1AC

STEM

1ACContention 1: STEM

The US is lagging far behind the rest of the world in STEM, specifically in educationDeSilver 2/15 (Drew, a senior writer at Pew Research Center., 2-15-2017, accessed 7-4-2017, "U.S. students’ academic achievement still lags that of their peers in many other countries", Pew Research Center: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/ //ghs-st) *scatterplots omittedHow do U.S. students compare with their peers around the world? Recently released data from international math and science assessments indicate that U.S. students continue to rank around the middle of the pack, and

behind many other advanced industrial nations . One of the biggest cross-national tests is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which every three years measures reading ability, math and science literacy and other key skills among 15-year-olds in dozens of developed and developing countries. The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science. Younger American students fare somewhat better on a similar cross-national assessment, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. That study, known as TIMSS, has tested students in grades four and eight every four years since 1995. In the most recent tests, from 2015, 10 countries (out

of 48 total) had statistically higher average fourth-grade math scores than the U.S., while seven countries had higher average science scores. In the eighth-grade tests, seven out of 37 countries had statistically higher average math scores than the U.S., and seven had higher science scores. Another long-running testing effort is the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a project of the federal Education Department. In the most recent NAEP results, from 2015, average math scores for fourth- and eighth-graders fell for the first time since 1990. A team from Rutgers University is analyzing the NAEP data to try to identify the reasons for the drop in math scores. The average fourth-grade NAEP math score in 2015 was 240 (on a scale of 0 to 500), the same level as in 2009 and down from 242 in 2013. The average eighth-grade score was 282 in 2015, compared with 285 in 2013; that score was the lowest since 2007. (The NAEP has only tested 12th-graders in math four times since 2005; their 2015 average score of 152 on a 0-to-300 scale was one point lower than in 2013 and 2009.) Looked at another way, the 2015 NAEP rated 40% of fourth-graders, 33% of eighth-graders and 25% of 12th-graders as “proficient” or “advanced” in math. While far fewer fourth- and eighth-graders now rate at “below basic,” the lowest performance level (18% and 29%, respectively, versus 50% and 48% in 1990), improvement in the top levels appears to have stalled out. (Among 12th-graders, 38% scored at the lowest performance level in math, a point lower than in 2005.) NAEP also tests U.S. students on science, though not as regularly, and the limited results available indicate some improvement. Between 2009 and 2015, the average scores of both fourth- and eight-graders improved from 150 to 154 (on a 0-to-300 scale), although for 12th-graders the average score remained at 150. In 2015, 38% of fourth-graders, 34% of eighth-graders and 22% of 12th-graders were rated proficient or better in science; 24% of fourth-graders, 32% of eighth-graders and 40% of 12th-graders were rated “below basic.” These results likely won’t surprise too many people. In a 2015 Pew Research Center report, only 29% of Americans rated their country’s K-12 education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (known as STEM) as above average or the best in the world. Scientists were even more critical: A companion survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that just 16% called U.S. K-12 STEM education the best or above average; 46%, in contrast, said K-12 STEM in the U.S. was below average.

A lack of qualified physics teachers is the root cause of the problemMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: https://www.aps.org/about/governance/task-force/upload/ttep-synopsis.pdf //ghs-st)

The Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP) is pleased to present this report as a contribution to the nation’s efforts to improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) literacy for all, and to increase the abilities of a STEM-capable workforce as well as the number of students who pursue STEM careers. We believe that a critical factor in helping the nation achieve these important goals is good teaching at the high school level. Good physics teaching at the high school level is hampered by a severe shortage of well- prepared teachers . This shortage is more pressing in physics than in any other field, and constitutes the primary challenge in providing a high-quality physics education to all students. To address this challenge, the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the American Institute of Physics constituted T-TEP, with members representing all the critical parts of the system under study: physics faculty, education faculty, university administration, high school teachers, and professional organizations. T-TEP found that, except for a handful of isolated models of excellence, the professional preparation of physics teachers is largely inefficient, mostly incoherent, and completely unprepared

to deal with the current and future needs of the nation’s students. During their training, most U.S. physics teachers took only a small number of physics courses and never developed a deep understanding of the subject, instead devoting much of their time to generic education courses that have limited value to practicing physics teachers. Students typically receive no early experiences in teachin g physics before they begin student teaching . In

contrast to this paradigm, research and reports indicate that teachers gain much more

value from courses and workshops that expose them to physics-specific pedagogy and intensive study of physics concepts in the context of learning to

teach physics—and from actually teaching it , with expert mentoring .

Such experiences can incorporate recent research in physics education that has yielded valuable knowledge of effective curricula, instructional methods, and assessment techniques. However, these potentially high-value courses and teaching

experiences are usually not available at institutions that prepare teachers, and in any case they

are almost always overshadowed by the time required for non- subject- specific pedagogical studies . This serious imbalance negatively affects the quality and effectiveness of physics teacher graduates. The fact that most new physics teachers have no exposure to modern knowledge of effective physics pedagogy is a terrible waste of resources and represents a gross inefficiency. Physics teacher preparation at

colleges and universities generally has an “orphan” status, claimed or valued by almost no one, except

as a low-priority sideline activity. This is largely due to the relatively small constituencies represented by prospective teachers of physics; the small numbers imply a large relative expense per graduate since economies of scale are lacking. The challenge is magnified since most high school physics

teachers teach other subjects as well. This implies a need for physics teachers-in-training to receive preparation in one or more additional subjects such as

mathematics, chemistry, or biology, thus straining an already overcrowded curriculum and giving rise to general science methods courses that cannot attend to the many intellectual intricacies of teaching a specific subject. The bottom line is that, with very few exceptions, neither physics departments nor education departments or colleges consider physics teacher preparation to be a significant part of their

mission. Teachers end up in a high school physics classroom through a wide variety of routes. Most

often these do not include either a major or minor in physics, or specific training in

teaching physics. Even the minority that do have a physics background often obtain only very limited pedagogical preparation in alternative or emergency certification programs, brief “in-service” workshops for practicing teachers, or post-baccalaureate programs with no focus on discipline-specific pedagogy. At the school and district level, administrators are often willing to put underqualified teachers in physics classrooms out of perceived short-term needs, even if the ostensibly short-term “solution” turns into a long-term obstacle to high-quality physics instruction. To lay out a plan toward national excellence, T-TEP issues recommendations to physics departments, schools of education, university administrators, school systems, state agencies, and the federal government, as well as to foundations and the business community, all of which have indispensable roles to play to help students be prepared to contribute to a STEM-literate society. Physics is universally recognized as a fundamental and essential STEM discipline. It has been argued that since 21st-century science tackles multidisciplinary problems, school systems should teach science in the interdisciplinary manner in which real science is conducted. We wholeheartedly agree that science should be taught in ways that reflect authentic science and engineering practices, including the use of technology, the incorporation of mathematical modeling, and emphasis on the social and historical contexts in which scientific efforts are situated. That said, we recognize that there are no generic STEM professionals—multidisciplinary teams consist of individuals who have deep grounding in some subject area and are well versed in communicating effectively with colleagues from diverse disciplinary perspectives. Therefore, to prepare a citizenry able to tackle 21st-century multidisciplinary problems, we believe that teachers need a deep understanding both of content within a specific discipline, and of the teaching of that discipline. This report represents the unanimous voice of T-TEP members. Over a period of four years, T-TEP collected and analyzed data through surveys, site visits, literature reviews, and formal and informal input from many individuals and organizations. T-TEP findings and recommendations were combed through, debated, and vetted by every single task force member, with the ultimate goal of presenting to the nation a unified, authoritative account of the current state of physics teacher education along with specific, actionable items for catalyzing an effective response. We believe this is our best chance to turn around the current tide of mediocrity and to put physics in its well-deserved place in the U.S. education system, as the basis of all science and a major way of knowing the world.

Even though the number of students that are taking STEM, the lack of qualified physics teachers leaving them useless compared to the rest of the worldMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: http://www.phystec.org/document/ServeFile.cfm?ID=9845&DocID=1498&DocFID=2602&Attachment=1 //ghs-st)In the United States there are over 23,000 teachers of high school physics who serve students in over 20,000 public and private high schools. While many of these high school

physics teachers are excellent educators, we are concerned that only a third of U.S. physics teachers

have a major in physics or physics education. While about 400 high school physics teachers are

hired each year with such qualifications, the rate at which we need new teachers in classrooms

to fill gaps produced by retirement or individuals taking other positions outside of teaching is approximately

1,200 per year. In many states, weak standards for certification or endorsement to teach

physics hide the fact that many teachers of physics lack the content knowledge and focused pedagogical preparation necessary to provide an excellent physics education for all students. The scarcity

of qualified physics teachers is exacerbated by the annual increase in both number and fraction of high school students who take physics.

Scenario 1: Innovation

Creating a physics teacher program spills over to all sectors of STEM – physics is a pre-requisite – only the aff is key because we need more teachersMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: http://www.phystec.org/document/ServeFile.cfm?ID=9845&DocID=1498&DocFID=2602&Attachment=1 //ghs-st)To be sure, the nation needs more teachers who themselves have a strong background in physics. More importantly, however, it needs educators who can lead others in

developing a deep understanding of physics. Research on the effectiveness of the high school physics course and on student learning in physics paints an alarming picture. Studies correlating effects of matriculation in high school physics courses and

success in the introductory physics course in college show that having taken high school physics has no larger an effect on success in the introductory college physics course than having taken high school mathematics instead. In addition, numerous physics education research studies conducted at the college level suggest that the overwhelming majority of students arrive in college without deep understanding of foundational ideas in physics, such as Newton’s laws of motion. Of course there are counterexamples—there are many high school physics teachers who have a profoundly positive effect on their students’ understanding of physics and love for physics. The challenge is to identify the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of such exemplars and build physics teacher education programs that focus intentionally on the development of these qualities in their prospective physics teachers in sufficient numbers to meet the national need. The state of high school physics ultimately affects the health of the physics profession. Physics faculty care about providing a substantive and meaningful encounter between their intellectual passion and their students (whether these students take one physics course or commit to becoming physics majors). Physics faculty should therefore also be concerned about the quality of that encounter before students reach them. A plausible causal chain connects students who receive sub-optimal physics instruction in high

school with a decreasing fraction of physics majors relative to other STEM majors in college, which in turn affects physics department size and ability to attract U.S. physics grad uate students . Public perceptions of the efficacy of

physics as an enterprise also affect public funding for science research and university

budget allocations for science programs. For members of the physics community, perhaps the most alarming prospect is that of a citizenry that fails to appreciate physics as a liberal arts discipline—its unique way of knowing and its unique approach to satisfying and stimulating curiosity about the natural world. Members of the physics community, particularly physics departments, need to recognize what they stand to gain by a transformed physics teacher professional preparation system and what they stand to lose by preserving the status quo.

STEM innovation is key to a LL of impactsLips and McNeill 9 (Dan, worker at the heritage foundation, daily signal, Goldwater Institute, US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and currently works at US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, got a BA in ptx from Stanford, Jena Baker, is the Senior Director, Government Relations at U.S. Travel Association, has worked in the Department of Homeland Security, Senate, and the Heritage Foundation, graduated from U of Arkansas, and U of Maryland College Park, 4/15/9, accessed 7/7/17, “A New Approach to Improving Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education” Heritage Foundation: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED505676.pdf //ghs-st)Unfortunately, experience of the past 50 years suggests that such federal initiatives are unlikely to solve the fundamental problem of American underperformance in STEM education—the limited number of students who complete elementary and secondary school with the skills and knowledge to pursue STEM

coursework in higher education and succeed in many parts of the workforce. The American education system is supposed to be a pipeline that prepares children in elementary and secondary school to pursue opportunities in post-secondary education and in the workforce. It is well known that this pipeline is leaky—that millions of children pass through their K–12 years without receiving a quality education. Too many students drop out and, all too often, those who do earn a high school degree lack the academic qualifications to succeed in STEM fields in college or in the workforce. Improving learning in STEM education should remain a priority for American policymakers.

For students, succeeding in K–12 STEM classes will open the door to future opportunities in higher education, and in the workforce. Also, ensuring that the next generation of American workers has adequate skills and training in critical areas is vital to America’s national security and economic competitiveness. If the United States lacks the tools to combat aggressors, America’s future is at risk . Wars are won partly

with superior tech nologies—and America’s survival depends on its ability to maintain an advantage over its enemies. U.S. scientists and engineers work every day to develop new tools to protect Americans from terror ism ,

such as lasers and explosives-detection devices. Tackling pressing global problems — from energy security to vulnerable cyber infrastructure—will require the intellectual curiosity and creativity of STEM- educated individuals.

Scenario 2: Inequality

Large amounts of race disparities in STEM now – a good education is key to solveRandazzo 5/17 (Matthew, the chief executive officer of the National Math and Science Initiative., 5-10-2017, accessed 7-4-2017, "Students Shouldn't Live in STEM Deserts", US News & World Report: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2017-05-10/the-us-must-address-disparities-in-access-to-stem-education //ghs-st)

More than ever, a high-quality math and science education is the foundation for opportunity. By 2020, almost two-thirds of all jobs will require post- secondary education or training – education that is supported by the

critical thinking and problem-solving skills learned in math and science . In the same period,

almost as many jobs will require basic literacy in science, technology, engineering and math. Yet, we as a nation continue with a familiar pattern in which access to high-quality STEM learning is unevenly distributed. Millions of students across the country live in what we call STEM deserts – school communities without access to rigorous and engaging math and science courses. Lack of STEM access is a critical equity issue in education , particularly for students in urban and rural communities, where access to high-level math and science courses is often out of reach. Soon, the impact of students living in STEM deserts will not only be reflected in those students'

high school and college competition rates, but will also take a toll on the country's technological superiority, its economy and national security .

The plan solves the racial disparity which allows people of colour to succeedMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: http://www.phystec.org/document/ServeFile.cfm?ID=9845&DocID=1498&DocFID=2602&Attachment=1 //ghs-st)In addition to impacting negatively the nation’s economy and security, inadequate science education threatens the very foundation of our democracy, as our educational system fails to provide members of racial and ethnic

minorities and the poor with the knowledge and skills they will require to participate meaningfully in crucial social decisions of ever increasing scientific and technological complexity. For instance, on the 2005 eighth grade National Assessment of Educational Progress in science, the achievement gaps between Caucasian and African American students ,

between Caucasian and Hispanic students, and between low-poverty and high-poverty students were roughly equivalent to three whole years of learning . Unequal

access to good science extends to our nation’s high schools. While the percentage of African American and Hispanic high school students taking physics is increasing, their participation (23% and 24%, respectively) still lags behind that of Caucasian

students (36%). High poverty schools, which also tend to have high percentages of students from groups underrepresented in the sciences, are less likely to offer advanced physics (AP or second year) and more likely not to offer physics at all. For example, 23% of high school students in New York City

attend schools that do not offer physics, and these students are disproportionately poor and members of underrepresented groups. 

Racial and economic inequality is a form of structural violence that condemns entire populations to preventable suffering and death. Bezruchka 14 — Stephen Bezruchka, Senior Lecturer in Health Services and Global Health at the School of Public Health at the University of Washington, holds a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University and an M.D. from Stanford University, 2014 (“Inequality Kills,” Divided: The Perils of Our Growing Inequality, Edited by David Cay Johnston, Published by The New Press, ISBN 9781595589446, p. 194-195)Differences in mortality rates are not just a statistical concern—they reflect suffering and pain for very real individuals and families. The higher mortality in the United States is an example of what Paul Farmer, the noted physician and anthropologist, calls

structural violence. The forty-seven infant deaths occur every day because of the way society in the United States is structured, resulting in our health status being that of a middle-income country, not a rich country. There is growing evidence that the factor most responsible for the relatively poor health in the United States is the vast and rising inequality in wealth and income that we not only tolerate, but resist changing.

Inequality is the central element , the upstream cause of the social disadvantage described in the IOM report. A political system that fosters inequality limits the attainment of health. The claim that economic inequality is a major reason for our poor health requires that several standard criteria for claiming causality are satisfied: the results are confirmed by many different studies by different investigators over different time periods; there is a dose-response relationship , meaning more inequality leads to worse health; no other contending explanation is posited; and the relationship is biologically plausible , with likely mechanisms through which inequality works. The field of study

called stress biology of social comparisons is one such way inequality acts. Those studies confirm that all the criteria for linking inequality to poorer health are met, concluding that the extent of inequality in society reflects the range of caring and sharing, with more unequal populations sharing less. Those who are poorer struggle to be accepted in society and the rich also suffer its effects. A recent Harvard study estimated that about one death in three in this country results from our very high income inequality. Inequality kills through structural violence . There is no smoking gun with this form of violence, which simply produces a lethally large social and economic gap between rich and poor .

