epistemic claim about when we should revise our beliefs, and a more empirically grounded epistemic claim about our processes of belief-formation and their reliability. While reflective equilibrium may move us to revise substantive moral
beliefs in view of other substantive moral beliefs, claims of these other kinds are less amenable to such revision. Unless ambitious arguments for revising these nonmoral claims away succeed, we must follow the argument to its conclusion and accept that reflective equilibrium makes moral skeptics of us.20 If only moral principles and judgments are
considered in reflective equilibrium, it won't make moral skeptics of us, but the argument from disagreement will undermine its conclusions. The argument forces us to give up the pre-existing moral beliefs against which we test various moral propositions in reflective equilibrium. While we may be justified in believing something because it coheres with
our other beliefs, this justification goes away once we see that those beliefs should be abandoned. Coherence with beliefs that we know we should give up doesn't confer justification. Now I'll consider conceptual analysis. It can produce moral beliefs about conceptual truths – for example, that the moral supervenes on the nonmoral, and that morality is
objective. It also may provide judgments about relations between different moral concepts – perhaps, that if the only moral difference between two actions is that one would produce morally better consequences than the other, doing what produces better consequences is right. I regard conceptual analysis as reliable, so that the argument from
disagreement does not force us to give up the beliefs about morality it produces. Unfortunately, if analytic naturalism is false, as has been widely held in metaethics since G. E. Moore, conceptual analysis won't provide all the knowledge we need to build a normative ethical theory.21 Even when it relates moral concepts like goodness and rightness to

our epistemic and anthropological situation,

each other, it doesn't tell us that anything is good or right to begin with. That's the knowledge we need to avoid moral skepticism. So far I've argued that

combined with plausible metaethical and epistemic principles, forces us to abandon our moral
beliefs. But if a reliable process of moral belief-formation exists, 4 is false, and we can answer the moral skeptic. The rest of this paper discusses the only reliable process I know of. 2.1 Phenomenal introspection reveals pleasure's goodness Phenomenal
introspection, a reliable way of forming true beliefs about our experiences, produces the belief that pleasure is good. Even as our other processes of moral belief-formation prove unreliable, it provides reliable access to pleasure's goodness, justifying the positive
claims of hedonism. This section clarifies what phenomenal introspection and pleasure are and explains how phenomenal introspection provides reliable access to pleasure's value. Section 2.2 argues that pleasure's goodness is genuine moral value, rather than value
of some other kind. In phenomenal introspection we consider our subjective experience, or phenomenology, and determine what it's like. Phenomenal introspection can be reliable while dreaming or hallucinating, as long as we can determine what the dreams or
hallucinations are like. By itself, phenomenal introspection doesn't produce beliefs about things outside experience, or about relations between our experiences and non-experiential things. So it doesn't produce judgments about the rightness of actions or the

goodness of non-experiential things. It can only tell us about the intrinsic properties of experience itself . Phenomenal introspection is generally reliable, even if mistakes about immediate experience

Experience is rich in detail, so one

are possible. could get some of the details wrong in belief. Under adverse conditions involving false expectations, misleading evidence about what one's experiences will be, or

Paradigmatically reliable processes like vision share these failings.

extreme emotional states that disrupt belief-formation, larger errors are possible.

Vision sometimes produces false beliefs . Still, it's so reliable as to be under adverse conditions, or when we're looking at complex things

indispensible in ordinary life. Regarding phenomenal introspection as unreliable is about as radical as skepticism about the reliability of vision. While contemporary psychologists reject introspection into one's motivations and other
psychological causal processes as unreliable, phenomenal introspection fares better. Daniel Kahneman, for example, writes that “experienced utility is best measured by moment-based methods that assess the experience of the present.”22 Even those most
skeptical about the reliability of phenomenal introspection, like Eric Schwitzgebel, concede that we can reliably introspect whether we are in serious pain.23 Then we should be able to introspectively determine what pain is like. So I'll assume the reliability of
 When
phenomenal introspection. One can form a variety of beliefs using phenomenal introspection. For example, one can believe that one is having sound experiences of particular noises and visual experiences of different shades of color.

looking at a lemon one can form some beliefs about their intrinsic
and considering the phenomenal states that are yellow experiences,

features – for example, that they're bright experiences. And when considering experiences of pleasure,
one can make some judgments about their intrinsic features – for example, that they're good experiences. Just as one can look inward
at one's experience of lemon yellow and recognize its brightness, one can look inward at one's experience of pleasure and recognize its goodness.24 When I consider a situation of increasing pleasure, I can form the belief that things are better than they were before,
just as I form the belief that there's more brightness in my visual field as lemon yellow replaces black. And when I suddenly experience pain, I can form the belief that things are worse in my experience than they were before. Having pleasure consists in one's
experience having a positive hedonic tone. Without descending into metaphor, it's hard to give a further account of what pleasure is like than to say that when one has it, one feels good. As Aaron Smuts writes in defending the view of pleasure as hedonic tone, “to
'feel good' is about as close to an experiential primitive as we get.” 25 Fred Feldman sees pleasure as fundamentally an attitude rather than a hedonic tone.26 But as long as hedonic tones are real components of experience, phenomenal introspection will reveal
pleasure's goodness. Opponents of the hedonic tone account of pleasure usually concede that hedonic tones exist, as Feldman seems to in discussing “sensory pleasures,” which he thinks his view helps us understand. Even on his view of pleasure, phenomenal
introspection can produce the belief that some hedonic tones are good while others are bad. There are many different kinds of pleasant experiences. There are sensory pleasures, like the pleasure of tasting delicious food, receiving a massage, or resting your tired
limbs in a soft bed after a hard day. There are the pleasures of seeing that our desires are satisfied, like the pleasure of winning a game, getting a promotion, or seeing a friend succeed. These experiences differ in many ways, just as the experiences of looking at
lemons and the sky on a sunny day differ. It's easy to see the appeal of Feldman's view that pleasures “have just about nothing in common phenomenologically” (79). But just as our experiences in looking at lemons and the sky on a sunny day have brightness in
common, pleasant experiences all have “a certain common quality – feeling good,” as Roger Crisp argues (109).27 As the analogy with brightness suggests, hedonic tone is phenomenologically very thin, and usually mixed with a variety of other experiences.28
Pleasure of any kind feels good, and displeasure of any kind feels bad. These feelings may or may not have bodily location or be combined with other sensory states like warmth or pressure. “Pleasure” and “displeasure” mean these thin phenomenal states of feeling
good and feeling bad. As Joseph Mendola writes, “the pleasantness of physical pleasure is a kind of hedonic value, a single homogenous sensory property, differing merely in intensity as well as in extent and duration, which is yet a kind of goodness” (442).29 What if
Feldman is right and hedonic states feel good in fundamentally different ways? Then phenomenal introspection suggests a pluralist variety of hedonism. Each fundamental flavor of pleasure will have a fundamentally different kind of goodness, as phenomenal
introspection more accurate than mine will reveal. This isn't my view, but I suggest it to those convinced that hedonic tones are fundamentally heterogenous. If phenomenal introspection reliably informs us that pleasure is good, how can anyone believe that their
pleasures are bad? Other processes of moral belief-formation are responsible for these beliefs. Someone who feels disgust or guilt about sex may not only regard sex as immoral, but the pleasure it produces as bad. Even if phenomenal introspection on sexual
pleasure disposes one to believe that it's good, stronger negative emotional responses to it may more strongly dispose one to believe that it's bad, following the emotional perception model suggested in section 1.4. Explaining disagreement about pleasure's value in
terms of other processes lets hedonists maintain that phenomenal introspection univocally supports pleasure's goodness. As long as negative judgments of pleasure come from unreliable processes instead of phenomenal introspection, the argument from