NSF

1ACContention 2: NSF

Trump is massively cutting the NSF’s budget – that comes from CyberCorps and EPSCoR – even if the budget is dead – specifically NSF internal cuts are inevitable in the squoJeffrey Mervis, Reporter on Science Policy in the United States and Internationally, Covering Science Policy for 30+ Years, including work at Nature and with ScienceMag for 24 years, “NSF Offers Arms-Length Defense of Trump’s 2018 Request,” Science Magazine, 06/27/17, http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/nsf-offers-arm-s-length-defense-trump-s-2018-requestPresident Donald Trump’s proposal for an 11.3% cut in spending at the National Science Foundation ( NSF ) may be dead on arrival in Congress. But that doesn’t mean congressional appropriators will be able to avoid any squeeze on NSF’s budget .¶ Representative John Culberson (R–TX), who chairs the House of Representatives spending panel that oversees NSF, opened a hearing yesterday on NSF’s 2018 budget request by saying he will work “to ensure NSF is appropriately funded” in the fiscal year that begins on 1 October. But after the hearing, Culberson declined to say whether that would require preserving its 2017 budget of $7.47 billion.¶ “I’ve personally ensured that NASA has received an appropriate level of funding because of the work that they do,” Culberson explained, referring to boosts this year in both the agency’s overall budget and its space science programs. “NSF is also a national treasure.” But when asked whether “appropriate” funding for NSF rules out a cut, Culberson would say only that “I’ve already given you a great answer.”¶ It was clear from yesterday’s hearing that neither Culberson nor the Democrats on

the spending panel are fans of Trump’s budget request for the agency. And NSF Director France Córdova

did what she could to distance herself from the results of an exercise in which NSF officials were forced to propose $820 million in cuts from current spending.¶ “That wasn’t your idea, was it?” Representative Matt Cartwright (D–PA)

asked Córdova, putting her in an awkward situation. “NSF is an executive branch agency , and this is the president’s budget ,” replied Córdova, a Senate-confirmed appointee of former President Barack Obama who is halfway through a 6-year term.¶ After the hearing, Córdova described how NSF followed White House orders to slice the agency’s budget to levels last seen a decade ago in current dollars—and 15 years ago if inflation is factored in. The goal, she said, was to preserve “core” research programs while also throttling back on

programs that had expanded rapidly in recent years.¶ “There isn’t another agency that just allows researchers to submit their own curiosity-driven research ideas,” she explained. “We call that the core, and to me it means principal investigator–driven research. And we wanted to be sure that there was still an agency on the planet that would continue to fund curiosity-driven, fundamental research.”¶ “But we also looked at the growth of everything over the last decade, by major program,” she added. “And we saw that some programs had experienced really, really big growth,” ticking off NSF’s graduate research fellowships, the Established

Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and the CyberCorps Scholarship for

Service. “So we took those off the table.”¶ Under the 2018 request, the next class of graduate fellows would be cut in half, from 2000 to 1000. EPSCoR, a long-

running program begun by Congress that helps states that receive relatively few NSF research grants, was trimmed by $60 million, or 37% , and the new CyberCorps program would drop by 20% , or $10 million .¶ That pruning reduced the overall size of the cut needed to around 9%, she said. Each of the agency’s research directorates were then told to find ways to cut that amount from their budgets. “We didn’t want to just spread it like peanut butter across every program,” she explained. The cuts to the three major activities were done in consultation with Trump budget officials, she added.¶ In her testimony, Córdova insisted that “we still have a lot of money” to do the cutting-edge research that has been a hallmark of the agency since it was created in 1950. But she also signaled her hope that Congress would come to the rescue. “The budget presents us with challenges ,” she acknowledged, “but it is not final until Congress weighs in. And scientists are anxiously waiting to see how it all unfolds.”

Scenario 1: CyberCorps

The Cyber Corps program is critical in strengthening public cyber security by providing scholarships in exchange for service – the NSF has above a 93% government placement rate nowWennergren et al, October 15 – David Wennergren et al., Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer at Professional Services Council, Previously Worked at US Department of Defense, and Ramon Barquin, President & Chief Executive Officer at Barquin International, and Shelley Metzenbaum, Seniorr Fellow & Self-Employed, Previous Good Government Catalyst at Open Data Enterprise Event, Previous Founding President of the Volcker Alliance, Previous Associate Director of Performance and Personnel Management at the White House Office of Management and Budget, and Alan Shark, Executive Director and CEO of Public Technology Institute, All Authors are/were Fellows of the National Academy of Public Administration, “Increasing the Effectiveness of the Federal Role in Cybersecurity Education,” National Academy of Public Administration, October 2015, http://napawash.org/images/reports/2015/Increasing_Effectiveness_of_Federal_Role_in_Cyber_Education.pdfThe CyberCorps®: SFS program is an interagency program for scholarships and grants to colleges and universities , administered by the NSF with cooperation from DHS , NSA and the Office of Personnel Management

(OPM); it has been operating since 2001.13 According to the NSF, the SFS program is designed to increase and strengthen the cadre of federal information assurance professionals that protect the government’s critical information infrastructure . It supplies grants to schools for student scholarships . Grants are administered by the receiving school and the school takes responsibility for awarding scholarships to students . The students are required to find employment (including an internship) in the public sector upon graduation, to keep the scholarship from turning into a loan that has to be repaid to the government. As of FY 2010 (latest available data), the government placement rate was above 93%, according to NSF.14 The SFS program provides additional grants to the participating colleges and universities to improve their cybersecurity education programs , including capacity-building in academic departments (facilities, professors, and so on). These

capacitybuilding grants in recent years have ranged from $300,000 to $900,000, ranging from one to three years in length15 The grants are renewable if NSF approves an acceptable renewal grant application which includes a review of the past use of funds. The program was recently

reaffirmed by Congress in the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014.16 The Director of NSF is charged with determining the “eligible degree programs” and the “qualifications” a college or university must meet to participate in the program.17

A steady supply of cybersecurity experts is critical to protect the nationals critical infrastructures – lack of workforce makes attacks extremely likely and damagingGAO 4/4 – GAO, United States Government Accountability Office, “Federal Efforts Are Under Way That May Address Workforce Challenges,” GAO, 04/04/2017, http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/683923.pdfFederal agencies and our nation’s critical infrastructures —such as energy,

transportation systems, communications, and financial services— are dependent on computerized ( cyber ) information systems and electronic data to carry out operations and to process , maintain, and report essential information. The information systems and networks that support federal operations are highly complex and dynamic, technologically diverse, and often geographically dispersed. This complexity increases the difficulty in identifying, managing, and protecting the myriad of operating systems, applications, and devices comprising the systems and networks. The security of federal information systems and data is vital to public confidence and the nation’s safety , prosperity, and well-being.

However, systems used by federal agencies are often riddled with security vulnerabilities—both known and unknown. For example, the national vulnerability database maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

identified 82,384 publicly known cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exposures as of February 9, 2017, with more being added each day. Federal systems and networks are also often interconnected with other internal and external

systems and networks, including the Internet, thereby increasing the number of avenues of attack and expanding their attack surface . In addition, cyber threats to systems supporting the federal government and critical infrastructure are evolving and becoming more sophisticated . These

threats come from a variety of sources and vary in terms of the types and capabilities of the actors, their willingness to act, and their motives. For example, foreign nations—where adversaries possess sophisticated levels of

expertise and significant resources to pursue their objectives—pose increasing risks.¶

Cybersecurity professionals can help to prevent or mitigate the vulnerabilities that could allow malicious individuals and groups access to federal IT systems. The ability to secure federal systems depends on the knowledge, skills, and abilities of the federal and contractor workforce that uses, implements, secures, and maintains these systems. This includes federal and contractor employees who use the IT systems in the course of their work as well as the designers, developers, programmers, and administrators of the programs and systems. However, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has noted that the

federal government and private industry face a persistent shortage of cybersecurity and IT talent to implement and oversee information security protections to combat cyber threats. In addition, the RAND Corporation2 and the Partnership for Public Service3 have reported that there is a nationwide shortage of cybersecurity experts, in particular in the federal government. According to these reports, this shortage of cybersecurity professionals makes securing the nation’s networks more challenging and may leave federal IT systems vulnerable to malicious attacks .

Cyberattacks threaten nuclear response – the DoD is willing to go nuclearBiddle 13 – Sam Biddle, Senior Writer at Gawker, Internally Citing the Pentagon’s Report: Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat, “Pentagon: Let’s Threaten Nuke Strike Against Hackers,” Gizmodo, 3/06/13, http://gizmodo.com/5988914/pentagon-lets-threaten-nuke-strike-against-hackers http://gizmodo.com/5988914/pentagon-lets-threaten-nuke-strike-against-hackersMost of us are content keeping hackers away with a firewall and decent password. But the Pentagon isn't nearly content, and in a new report, insists we should keep our nuclear arsenal ready for Internet retaliation. What could go wrong?¶ The report, "Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat," was prepared by the Department of Defense's Defense Science Board, and over the course of 138 pages makes one very clear point: if China ever hacks us, "Protect the Nuclear Strike as a Deterrent." The phrase is repeated again and again—the word "nuclear" appears 113 times in a report ostensibly dealing with computer warfare. The entire thing is riddled with jargon, euphemism, and rosy military metaphor—climbing the ladder of deterrence!—but the notion that American nukes could (and should!) be part of the "cyber war" equation (and insulated against any electronic disruption) is unequivocal.¶ Let's put it plainly: China should know that we have nukes, tons of 'em, and if China's stellar hacker platoon s ever tried to, say, bring down a n American satellite , destabilize a dam, or switch off an enormous chunk of the power grid as part of an open military attack, they should be thinking about our nuclear missiles coming back in return. The US government has already said that it'd consider internet-based offensives an act of war that'd have IRL consequences, but nuking as a response to DDoS has never been so explicit. "The United States would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in 'extreme circumstances,'" the report says. And that's always been the case: you nuke us, we'll nuke you. But now the definition of what circumstances are extreme is entirely remade : "Presumably one would characterize a catastrophic Tier V-VI adversary cyber attack on the United States as 'extreme circumstances.'"¶ Wait—what's a Tier V-VI adversary cyber attack? That's simple: "States with the ability to successfully execute full spectrum (cyber capabilities in combination with all of their military and intelligence capabilities) operations to achieve a specific outcome in political, military, economic, etc. domains."¶ States like us.¶ Careful, Pentagon—this is one hell of a precedent.

Scenario 2: R&D

The EBSCoR program is essential to help states compete in R&D developmentHarris 1/12 – Luke A. Harris, Analyst in Science and Technology Policy, “Establish Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR): Background and Selected Issues,” Congressional Research Service, 01/12/2017, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44689.pdfNational Science Foundation NSF’s EPSCoR program was established in 1978 by a resolution of the National Science Board (NSB). 8 Congress directed initial appropriations for the program in FY1979. 9 NSF’s EPSCoR was formally established in

statute in 1988 to assist states that “historically have receive d relatively little Federal [ R&D ] funding ” and have “ demonstrated a commitment to develop their research bases and improve science and engineering research and education .” 10 The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 directed NSF to continue the program “with the objective of helping eligible States to develop the research infrastructure that will make them more competitive for Foundation and other Federal research funding.”11 According to NSF, the overall program mission is to advance excellence in science and engineering research and education in order to

achieve sustainable increases in research, education, and training capacity and competitiveness that will enable EPSCoR jurisdictions to have increased engagement in areas supported by the NSF. 12 NSF states that EPSCoR’s goals are to provide strategic programs and opportunities for EPSCoR participants that stimulate sustainable improvements in their R&D capacity and competitiveness; [ and ] to advance science and engineering

capabilities in EPSCoR jurisdictions for discovery , innovation and overall knowledge-based prosperity . 13 EPSCoR program objectives further include broadening participation of diverse groups in

EPSCoR projects and establishing science, technology, engineering, and math ( STEM ) education , training , and professional development opportunities that advance research and workforce development needs identified by each jurisdiction. 14 NSF’s EPSCoR program is broadly set up as federal-jurisdiction partnerships . To participate in the EPSCoR program, an eligible jurisdiction is required to form its own EPSCoR steering committee15 and to develop a science and technology (S&T) plan specific to the jurisdiction’s needs and goals. Each steering committee is expected to undertake “a recent comprehensive analysis of the strengths, barriers, and opportunities for further development of its institutions in support of overall objectives in research, education, and innovation.”16 Through these activities, steering committees work closely with partners in academia, government, and the private sector to build statewide networks. The funding awards structure for the NSF EPSCoR program has changed over time. In 1980, NSF awarded the first EPSCoR planning grants to seven states to support establishment of state steering committees, identify barriers to research competitiveness, and suggest possible remedies.17 Building from that work, five states subsequently developed successful research grant proposals and received five years of initial funding, primarily to support individual investigators. In the 1990s, award levels increased, and the grant focus changed to support for research clusters and statewide proposals for infrastructure development. 18 In the 2000s, NSF’s EPSCoR program was moved to the Office of Integrative Activities (OIA) and developed to include the three current investment components: Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) awards, co-funding, and outreach/workshops.

State-by-state R&D is the key internal link to innovation and economic success – but a state’s “go at it alone” approach fails.Andes and Muro 13 – Scott Andes, Senior Policy Associate and Associate Fellow at the Centennial Scholar Initiative, Mark Muro, Senior Fellow and Policy Director at the Metropolitan Policy Program, “State Government Step Up R&D Investment,” The Brookings Institute, 11/20/2013, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2013/11/20/state-governments-step-up-rd-investment/Conventional wisdom holds that some areas of public policy impact the entire country and are therefore inherently national. One obvious case in point is national security, where a single, unified security policy is essential for the country’s defense. Another is the nation’s research and development (R&D) enterprise, which has also typically been viewed as the special province of the federal government.¶ Yet now with federal paralysis pandemic, state and local leaders are taking control of their economic destinies and asserting themselves in many areas traditionally left to Washington—and R&D is no exception. ¶ According to recent data from the National Science Foundation, state government R&D expenditures increased by 11.3 percent between 2010 and 2011, while federal investments declined 9 percent during the same time period.¶ The academic literature on innovation systems has generally placed nations at the center of the analysis , emphasizing national tax, trade, intellectual property, and education policies. More specifically, the argument goes, R&D provides the nation with a number of positive externalities that are diminished when state and regional competition creates barriers to interstate knowledge exchange. Better to leave the federal government at the helm of large-scale investments and to drive coordination across multiple sub-national jurisdictions. While this may have been a valid point in the 1980s and 1990s when “national innovation systems” research was in its heyday, the way in which R&D is performed today is fundamentally different . ¶ In the past R&D has been organized vertically by a few very large domestic firms, universities, and national labs. Think Bell Labs. In such a climate there is no need to “go regional,” as national leaders can interact directly with the handful of major research-performing firms. Today, however, R&D is increasingly organized horizontally through thousands of small-and medium-sized firms across hundreds of complex supply chains . In such a climate, clusters, not countries, matter. Nevada R&D may be motivated by rapid tech nology transfer to young software firms, while Tennessee needs greater large scale investments in lightweight composites. What works in one region doesn’t work everywhere . ¶ To be sure, states can’t go it alone—the federal government can and should ramp up national R&D investments . But in the meantime,

successful state and regional leaders —public, private, and philanthropic—recognize R&D investments are a critical fuel of regional economic success . Innovation precedes exports, foreign direct investment, higher wages, and better standards of living . No wonder these leaders aren’t waiting for the federal government but are investing in research that supports their firms and unique industry clusters today.

Innovation’s key to maintaining US Hegemony. Every tool that retains foreign policy leadership hinges on strong innovation. Troyjo ‘16Marcos Troyjo, Adjunct Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs and Global Affairs Scholar at Columbia University. Troyjo is the founder of the Center for Business Diplomacy, an independent think-tank on global entrepreneurship. He holds a PhD in sociology of international relations from the University of São Paulo and pursued postdoctoral studies at Columbia University. An economist and political scientist, he is an alumnus of The Rio Branco Institute (Instituto Rio Branco), the graduate school of international relations and diplomatic academy of Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He undertook additional graduate studies at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. “The New Age Of Talent” – Huffington Post - Oct 14, 2016 - - #CutWithKirby - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-new-age-of-talent_us_580140b4e4b0985f6d157076The emergence of ‘Talentism’ as a key factor in the global economy is revolutionizing traditional notions of power, prosperity and prestige

The relative weight of a ny country in international relations can be

traditionally measured at three levels: its dissuasive strength in terms of defense

forces ; the prosperity of its citizens and companies ; and its influence as

projected through intangible values. As far as all of these are concerned, innovation is the key. And innovation is something that is produced by elites. This has been well explained

from the time of the pioneering Schumpeter up until Acemoglu and Robinson and their essential book Why Nations Fail. Those who turn their backs on the knowledge, business, and policy-

making elites that can bring about innovation become increasingly irrelevant nations. The outcome is diminished traditional power , a low degree of

technological density in the economy, and a limited soft power projection. The only way forward is to encourage elites to adopt one of two types of innovation strategies: either creative destruction or creative adaptation. The former means that the economy is in a permanent state of ‘evolutionary chaos.’ Innovators are the only ones to survive in a context of constant mutation. The replacement of typewriters by computers is a typical example of creative destruction. Argentina used to be a wealthy country at the beginning of the 20th century thanks to agriculture and livestock. Its elite was well educated but little disposed to innovation. As a result, it entered the 21st century relatively poor. Meanwhile, the United States has been progressing since the 19th century thanks to its radically innovative elite. It became the

wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world.

Failed US leadership causes global wars and extinction. No alternative to US hegemony will safely emerge. Brzezinski ‘12 Zbigniew K. Brzezinski - CSIS counselor and trustee and cochairs the CSIS Advisory Board, holds honorary degrees from Georgetown University, Williams College, Fordham University, College of the Holy Cross, Alliance College, the Catholic University of Lublin, Warsaw University, and Vilnius University. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards) February 2012 “After America” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/03/after_america?page=0,0For if America falters, the world is unlikely to be dominated by a single preeminent successor -- not

even China. International uncertainty, increased tension among global competitors, and even

outright chaos would be far more likely outcomes. While a sudden, massive crisis of the American system -- for instance, another financial crisis -- would produce a fast-moving chain reaction leading to global political and economic disorder, a steady drift by America into increasingly pervasive decay

or endlessly widening warfare with Islam would be unlikely to produce, even by 2025, an effective global successor. No single power will be ready by then to exercise the role that the world, upon the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, expected the United States to play: the leader of a new, globally cooperative world order. More probable would be a protracted phase of rather inconclusive realignments of both global and regional power , with no

grand winners and many more losers , in a setting of international uncertainty and even of potentially fatal risks to global well-being . Rather than a world where dreams of democracy flourish, a Hobbesian world of enhanced national security based on varying fusions of authoritarianism, nationalism, and religion could ensue. RELATED 8 Geopolitically Endangered Species The leaders of the world's second-rank powers, among them India, Japan, Russia, and some European countries, are already assessing the potential impact of U.S. decline on their respective national interests. The Japanese, fearful of an assertive China dominating the Asian mainland, may be thinking of closer links with Europe. Leaders in India and Japan may be considering closer political and even military cooperation in case America falters and China rises. Russia, while perhaps engaging in wishful thinking (even schadenfreude) about America's uncertain

prospects, will almost certainly have its eye on the independent states of the former Soviet Union. Europe, not yet cohesive, would likely be pulled in several directions: Germany and Italy toward Russia because of commercial interests, France and insecure Central Europe in favor of a politically tighter European Union, and Britain toward manipulating a balance within the EU while preserving its special relationship with a declining United States. Others may move more rapidly to carve out their own regional spheres: Turkey in the

area of the old Ottoman Empire, Brazil in the Southern Hemisphere, and so forth. None of these countries, however, will have the requisite combination of economic, financial, technological, and military power even to consider inheriting America's leading role. China, invariably mentioned as America's prospective successor, has an impressive imperial lineage and a strategic tradition of carefully calibrated patience, both of which have been critical to its overwhelmingly successful, several-thousand-year-long history. China thus prudently accepts the existing international system, even if it does not view the prevailing hierarchy as permanent. It recognizes that success depends not on the system's dramatic collapse but on its evolution toward a gradual redistribution of power. Moreover, the basic reality is that China is not yet ready to assume in full America's role in the world. Beijing's leaders themselves have repeatedly

emphasized that on every important measure of development, wealth, and power, China will still be a modernizing and developing state several decades from now, significantly behind not only the United States but also Europe and Japan in the major per capita indices of modernity and national power.

Accordingly, Chinese leaders have been restrained in laying any overt claims to global leadership. At some stage, however, a more assertive Chinese nationalism could arise and damage China's international interests. A swaggering, nationalistic Beijing would unintentionally mobilize a powerful regional coalition against itself. None of China's key neighbors -- India, Japan,

and Russia -- is ready to acknowledge China's entitlement to America's place on the global totem pole. They might even seek support from a waning America to offset an overly assertive China. The resulting regional scramble could become intense , especially given the similar nationalistic tendencies among China's neighbors. A phase of acute international tension in Asia could ensue . Asia of the 21st century could then begin to resemble Europe of

the 20th century -- violent and bloodthirsty . At the same time, the security of a number of weaker states located geographically next to major regional

powers also depends on the international status quo reinforced by America's global preeminence -- and would be made significantly more vulnerable in proportion

to America's decline. The states in that exposed position -- including Georgia, Taiwan, South Korea, Belarus, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, and the greater Middle East -- are today's geopolitical equivalents of nature's most endangered species.

Their fates are closely tied to the nature of the international environment left behind by a waning America, be it ordered and restrained or, much more likely, self-serving and expansionist. A faltering United States could also find its strategic partnership with Mexico in jeopardy. America's economic resilience and political stability have so far mitigated many of the challenges posed by such sensitive neighborhood issues as economic dependence, immigration, and the narcotics trade. A decline in American power, however, would likely undermine the health and good judgment of the U.S. economic and political systems. A waning U nited S tates would likely be more nationalistic , more defensive about its national identity, more paranoid about its homeland security, and less willing to sacrifice resources for the sake of others' development. The worsening of relations between a declining America and an internally troubled Mexico could even give rise to a particularly ominous phenomenon: the emergence, as a major issue in nationalistically aroused Mexican politics, of territorial claims justified by history and ignited by cross-border incidents. Another consequence of American decline could be a corrosion of the generally cooperative management of the global commons -- shared interests such as sea lanes , space, cyberspace, and the environment , whose protection is imperative to the long-term growth of the global economy and the continuation of basic geopolitical stability. In almost every case, the potential absence of a constructive and influential U.S. role would fatally undermine the essential communality of the global commons because the superiority and ubiquity of American power creates order where there would normally be conflict. None of this will necessarily come to pass. Nor is the concern that America's decline would generate global insecurity, endanger some vulnerable states, and produce a more troubled North American neighborhood an argument for U.S. global supremacy. In fact, the strategic complexities of the world in the 21st century make such supremacy unattainable. But those dreaming today of America's collapse would probably come to regret it. And as the world after America would be increasingly complicated and chaotic, it is imperative that the United States pursue a new, timely strategic vision for its foreign policy -- or start bracing itself for a dangerous slide into global turmoil.

Plan

1AC — PlanText: The United States federal government should develop a discipline-specific teacher professional recruitment, preparation, and development program for physics teachers that includes high-quality physics-specific pedagogy.

Solvency

1ACContention 3: Solvency

An increase of funding and preparation is critical to solve, prefer our reverse causal evidenceMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: https://www.aps.org/about/governance/task-force/upload/ttep-synopsis.pdf //ghs-st)The U nited S tates should take significant steps to alleviate the severe shortage of qualified physics teachers. 12. Physics departments and

schools of education should design certification pathways for individuals in various populations to become well-prepared physics teachers:

undergraduate students who have not yet chosen a major, undergraduate STEM majors, graduate students in STEM disciplines, STEM teachers who may not yet be prepared to teach physics,

and STEM professionals such as engineers, scientists, and laboratory technicians. a. Active recruitment of STEM students into physics teaching is necessary to increase the number of physics teachers . The recruiting pool should be 27 T-TEP broad and include undergraduates as well as graduate students, physics majors as well as other STEM majors who have sufficient physics background or can acquire it. b. Teacher prep aration programs should have streamlined pathways for STEM research professionals as well as for experienced STEM teachers, respecting and capitalizing on the different experiences of each of these groups. While STEM professionals and experienced STEM teachers both require high-quality instruction in physics content along with physics-specific pedagogical education , the physics teacher endorsement program should not require an extensive amount of time to complete and should be designed to accommodate the special scheduling constraints of these professionals. c. Special pathways for STEM professionals and experienced STEM teachers will have significant intersections with pathways designed for undergraduate teacher preparation. To promote interaction and discussion among diverse student groups and to increase enrollment in courses on physics- specific pedagogy , these courses should be structured to simultaneously enroll undergraduate STEM majors, in-service STEM teachers, and post-baccalaureate STEM professionals.

An increase of NSF funding into education leads to an increase of the overall NSF budgetMoore 3/28 (James E., professor and vice dean for Academic Programs in the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering, and a professor in the USC Price School of Public Policy., 3-28-2017, accessed 7-9-2017, "Why Trump is right to question research funding: Guest commentary", LA News: http://www.dailynews.com/opinion/20170328/why-trump-is-right-to-question-research-funding-guest-commentary //ghs-st)

President Trump ’s “America First” budget blueprint calls for eliminating about 20 independent agencies, and eliminating multiple agencies and programs across federal departments. While disquieting to many, and silent on the crucial matter of entitlement programs, the president’s budget proposal still forces an overdue examination of the legitimate role of government. All of the agencies and programs the president calls for eliminating serve constructive purposes. But are the purposes important enough to justify expropriating the taxpayer funds needed to support them? Even if the benefits of most of these programs exceed their costs, do these benefits exceed the benefits that would otherwise flow from leaving more taxpayer dollars with taxpayers? Households and firms do only one of two things with their money. They spend it or they invest it, and both activities expand the economy. Some of the agencies the president’s budget eliminates are highly visible, such as the National Endowment for the Arts. Some are more obscure, such as the Corporation for National and Community Service. None of them, though, are engaged in activities so compelling that public authority necessarily should be reaching into the pockets of taxpayers to enable the work. Proposing their elimination forces an examination of this question, and in many cases the right answer will be pull back from the activity. The budget blueprint calls for a funding reduction of 18 percent for the National Institutes of Health, largely as a function of reorganization. Similar opportunities exist at the National Science Foundation. But the NSF is absent from the budget

proposal, and universities across the country are anxious to know whether the NSF will be affected by the president’s agenda. This is because one of the ways universities measure quality is by the number of doctoral graduates each institution produces, on the sometimes fanciful assumption that more doctoral graduates translates into more placements on faculties. Federal research funds are of central importance to doctoral programs , and reductions in funding would force a change in the way universities compete . The NSF mostly supports research in basic science and engineering . Both NIH and

NSF research funds are awarded in intensively competitive processes. The long-run economic benefits provided by the results these research projects generate very probably justify the tax burden necessary to achieve them. If we could remove the past century of physical and natural science research results from our lives, the quality of our existence would be dramatically diminished. However, there are elements of the NSF agenda that do not pass this test. The NSF’s fiscal year budget request for 2017 was just under $8 billion. The support requested for research in the social, behavioral and economic sciences is only a small portion of this, under $300 million, but the most appropriate level is zero. If we could eliminate the last century of social science research results from our lives, it is hard to know what would change. The NSF’s request for Education and Human Resources accounts for just under $1 billion. Most of these expenditures could cease with little or no impact on the quality or volume of scientific research done in the United States. They should. The most important expenditures, such as support for graduate research fellowships, are a reasonably small share of this total, and if retained could be folded into the foundation’s competitive research funding programs. If half of the NSF’s EHR budget was shifted to research, and the other half conserved, NSF research funding could still be expanded by 3 percent , even if social science research funding was completely eliminated. Total agency expenses would be reduced by over 9 percent, half the NIH benchmark. Completely eliminating social science and EHR expenditures would reduce the NSF budget by over 15 percent, and the NSF could still fund just as much meaningful research as ever . Many such reforms are possible, but this means more attention to priorities than we have paid in the past. The president and his budget advisors are on the right track.

Advantages

STEM

GeneralThe US is lagging far behind the rest of the world in STEM, specifically in educationDeSilver 2/15 (Drew, a senior writer at Pew Research Center., 2-15-2017, accessed 7-4-2017, "U.S. students’ academic achievement still lags that of their peers in many other countries", Pew Research Center: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/ //ghs-st) *scatterplots omittedHow do U.S. students compare with their peers around the world? Recently released data from international math and science assessments indicate that U.S. students continue to rank around the middle of the pack, and

behind many other advanced industrial nations . One of the biggest cross-national tests is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which every three years measures reading ability, math and science literacy and other key skills among 15-year-olds in dozens of developed and developing countries. The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science. Younger American students fare somewhat better on a similar cross-national assessment, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. That study, known as TIMSS, has tested students in grades four and eight every four years since 1995. In the most recent tests, from 2015, 10 countries (out

of 48 total) had statistically higher average fourth-grade math scores than the U.S., while seven countries had higher average science scores. In the eighth-grade tests, seven out of 37 countries had statistically higher average math scores than the U.S., and seven had higher science scores. Another long-running testing effort is the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a project of the federal Education Department. In the most recent NAEP results, from 2015, average math scores for fourth- and eighth-graders fell for the first time since 1990. A team from Rutgers University is analyzing the NAEP data to try to identify the reasons for the drop in math scores. The average fourth-grade NAEP math score in 2015 was 240 (on a scale of 0 to 500), the same level as in 2009 and down from 242 in 2013. The average eighth-grade score was 282 in 2015, compared with 285 in 2013; that score was the lowest since 2007. (The NAEP has only tested 12th-graders in math four times since 2005; their 2015 average score of 152 on a 0-to-300 scale was one point lower than in 2013 and 2009.) Looked at another way, the 2015 NAEP rated 40% of fourth-graders, 33% of eighth-graders and 25% of 12th-graders as “proficient” or “advanced” in math. While far fewer fourth- and eighth-graders now rate at “below basic,” the lowest performance level (18% and 29%, respectively, versus 50% and 48% in 1990), improvement in the top levels appears to have stalled out. (Among 12th-graders, 38% scored at the lowest performance level in math, a point lower than in 2005.) NAEP also tests U.S. students on science, though not as regularly, and the limited results available indicate some improvement. Between 2009 and 2015, the average scores of both fourth- and eight-graders improved from 150 to 154 (on a 0-to-300 scale), although for 12th-graders the average score remained at 150. In 2015, 38% of fourth-graders, 34% of eighth-graders and 22% of 12th-graders were rated proficient or better in science; 24% of fourth-graders, 32% of eighth-graders and 40% of 12th-graders were rated “below basic.” These results likely won’t surprise too many people. In a 2015 Pew Research Center report, only 29% of Americans rated their country’s K-12 education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (known as STEM) as above average or the best in the world. Scientists were even more critical: A companion survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that just 16% called U.S. K-12 STEM education the best or above average; 46%, in contrast, said K-12 STEM in the U.S. was below average.

A lack of qualified physics teachers is the root cause of the problemMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: https://www.aps.org/about/governance/task-force/upload/ttep-synopsis.pdf //ghs-st)The Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP) is pleased to present this report as a contribution to the nation’s efforts to improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) literacy for all, and to increase the abilities of a STEM-capable workforce as well as the number of students who pursue STEM careers. We believe that a critical factor in helping the nation achieve these important goals

is good teaching at the high school level. Good physics teaching at the high school level is hampered by a severe shortage of well- prepared teachers . This shortage is more pressing in physics than in any other field, and constitutes the primary challenge in providing a high-quality physics education to all students. To address this challenge, the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the American Institute of Physics constituted T-TEP, with members representing all the critical parts of the system under study: physics faculty, education faculty, university administration, high school teachers, and professional organizations. T-TEP found that, except for a handful of isolated models of excellence, the professional preparation of physics teachers is largely inefficient, mostly incoherent, and completely unprepared

to deal with the current and future needs of the nation’s students. During their training, most U.S. physics teachers took only a small number of physics courses and never developed a deep understanding of the subject, instead devoting much of their time to generic education courses that have limited value to practicing physics teachers. Students typically receive no early experiences in teachin g physics before they begin student teaching . In

contrast to this paradigm, research and reports indicate that teachers gain much more

value from courses and workshops that expose them to physics-specific pedagogy and intensive study of physics concepts in the context of learning to

teach physics—and from actually teaching it , with expert mentoring .

Such experiences can incorporate recent research in physics education that has yielded valuable knowledge of effective curricula, instructional methods, and assessment techniques. However, these potentially high-value courses and teaching

experiences are usually not available at institutions that prepare teachers, and in any case they

are almost always overshadowed by the time required for non- subject- specific pedagogical studies . This serious imbalance negatively affects the quality and effectiveness of physics teacher graduates. The fact that most new physics teachers have no exposure to modern knowledge of effective physics pedagogy is a terrible waste of resources and represents a gross inefficiency. Physics teacher preparation at

colleges and universities generally has an “orphan” status, claimed or valued by almost no one, except

as a low-priority sideline activity. This is largely due to the relatively small constituencies represented by prospective teachers of physics; the small numbers imply a large relative expense per graduate since economies of scale are lacking. The challenge is magnified since most high school physics

teachers teach other subjects as well. This implies a need for physics teachers-in-training to receive preparation in one or more additional subjects such as

mathematics, chemistry, or biology, thus straining an already overcrowded curriculum and giving rise to general science methods courses that cannot attend to the many intellectual intricacies of teaching a specific subject. The bottom line is that, with very few exceptions, neither physics departments nor education departments or colleges consider physics teacher preparation to be a significant part of their mission. Teachers end up in a high school physics classroom through a wide variety of routes. Most

often these do not include either a major or minor in physics, or specific training in

teaching physics. Even the minority that do have a physics background often obtain only very

limited pedagogical preparation in alternative or emergency certification programs, brief “in-service” workshops for practicing teachers, or post-baccalaureate programs with no focus on discipline-specific pedagogy. At the school and district level, administrators are often willing to put underqualified teachers in physics classrooms out of perceived short-term needs, even if the ostensibly short-term “solution” turns into a long-term obstacle to high-quality physics instruction. To lay out a plan toward national excellence, T-TEP issues recommendations to physics departments, schools of education, university administrators, school systems, state agencies, and the federal government, as well as to foundations and the business community, all of which have indispensable roles to play to help students be prepared to contribute to a STEM-literate society. Physics is universally recognized as a fundamental and essential STEM discipline. It has been argued that since 21st-century science tackles multidisciplinary problems, school systems should teach science in the interdisciplinary manner in which real science is conducted. We wholeheartedly agree that science should be taught in ways that reflect authentic science and engineering practices, including the use of technology, the incorporation of mathematical modeling, and emphasis on the social and historical contexts in which scientific efforts are situated. That said, we recognize that there are no generic STEM professionals—multidisciplinary teams consist of individuals who have deep grounding in some subject area and are well versed in communicating effectively with colleagues from diverse disciplinary perspectives. Therefore, to prepare a citizenry able to tackle 21st-century multidisciplinary problems, we believe that teachers need a deep understanding both of content within a specific discipline, and of the teaching of that discipline. This report represents the unanimous voice of T-TEP members. Over a period of four years, T-TEP collected and analyzed data through surveys, site visits, literature reviews, and formal and informal input from many individuals and organizations. T-TEP findings and recommendations were combed through, debated, and vetted by every single task force member, with the ultimate goal of presenting to the nation a unified, authoritative account of the current state of physics teacher education along with specific, actionable items for catalyzing an effective response. We believe this is our best chance to turn around the current tide of mediocrity and to put physics in its well-deserved place in the U.S. education system, as the basis of all science and a major way of knowing the world.