disagreement eliminates them. The parallel between yellow’s brightness and pleasure’s goodness demonstrates the
objectivity of the value detected in phenomenal introspection. Just as anyone's yellow experiences objectively are bright experiences, anyone's pleasure objectively is a good experience.30 While one's phenomenology is often called one's
“subjective experience”, facts about it are still objective. “Subjective” in “subjective experience” means “internal to the mind”, not “ontologically dependent on attitudes towards it.” My yellow-experiences objectively have brightness. Anyone who thought my
yellow-experiences lacked brightness would be mistaken. Pleasure similarly is objectively good. It's true that anyone's pleasure is good. Anyone who denies this is mistaken. As Mendola writes, the value detected in phenomenal introspection is “a plausible candidate

for objective value” (712). Even though phenomenal introspection only tells me about my own phenomenal states, I can know that others' pleasure is good .

Thus, the standard is maximizing well-being through pleasure. Prefer

additionally -

Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard pleasure
and pain as good reasons for action. Moreover, only pleasure and pain are
intrinsically valuable. All other values can be explained with reference to
pleasure.
Moen 16 [Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument
for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281]
Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic value and disvalue is that pleasure is intrinsically valuable and pain is intrinsically disvaluable. On virtually any proposed list of intrinsic values and disvalues (we will look at some of

them below), pleasure is included among the intrinsic values and pain among the intrinsic disvalues. This inclusion makes intuitive sense, moreover, for there is something undeniably good
about the way pleasure feels and something undeniably bad about the way pain feels, and neither the goodness of pleasure nor the badness of pain seems to be exhausted by the
further effects that these experiences might have. “Pleasure” and “pain” are here understood inclusively, as encompassing anything hedonically positive and anything hedonically negative.2 The special value statuses of pleasure and pain are manifested in how we

treat these experiences in our everyday reasoning about values. If you tell me that you are heading for the convenience store, I might ask: “What for?” This is a reasonable question, for when you go to the convenience
store you usually do so, not merely for the sake of going to the convenience store, but for the sake of achieving something further that you deem to be valuable. You might answer, for example: “To buy soda.” This answer makes sense, for soda is a nice thing and
you can get it at the convenience store. I might further inquire, however: “What is buying the soda good for?” This further question can also be a reasonable one, for it need not be obvious why you want the soda. You might answer: “Well, I want it for the pleasure

But
of drinking it.” If I then proceed by asking “ pleasure is not good for
what is the pleasure of drinking the soda good for?” the discussion is likely to reach an awkward end. The reason is that the

anything further; “We never ask what end is in

it is simply that for which going to the convenience store and buying the soda is good.3 As Aristotle observes: [a man] his

being pleased, because we assume that pleasure is choice worthy in itself.” 4 Presumably, a similar story can be told in the case of pains, for if someone says “This is
painful!” we never respond by asking: “And why is that a problem?” We take for granted that if something is painful, we have a sufficient explanation of why it is bad. If we are onto something in our everyday reasoning about values, it seems that

pleasure and pain are both places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value.

They continue
I think several things should be said in response to Moore’s challenge to hedonists. First, I do not think the burden of proof lies on hedonists to explain why the additional values are not intrinsic values. If someone claims that X is intrinsically valuable, this is a
substantive, positive claim, and it lies on him or her to explain why we should believe that X is in fact intrinsically valuable. Possibly, this could be done through thought experiments analogous to those employed in the previous section. Second, there is something

additional intrinsic values

peculiar about the list of tend to be explained as things
that counts in hedonism’s favor: the listed values have a strong ency well

that promote pleasure and avert pain.

help To go through Frankena’s list, life consciousness
and activity are necessary presuppositions for pleasure; ,

bring about pleasure;