Even though the number of students that are taking STEM, the lack of qualified physics teachers leaving them useless compared to the rest of the worldMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: http://www.phystec.org/document/ServeFile.cfm?ID=9845&DocID=1498&DocFID=2602&Attachment=1 //ghs-st)In the United States there are over 23,000 teachers of high school physics who serve students in over 20,000 public and private high schools. While many of these high school

physics teachers are excellent educators, we are concerned that only a third of U.S. physics teachers

have a major in physics or physics education. While about 400 high school physics teachers are

hired each year with such qualifications, the rate at which we need new teachers in classrooms

to fill gaps produced by retirement or individuals taking other positions outside of teaching is approximately

1,200 per year. In many states, weak standards for certification or endorsement to teach

physics hide the fact that many teachers of physics lack the content knowledge and focused pedagogical preparation necessary to provide an excellent physics education for all students. The scarcity of qualified physics teachers is exacerbated by the annual increase in both number and fraction of high school students who take physics.

An increase of funding and preparation is critical to solve, prefer our reverse causal evidenceMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: https://www.aps.org/about/governance/task-force/upload/ttep-synopsis.pdf //ghs-st)The U nited S tates should take significant steps to alleviate the severe shortage of qualified physics teachers. 12. Physics departments and

schools of education should design certification pathways for individuals in various populations to become well-prepared physics teachers:

undergraduate students who have not yet chosen a major, undergraduate STEM majors, graduate students in STEM disciplines, STEM teachers who may not yet be prepared to teach physics,

and STEM professionals such as engineers, scientists, and laboratory technicians. a. Active recruitment of STEM students into physics teaching is necessary to increase the number of physics teachers . The recruiting pool should be 27 T-TEP broad and include undergraduates as well as graduate students, physics majors as well as other STEM majors who have sufficient physics background or can acquire it. b. Teacher prep aration programs should have streamlined pathways for STEM research professionals as well as for experienced STEM teachers, respecting and capitalizing on the different experiences of each of these groups. While STEM professionals and experienced STEM teachers both require high-quality instruction in physics content along with physics-specific pedagogical education , the physics teacher endorsement program should not require an extensive amount of time to complete and should be designed to accommodate the special scheduling constraints of these professionals. c. Special pathways for STEM professionals and experienced STEM teachers will have significant intersections with pathways designed for undergraduate teacher preparation. To promote interaction and discussion among diverse student groups and to increase enrollment in courses on physics- specific pedagogy , these courses should be structured to simultaneously enroll undergraduate STEM majors, in-service STEM teachers, and post-baccalaureate STEM professionals.

EconomyK2 econMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: https://www.aps.org/about/governance/task-force/upload/ttep-synopsis.pdf //ghs-st)Economic implications of substandard student achievement Substandard U.S. student achievement in science is coupled to the significant demand for foreign-born science and engineering (S&E) workers to fill positions in what is known as

“K nowledge- and T ech nology-Intensive I ndustries ;” these industries have been a major and growing part of the U.S. econ omy , and currently represent 40% of the U.S Gross Domestic Product.12 The current size of the S&E workforce is over 5 million, and several million more workers outside S&E occupations use related knowledge and skills in their jobs.13 In 2003, it was estimated that about 25% of the entire S&E workforce was foreign-born, as were 40% of doctorate holders in S&E occupations; these percentages are likely higher

today given increasing trends over time. Physical sciences , computer/mathematical sciences, and engineering had the highest fractions of foreign-born individuals.

RaceLarge amounts of race disparities in STEM now – a good education is key to solveRandazzo 5/17 (Matthew, the chief executive officer of the National Math and Science Initiative., 5-10-2017, accessed 7-4-2017, "Students Shouldn't Live in STEM Deserts", US News & World Report: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2017-05-10/the-us-must-address-disparities-in-access-to-stem-education //ghs-st)More than ever, a high-quality math and science education is the foundation for opportunity. By 2020, almost two-thirds of all jobs will require post- secondary education or training – education that is supported by the

critical thinking and problem-solving skills learned in math and science . In the same period,

almost as many jobs will require basic literacy in science, technology, engineering and math. Yet, we as a nation continue with a familiar pattern in which access to high-quality STEM learning is unevenly distributed. Millions of students across the country live in what we call STEM deserts – school communities without access to rigorous and engaging math and science courses. Lack of STEM access is a critical equity issue in education , particularly for students in urban and rural communities, where access to high-level math and science courses is often out of reach. Soon, the impact of students living in STEM deserts will not only be reflected in those students'

high school and college competition rates, but will also take a toll on the country's technological superiority, its economy and national security .

The plan solves the racial disparity which allows people of colour to succeedMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: http://www.phystec.org/document/ServeFile.cfm?ID=9845&DocID=1498&DocFID=2602&Attachment=1 //ghs-st)In addition to impacting negatively the nation’s economy and security, inadequate science education threatens the very foundation of our democracy, as our educational system fails to provide members of racial and ethnic

minorities and the poor with the knowledge and skills they will require to participate meaningfully in crucial social decisions of ever increasing scientific and technological complexity. For instance, on the 2005 eighth grade National Assessment of Educational Progress in science, the achievement gaps between Caucasian and African American students ,

between Caucasian and Hispanic students, and between low-poverty and high-poverty students were roughly equivalent to three whole years of learning . Unequal

access to good science extends to our nation’s high schools. While the percentage of African American and Hispanic high school students taking physics is increasing, their participation (23% and 24%, respectively) still lags behind that of Caucasian

students (36%). High poverty schools, which also tend to have high percentages of students from groups underrepresented in the sciences, are less likely to offer advanced physics (AP or second year) and more likely not

to offer physics at all. For example, 23% of high school students in New York City

attend schools that do not offer physics, and these students are disproportionately poor and members of underrepresented groups. 

Racial and economic inequality is a form of structural violence that condemns entire populations to preventable suffering and death. Bezruchka 14 — Stephen Bezruchka, Senior Lecturer in Health Services and Global Health at the School of Public Health at the University of Washington, holds a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University and an M.D. from Stanford University, 2014 (“Inequality Kills,” Divided: The Perils of Our Growing Inequality, Edited by David Cay Johnston, Published by The New Press, ISBN 9781595589446, p. 194-195)Differences in mortality rates are not just a statistical concern—they reflect suffering and pain for very real individuals and families. The higher mortality in the United States is an example of what Paul Farmer, the noted physician and anthropologist, calls

structural violence. The forty-seven infant deaths occur every day because of the way society in the United States is structured, resulting in our health status being that of a middle-income country, not a rich country. There is growing evidence that the factor most responsible for the relatively poor health in the United States is the vast and rising inequality in wealth and income that we not only tolerate, but resist changing.

Inequality is the central element , the upstream cause of the social disadvantage described in the IOM report. A political system that fosters inequality limits the attainment of health. The claim that economic inequality is a major reason for our poor health requires that several standard criteria for claiming causality are satisfied: the results are confirmed by many different studies by different investigators over different time periods; there is a dose-response relationship , meaning more inequality leads to worse health; no other contending explanation is posited; and the relationship is biologically plausible , with likely mechanisms through which inequality works. The field of study

called stress biology of social comparisons is one such way inequality acts. Those studies confirm that all the criteria for linking inequality to poorer health are met, concluding that the extent of inequality in society reflects the range of caring and sharing, with more unequal populations sharing less. Those who are poorer struggle to be accepted in society and the rich also suffer its effects. A recent Harvard study estimated that about one death in three in this country results from our very high income inequality. Inequality kills through structural violence . There is no smoking gun with this form of violence, which simply produces a lethally large social and economic gap between rich and poor .

Democracy

Educational inequality cements political inequality that deprives students of the right to life, the right to vote, and the right to free expression. Wesche 16 — Breanne N. Wesche, Attorney at the Rizio Law Firm—a personal injury law firm in California, former Special Education Teacher in the Houston Independent School District, holds a J.D. from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, 2016 (“Putting The American Education System To The Test: Recognizing Education As A Fundamental Right And Abolishing Unequal School Funding,” Thurgood Marshall Law Review (41 T. Marshall L. Rev. 5), Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)[*5] I. Introduction In the United States of America, a child's zip code often determines the quality of the child's education . A myriad of social, economic, and political factors contributes to this tragic truth. This article, however,

focuses on the staggering, discriminatory effect that Unequal School Funding has on our nation's youth. Consider the experience of Daniel Lopez, a fifth-grade student in Houston, Texas. n1 Daniel and his family live on the south side of Houston, near William P. Hobby Airport. The public school nearest Daniel is an old, dilapidated building. When Daniel arrives at school each morning, he sees broken computers, leaky air conditioners, and chipping turquoise paint. He sees a small athletic field, occupied by ten-year-old "temporary" trailers. He sees a physical education teacher, doing her best to teach a mathematics class. Compare Daniel's experience to that of Thomas Smith, a fifth-grade student living near Houston, Texas. n2 Thomas and his family live in a neighborhood filled with multi-million dollar homes, located just miles away from Daniel's neighborhood. The public school nearest Thomas is a new, state-of-the art building. When Thomas arrives at school each morning, he sees new tablets for every student, interactive white boards in every classroom, and extra teacher assistants for individualized help. He sees the new soccer field, next to the tennis courts. He sees art and music teachers with specialized training. [*6] Which student do you expect is more likely to feel valued when he arrives at school each day? Which student is more likely to reach his potential? Which student do you think has more opportunities to succeed? Such disparate realities exist between students in different zip codes in large part because of Unequal School Funding: the discriminatory practice in which school funding is based on unequal property taxes within the district. Discriminatory practices such as Unequal School Funding exist in our country because education is not protected as a fundamental right. The United States Supreme Court has only once

considered whether education is a fundamental right. The Court's failure to recognize education as a fundamental right resulted in both the nation's pervasive practice of Unequal School Funding and the wildly varying protection of educational rights throughout the states. In light of these horrible repercussions, the Court should now readdress whether education is a fundamental right. Furthermore, the proper analysis of education as a fundamental right would undoubtedly abolish unequal and discriminatory practices such as Unequal School Funding. I. Education Is A Fundamental Right Education is a fundamental right because it is inextricably linked to the constitutional guarantees of liberty , voting , and freedom of expression . The quality and level of a United States citizen's education has a direct impact on that citizen's ability to exercise such constitutional rights. As compared to a citizen with a low-quality and low-level education, a person with a high- quality and high-level education is less likely to be incarcerated, more likely to vote, and more equipped to exercise his freedom of expression. A. The Right to Liberty "[An incarcerated man] has, as a consequence of his crime, not only forfeited his liberty, but all his personal rights except those which the law in its humanity accords to him. He is for the time being the slave of the State. He is civiliter mortuus; and his estate, if he has any, is administered like that of a dead man." -- Ruffin v. Commonwealth n3 A United States citizen's right to liberty is forfeited upon incarceration. Thomas Jefferson once described liberty as the [*7] "unobstructed action according to our own will within limits drawn around us by the equal right of others." n4 A prisoner is stripped of the right to take

unobstructed actions. For example, a prisoner cannot take the unobstructed actions of voting, traveling, starting a business, or having children. n5 A prisoner's every allowable action -- what to eat, when to sleep, when to bathe, who to see, what to wear -- is obstructed and confined by rules created by others. n6 A person's inalienable right to liberty, then, becomes alienable upon his incarceration. A citizen with a low-level education is significantly more likely to be incarcerated than his well-educated counterpart. In 2004, the Bureau of Justice Statistics concluded that 36.3% of incarcerated men over the age of 18 have less than a high school diploma, and only 11.5% of incarcerated men over the age of 18 have some college education. n7 Likewise, a survey conducted by the American Community Survey in 2009 revealed that Black and White men who are "high school dropouts are about 5 times more likely to go to prison . . . than men who have completed high school." n8 Moreover, the amount of male high school dropouts who become incarcerated continues to rise every year, while the amount of high-school-educated men who become incarcerated remains virtually stagnant. n9 The statistics for female prisoners are equally as staggering. A 2009 survey found that 37% of incarcerated women had less than a high school education, while only 14% of non-incarcerated women had less than a high school education. n10 The survey also found that only 31% of incarcerated women had some postsecondary education, while 58% of non-incarcerated women had some postsecondary education. n11 In short, education levels are inversely related with the likelihood of incarceration: the increased quantity of a person's education decreases the likelihood of incarceration and resulting forfeiture of liberties. [*8] B. The Right to Vote "A share in the sovereignty of the state, which is exercised by the citizens at large in voting at elections, is one of the most important rights of the subject, and in a republic ought to stand foremost in the estimation of the law." -- Alexander Hamilton n12 The right to vote and access to state and federal franchise is a revered and zealously protected right of all citizens. n13 The right to vote in federal elections is explicitly conferred by the United States Constitution, in Article I, Section 2, and in the Seventeenth Amendment. The right to vote in state elections, while not explicitly listed in the Constitution, has been provided special judiciary protection, as "it is the 'preservative of other basic civil and political rights.'" n14 A citizen with a low-level education is significantly less likely to vote than his well-educated counterpart. n15 The U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey in 2012 showed that only 7.9 million citizens without a high school diploma were registered to vote, compared to over 41.6 million citizens with a high school diploma who were registered to vote. n16 The same survey showed that only 6 million citizens without a high school diploma reported voting, compared to over 34.4 million with a high school diploma who reported voting. n17 Further, a study in 2009 showed that 50.4% of those with less than a high school education were registered to vote, while 84.8% of those with bachelor's degrees or more were registered to vote. n18 Education, thus, significantly contributes to the likelihood of a citizen's effective participation in a democratic society . n19 C. The Right to Freedom of Expression [*9] "[Education] is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities . . . It is the very foundation of good citizenship." -- Brown v. Board of Education n20 The First Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and of assembly, collectively known as "freedom of expression." n21 Justice Benjamin Cardozo defined freedom of expression as "the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom." n22 Exercise of freedom of expression continuously protects all other fundamental rights . n23

A poor education significantly limits a citizen's ability to exercise freedom of expression. "Education directly affects the ability of a child to exercise his First Amendment rights, both as a source and as a receiver of information and ideas, whatever interests he may pursue in life." n24 The classroom – the "marketplace of ideas" n25 – holds a pivotal role of opening up an individual to key experiences in our culture and society.

n26 Schools should instill in our young an interest in political discourse,

the tools for political debate, and knowledge of governmental processes. n27 Indeed, Americans revere public schools as the "most vital civic institution" for encouraging political consciousness and protecting our democratic system of government. n28 A substandard education, however, strips a child of his ability to fully participate in our democratic society, thereby losing his voice and the ability to fight for his rights. II. THE PROBLEM: THE SUPREME COURT HAS FAILED TO RECOGNIZE EDUCATION

AS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT [*10] The Supreme Court's failure to recognize education as a fundamental right has allowed discriminatory and inconsistent treatment of educational rights throughout the states . For

example, the trend of allotting unequal funding to school districts is a pervasive practice across the country . Moreover, without guidance from the Supreme Court, each state government 's protection of educational rights is, at best , haphazard and wavering . Thus, the state where a citizen resides determines both whether education is considered to be a fundamental right and the level of educational equality the state government requires. Only the plan can remedy this political inequality — education is key. Newman 13 — Anne Newman, Researcher at the University of California Center for Collaborative Research for an Equitable California—a multi-campus research program and initiative, holds a Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Education from Stanford University, 2013 (“Education Policy Making in the Shadow of an Enduring Democratic Dilemma,” Realizing Educational Rights: Advancing School Reform through Courts and Communities, Published by the University of Chicago Press, ISBN 9780226071749, p. 17-19) The Relationship Between Education and Political Equality Making informed decisions about representation and public policy requires a host of abilities, including analytic reasoning skills and the ability to distinguish sophistry from sound argument. This is even more true in a deliberative democracy that expects citizens to contribute to agenda setting, in contrast to a vote-centric democracy that simply asks citizens to cast ballots for representatives. The crux of the relationship between education and political equality centers on the types of advantages that education affords citizens in public discourse. People who have comfortable housing, lucrative employment, and good health care may participate in deliberation more easily than those who are less well-off in these respects . Moreover,

severe deprivation in any of these welfare domains may impede political participation altogether. Yet inequalities with respect to housing, income, or health care do not result in deliberative inequality per se . Having a bigger house, a more lucrative job, or better health care does not directly confer superior deliberative skills upon citizens. By contrast , education is directly tied to deliberative influence , and it is not possible to neutralize educational inadequacies to restore political equality without addressing educational deficits head on . The political disadvantage that follows from having poor reasoning skills or limited literacy, for example, is hard to remedy without addressing these problems directly . Moreover,

educational inequalities cannot be readily contained for the sake of

achieving political equality in public forums. How could well-educated citizens refrain from using their skills in deliberations? Basic income ,

on the other hand, is largely instrumental to deliberative influence , and the wellbeing it provides can be achieved through various means, such as public assistance for food and housing. By contrast , the quality of citizens’ education directly affects their effectiveness in public deliberation , and nothing short of giving citizens the requisite skills can compensate for their lack thereof. A few caveats are necessary here. Some citizens may secure the skills that constitute an adequate education outside formal schooling because these skills are not the sole province of formal education. And not all schools successfully teach students the requisite deliberative skills. Even many well-funded schools may fail on this front. Moreover, a charismatic personality may more than compensate for educational disadvantage in some deliberative settings. Yet the possibility of autodidacts and compelling personalities cannot vindicate miserly provisions for public education. Nor do the deficiencies of civic curricula today diminish the importance of the state’s responsibility to do better on this front. After all, for the vast majority of citizens, educational opportunity is limited to the offerings of the public system. When public schools fail them, a significant portion of the population is likely to be severely disadvantaged in the political sphere. The tight link between education and political equality is poignantly expressed in Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall’s dissenting opinion in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, in which the majority opinion refused to recognize a federal right to education.29 In addition to finding no legal ground for such a right, the majority expressed concern that recognizing a right to education would open the floodgates to myriad other welfare rights. Marshall refuted the Court’s slippery-slope argument by contending that education is distinctively tied to individuals’ ability to exercise constitutional liberties, including free speech and the right to vote , and to participate in politics more generally: “Education may instill the interest and provide the tools necessary for political discourse and debate. Indeed, it has frequently been suggested that education is the dominant factor affecting political consciousness and participation.”30 His dissent highlights how

the meaningful exercise of political liberties is inextricably tied to educational opportunity—a connection that is even tighter in a deliberative democracy, where one’s reasoning skills and ability to communicate determine one’s opportunity to have political influence.

Utilitarian balancing can’t justify educational inequality. Any solvency deficit to a counterplan should be rejected as a preventable injustice. Gross 1 — James A. Gross, Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2001 (“A Human Rights Perspective on U.S. Education: Only Some Children Matter,” The Catholic University Law Review (50 Cath. U.L. Rev. 919), Summer, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)VI. Concluding Observations To understand that education is a human right is to understand that the problems of education in this country and the proposed solutions are inextricably interconnected with issues of

morality, justice and values . Fundamental issues of human rights, justice and morality must be addressed and resolved before any reconstruction of the educational system is attempted. What is excused as misfortune must be recognized as injustice and what has been dismissed as the status quo must be traced to the action or inaction of the unjust. A just society, particularly one with the economic resources of the

United States, would not choose to reject any of its children. A just society would treat each of its children as an "unprecedented wonder" n243 and would be committed to enabling them to realize their potential for living a full human life. n244 Each child would be recognized for the person he is; his presence on this earth would be treated as an "unconditional blessing." n245 This recognition and celebration of life is the core principle of human rights. It was recognized by a Freedmen's Bureau commissioner who urged that the freed people in the Bureau's schools be "treated as men with immortal souls rather than as beasts of burden or machines for pulling cotton." n246 More than 100 years later, Thomas Sowell similarly noted that the "only common denominator among the successful schools [in the black community/ghetto] was that the students were treated like human beings and everything was geared to the expectation that they would succeed." n247 The children understood that they were important in and of themselves. n248 [*952] Conscious choices violate the human rights of certain children . Yet human rights constitute the most essential moral claims that all human beings can assert. n249 They confirm the sacredness of human beings and their intrinsic dignity . Human rights are entitlements. The great disparity in the amount of money spent for some compared to that spent on the education of other people's children is a measure of how little certain children are valued as human beings. As a result, a message is sent that those children "deserve to be neglected [and] to be surrounded by a blatant lack of respect." n250 A solution to this problem will require the problem solvers to know what it is like for children to grow up rejected and shunned by the dominant society, what it means and does to them, and whether they think they deserve to be treated that way. As Kozol asks, "what is it that enables some of them to pray? When they pray, what do they say to God?" n251 Other previously ignored questions must also be answered: how certain people hold up under terrible ordeal, how many more do not, how human beings devalue other people's lives, how numbness and destructiveness are universalized, how human pity is at length extinguished and the shunning of the vulnerable can come in time to be perceived as natural behavior ... . How does a nation deal with those whom it has cursed? n252 Others wonder about the impact of long-standing devaluation on both the children devalued and on those responsible for that devaluation: "after all that has happened, in history and in our own time, can black people still be seen with empathy and without sentimentality as human beings with aspirations and potential that deserve fulfillment?" n253 Andrew Hacker maintains that persuading Americans to care about children other than their own is imperative because indigent children are looked upon as a burden. n254 Where is the public indignation at the abuse of innocent children who have done nothing wrong? Despite a "reverence for fair play" and a "genuine distaste for loaded dice" in the United States, Kozol maintains [*953] that in the realms of education, health care and inheritance of wealth, fairness is not evident. n255 In those areas, Kozol says, "we want the game to be unfair and we have made it so; and it will likely so remain." n256 If our motives can be judged most accurately by our actions or inaction, Hacker and Kozol's perceptions are on the mark. Many in our country, including children, are isolated in helplessness while others choose to isolate themselves by their own selfishness. It is a selfishness that consists not only of an unwillingness to redistribute resources to others in need, but also of a deliberate perpetuation of an unfair distribution of the benefits of the educational system

which secures advantages in society. Americans pride themselves on their morality. The "American Creed" is the ideological foundation of the nation, encompassing the ideals of the inherent dignity of the individual human being, and of the fundamental equality of all, as well as "inalienable" rights to freedom, justice and fair opportunity. All of these ideals are reconciled within the framework of the common good. These are the elements of a democratic creed that, although pre-dating the United States, represents the "national conscience." n257 The creed is the basis for the realization of the "American Dream," which in addition to being a dream of wealth has also "been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman" to benefit "the simple human being of any and every class." n258 In 1944, Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal characterized U.S. race relations as an "American Dilemma": the moral dilemma of the disparity between ideals and actual behavior. n259 It is tragic that any such gap remains after all of these years. Yet, it is not unrealistic to believe in and work for change unless those with economic and political influence are completely hypocritical. The civil rights and women's rights movements in this country are among the precedents that justify some optimism and hope. No matter how discouraging the prospects for fundamental change in the educational system, it would be even more irresponsible to fail to act. n260 If human rights violations are to end, then the moral choices that [*954] underlie those violations and the values that influence those moral choices must be changed. n261

Without that change, we will continue merely to remodel on a faulty foundation. Despite commentaries about the futility of trying to reverse these choices, fundamental change is possible and one of the many reasons for that change is the ability of challengers to redefine a policy issue. Acceptance of education as a human right changes our understanding of the essential purpose of education and requires a fundamental and thorough redefinition of education policy. The primary objective of education policy would become compliance with the rights of all children to the type and quality of education needed to live full human lives rather than , as now, conceiving of education as merely a utilitarian instrument for maximizing payoff for those who invest in it - or for those who can afford the type of education most likely to provide the greatest return on investment. It puts into sharp historical and cultural perspective the fact that since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1945, nations from all over the world have recognized education as a human right while our own Supreme Court does not consider education to be even a constitutional right. It may be that domestic human rights issues go unacknowledged by the public because of the myth that the United States is a paragon of human rights observance. As human rights become more important in international relations, this country is vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy for attempting to maintain a "facade of championing human rights when it does not protect the rights of its own citizens." n262 Despite the rhetoric about the sanctity of human rights, hypocritical or not, it is likely that most people in this country comprehend human rights only in the context of such egregious human evils as genocide or systematic torture. Beyond that there is little understanding of the meaning, significance and implications of human rights. All education systems want to produce a certain kind of human being, and values have always been an essential and unavoidable part of education. Ironically, therefore, the redefinition of education policy [*955] issue requires education. From the time they start school, children need to learn about human rights and to respect the human rights and dignity of all people regardless of race, color, language, gender, or faith. Human rights education needs to occur at all levels from elementary school through college or university. Promotion of internationally recognized human rights principles emerging in international law, moreover, would educate our judiciary as well as the public. These international human rights principles pose a growing challenge to what some experts consider the isolation and provincialism of U.S. courts. n263 Given the influence of values on judicial decision-making, these human rights principles provide an important source of law for U.S. courts to use in the interpretation of the Constitution, including filling in the gaps in constitutional protections. To ignore those principles is to express indifference to them and expresses a willingness to put the United States in direct conflict with international law. n264 No attempt is made here to spell out the details of a curriculum or the content of specific course subjects needed to enable people to live full human lives. However, a quality education is about reading, writing, computing, communicating, imagining, thinking, reasoning, creating, participating, questioning, analyzing, challenging, judging, and changing. It is about the unprecedented wonder of each and

every human being, the rights and duties of each other. It is about history and heritage as well as partaking in cultural stories and heritage. It is about sharing all the intellectual adventures at the heart of civilization. It is about morals and ethics and the content of character. It is also about participating in decisions that affect one's life. A quality education must not be indoctrination in an "Aren't-We-Americans-Just-Dandy curriculum" as Theodore and Nancy Sizer called it. n265 Education needs to have a global perspective with an understanding of all peoples, their cultural heritage, values, problems and ways of life. Education needs to be about human solidarity, respect for human dignity, the equal rights of all human beings, and justice and equality for all people. There is no reason that can justify the perpetuation of human rights violations to education: not transparent appeals to the democratic principle of local control of education (it would be a perverted [*956] democracy that commits or tolerates violations of the human rights of children); not a state's use of local control as an excuse rather than as a justification for interdistrict inequality; n266 and not the federal government's evasion of the duty by hiding behind the myth that education is exclusively a state and local matter in this country . n267 A just society would not tolerate anything less than the end of these violations of our children's human right to education . Of course, our willingness to end these violations depends on the type of a society we desire and what kind of people we want to be .

American democracy will collapse without excellent and equitable K-12 education. Political inequality results in fascism. Brown 10 — Wendy Brown, Heller Professor of Political Science at the University of California-Berkeley, Co-Chair of the University of California-Berkeley Faculty Association, holds a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy from Princeton University, 2010 (“Without Quality Public Education, There Is No Future for Democracy,” The California Journal of Politics & Policy, Volume 2, Issue 1, Available Online at http://escholarship.org/uc/item/72s6p9ph, Accessed 07-09-2017, p. 2-3)Without quality public education, we the people cannot know, handle, let alone check the powers that govern us . Without quality public education, there can be no substance to the promise of equality and freedom, no possibility of developing and realizing individual capacities, no possibility of children overcoming disadvantage or of teens reaching for the stars, no possibility of being a people guiding their own destiny or of individuals choosing their own course. Above all, there is no possibility of being a self-governing people, a democracy. As the world grows more complex and integrated and the media grows ever more sophisticated and powerful in shaping events and ideas, what maintains democracy is not the technical instruction into which resource-starved schools are rapidly retreating. It is not the

reduction of high school to two years, college to three and only vocational training for the many, but the kind

of education through which future citizens learn to understand and engage the complexities of this world . For democracy to survive, let alone thrive, the people must be able to know and analyze the powers organizing our lives . The people must be able to reflect on the perils and possibilities of our time and develop considered views about how to navigate them. The people must be able to analyze written and oral arguments, journalistic accounts, images and sound bites—distinguishing the reasonable from the sensational, the serious from the simplistic, the well-founded from the fatuous. If such capacities have always been important to democratic citizenship, our increasingly complex world demands them all the more , and quality public education is the key to their acquisition. Without quality public education in our future, there is no future for democracy . Without quality public education in our future, we face a huge divide between the educated and uneducated, corresponding to a divide between the rich and the poor and [end page 2] magnifying the power of the former and the powerlessness of the latter. This is plutocracy, not democracy. Without quality public education in our future, we face a populace taught only the skills needed for work, ill- equipped to understand or participate in civic and political life. This is corporate oligarchy, not democracy. Without quality public education in our future, we face a people manipulable through their frustrations, mobilizable through false enemies and false promises . This is the dangerous material of democracy’s opposite— despotism if not fascism. So California’s disinvestment in education not only entrenches and deepens inequalities , not only breaks the promise of opportunity for every able student, not

only chokes the engine of invention and achievement that built California’s 20th century glory. It destroys the fundament of democracy itself —an educated citizenry capable of thoughtful analysis and informed judgment. California must recommit to first-class K-12 education and the California Master Plan for higher education. We must come to our senses, quickly, about preserving the most esteemed public university system in the world. And we must do so not only because education is what lifts people from poverty , equalizes opportunities , reduces crime and violence , builds bright individual and collective futures, but because education makes democracy real. Educate the state. Sí se puede.

This is an existential risk — concentrated private power causes global warming and nuclear war. Chomsky 14 — Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania 2014 (“America’s corporate doctrine of power a grave threat to humanity,” Salon — originally published on TomDispatch, July 1st, Available Online at http://www.salon.com/2014/07/01/noam_chomsky_americas_corporate_doctrine_of_power_a_grave_threat_to_humanity/, Accessed 07-09-2015)

The Final Century of Human Civilization? There are other examples too numerous to mention, facts that are well-established and would be taught in elementary schools in free societies. There is, in other words, ample evidence that securing state power from the domestic population and securing concentrated private power are driving forces in policy formation. Of course, it is not quite that simple. There are interesting cases, some quite current, where these commitments conflict, but consider this a good first approximation and radically opposed to the received standard doctrine. Let us turn to another question: What about the security of the population? It is easy to demonstrate that this is a marginal concern of policy planners. Take two prominent current examples, global warming and nuclear weapons . As any literate person is doubtless aware, these are dire threats to the security of the population . Turning to state policy, we find

that it is committed to accelerating each of those threat s — in the interests of the primary concerns, protection of state power and of the concentrated private power that largely determines state policy .

Consider global warming. There is now much exuberance in the U nited States

about “100 years of energy independence ” as we become “the Saudi Arabia of the next century ” — perhaps the final century of human civilization if current policies persist. That illustrates very clearly the

nature of the concern for security, certainly not for the population. It also illustrates the moral calculus of contemporary Anglo-American state capitalism: the fate of our grandchildren counts as nothing when compared with the imperative of higher profits tomorrow. These conclusions are fortified by a closer look at the propaganda system. There is a huge public relations campaign in the U.S., organized quite openly by Big Energy and the business world, to try to convince the public that global warming is either unreal or not a result of human activity. And it has had some impact. The U.S. ranks lower than other countries in public concern about global warming and the results are stratified: among Republicans, the party more fully dedicated to the interests of wealth and corporate power, it ranks far lower than the global norm. The current issue of the premier journal of media criticism, the Columbia Journalism Review, has an interesting article on this subject, attributing this outcome to the media doctrine of “fair and balanced.” In other words, if a journal publishes an opinion piece reflecting the conclusions of 97% of scientists, it must also run a counter-piece expressing the viewpoint of the energy corporations. That indeed is what happens, but there certainly is no “fair and balanced” doctrine. Thus, if a journal runs an opinion piece denouncing Russian President Vladimir Putin for the criminal act of taking over the Crimea, it surely does not have to run a piece pointing out that, while the act is indeed criminal, Russia has a far stronger case today than the U.S. did more than a century ago in taking over southeastern Cuba, including the country’s major port — and rejecting the Cuban demand since independence to have it returned. And the same is true of many other cases. The actual media doctrine is “fair and balanced” when the concerns of concentrated private power are involved, but surely not elsewhere. On the issue of nuclear weapons, the record is similarly interesting — and frightening. It reveals very clearly that, from the earliest days, the security of the population was a non-issue, and remains so. There is no time here to run through the shocking record, but there is little doubt that it strongly supports the lament of General Lee Butler, the last commander of the Strategic Air Command, which was armed with nuclear weapons. In his words, we have so far survived the nuclear age “by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.” And we can hardly count on continued divine intervention as policymakers play roulette with the fate of the species in pursuit of the driving factors in policy formation. As we are all surely aware, we now face the most ominous decisions in human history . There are many problems that must be addressed, but two are overwhelming in their significance: environmental destruction and nuclear war . For the first time in history, we face the possibility of destroying the

prospects for decent existence — and not in the distant future .