health, and strength and happiness, beatitude, and contentment are regarded by Frankena himself as “pleasures and satisfactions.” The same is arguably true of beauty, harmony, and “proportion in
objects contemplated,” and also of affection, friendship, harmony, and proportion in life, experiences of achievement, adventure and novelty, self-expression, good reputation, honor and esteem. Other things on Frankena’s list, such as understanding, wisdom,
freedom, peace, and security, although they are perhaps not themselves pleasurable, are important means to achieve a happy life, and as such, they are things that hedonists would value highly. Morally good dispositions and virtues, cooperation, and just
distribution of goods and evils, moreover, are things that, on a collective level, contribute a happy society, and thus the traits that would be promoted and cultivated if this were something sought after. To a very large extent, the intrinsic values suggested by
pluralists tend to be hedonic instrumental values. Indeed, pluralists’ suggested intrinsic values all point toward pleasure, for while the other values are reasonably explainable as a means toward pleasure, pleasure itself is not reasonably explainable as a means
toward the other values. Some have noticed this. Moore himself, for example, writes that though his pluralistic theory of intrinsic value is opposed to hedonism, its application would, in practice, look very much like hedonism’s: “Hedonists,” he writes “do, in general,
recommend a course of conduct which is very similar to that which I should recommend.”24 Ross writes that “[i]t is quite certain that by promoting virtue and knowledge we shall inevitably produce much more pleasant consciousness. These are, by general
agreement, among the surest sources of happiness for their possessors.”25 Roger Crisp observes that “those goods cited by non-hedonists are goods we often, indeed usually, enjoy.”26 What Moore and Ross do not seem to notice is that their observations give rise
to two reasons to reject pluralism and endorse hedonism. The first reason is that if the suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values are potentially explainable by appeal to just pleasure and pain (which, following my argument in the previous chapter, we should accept as
 It is ontologically costly to
intrinsically valuable and disvaluable), then—by appeal to Occam’s razor—we have at least a pro tanto reason to resist the introduction of any further intrinsic values and disvalues. more

posit a plurality of intrinsic values and disvalues, so in case all values admit explanation by of

a single intrinsic value and

reference to disvalue, we have reason to reject more complicated
a single intrinsic

accounts. The fact that suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values tend to be hedonistic instrumental values does not, however, count in favor of hedonism solely in virtue of being most elegantly explained by hedonism; it also does so in virtue of
creating an explanatory challenge for pluralists. The challenge can be phrased as the following question: If the non-hedonic values suggested by pluralists are truly intrinsic values in their own right, then why do they tend to point toward pleasure and away from
pain?27

Contention 1 is Racism
 Advantage 1 – Inequality
Standardized testing is a form of racial eugenics in which testing companies try
to recreate results that harm minorities
Singer 19, [Steven Singer] April 06, 2019 Common Dreams DOA: 9/3/19 “Standardized Testing
is a Tool of White Supremacy”
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/04/06/standardized-testing-tool-white-
supremacy SLHS-RR
But standardized testing? That hasn’t really changed all that much. It still reduces complex processes down to a predetermined set
of only four possible answers—a recipe good for guessing what a test-maker wants more than expressing a complex answer about
the real world. It still attempts to produce a bell curve of scores so that so many test takers fail, so many pass, so many get advanced
scores, etc. It still judges correct and incorrect by reference to a predetermined standard of how a preconceived “typical” student
would respond. Considering how and why such assessments were created in the first place, the presence of a racial
achievement gap should not be surprising at all. That’s the result these tests were originally
created to find. Modern testing comes out of Army IQ tests developed during World War I. In 1917, a group of psychologists
led by Robert M. Yerkes, president of the American Psychological Association (APA), created the Army Alpha and Beta tests. These
were specifically designed to measure the intelligence of recruits and help the military
distinguish those of “superior mental ability” from those who were “mentally inferior.” These
assessments were based on explicitly eugenicist foundations—the idea that certain races were
distinctly superior to others. In 1923, one of the men who developed these intelligence tests, Carl Brigham, took these
ideas further in his seminal work A Study of American Intelligence. In it, he used data gathered from these IQ tests to argue the
following: The decline of American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups,
owing to the presence here of the negro. These are the plain, if somewhat ugly, facts that our study shows. The deterioration of
American intelligence is not inevitable, however, if public action can be aroused to prevent it. Thus, Yerkes and Brigham’s
pseudoscientific tests were used to justify Jim Crow laws, segregation, and even lynchings.
Anything for “racial purity.” People took this research very seriously. States passed forced sterilization laws for people
with “defective” traits, preventing between 60,000 and 70,000 people from “polluting” America’s ruling class. The practice was even
upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1927 Buck v. Bell decision. Justices
decided that mandatory sterilization of
“feeble-minded” individuals was, in fact, constitutional. Of the ruling, which has never been
explicitly overturned, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “It is better for all the world, if
instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime , or to let them starve for their imbecility, society
can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. ...Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Eventually
Brigham took his experience with Army IQ tests to create a new assessment for the College Board—the Scholastic Aptitude Test—
now known as the Scholastic Assessment Test or SAT. It was first given to high school students in 1926 as a gatekeeper. Just as the
Army intelligence tests were designed to distinguish the superior from the inferior, the SAT was designed to predict which students
would do well in college and which would not. It was meant to show which students should be given the chance at a higher
education and which should be left behind. And unsurprisingly
it has always—and continues to—privilege
white students over children of color. The SAT remains a tool for ensuring white supremacy that
is essentially partial and unfair—just as its designers always meant it to be. Moreover, it is the
model by which all other high stakes standardized tests are designed . But Brigham was not alone in
smuggling eugenicist ideals into the education field. These ideas dominated pedagogy and psychology for generations until after
World War II when their similarity to the Nazi philosophy we had just defeated in Europe dimmed their exponents’ enthusiasm.
Another major eugenicist who made a lasting impact on education was Lewis Terman, Professor of Education at Stanford University
and originator of the Stanford-Binet intelligence test. In his highly influential 1916 textbook, The Measurement of Intelligence he
wrote: Among laboring men and servant girls there are thousands like them [feebleminded individuals]. They are the world’s
“hewers of wood and drawers of water.” And yet, as far as intelligence is concerned, the tests have told the truth. …No amount of
school instruction will ever make them intelligent voters or capable voters in the true sense of the word. ...The fact that one meets
this type with such frequency among Indians, Mexicans, and negroes suggests quite forcibly that the whole question of racial
differences in mental traits will have to be taken up anew and by experimental methods. Children
of this group should
be segregated in special classes and be given instruction which is concrete and practical . They
cannot master, but they can often be made efficient workers, able to look out for themselves. There is no possibility at present of
convincing society that they should not be allowed to reproduce, although from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave
problem because of their unusually prolific breeding (91-92). This was the original justification for academic tracking. Terman and
other educational psychologists convinced many schools to use
high-stakes and culturally-biased tests to place
“slow” students into special classes or separate schools while placing more advanced students
of European ancestry into the college preparatory courses. The modern wave of high stakes testing has its
roots in the Reagan administration—specifically the infamous propaganda hit piece A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Education
Reform. In true disaster capitalism style, it concluded that our economy was at risk because of poor public schools.
Therefore, it suggested circumventing the schools and subordinating them to a system of standardized tests, which would be used to
determine everything from teacher quality to resource allocation. It’s a bizarre argument, but it goes something like this: the best
way to create and sustain a fair educational system is by rewarding “high-achieving” students. So we shouldn’t provide kids with
what they need to succeed. We should make school a competition where the strongest get the most and everyone else gets a lesser
share. And the gatekeeper in this instance (as it was in access to higher education) is high stakes testing. The
greater the test
score, the more funding your school receives, the lower class sizes, the wider curriculum, more
tutors, more experienced and well compensated teachers, etc. It’s a socially stratified education system
completely supported by a pseudoscientific series of assessments. After all, what is a standardized test but an
assessment that refers to a specific standard? And that standard is white, upper class students.
In his book How the SAT Creates Built-in-Headwinds, national admissions-test expert, Jay Rosner, explains the process by-
which SAT designers decide which questions to include on the test: Compare two 1998 SAT verbal [section]
sentence-completion items with similar themes: The item correctly answered by more blacks than whites was
discarded by [the Educational Testing Service] (ETS), whereas the item that has a higher
disparate impact against blacks became part of the actual SAT. On one of the items, which was of medium
difficulty, 62 percent of whites and 38 percent of African Americans answered correctly, resulting in a large impact of 24
percent... On this second item, 8 percent more African Americans than whites answered correctly. In other words, the criteria
for whether a question is chosen for future tests is if it replicates the outcomes of previous
exams—specifically tests where students of color score lower than white children. And this is still
the criteria test makers use to determine which questions to use on future editions of nearly
every assessment in wide use in the U.S.

Private tutoring on standardized tests empirically leads to better results – the

aff widens the education gap between social classes.
Choi 18, DOI: 68.170.93.91 DOA: 9/3/19 The Heterogeneous Effects of Shadow Education on
SAT Scores Author(s): Yool Choi Source: Development and Society, Vol. 47, No. 3 (September
2018), pp. 451-476 Published by: Institute for Social Development and Policy Research (ISDPR)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26506194

Shadow education is basically private tutoring

- Statistically significant
- Peer reviewed journal
- Answers defense

The overall goalof this study was to examine the effects of shadow education on SAT scores and
thus to investigate the impact of shadow education on educational inequality in the United
States. The key questions that asked in this study are as follows: (1) What is the average effect of private shadow education on SAT
scores? (2) How do the effects of private shadow education differ based on individual likelihood of participating in shadow
education? and (3) How do the average and heterogeneous effects of private shadow education differ according to multiple
counterfactual scenarios? By examining variation in SAT scores by likelihood of participating in private shadow education, this study
challenges the effect homogeneity assumption and sheds light on the exact role of shadow education in educational stratification.
Moreover, by considering multiple counterfactual conditions, I investigated
the possibility that public resources
could serve as a substitute for private shadow education. Using rich data from the Educational
Longitudinal Study of 2002, we found significant variation in SAT scores by likelihood of
participation in private shadow education. Those who were most likely to use private shadow
education benefitted the most from it. Since higher propensity participants are already socioeconomically advantaged,
this pattern suggests that private shadow education widens the education gap between social classes. That is,
although the average effects of private shadow education are moderate , which limits the relevance of
private shadow education to educational inequality, the positive selection pattern suggests that the most
advantaged students benefit considerably more from private shadow education and thus it
functions as a strong mechanism of educational stratification in the United States. Moreover, I find
that using public resources in lieu of private shadow education neither ameliorates the impact of
private shadow education on academic outcomes nor changes the positive selection pattern. This
study broadens our understanding of how private shadow education is a critical factor in exacerbating educational stratification in
the United States. However, the policy implications of this study are quite complex. Intervening in shadow education would be
extremely difficult due to the fact that shadow education operates in the private sector. Some countries such as South Korea,
Uganda, and Mauritius have tried to ban shadow education, but these bans have been ineffective (Bray 2006). If direct intervention
in shadow education is difficult, then, this study raises questions for public education in terms of its system and quality in the United
States. In this sense, it would be useful to examine what current educational environments boost the prevalence and impact of
shadow education. If the impact of shadow education centers on SAT preparation activities and the college entrance process, what
kind of alternative systems could be put in place? And more specifically, given that public shadow education does not help to
mitigate the disproportionate impact of private shadow education, what differences exist between those two educational activities?
What kind of additional learning opportunities within formal schooling could be provided to disadvantaged students, and how can
these activities be made effective compared to private shadow education? These questions are only part of what policymakers and
education scholars need to examine in order to ameliorate the educational inequality that is caused by private shadow education. In
conclusion, given
the increasing prevalence of private shadow education in the United States, this
study emphasizes that the acquisition of educational advantages greatly depends on private
investment and that the pathway to social mobility through education appears to cross the
border of public education. Therefore, extensive efforts to enhance educational equality is necessary, taking into account
both public and private educational contexts.

Even if the tests are fair, perceptions of unfairness still result in lower test
scores
Walpole et al 05 (Marybeth Walpole Patricia M. Mcdonough University Of California–Los
Angeles Constance J. Bauer Gloucester Township Public School District Carolyn Gibson Kamau
Kanyi Rita Toliver Rowan University), DOA: 9/4/19 ”This Test is Unfair: Urban African American
and Latino High School Students’ Perceptions of Standardized College Admission Tests”, URBAN
EDUCATION, Vol. 40 No. 3, May 2005 321-349 DOI: 10.1177/0042085905274536 © 2005 Corwin
Press, Inc. SLHS-RR

Furthermore, a lack of information, lack of resources to pay for college admission tests, lack of test
preparation, and the pressure these students feel to perform well result in admission test
requirements becoming a barrier to college attendance for the African American and Latino students in the current
study. Results from Freeman’s (1997) study illustrated some of the obstacles African American students perceived
when considering college and documented that students’ perceptions of obstacles may hinder their participation. The
current study indicates that students perceive the tests as obstacles, and those perceptions can, in turn,
hinder their participation. This should be sufficient reason to deemphasize standardized
admission testing. Students’ perceptions of the tests as unfair, particularly for underrepresented students of color, also have
connotations for the new line of research on stereotype threat (Aronson, Justina, Good, et al., 1999; Spencer et al., 1999; Steele,
1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995, 1998). Several
students in the current study, without being asked
specifically, said they had heard or believed the admission tests were biased and that they
would not score as well as their peers because they were African American or Latino . This is exactly
the type of internalized stereotype that Steele and his colleagues (Aronson, Justina, Good, et al., 1999; Spencer et al., 1999; Steele,
1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995, 1998) believed results in lower test scores. Furthermore, although some psychometric research
shows that admission test questions are not biased (Freedle & Kostin, 1990; Scheuneman & Gerriĵ, 1990), students believe
the tests are unfair, and that perception can shape how students respond to the tests.