For this reason alone, it is imperative to sweep away the ideological clouds and face honestly and realistically the question of how policy decisions are made , and what we can do to alter them before it is too late.

SexismNot many women in STEM now – destroys science idendtiyJohansson 15 (Anders, getting a PhD in gender research and Physics education research at the Uppsala university in Sweden, accessed 7/13/17, “Uniformity in physics courses and student diversity: A study of learning to participate in physics” Uppsala: https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:872763/FULLTEXT01.pdf //ghs-st)Taking a starting point in my own experiences of physics education, I want to explore what it means to

become a physicist and who can participate in physics. However, the discussion about participation in science has been taking place for a long time. The discussions about science participation can often be characterized as a discussion of a “lack”, conceptualized in what has been called a “deficit framework” (Zeidler, 2014). This can be stated as “Europe needs more scientists” (European Commission, 2004), or in asking the question “why so few” women study science and engineering (Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose, 2010). The issue in this view seems to be how to get more (of certain kinds of) people into science. More or less working under these premises, scientific studies of recruitment and retention of university students however give many different answers to how this can be approached. Students’ interest in science

has been shown to be declining in western countries and large assessments like PISA show that girls are generally less inclined towards a science career than boy s (Sikora & Pokropek, 2012), i.e. girls “lack” science interest. Thus much effort has been put into increasing school students ’, and particularly girls’ interest in science, with mixed results. Studies in recent years have employed perspectives from social theory, regarding identity negotiations of young people in late-modern societies to explore the processes behind their study choice (Holmegaard, Ulriksen, & Madsen, 2014; Department of Education and Professional Studies, 2013; Archer et al., 2012; Schreiner, 2006). Similarly, studies of students’ negotiations about leaving or staying at their university education have shown that the reasons are multiple (Seymour & Hewitt, 1997), but that students may often attribute all reasons for “failure” to themselves (Johannsen, Rump, & Linder, 2013). Studying student retention with the novel statistical approach of network analysis, the influence of different parts of the system on students’ choices can be mapped in greater detail, and results from such studies have indicated that relationships between teachers and students play a large role (Forsman, Mann, Linder, & van den Bogaard, 2014; Forsman, Linder, Moll, Fraser, & Andersson, 2014). Thus, research has taken the question of “lack”, from lacks in women’s (and minorities’) ability or interests, to addressing problems in institutions or attitudes in society as a whole. These structural factors can be seen as “ excluding ” or “ repressing ” certain students, making science still “lack” these people. 8 But, drawing from Foucault’s notion of power as not simply repressing, but rather producing (Foucault, 1975/1995, p.

194), I want to pose the questions in a different way and ask what culture and identities are (re-)produced in physics education. This shifts the focus from the lack of certain people or certain people as lacking ability or interests to scientific culture itself. Feminist science studies have long argued that the culture of science holds many problems, for instance in its androcentrism (Merchant, 1980/1989; Harding, 1986; Keller, 1985/1995), but I want to investigate the role of the culture of science in the specific context of undergraduate physics education, my disciplinary home.

A better physics education system is critical to science identity and spurring more Johansson 15 (Anders, getting a PhD in gender research and Physics education research at the Uppsala university in Sweden, accessed 7/13/17, “Uniformity in physics courses and student diversity: A study of learning to participate in physics” Uppsala: https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:872763/FULLTEXT01.pdf //ghs-st)

2.5.2 Science education, gender and identity Hussénius, Andersson, Gullberg, and Scantlebury (2013), in a critical examination of the attention paid to gender in science education, outline three different approaches of research with a gender perspective: Research addressing gender , gender research, and feminist research . Whereas “Research addressing gender” is characterized as any research using “sex or gender as analytical categories”, the two later categories of research are using “gender theoretical frameworks” and /or “ gender perspectives to analyse power ” (2013, p. 302).

Additionally, “Feminist research” has the stated aim of changing power imbalances, i.e. subscribing to a critical research paradigm (Taylor, 2014; Treagust 24 et al., 2014; Guba & Lincoln, 1994). Doing

literature searches, the authors point out that very few studies in science education consider gender, and that those doing so are almost exclusively of the “addressing

gender” kind. This also holds true for all the PER studies discussed above.

The lack of critical perspectives, in PER and science education, can perhaps be related to the still dominating post-positivist paradigm in both fields. Sandra Harding, in discussing science and gender 30 years ago, claimed that: [R]esearch programs where remnants of empiricist, positivist philosophies of social science hold sway have been systematically inhospitable to gender as a theoretical category. At best they have been willing to add gender as a variable to be analyzed in their subject matter—as a property of individuals and their behaviors rather than

also of social structures and conceptual systems. (Harding, 1986, pp. 33–34) Taking issue with the contemporary feminist discussions of science, Harding describes five more or less radical research programmes, from “equity studies”, which ask why there are so few women in science, to elaborations of feminist epistemologies, which take the critique to the very root of knowledge production (Harding, 1986, pp. 21–24). Using the discussions of Harding and Hussénius et al., which argue for the necessity of a critical perspective on gender and identity that does not take “science” for granted I will discuss how a few different science education articles use gender and identity. In recent years, many researchers in science education have started employing an identity perspective. Especially studies of attitudes have moved from earlier psychological notions of students “holding” attitudes, to attitudes negotiated in relation to social identities (Tytler, 2014). However, identity can be used in many ways in educational research, and even though it might be regarded as “‘the missing link’ in the researchers’ story of the complex dialectic between learning and its sociocultural context” (Sfard & Prusak, 2005, p. 15), it needs to be used in a thoughtful manner (Sfard & Prusak, 2005). A common way of using the identity concept, perhaps related to a mostly interpretivist paradigm (Guba & Lincoln, 1994), is that learning means acquiring an identity. Here the task of educational reformers and researchers is to help students gain a suitable identity. This is the perspective of for instance Allie et al. (2009), who “views learning in engineering as a process of coming to participate in the discourse of the engineering community and taking on the identity of being a member of this community” (Allie et al., 2009, p. 360). A similar framework is used by Irving and Sayre (2015a, 2015b)

who discuss “becoming a physicist” as acquiring a physics identity and being recognized by the physicist community. I believe that this view is especially valuable when asking questions about student retention and attrition, but there is a risk that the research aligns itself with an instrumental (from the point of institutions) view of students if this is not combined with a critical perspective 25 of science. If becoming a part of some scientific community is taken for granted as an evident goal, we miss the perspectives of the students who actually resist a “physics identity” and do not want to be part of the physics community, and we fail to critique the possibly undemocratic tendencies of that community. The “acquiring a science identity”-perspective is thus not critical enough in the frameworks of Harding and Hussénius et al. Some studies, while using “science identity” as a construct, nevertheless puts the meaning of it under critical scrutiny. I will discuss a few such studies here. Carlone and Johnson (2007), in a more explicitly feminist oriented and widely cited study, explore the possibilities of achieving a viable science identity

for women of colour. In this paper, a “science identity”-model is defined as a tool for examining these women’s pathways, even though this might have problems that the authors themselves acknowledge: We understand the limitations of using an a priori definition and prototype of a person who has a “science identity.” There are many ways of being a “science person” and defining one prototype may reproduce status quo and overly narrow conceptions of what counts as a science person. However, because our study examines women who were largely pursuing science degrees and science-related careers, we argue that they had to confront, in some way, the historically enduring “science identity” prototype. Thus, we argue that it is appropriate to clearly define this prototype to make sense of the ways the women accepted, rejected, and/or transformed it. (Carlone & Johnson, 2007, p. 1212) In this way, Carlone and Johnson aim at taking a critical stance towards the normative view of science. However, it is interesting to note how these authors describe that the women holding “Altruistic science identities” “redefined what they meant by science” (Carlone & Johnson, 2007, p. 1199), without explanation. This seems to imply that these women necessarily carried a mainstream view of science from the start, something that is of course probable, but should not perhaps be taken for granted. This shows the diffi- culty of upholding a critical view throughout

Women’s participation in STEM is key to innovation.Corbett and Hill, Senior Researchers at the AAUW, 2015 (Christianne and Catherine, “Solving the Equation: the Variables for Women’s Success in Engineering and Computing”, DoA: 6/26/17, http://www.aauw.org/aauw_check/pdf_download/show_pdf.php?file=solving-the-equation, DVOG) Why does women’s representation in engineering and computing fields matter? The answer can be summed up in one word: innovation. Finding solutions to many of the big problems of this century, including climate change, universal access to water, disease, and renewable energy, will require the skills of engineers and computer scientists. When women are not well represented in these fields, everyone misses out on the novel solutions that diverse participation brings . Moreover, a recent experiment showed that lower-performing men are frequently selected over higher-performing women for mathematical work (Reuben et al., 2014a). With so few women working in these fields, U.S. engineering and technology companies are losing out on a massive talent pool and are less globally competitive than they could be because they may not be hiring the best people for the jobs.

STEM diversity is key to the innovation that can solve global warming.Pryzstac, Founder of the Roosevelt Institute at UMass Amherst, 2015 (Carly, 10/2, “Diversity in STEM Fields is Key to Stopping Climate Change”, Roosevelt Institute, DoA: 7/2/17 http://rooseveltinstitute.org/diversity-stem-fields-key-stopping-climate-change/, DVOG) President Obama has said that ”when Americans are called on to innovate, that’s what we do—whether it’s making more fuel-efficient cars or more fuel-efficient appliances, or making sure that we are putting in place the kinds of equipment that prevents harm to the ozone layer and eliminates acid rain.” But in order to do that, we need scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians. Take, for example, the issue of green energy. By burning fewer greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels, we get ever closer to the goal of COP21, the aforementioned conference occurring this November in Paris. Innovations in nanoscience and nanotechnology increase the efficiency of solar cells, an important fossil fuel alternative, by providing cheaper and more efficient silicon. Continued innovation in these and other STEM fields will be required to achieve long-term progress. Because of the nature of the problem they are trying to solve, the professionals developing these technologies should come from diverse backgrounds and identities. Climate change is a human rights issue because of its broad and indiscriminate effects as well as its disproportionate negative consequences for marginalized populations. Researchers and advocates have argued that we must examine not just where the most severe storms might hit, what locations will be flooded when sea levels rise, and so on, but also which groups of people are likely to be most affected by these trends. This vulnerability analysis shows that low-income communities that lack power and influence in society are in the greatest danger. So far, we are not doing particularly well at achieving greater representation in these fields. An American Community Survey report issued in 2013 found that only 6 percent of our workforce were employed in a STEM occupation. Of those, only 26 percent were women (even though women as a whole make up half of the overall workforce) and 70.8 percent identified as non-Hispanic whites. This disparity seems to result, at least in part, from unequal education: The United States Department of Education reports that “women, underrepresented minorities, first generation college students, and students from low-income backgrounds leave STEM fields at higher rates than their counterparts.” Confronting this issue of inequality at the professional level must start with confronting inequalities in our educational system. Mentorship in STEM, as in any professional occupation, is lacking. The primary responsibility for mentoring programs has not been given to any one body, and frequently starts too late in a professional’s development to have an effect on the attrition in STEM in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. It is in the best interests of colleges, universities, and companies to leverage their considerable expertise toward this effort, as doing so will ultimately provide them with more qualified and numerous students and professionals. In order to increase opportunity in STEM for current students, the way we teach these subjects must change. If STEM students come from a diverse background, instructors teaching these students cannot approach teaching with a one-size-fits-all approach. Research has shown that traditional lecture-and-textbook approaches do not cater to women and minorities, as

these groups are more likely to show interest in people than in things, and showing these ideas in isolation rather than in context disengages underrepresented groups in STEM. This was known as far back as 1990, but the educational system is slow to change. In the same way that addressing climate change is urgent, increasing the talent pool of STEM professionals in the educational pipeline must be looked upon with the same necessity. Until the people designing technologies to help alleviate the impact of climate change represent the populations affected by climate change, the technology will ultimately come up short of its full potential. STEM research and development will benefit immensely when the experiences of those who are doing the work are as diverse as the populations they aim to help. COP21 is working to establish the urgency of the fight to mitigate climate change, but in order to reduce global climate impacts, we first need to look at the educational system producing the minds that are working to do just that.

Failure to slow the rate of warming risks massive destruction and conflictMichael T. Klare, Professor, Peace and World Security Studies, Hampshire College, “ The Future of Climate

Change Is Widespread Civil War,” THE NATION, 11—3—15, www.thenation.com/article/the-future-of-climate-change-is-widespread-civil-war/, accessed 3-20-16.At the end of November, delegations from nearly 200 countries will convene in Paris for what is billed as the most important climate meeting ever held. Officially known as the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP-21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the 1992 treaty that designated that phenomenon a threat to planetary health and human survival), the Paris summit will be focused on the adoption of measures that would limit global warming to less than catastrophic levels. If it fails, world temperatures in the coming decades are likely to exceed 2 degrees Celsius (3.5 degrees Fahrenheit), the maximum amount most scientists believe the Earth can endure without experiencing

irreversible climate shocks, including soaring temperatures and a substantial rise in global sea levels. A failure to cap carbon emissions guarantees another result as well, though one far less discussed. It will, in the long run, bring on not just climate shocks, but also worldwide instability, insurrection, and warfare . In this sense,

COP-21 should be considered not just a climate summit but a peace conference—perhaps the most significant peace convocation in history. To grasp why, consider the latest scientific findings on the likely impacts of global warming, especially the 2014 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change (IPCC). When first published, that report attracted worldwide media coverage for predicting that unchecked climate change will result in severe droughts, intense storms, oppressive heat waves, recurring crop failures, and coastal flooding, all leading to widespread death and deprivation. Recent events, including a punishing drought in California and crippling heat waves in Europe and

Asia, have focused more attention on just such impacts. The IPCC report ,

however, suggested that global warming would have devastating impacts of a social and political nature as well, including economic decline, state collapse, civil strife, mass migrations, and sooner or later resource wars. These predictions

have received far less attention, and yet the possibility of such a future should be obvious enough

since human institutions, like natural systems, are vulnerable to climate change. Economies are going to suffer when key commodities—crops, timber, fish, livestock—

grow scarcer, are destroyed, or fail. Societies will begin to buckle under the strain of economic decline and massive refugee flows . Armed conflict

may not be the most immediate consequence of these developments, the IPCC notes, but co mbine the effects of climate change with already existing poverty, hunger, resource scarcity, incompetent and corrupt governance, and ethnic, religious, or national resentments, and you’re likely to end up with bitter conflicts

over access to food, water, land, and other necessities of life. THE COMING OF CLIMATE CIVIL WARS Such wars would not arise in a vacuum. Already existing stresses and grievances would be heightened, enflamed undoubtedly by provocative acts and the exhortations of demagogic leaders. Think of the current outbreak of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories, touched off by clashes over access to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (also known as the Noble Sanctuary) and the inflammatory rhetoric of assorted leaders. Combine economic and resource deprivation with such situations

and you have a perfect recipe for war. The necessities of life are already unevenly distributed across the planet. Often the divide between those with access to adequate supplies of vital resources and those lacking them coincides with long-term schisms along racial, ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines. The Israelis and Palestinians, for example, harbor deep-seated ethnic and

religious hostilities but also experience vastly different possibilities when it comes to access to land and water. Add the stresses of climate

change to such situations and you can naturally expect passions to boil over. Climate change will degrade or destroy many natural systems, often already under stress, on which humans rely for their survival. Some areas that now support agriculture or animal husbandry may become uninhabitable or capable only of providing for greatly diminished populations. Under the pressure of rising temperatures and increasingly fierce droughts, the southern fringe of the Sahara desert, for example, is now being transformed from grasslands capable of sustaining nomadic herders into an empty wasteland, forcing local nomads off

their ancestral lands. Many existing farmlands in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East will suffer a similar fate. Rivers that once supplied water year-round will run only sporadically or dry up altogether, again

leaving populations with unpalatable choices. As the IPCC report points out, enormous pressure will be put upon often weak state institutions to adjust to climate change and aid those in desperate need of emergency food, shelter, and other necessities. “Increased human insecurity,” the report says, “may coincide with a decline in the capacity of states to conduct effective adaptation efforts, thus creating the circumstances in which there is greater potential for violent conflict.” A good example of this peril is provided by the outbreak of civil war in Syria and the subsequent collapse of that country in a welter of fighting and a wave of refugees of a sort that hasn’t been seen since World War II. Between 2006 and 2010, Syria experienced a devastating drought in which climate change is believed to have been a factor, turning nearly 60 percent of the country into desert. Crops failed and most of the country’s livestock perished, forcing millions of farmers into penury. Desperate and unable to live on their land any longer, they moved into Syria’s major cities in search of work, often facing extreme hardship as well as hostility from well-connected urban elites. Had Syrian autocrat Bashar al-Assad responded with an emergency program of jobs and housing for those displaced, perhaps conflict could have been averted. Instead, he cut food and fuel subsidies, adding to the misery of the migrants and fanning the flames of revolt. In the view of several prominent scholars, “the rapidly growing urban peripheries of Syria, marked by illegal settlements, overcrowding, poor infrastructure, unemployment, and crime, were neglected by the Assad government and became the heart of the developing unrest.” A similar picture has unfolded in the Sahel region of Africa, the southern fringe of the Sahara, where severe drought has combined with habitat decline and government neglect to provoke armed violence. The area has faced many such periods in the past, but now, thanks to climate change, there is less time between the droughts. “Instead of 10 years apart, they became five years apart, and now only a couple years apart,” observes Robert Piper, the United Nations regional humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel. “And that, in turn, is putting enormous stresses on what is already an incredibly fragile environment and a highly vulnerable population.” In Mali, one of several nations straddling this region, the nomadic Tuaregs have been particularly hard hit, as the grasslands they rely on to feed their cattle are turning into desert. A Berber-speaking Muslim population, the Tuaregs have long faced hostility from the central government in Bamako, once controlled by the French and now by black Africans of Christian or animist faith. With their traditional livelihoods in peril and little assistance forthcoming from the capital, the Tuaregs revolted in January 2012,

capturing half of Mali before being driven back into the Sahara by French and other foreign forces (with US logistical and intelligence support). Consider the events in Syria and Mali previews of what is likely to come later in this century on a far larger scale. As climate change intensifies, bringing not just

desertification but rising sea levels in low-lying coastal areas and increasingly devastating heat waves in regions that are already hot, ever more parts of the planet will be rendered less habitable, pushing millions of people into desperate flight. While the strongest and wealthiest governments, especially in more temperate regions, will be better able to cope with these stresses,

expect to see the number of failed states grow dramatically, leading to violence and open warfare over what food, arable land, and shelter remains. In other words, imagine significant parts of the planet in the kind of state that Libya, Syria, and Yemen are in today. Some people will stay and fight to survive; others will migrate, almost assuredly encountering a far more violent version of the hostility we already

see toward immigrants and refugees in the lands they head for. The result, inevitably, will be a global epidemic of resource civil wars and resource violence of every sort. WATER