GPA is better at determining college readiness – prefer – empirics and it’s a

comparative study.
Chingos 18, [Matthew M. Chingos is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute and Director of
the Education Policy Program at the Urban Institute] 2018 AEI DOA: 9/4/19 “What Matters Most
for College Completion?” http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/What-Matters-
Most-for-College-Completion.pdf SLHS-RR
Test Scores and Grades. Both SAT or ACT scores and high school GPA are associated with the likelihood that students at four-year
colleges earn a bachelor’s degree. But when considered together, the predictive power of high school GPA is much
stronger. Figure 2 shows that, among students with similar SAT or ACT scores, those with higher high school GPAs
are much more likely to graduate. But among students with similar high school GPAs, no strong relationship
exists between SAT or ACT scores and graduation rates (except that those who score below 800 are noticeably
less likely to complete college). This makes sense given that earning good grades requires consistent behaviors
over time—showing up to class and participating, turning in assignments, taking quizzes, etc.—whereas students could in theory
do well on a test even if they do not have the motivation and perseverance needed to achieve good grades. It seems likely that
the kinds of habits high school grades capture are more relevant for success in college than a
score from a single test. The data in Figure 2 are for a group of less-selective (i.e., average SAT or ACT score below 1150)
public colleges and universities in four US states, but the much stronger predictive power of high school GPA
relative to SAT or ACT scores holds across a wide range of public institutions .4 And the relatively
weak predictive power of SAT or ACT scores vanishes entirely once the student’s high school is
taken into account, suggesting that the test scores serve partly as a proxy for high school quality .
Why do test scores so strongly predict bachelor’s degree attainment on their own (see Figure 1) but not graduation rates once high
school GPA is taken into account? Part of the reason is that students
with higher test scores are both more likely
to enroll in any college and to enroll in more selective colleges (presumably in part because of the use of SAT
or ACT scores in the admissions process).5 In sum, students with higher test scores are more likely to graduate college in part
because they will likely attend better-resourced higher education institutions that graduate more of their students. For an example
of this, see Table 1 in the related paper by Mark Schneider and Kim Clark on institutional effects, where the completion rate is over
90 percent at some of the most selective universities.6 These
students, however, are not much more likely to
graduate than those with lower test scores (but with similar high school grades) on the same
campus.
 Contention 2 is Stress
Standardized tests greatly increases stress hormones within children and
lowers scores – impact is worse for disadvantaged kids.
Heissel et al. 15 [Jennifer A. Heissel, Dorainne J. Levy, Emma K. Adam, Jennifer A. Heissel –
Northwestern University, Dorainne J. Levy – Indiana University, Emma K. Adam – Northwestern
University] "Stress, Sleep, and Performance on Standardized Tests: Understudied Pathways to
the Achievement Gap" Aera Open, 6-9-2017, DOA: 9/4/19
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858417713488#articleCitationDownloadCo
ntainer SLHS-RR

This study examined whether children responded physiologically to high-stakes testing in naturalistic
settings, and how any responses were associated with performance on the high-stakes test .
Children displayed a statistically significant increase in cortisol level in anticipation of high-
stakes testing; this pattern was driven by males. We also find some evidence that, among a sample of
disadvantaged students, the most-disadvantaged students had the largest increase in cortisol in
anticipation of the high-stakes test. These changes were driven by the occurrence of a test that mattered for schools,
but had limited consequence for individual students. Large decreases and large increases in cortisol were associated with
underperformance on the high-stakes test, relative to what we would have expected from students given their in-school academic
performance and other characteristics. Even the average increase in cortisol shown in Table 2 (15%) was
associated with much lower test scores , relative to those with little change in cortisol. An increase of more than 10%
or a decrease of more than 10% was associated with a 0.4 SD decrease in test scores, relative to those with little change. This is
equivalent to approximately 80 points on the 1600-point SAT scale . Concurrent cortisol during the test was
not a statistically significant predictor of performance: it was the cortisol change relative to baseline that
predicted outcomesThere’s a spillover effect – emphasis on standardization leads to over-testing
within schools which leads to a litany of health problems against students and worsens
educational quality.

High stakes tests disproportionately harm minorities under stringent time

pressures that don’t accurately reflect ability – test-optional doesn’t solve.
Colker 19 [Ruth Colker holds the Heck-Faust Memorial Chair in Constitutional Law at the Ohio
State University's Moritz College of Law] DOA: 9/4/19 "The College Admissions Scandal and the
Trouble With Strictly Timed Standardized Tests" Pacific Standard, 3-22-2019,
https://psmag.com/education/what-the-college-admissions-scandal-tells-us-about-disability-
and-standardized-tests SLHS-RR

Stringently timed, high-stake tests have an adverse impact against racial minorities, women, those with
low socio-economic status, non-native speakers of English, older applicants, and people with
disabilities. Of course, that adverse impact is further exacerbated when the ultra-wealthy cheat to inflate their children's scores. It is a dirty little
secret that no testing entity has published any validity study justifying the need for students to

take exams under such stringent time pressures. Rigorously timed exams are easy to administer and readily
produce a bell-shaped curve. But it is a bell-shaped curve expressing socio-economic status—not
genuine ability. It would be easier (and much quicker) just to ask students to indicate their parents' income level and then hand them a score in
a few seconds, rather than put low-income students through the charade of grit and determination required to overcome their lack of class privilege to
do well on these exams. It is true that some universities make submission of scores on the ACT or SAT
optional, allowing applicants to use other methods to demonstrate their knowledge and aptitudes. Nonetheless, when applicants take
advantage of such optional methods, they place themselves at competitive disadvantage with
respect to admissions or financial aid, including merit-based financial aid. The absence of standardized test
scores signals that an applicant's scores are well below the median for that university's applicant pool. Despite
their test-optional stances, such universities in fact reify the importance of speeded standardized exams .

Further, because standardized test scores are part of the U.S. News and World Report ranking system, even test-optional universities

are mindful of the big role that the test scores of their admitted students play in helping them
maintain a high rank, and make admissions decisions accordingly.

The status quo creates a curriculum centered around “teaching the test” which
guts real-world applicability and destroys information retention.
Sofian 19, DOA: 9/3/19 Indira Sofian, Medium, “The Problem with High School” 2/4/19
https://medium.com/@indrasofian/the-problem-with-high-school-caf770c87797 SLHS-RR

For decades, the national

conversation around education reform have largely been centered on
standardizing content and curriculum , keeping teachers and schools accountable to the performance of their students,
and getting students into college. That’s led to policies like the Common Core, Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind, and their
related agendas. The problem with that focus is that
it glosses over the other problems with high school
today that are far more fundamental than a simple change in policy can fix . Curriculum content
in schools is geared towards tests, not real world applicability or interest from students. The general
pedagogy of the classroom — a lecture based model where students practice rote memorization and little else— is outdated.
Focusing on graduation rates and college acceptance rates brainwashes people into believing that going to a traditional four year
university is the only way to succeed in life. Anxiety and depression rates among adolescents have
skyrocketed in the last several years alone. It’s a flawed system that was designed decades ago to meet the needs of
a society in the throes of the Industrial Revolution. Now, it’s no longer able to meet the demands of a fast-
moving society that’s both technologically and culturally different than before. To understand more,
let’s examine the issues that plague the typical high school model. What We Learn is Neither Interesting nor Useful In high school,
the most common subjects taught are science, math, english, history, and a foreign language. Within those subjects, you
have sub categories of subjects like chemistry, algebra, world history, and the like. These subjects were determined by a
group of men called the Committee of Ten more than one hundred years ago. Since then, we’ve taught
them almost without question in every high school. At the time, the Committee sought to standardize the US education system
curriculum and ensure that people would learn across a breadth of subjects and have the foundations of knowledge to be prepared
for life. Unfortunately, it’s clear that school no longer does that. At its base, a
good education should either be
interesting, useful, or both. It stands to reason that if you’ve had a good education, you should
remember what you learned. Yet, students forget roughly 60% of what they learned in high
school right before they even enter college . Memorizing information for tests and forgetting almost all of it right
after tests is a well known element of our school culture. Even as adults, it’s unlikely that people remember much of anything from
high school. Do you remember the ways in which the Ming and early Qing dynasties represented the high point in Chinese society?
Or what happened in the Epic of Gilgamesh? Or what multiple alleles in biology are? How about demonstrative adjectives and
pronouns in Spanish? There’s no context for this knowledge , no place for it to make sense . We learn these
topics in isolation without being able to connect them to our own lives. Adults often lament the skills and subjects they wish they
could have learned in school that would have helped them in life. They wished that they had learned about topics like taxes, conflict
resolution, investing, how to navigate our healthcare system, money management, how to manage people, and so much more. They
wish they could have been exposed to different types of careers and explored them. Yet, the subjects we learn in school are
primarily restricted to the aforementioned five subjects and whatever else shows up on our tests. In high school, tests and
students’ scores reign king. They determine if a student gets into a good college after
graduating. They determine if teachers get to keep their jobs. They determine if the school’s
funding gets cut or raised. With that influence, standardized testing has transformed schools into machines for test scores.
Policies like Race to the Top and Common Core have pressured schools and teachers to “teach to the test”, with
little to no regard to the relevance of the content we learn in school, the way it’s taught, or whether or not
these tests even measure anything worth measuring. To make matters worse, this tight focus on test content has de-prioritized
other programs and curriculums that aren’t critical. Namely, programs in music, arts, physical education, and other electives, all of
which have received constant cuts in schools across the country throughout the years. State tests in math and english mean that less
time can be devoted to even other academic subjects, like social studies. It’s tragic because of how important these pieces of
education are to students. For some, programs like band are sources of relaxation to students and allow them to express themselves
in ways that they can’t in class. For others, these programs expose students to new interests and fields and even lead into their
careers.

The impact continues– emphasis on standardization leads to over-testing within

schools which leads to a litany of health problems against students and
worsens educational quality.
Simpson 16 [Christina Simpson Harvard Graduate School of Education] DOA: 9/3/19 May 2016
“Effects of Standardized Testing on Students’ Well-
Being”, https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/eap/files/c._simpson_effects_of_testing_on_well_b
eing_5_16.pdf, May 2016
One of the reasons teachers likely report concerns about the amount of time students spend on testing-related
activities is that it results in lost instructional time. The Northwest Evaluation Association (2014) found that 70
percent of teachers surveyed feel that the focus on high-stakes testing takes too much time away from learning. Teoh, Coggins,
Guan, & Hiler (2014) found that many teachers feel that test preparation takes up instructional time as well. A third grade teacher is
quoted as saying: “The prepping for the test takes a lot of time . Instead of possibly doing projects or more hands-on learning, we really focused on the testing format and

preparing our students to be comfortable taking the test. The prepping starts at the beginning of the year and ends in April” (Teoh, Coggins, Guan, & Hiler, 2014). In addition to the amount of time students spend on standardized testing, the stakes associated with

these assessments have been cited as contributing to student stress as well (Larson, El Ramahi, Conn, Estes, & Ghibellini, 2010). As would be expected, students often experience more stress from high-stakes tests than from low-stakes tests. Segool, Carlson, Goforth,

von der Embse, and Barterian (2013) found that elementary school students experienced greater test anxiety on a high-stakes assessment, mandated by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), than on classroom tests and hypothesized that one contributing factor may be the

emphasis placed on it by educators (Segool et 5 al., 2013). Heiser et al. (2015) shares similar findings to Segool et al. in a report prepared by the New York State School Boards Association and the New York State Association of School Psychologists on test anxiety in