WARS Most of these conflicts will be of an internal, civil character: clan against clan, tribe against tribe, sect against sect. On a climate-changed planet, however, don’t rule out struggles among nations for diminished vital resources—especially access to water. It’s already clear that climate change will reduce the supply of water in many tropical and subtropical regions, jeopardizing the continued pursuit of agriculture, the health and functioning of major cities, and possibly the very sinews of society. The risk of “water wars” will arise when two or more countries depend on the same key water source—the Nile, the Jordan, the Euphrates, the Indus, the Mekong , or other trans-boundary river systems—and one or more of them seek to appropriate a disproportionate share of the ever-shrinking supply of its water. Attempts by countries to build dams and divert the water flow of such riverine systems have already provoked skirmishes and threats of war, as when Turkey and Syria erected dams on the Euphrates, constraining

the downstream flow. One system that has attracted particular concern in this regard is the Brahmaputra River, which originates in China (where it is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo) and passes through India and Bangladesh before emptying into the Indian Ocean. China has already erected one dam on the river and has plans for more, producing considerable unease in India, where the Brahmaputra’s water is vital for agriculture. But what has provoked the most alarm is a Chinese plan to channel water from that river to water-scarce areas in the northern part of that country. The Chinese insist that no such action is imminent, but intensified warming and increased drought could, in the future, prompt such a move, jeopardizing India’s water supply and possibly provoking a conflict. “China’s construction of dams and the proposed diversion of the Brahmaputra’s waters is not only expected to have repercussions for water flow, agriculture, ecology, and lives and livelihoods downstream,” Sudha Ramachandran writes in The Diplomat, “it could also become another contentious issue undermining Sino-Indian relations.” Of course, even in a future of far greater water stresses, such situations are not guaranteed to provoke armed combat. Perhaps the states

involved will figure out how to share whatever limited resources remain and seek alternative means of survival. Nonetheless, the temptation to employ force is bound to grow as supplies dwindle and millions of people face thirst and starvation. In such circumstances, the survival

of the state itself will be at risk, inviting desperate measures. LOWERING THE TEMPERATURE There is much that undoubtedly could be done to reduce the risk of water wars, including the adoption of cooperative water-management schemes and the

introduction of the wholesale use of drip irrigation and related processes that use water far more efficiently. However, the best way to avoid future climate-related strife is, of course, to reduce the pace of global

warming . Every fraction of a degree less warming achieved in Paris and thereafter will mean that much less blood spilled in future climate-driven resource wars . This is why the Paris climate summit should be viewed as a kind of preemptive peace conference , one that is taking place

before the wars truly begin. If delegates to COP-21 succeed in sending us down a path that limits global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, the risk of future violence will be diminished accordingly. Needless to say, even 2 degrees of warming guarantees substantial damage to vital natural systems, potentially severe resource scarcities, and attendant civil strife. As a result, a lower ceiling for temperature rise would be preferable and should be the goal of future conferences. Still, given the carbon emissions pouring into the atmosphere, even a 2-degree cap would be a significant accomplishment. To achieve such an outcome, delegates will undoubtedly have to begin dealing with conflicts of the present moment as well, including those in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Ukraine, in order to collaborate in devising common, mutually binding climate measures. In this sense, too, the Paris summit will be a peace conference. For the first time, the nations of the world will have to step beyond national thinking and embrace a higher goal: the safety of the ecosphere and all its human inhabitants, no matter their national, ethnic, religious, racial, or linguistic identities. Nothing like this has ever been attempted, which means that it will be an exercise in peacemaking of the most essential sort—and, for once, before the wars truly begin.

Spillover (LL)Creating a physics teacher program spills over to all sectors of STEM – physics is a pre-requisite – only the aff is key because we need more teachersMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: http://www.phystec.org/document/ServeFile.cfm?ID=9845&DocID=1498&DocFID=2602&Attachment=1 //ghs-st)To be sure, the nation needs more teachers who themselves have a strong background in physics. More importantly, however, it needs educators who can lead others in

developing a deep understanding of physics. Research on the effectiveness of the high school physics course and on student learning in physics paints an alarming picture. Studies correlating effects of matriculation in high school physics courses and

success in the introductory physics course in college show that having taken high school physics has no larger an effect on success in the introductory college physics course than having taken high school mathematics instead. In addition, numerous physics education research studies conducted at the college level suggest that the overwhelming majority of students arrive in college without deep understanding of foundational ideas in physics, such as Newton’s laws of motion. Of course there are counterexamples—there are many high school physics teachers who have a profoundly positive effect on their students’ understanding of physics and love for physics. The challenge is to identify the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of such exemplars and build physics teacher education programs that focus intentionally on the development of these qualities in their prospective physics teachers in sufficient numbers to meet the national need. The state of high school physics ultimately affects the health of the physics profession. Physics faculty care about providing a substantive and meaningful encounter between their intellectual passion and their students (whether these students take one physics course or commit to becoming physics majors). Physics faculty should therefore also be concerned about the quality of that encounter before students reach them. A plausible causal chain connects students who receive sub-optimal physics instruction in high

school with a decreasing fraction of physics majors relative to other STEM majors in college, which in turn affects physics department size and ability to attract U.S. physics grad uate students . Public perceptions of the efficacy of

physics as an enterprise also affect public funding for science research and university

budget allocations for science programs. For members of the physics community, perhaps the most alarming prospect is that of a citizenry that fails to appreciate physics as a liberal arts discipline—its unique way of knowing and its unique approach to satisfying and stimulating curiosity about the natural world. Members of the physics community, particularly physics departments, need to recognize what they stand to gain by a transformed physics teacher professional preparation system and what they stand to lose by preserving the status quo.

STEM innovation is key to a LL of impactsLips and McNeill 9 (Dan, worker at the heritage foundation, daily signal, Goldwater Institute, US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, U.S. Senate

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and currently works at US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, got a BA in ptx from Stanford, Jena Baker, is the Senior Director, Government Relations at U.S. Travel Association, has worked in the Department of Homeland Security, Senate, and the Heritage Foundation, graduated from U of Arkansas, and U of Maryland College Park, 4/15/9, accessed 7/7/17, “A New Approach to Improving Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education” Heritage Foundation: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED505676.pdf //ghs-st)the limited number of students who complete elementary and secondary school with the skills and knowledge to pursue STEM coursework in higher education and succeed in many parts of the workforce. The American education system is supposed to be a pipeline that prepares children in elementary and secondary school to pursue opportunities in post-secondary education and in the workforce. It is well known that this pipeline is leaky—that millions of children pass through their K–12 years without receiving a quality education. Too many students drop out and, all too often, those who do earn a high school degree lack the academic qualifications to succeed in STEM fields in college or in the workforce. Improving learning in STEM education should remain a priority for American policymakers.

For students, succeeding in K–12 STEM classes will open the door to future opportunities in higher education, and in the workforce. Also, ensuring that the next generation of American workers has adequate skills and training in critical areas is vital to America’s national security and economic competitiveness. If the United States lacks the tools to combat aggressors, America’s future is at risk . Wars are won partly

with superior tech nologies—and America’s survival depends on its ability to maintain an advantage over its enemies. U.S. scientists and engineers work every day to develop new tools to protect Americans from terror ism ,

such as lasers and explosives-detection devices. Tackling pressing global problems — from energy security to vulnerable cyber infrastructure—will require the intellectual curiosity and creativity of STEM- educated individuals.1 Given the importance of addressing these needs, policymakers should recognize the need for a new approach to STEM education in America.

HegAn increase of STEM is critical to overall competitivenessMeltzer et al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: https://www.aps.org/about/governance/task-force/upload/ttep-synopsis.pdf //ghs-st)Maintaining the s tatus quo for physics teacher preparation risks producing a citizenry that fails to appreciate and support physics. Although the evidence cited above

suggests that good high school physics classes can motivate students to pursue physics or other STEM studies in college , most students enrolled in high school and college physics courses have no intention of pursuing advanced physics studies. Poor instruction increases the likelihood these students will have a negative experience with physics or avoid it altogether . Lack of positive exposure to physics is likely to result in apathy toward the field and public support of work done by physicists. Recent calls to action A number of studies and reports in the past decade have highlighted problems associated with STEM education in the United States. Perhaps the most compelling and widely cited is the 2007 report “Rising Above The Gathering Storm”29 from the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. This report makes clear that failing to invest in basic sciences and mathematics is a significant threat to American competitiveness. First among the report’s recommendations is to annually recruit 10,000 of America’s brightest students to become science and mathematics teachers. In 2010, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) echoed this recommendation in its report on improving K-12 education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.30 Beyond mere numbers of teachers, however, the nation needs high quality STEM instruction. In support of this goal, the first recommendation of the February 2012 PCAST report is a call for the nation to catalyze widespread adoption of empirically validated teaching practices.31 Many other recent reports have echoed these calls to take urgent action to improve U.S. STEM education.32

NSF

GeneralTrump is massively cutting the NSF’s budget – that comes from CyberCorps and ESPSCoR – even if the budget is dead – specifically NSF internal cuts are inevitable in the squoJeffrey Mervis, Reporter on Science Policy in the United States and Internationally, Covering Science Policy for 30+ Years, including work at Nature and with ScienceMag for 24 years, “NSF Offers Arms-Length Defense of Trump’s 2018 Request,” Science Magazine, 06/27/17, http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/nsf-offers-arm-s-length-defense-trump-s-2018-requestPresident Donald Trump’s proposal for an 11.3% cut in spending at the National Science Foundation ( NSF ) may be dead on arrival in Congress. But that doesn’t mean congressional appropriators will be able to avoid any squeeze on NSF’s budget .¶ Representative John Culberson (R–TX), who chairs the House of Representatives spending panel that oversees NSF, opened a hearing yesterday on NSF’s 2018 budget request by saying he will work “to ensure NSF is appropriately funded” in the fiscal year that begins on 1 October. But after the hearing, Culberson declined to say whether that would require preserving its 2017 budget of $7.47 billion.¶ “I’ve personally ensured that NASA has received an appropriate level of funding because of the work that they do,” Culberson explained, referring to boosts this year in both the agency’s overall budget and its space science programs. “NSF is also a national treasure.” But when asked whether “appropriate” funding for NSF rules out a cut, Culberson would say only that “I’ve already given you a great answer.”¶ It was clear from yesterday’s hearing that neither Culberson nor the Democrats on

the spending panel are fans of Trump’s budget request for the agency. And NSF Director France Córdova

did what she could to distance herself from the results of an exercise in which NSF officials were forced to propose $820 million in cuts from current spending.¶ “That wasn’t your idea, was it?” Representative Matt Cartwright (D–PA)

asked Córdova, putting her in an awkward situation. “NSF is an executive branch agency , and this is the president’s budget ,” replied Córdova, a Senate-confirmed appointee of former President Barack Obama who is halfway through a 6-year term.¶ After the hearing, Córdova described how NSF followed White House orders to slice the agency’s budget to levels last seen a decade ago in current dollars—and 15 years ago if inflation is factored in. The goal, she said, was to preserve “core” research programs while also throttling back on

programs that had expanded rapidly in recent years.¶ “There isn’t another agency that just allows researchers to submit their own curiosity-driven research ideas,” she explained. “We call that the core, and to me it means principal investigator–driven research. And we wanted to be sure that there was still an agency on the planet that would continue to fund curiosity-driven, fundamental research.”¶ “But we also looked at the growth of everything over the last decade, by major program,” she added. “And we saw that some programs had experienced really, really big growth,” ticking off NSF’s graduate research fellowships, the Established

Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and the CyberCorps Scholarship for

Service. “So we took those off the table.”¶ Under the 2018 request, the next class of graduate fellows would be cut in half, from 2000 to 1000. EPSCoR, a long-

running program begun by Congress that helps states that receive relatively few NSF research grants, was trimmed by $60 million, or 37% , and the new CyberCorps program would drop by 20% , or $10 million .¶ That pruning reduced the overall size of the cut needed

to around 9%, she said. Each of the agency’s research directorates were then told to find ways to cut that amount from their budgets. “We didn’t want to just spread it like peanut butter across every program,” she explained. The cuts to the three major activities were done in consultation with Trump budget officials, she added.¶ In her testimony, Córdova insisted that “we still have a lot of money” to do the cutting-edge research that has been a hallmark of the agency since it was created in 1950. But she also signaled her hope that Congress would come to the rescue. “The budget presents us with challenges ,” she acknowledged, “but it is not final until Congress weighs in. And scientists are anxiously waiting to see how it all unfolds.”

An increase of NSF funding into education leads to an increase of fundingMoore 3/28 (James E., professor and vice dean for Academic Programs in the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering, and a professor in the USC Price School of Public Policy., 3-28-2017, accessed 7-9-2017, "Why Trump is right to question research funding: Guest commentary", LA News: http://www.dailynews.com/opinion/20170328/why-trump-is-right-to-question-research-funding-guest-commentary //ghs-st)President Trump ’s “America First” budget blueprint calls for eliminating about 20 independent agencies, and eliminating multiple agencies and programs across federal departments. While disquieting to many, and silent on the crucial matter of entitlement programs, the president’s budget proposal still forces an overdue examination of the legitimate role of government. All of the agencies and programs the president calls for eliminating serve constructive purposes. But are the purposes important enough to justify expropriating the taxpayer funds needed to support them? Even if the benefits of most of these programs exceed their costs, do these benefits exceed the benefits that would otherwise flow from leaving more taxpayer dollars with taxpayers? Households and firms do only one of two things with their money. They spend it or they invest it, and both activities expand the economy. Some of the agencies the president’s budget eliminates are highly visible, such as the National Endowment for the Arts. Some are more obscure, such as the Corporation for National and Community Service. None of them, though, are engaged in activities so compelling that public authority necessarily should be reaching into the pockets of taxpayers to enable the work. Proposing their elimination forces an examination of this question, and in many cases the right answer will be pull back from the activity. The budget blueprint calls for a funding reduction of 18 percent for the National Institutes of Health, largely as a function of reorganization. Similar opportunities exist at the National Science Foundation. But the NSF is absent from the budget

proposal, and universities across the country are anxious to know whether the NSF will be affected by the president’s agenda. This is because one of the ways universities measure quality is by the number of doctoral graduates each institution produces, on the sometimes fanciful assumption that more doctoral graduates translates into more placements on faculties. Federal research funds are of central importance to doctoral programs , and reductions in funding would force a change in the way universities compete . The NSF mostly supports research in basic science and engineering . Both NIH and

NSF research funds are awarded in intensively competitive processes. The long-run economic benefits provided by the results these research projects generate very probably justify the tax burden necessary to achieve them. If we could remove the past century of physical and natural science research results from our lives, the quality of our existence would be dramatically diminished. However, there are elements of the NSF agenda that do not pass this test. The NSF’s fiscal year budget request for 2017 was just under $8 billion. The support requested for research in the social, behavioral and economic sciences is only a small portion of this, under $300 million, but the most appropriate level is zero. If we could eliminate the last century of social science research results from our lives, it is hard to know what would change. The NSF’s request for Education and Human Resources accounts for just under $1 billion. Most of these expenditures could cease with little or no impact on the quality or volume of scientific research done in the United States. They should. The most important expenditures, such as support for graduate

research fellowships, are a reasonably small share of this total, and if retained could be folded into the foundation’s competitive research funding programs. If half of the NSF’s EHR budget was shifted to research, and the other half conserved, NSF research funding could still be expanded by 3 percent , even if social science research funding was completely eliminated. Total agency expenses would be reduced by over 9 percent, half the NIH benchmark. Completely eliminating social science and EHR expenditures would reduce the NSF budget by over 15 percent, and the NSF could still fund just as much meaningful research as ever . Many such reforms are possible, but this means more attention to priorities than we have paid in the past. The president and his budget advisors are on the right track.