New York. A survey of school psychologists in New York’s public schools found that 76 percent of respondents feel that test anxiety is higher for state assessments than it is for local assessments (Heiser et al., 2015). While some tests do have direct consequences for

students, such as grade retention, students often still perceive the tests as high-stakes and stressful because they understand that standardized testing has consequences for their schools, teachers, and administrators. A study of children’s perspectives on testing

indicates that even third grade children have some understanding of the consequences of high-stakes testing for their school and teachers (Dutro & Selland, 2012). A survey conducted by the Northwest Evaluation Association (2014) reports that 55 percent of

students surveyed believe one reason they take state-mandated tests is to evaluate their schools. Elementary school students in El Paso, Texas were asked to describe their fears related to the state-mandated test, and one student’s response provides an example of

the degree to which students understand the impact of standardized testing for teachers: “Your teacher will feel bad because you didn’t try. She gets paid for teaching you. She wants her boss to see what a good teacher she is, but if you don’t try, her boss won’t

know what a good teacher she is” (Strauss, 2014). The students’ comment also highlights how consequences for schools and educators may cause some students to feel pressure to perform well on high-stakes testing. Physical and Emotional Symptoms of Stress

. The pressure was already high in many states before

Concerns about the impact of standardized testing on students’ health have been expressed in the past

NCLB, and prior to NCLB being signed into law, a number of child and adolescent psychiatrists,
child development experts, and educators signed a statement advising against the additional
standardized testing that NCLB would 6 require (Alliance for Childhood, 2001). The statement argued that, “test-related
stress is literally making many children sick” and that ignoring the adverse health consequences of additional
standardized testing is inadvisable (Alliance for Childhood, 2001, para. 1). A school nurse and former board member of the National
Association of School Nurses shared
that she had witnessed an increase in anxiety-related
complaints in connection with the increased emphasis on standardized testing  (Alliance for Childhood,
2001). Health consequences associated with standardized testing were cited as
including stomachaches and vomiting, headaches, sleep problems, depression, attendance
problems, and acting out (Alliance for Childhood, 2001). Particular concern was expressed for students
with existing mental health issues (Alliance for Childhood, 2001). In an article published around the same time as the
Alliance for Childhood statement, Dounay (2000) noted that articles in the press suggested an increase in stress-related symptoms,
including sleep disorders, in the past few years as well. Students continued to experience test-related stress from the standardized
testing required by NCLB. Articles in the press provide reports of individual students experiencing a variety of stress-related
symptoms in connection to standardized testing, such as stomachaches, sleep problems, headaches, and anxiety attacks. Parents are
often quoted in these articles expressing concerns about the impact of standardized testing on their children’s well-being. A quote
from a parent in Florida provides a relevant example, “I have friends whose children are vomiting because they are so
stressed. They’re having anxiety attacks”  (Schulzke, 2015). Johnson, Johnson, Farenga, and Ness (2008) quote a father in New York discussing his son’s experience with testing under NCLB: My son is

about to take the fourth-grade ELA exams this week. He has experienced extreme anxiety, vomiting, diarrhea, and has been unable to sleep in his own bed for the last three days. It’s breaking my heart. He wants to do so well. A nine-year-old should not be subjected

7 to this. No Child Left Behind is not a remedy, it’s a horror for our children. (Johnson et al., 2008, p. 15). Educators expressed concerns about the impact of standardized testing on students’ well-being in the press as well. Toppo (2007) described a director of testing

and accountability in North Carolina who, “told the American School Board Journal in 2003 that administrators discard as many as 20 test booklets on exam days because children vomit on them” (para. 19). A letter from principals in New York even goes so far as to

say, “We know that many children cried during or after testing, and others vomited or lost control of their bowels or bladders. Others simply gave up” (Fougner et al., 2014). The letter led to significant media coverage, with one headline even saying, “Common Core

testing makes children vomit, wet their pants: N.Y. principals” (Chasmar, 2013). Vomiting is frequently cited in the press as one of the stress-related symptoms that students experience, and while the frequency with which students are vomiting because of testing is

unclear, it is striking that manuals for test administrators and coordinators often contain guidelines for what to do in the event a student becomes ill during standardized testing. In reviewing test administrator manuals for ten geographically diverse states and for the

Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), five contained guidelines for what to do in the event that test documents become soiled by vomit (California Department of Education, 2016; Georgia Department of Education, 2016; Ohio

Department of Education, 2015; PARCC, 2016; Pennsylvania Department of Education, 2016). PARCC’s Test Coordinator Manual for grades 3 through 8, which is provided to eight fully participating states and three additional partners, provides a relevant example of

these guidelines. The manual asks that the soiled test booklet or answer document be placed in a resealable, plastic bag, and if possible, responses are to be transcribed into a replacement document (PARCC, 2016). A list of contaminated test documents must be

maintained, 8 but PARCC recommends the actual contaminated documents be securely destroyed according to district biohazard protocols (PARCC, 2016). There are some signs, from press reports and surveys, suggesting  that test-
related stress has worsened in recent years.  Heiser et al. (2015) report that 61 percent of responding school psychologists in New York feel that levels of test anxiety have risen since the

advent of Common Core aligned assessments. The New York State Parent Teacher Association (PTA) surveyed parents and teachers and found that respondents reported that 75 percent of students, those who do not receive additional educational support, were

more stressed about testing than they had been in previous years (Klein, 2014). A pediatrician from Florida shares that she sees an increase in patients with stress-related symptoms around the time of testing, such as stomachaches and panic attacks, and even says

that for some children the anxiety makes it difficult to get them to school (Thompson, 2014). She feels that the impact of standardized testing has worsened over the past twenty years and particularly in the last five to eight years, indicating that the number of

children she sees with stressrelated symptoms around the time of testing has grown (Thompson, 2014). Student Engagement and Self-Efficacy Another concern frequently expressed is how standardized testing is affecting students’ engagement and interest in school

and students’ beliefs in their own abilities. Pedulla et al. (2003) found that many teachers surveyed agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that, “Many students in my class feel, that, no matter how hard they try, they will still do poorly on the statemandated

test” (p. 25). High school teachers in particular reported concerns around students’ beliefs in their abilities to be successful on the state-mandated test; 62% of high school teachers agreed with the statement, as compared with 59% of middle school teachers and

49% of elementary school teachers (Pedulla et al., 2003, p. 27). Paris, Lawton, Turner, and Roth (1991) note that by middle 9 school, visible signs of achievement, such as test scores, affect students’ perceptions of their own competence. Students’ perspectives are

also valuable in understanding how testing may negatively affect students’ self-efficacy. Dutro and Selland (2012) explored the perspectives of students in a highpoverty, urban elementary school on standardized testing and found that how students perform on high-

 classifying students as either proficient or less

stakes testing can affect their beliefs about their own competence and potential as learners. Dutro and Selland argue that by

than proficient, highstakes tests have the ability to inform and affect how children

construct their identities as learners. Dutro and Selland note that only the students who scored proficient or above in
the study expressed positive feelings about the test-taking experience; none of the students scoring less than proficient, in contrast,
held such positive views. Dutro and Selland express concern around how, “students’ knowledge of their position as less than
proficient in key content areas such as reading may discourage, rather than encourage, students’ investment
in school”  (p. 359). Harlen and Deakin Crick (2003) argue as well that labeling low achieving students as “failures” impacts their beliefs in their ability to learn and lowers their self-esteem. Articles in the press report individual cases in which

standardized testing has impacted students’ engagement and self-efficacy. Mulholland (2015) reports that one New York parent witnessed a change in her son’s beliefs in his own abilities and interest in school in connection to a heightened focus on standardized

testing: “He would be doing homework, and he would be sobbing, he’d be trying to wipe tears away while he’s trying to finish his homework so he could see the paper. He would constantly talk about how stupid he was, how ‘I can’t wait until I can drop out of

school.’” In an article about the National Education Association’s campaign to end “toxic testing,” Long and Robertson (2014) quote a parent expressing similar concerns about the effects of standardized testing on students: “The kids pay a very high price. It chips

away at their sense of 10 selves as learners from a young age; telling them that there is one way to learn and boxing them into narrow ways of seeing their skills and their contributions.”

Lack of care for teen mental health is the main cause of School shootings.
Geher 18, , Glenn Geher, Ph.D. is professor of psychology at the State University of New York at New Paltz where he has been awarded SUNY Chancellor Awards for Excellence for both Teaching and Research. In addition to teaching various courses

and directing the New Paltz Evolutionary Psychology Lab, Glenn serves as founding director of the campus’ Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) program. He is also credited as the founder of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS). Mental Health and

School Shootings, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/201802/mental-health-and-school-shootings

For a second, for argument’s sake, let’s think about the implications of the  it is a mental health issue perspective on mass
shootings.  From where I stand, if this were the case, this would be enormously unsettling for various reasons.

mental health problems have pretty much been skyrocketing in

Largely, this would be concerning because 

our nation across the past few decades  (see Twenge, 2015). In fact, in a powerful Psychology Today post from 2015, my colleague Jean Twenge provides a mountain of data

a broad array of psychological disorders, including   and  ,

speaking to the facts that (a)  depression anxiety

have increased in frequency since the 1980s and (b) this observed pattern is

not exclusively the result of over-diagnosis. our nation is getting less and
 In short, 

less mentally healthy with time.  And yes, this is a problem.

I’d like you to join me

While this pattern is problematic for many reasons, 

in thinking about the implications regarding the future of senseless violence in

this country. If mass shootings are the result of mental
 A simple assessment of this situation is pretty grave. 

health problems, and if mental health problems are on the rise, then we can
only expect the trend in such events as mass shootings to increase .  Think about that.

this constellation of facts is truly grim and gives me great concern

To my mind, 

regarding our future. action is ultimately what is needed here.

 Of course,   And in a democracy like ours,
action often takes the form of embracing the First Amendment and by engaging in the electoral process. We can do things such as writing letters to elected officials, writing letters to the local newspaper, meeting
with elected officials and holding them to task, electing officials into office who have a record of taking action on the issues at hand to make a positive difference, and even running for office.
 UV

A2- Inflation
Top level check

- Other metrics check,

2. ow, normalization of racial violence

3. standardized testing doesn’t give accurate results,

4. uniqueness da, inflation happening rn,

Neg dosent get rid of it

A2 – Holistic worse
1.) Standardized tests uniquely the worse -> they act as a barrier for most colleges, a
requirement for entering. Holistic admissions still exist afterwards. We eliminate and
lower the number of barriers that hurt minority groups -> proven by our statistical
evidence that elimination increases diversity and minority education.

A2- Student Loans

1.) False, more and more schools offer financial aid without loans, empirically proven with
ivy leagues, college cover tuition once you are below certain income levels
2.) Turn, people can only get student loans if they go to college, standardized testing
prevents minorities from even receiving higher level education In the first place, no
hope of future success, forced to work low level jobs with no hope of succeeding

A2- Homeschool

1. Defense, homeschool is a small population, we need to take care of minority problem

2. Like the offense is minimal lol
3. Ur logic is still reliant on some standardized metric being there to evaluate, holistic
evaluation net better

A2 – PIC’s
1.) They don’t negate -> the resolution isn’t a question of one plan versus another, but rather if
the resolution as a general principle is true.

2.) Plants 89 argument.

3.) Doesn’t solve -> discussion is key, and having any tests still urge people to go into this
problematic testing.

A2 – counterplans
1.) aff still better

2.) Perm -> do the reform on the holistic admissions

3.) Don’t solve -> the only way to truly solve is to completely rebalance wealth

4.) doesn’t solve -> it’s not a question of just access to funding but also burdens -> minority
schools don’t teach students to care which means they still don’t get access.

5.) furthermore, access isn’t the only issue. There is unique racism in schools

Ex) school to prison pipeline

Ex) harder punishments towards minorities

A2 tests good
1.) CX teaching to test bad

2.) not good indicator

a.) not based on knowledge

b.) inequal