InnovationThe EPSCoR program is essential to help states compete in R&D developmentHarris 1/12 – Luke A. Harris, Analyst in Science and Technology Policy, “Establish Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR): Background and Selected Issues,” Congressional Research Service, 01/12/2017, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44689.pdfNational Science Foundation NSF’s EPSCoR program was established in 1978 by a resolution of the National Science Board (NSB). 8 Congress directed initial appropriations for the program in FY1979. 9 NSF’s EPSCoR was formally established in

statute in 1988 to assist states that “historically have receive d relatively little Federal [ R&D ] funding ” and have “ demonstrated a commitment to develop their research bases and improve science and engineering research and education .” 10 The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 directed NSF to continue the program “with the objective of helping eligible States to develop the research infrastructure that will make them more competitive for Foundation and other Federal research funding.”11 According to NSF, the overall program mission is to advance excellence in science and engineering research and education in order to achieve sustainable increases in research, education, and training capacity and competitiveness that will enable EPSCoR jurisdictions to have increased engagement in areas supported by the NSF. 12 NSF states that EPSCoR’s goals are to provide strategic programs and opportunities for EPSCoR participants that stimulate sustainable improvements in their R&D capacity and competitiveness; [ and ] to advance science and engineering

capabilities in EPSCoR jurisdictions for discovery , innovation and overall knowledge-based prosperity . 13 EPSCoR program objectives further include broadening participation of diverse groups in

EPSCoR projects and establishing science, technology, engineering, and math ( STEM ) education , training , and professional development opportunities that advance research and workforce development needs identified by each jurisdiction. 14 NSF’s EPSCoR program is broadly set up as federal-jurisdiction partnerships . To participate in the EPSCoR program, an eligible jurisdiction is required to form its own EPSCoR steering committee15 and to develop a science and technology (S&T) plan specific to the jurisdiction’s needs and goals. Each steering committee is expected to undertake “a recent comprehensive analysis of the strengths, barriers, and opportunities for further development of its institutions in support of overall objectives in research, education, and innovation.”16 Through these activities, steering committees work closely with partners in academia, government, and the private sector to build statewide networks. The funding awards structure for the NSF EPSCoR program has changed over time. In 1980, NSF awarded the first EPSCoR planning grants to seven states to support establishment of state steering committees, identify barriers to research competitiveness, and suggest possible remedies.17 Building from that work, five states subsequently developed successful research grant proposals and received five years of initial funding, primarily to support individual investigators. In the 1990s, award levels increased, and the grant focus changed to support for research clusters and statewide proposals for infrastructure development. 18 In the 2000s, NSF’s EPSCoR program was moved to the Office of Integrative Activities (OIA) and developed to include the three current investment components: Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) awards, co-funding, and outreach/workshops.

State-by-state R&D is the key internal link to innovation and economic success – but a state’s “go at it alone” approach fails.Andes and Muro 13 – Scott Andes, Senior Policy Associate and Associate Fellow at the Centennial Scholar Initiative, Mark Muro, Senior Fellow and Policy Director at the Metropolitan Policy Program, “State Government Step Up R&D Investment,” The Brookings Institute, 11/20/2013, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2013/11/20/state-governments-step-up-rd-investment/Conventional wisdom holds that some areas of public policy impact the entire country and are therefore inherently national. One obvious case in point is national security, where a single, unified security policy is essential for the country’s defense. Another is the nation’s research and development (R&D) enterprise, which has also typically been viewed as the special province of the federal government.¶ Yet now with federal paralysis pandemic, state and local leaders are taking control of their economic destinies and asserting themselves in many areas traditionally left to Washington—and R&D is no exception. ¶ According to recent data from the National Science Foundation, state government R&D expenditures increased by 11.3 percent between 2010 and 2011, while federal investments declined 9 percent during the same time period.¶ The academic literature on innovation systems has generally placed nations at the center of the analysis , emphasizing national tax, trade, intellectual property, and education policies. More specifically, the argument goes, R&D provides the nation with a number of positive

externalities that are diminished when state and regional competition creates barriers to interstate knowledge exchange. Better to leave the federal government at the helm of large-scale investments and to drive coordination across multiple sub-national jurisdictions. While this may have been a valid point in the 1980s and 1990s when “national innovation systems” research was in its heyday, the way in which R&D is performed today is fundamentally different . ¶ In the past R&D has been organized vertically by a few very large domestic firms, universities, and national labs. Think Bell Labs. In such a climate there is no need to “go regional,” as national leaders can interact directly with the handful of major research-performing firms. Today, however, R&D is increasingly organized horizontally through thousands of small-and medium-sized firms across hundreds of complex supply chains . In such a climate, clusters, not countries, matter. Nevada R&D may be motivated by rapid tech nology transfer to young software firms, while Tennessee needs greater large scale investments in lightweight composites. What works in one region doesn’t work everywhere . ¶ To be sure, states can’t go it alone—the federal government can and should ramp up national R&D investments . But in the meantime,

successful state and regional leaders —public, private, and philanthropic—recognize R&D investments are a critical fuel of regional economic success . Innovation precedes exports, foreign direct investment, higher wages, and better standards of living . No wonder these leaders aren’t waiting for the federal government but are investing in research that supports their firms and unique industry clusters today.

CyberA steady supply of cybersecurity experts are critical to protect the nationals critical infrastructures – lack of workforce makes attacks extremely likely and damagingGAO 4/4 – GAO, United States Government Accountability Office, “Federal Efforts Are Under Way That May Address Workforce Challenges,” GAO, 04/04/2017, http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/683923.pdfFederal agencies and our nation’s critical infrastructures —such as energy,

transportation systems, communications, and financial services— are dependent on computerized ( cyber ) information systems and electronic data to carry out operations and to process , maintain, and report essential information. The information systems and networks that support federal operations are highly complex and dynamic, technologically diverse, and often geographically dispersed. This complexity increases the difficulty in identifying, managing, and protecting the myriad of operating systems, applications, and devices comprising the systems and networks. The security of federal information systems and data is vital to public confidence and the nation’s safety , prosperity, and well-being.

However, systems used by federal agencies are often riddled with security vulnerabilities—both known and unknown. For example, the national vulnerability database maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

identified 82,384 publicly known cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exposures as of February 9, 2017, with more being added each day. Federal systems and networks are also often interconnected with other internal and external

systems and networks, including the Internet, thereby increasing the number of avenues of attack and expanding their attack surface . In addition, cyber threats to systems supporting the federal government and critical infrastructure are evolving and becoming more sophisticated . These

threats come from a variety of sources and vary in terms of the types and capabilities of the actors, their willingness to act, and their motives. For example, foreign nations—where adversaries possess sophisticated levels of

expertise and significant resources to pursue their objectives—pose increasing risks.¶

Cybersecurity professionals can help to prevent or mitigate the vulnerabilities that could allow malicious individuals and groups access to federal IT systems. The ability to secure federal systems depends on the knowledge, skills, and abilities of the federal and contractor workforce that uses, implements, secures, and maintains these systems. This includes federal and contractor employees who use the IT systems in the course of their work as well as the designers, developers, programmers, and administrators of the programs and systems. However, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has noted that the federal government and private industry face a persistent shortage of cybersecurity and IT talent to implement and oversee information

security protections to combat cyber threats. In addition, the RAND Corporation2 and the Partnership for Public Service3 have reported that there is a nationwide shortage of cybersecurity experts, in particular in the federal government. According to these reports, this shortage of cybersecurity professionals makes securing the nation’s networks more challenging and may leave federal IT systems vulnerable to malicious attacks .

Cyberattacks threaten nuclear response – the DoD is willing to go nuclearSam Biddle 13 – Sam Biddle, Senior Writer at Gawker, Internally Citing the Pentagon’s Report: Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat, “Pentagon: Let’s Threaten Nuke Strike Against Hackers,” Gizmodo, 3/06/13, http://gizmodo.com/5988914/pentagon-lets-threaten-nuke-strike-against-hackers http://gizmodo.com/5988914/pentagon-lets-threaten-nuke-strike-against-hackersMost of us are content keeping hackers away with a firewall and decent password. But the Pentagon isn't nearly content, and in a new report, insists we should keep our nuclear arsenal ready for Internet retaliation. What could go wrong?¶ The report, "Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat," was prepared by the Department of Defense's Defense Science Board, and over the course of 138 pages makes one very clear point: if China ever hacks us, "Protect the Nuclear Strike as a Deterrent." The phrase is repeated again and again—the word "nuclear" appears 113 times in a report ostensibly dealing with computer warfare. The entire thing is riddled with jargon, euphemism, and rosy military metaphor—climbing the ladder of deterrence!—but the notion that American nukes could (and should!) be part of the "cyber war" equation (and insulated against any electronic disruption) is unequivocal.¶ Let's put it plainly: China should know that we have nukes, tons of 'em, and if China's stellar hacker platoon s ever tried to, say, bring down a n American satellite , destabilize a dam, or switch off an enormous chunk of the power grid as part of an open military attack, they should be thinking about our nuclear missiles coming back in return. The US government has already said that it'd consider internet-based offensives an act of war that'd have IRL consequences, but nuking as a response to DDoS has never been so explicit. "The United States would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in 'extreme circumstances,'" the report says. And that's always been the case: you nuke us, we'll nuke you. But now the definition of what circumstances are extreme is entirely remade : "Presumably one would characterize a catastrophic Tier V-VI adversary cyber attack on the United States as 'extreme circumstances.'"¶ Wait—what's a Tier V-VI adversary cyber attack? That's simple: "States with the ability to successfully execute full spectrum (cyber capabilities in combination with all of their military and intelligence capabilities) operations to achieve a specific outcome in political, military, economic, etc. domains."¶ States like us.¶ Careful, Pentagon—this is one hell of a precedent.

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SpaceThe EPSCoR program is key to broader partnerships and initiatives in aerospace-related research activitiesNASA 6/12 National Aeronautics and Space Administration "Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research," (Published by NASA Available Online at: https://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/national/epscor/home/index.html)The Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or EPSCoR, establishes partnerships with government, higher education and industry that are designed to effect lasting improvements in a state's or region's research infrastructure, R&D capacity and hence, its national R&D competitiveness. The EPSCoR program is directed at those jurisdictions that have not in the past participated equably in competitive aerospace and aerospace-related research activities. Twenty-four states, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam currently participate. Five federal agencies conduct EPSCoR programs, including NASA. The goal of EPSCoR is to provide seed funding that will enable jurisdictions to develop an academic research enterprise directed toward long-term, self-sustaining, nationally-competitive capabilities in aerospace and aerospace-related research. NASA EPSCoR objectives are to: Contribute to and promote the development of research infrastructure in EPSCoR jurisdictions in areas of strategic importance to the NASA mission. Improve the capabilities of the jurisdictions to gain support from sources outside the NASA EPSCoR program. Develop partnerships between NASA research assets, industry, and EPSCoR jurisdictions’ academic institutions. Contribute to the overall research infrastructure, science and technology capabilities, higher education, and/or economic development of the jurisdiction. The three main components of EPSCoR are:

EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Development awards, or RID. This component enables jurisdictions to build and strengthen relationships with NASA researchers. The RID has a three-year base period of performance with a potential one-year no cost extension. Awards are $125,000 per year. NASA intends to announce the RID opportunity every three to five years, pending funding availability. EPSCoR Research Awards solicits topic-specific proposals addressing high-priority NASA research and technology development needs. Awards are up to $750,000 for a three-year performance period. NASA intends to announce the EPSCoR Cooperative Agreement Notice, or CAN, for Research Awards yearly, pending funding availability. EPSCoR International Space Station, or ISS, Flight Opportunity Awards. Awards are up to $100,000 for a three-year performance period. NASA intends to announce the EPSCoR CAN for ISS Flight Opportunity Awards yearly, pending funding availability.

Continuing research through EPSCoR is necessary for Space ResearchNASA, 3-21-2016, "NASA Expands Economic Research to Advance Space Development," https://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/feature/nasa-expands-economic-research-to-advance-space-developmentThe global space economy is growing, generating more than $300 billion a year in space-related activities, and attracting new, diverse participants and investors. A recent study also found more private money invested in commercial

space development in 2015 than in the previous 15 years combined. NASA has selected six new research proposals to understand the effective drivers of investments in the space economy. In its second call for economic studies related to investments in the space economy, the agency picked studies that cover topics ranging from in-space manufacturing in low-Earth orbit (LEO) to the economics of resources obtained from near-Earth objects (NEO), such as asteroids. “This year’s response of 32 proposals competing for only six grant opportunities shows both the strength and the diversity of interest in the economic development of space,” said Dr. Alexander MacDonald, NASA’s Senior Economic Advisor. The six studies selected this year will cover topics ranging from in-space manufacturing in low-Earth orbit (LEO) to the economics of resources obtained from near-Earth objects (NEO) such as asteroids. “The studies we chose will help us understand the dynamics and potential of future commercial space developments, both in partnership with the government, and as privately funded ventures. Some of the studies will also look to history to harvest the lessons learned from analogous developments in the past,” said MacDonald. One study offers unique insights into an area that is often overlooked in space economic analyses, “The Start Up Supply Chain;” specifically, the current capabilities of the industrial base to support startup space companies. Proposed by the Tauri Group, this study will characterize the inexpensive system components that are widely available today and used to build new types of space systems, as well as less well-known technologies whose use might catalyze new opportunities and new space ventures in the near future. The goal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology study, “Modeling and Simulation for Strategic Development of a Profitable In-Space Manufacturing Economy,” is to determine the necessary parameters of future profitable space-based manufacturing operations with an emphasis on additive manufacturing technologies. The proposers note that in-space manufacturing, either from raw materials launched from Earth, repurposed from other in-space components, or produced from extraterrestrial materials, is a crosscutting application, providing benefits across different subsystems, spacecraft, and system architectures. The study will examine issues and opportunities from technology development, customer demand volumes, supplier capabilities, and the constraints of orbital mechanics in order to explore the trade space. The study “Protein Crystallization for Drug Development: An Empirical Appraisal of Economic Effects of Microgravity” proposed by Research Triangle Institute International will leverage new data on the effects of microgravity on protein crystals in an economic analysis of the benefits and costs of sending proteins to space to advance drug discovery. The study will provide estimates of economic impact and strategy recommendations to help understand the medical and commercial value of protein crystallization in space. “Stepping Stones: Economic Study of Space Transportation Supplied From NEO Resources,” a study proposed by Trans Astronautica Corporation, will evaluate the degree to which asteroid mining and resource utilization can enable significantly increased industrial activity beyond LEO and characterize the possible economic benefits of this potentially important new resource. The Stepping Stones study will analyze market mechanisms, private sector partnerships, non-traditional commercial entities, economic benefits, and competitive stresses associated with the technology to exploit near- Earth asteroid resources for the development of a self-sustaining, reusable space transportation network. The evolving role of government in commercial development will be examined from a historical

perspective by Moment LLC in the study “NACA and NASA Industrial Intelligence, 1945 to 1963.” During the 1950s, the aerospace industry shifted westward and into missiles and supersonic aircraft, then into satellites and crewed vehicles. This business history of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and NASA Western Support Office in Santa Monica from 1945 to 1963 explores how NACA and NASA gathered intelligence on the small entrepreneurial firms entering the space economy, and how it identified mechanisms for NASA support at the beginning of space development. In its study “From Sailing Ships To Space Ships: How Commercial Firms Utilize Outside Assistance To Reduce Financial Risk In The Emerging Space Transportation Industry,” the American University will examine the external economic practices used to assist the commercial launch service industry and compare those practices to the ones historically used to reduce financial risk in new transportation activities. The resulting study will merge three investigations: a history of practices used to assist emerging transportation industries, a series of financial case studies describing outside assistance for commercial space transportation firms, and an assessment of the effect of such practices in reducing financial risk. Program officials selected these six proposals through a competitive NASA Research Announcement and a comprehensive review process. With the high interest and strong quality of the proposals, NASA’s Emerging Space Office expects to release the next call for economics research in September 2016.

Continued agency cooperation between NASA and other programs is key to space colonizationThomson 12 - Iain Thomson B.A. from University of Exeter in Political Sciences and Sociology, Previously a news editor at incisive media, 3-8-2012, ("NASA: The future of space is public/private partnerships," The Register, https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/08/nasa_private_space_nasa/)The future of space exploration is going to be dependent on a mix of public and private money, and it's likely that the first Mars colonization missions will be commercial operations. Dr. S. Pete Worden, director at NASA Ames Research Center, told The Register that the agency was firmly enmeshing itself with the private sector, citing cooperation on the Dragon capsule being developed by Elon Musk's SpaceX team as a good example. NASA developed a heat shield material called PICA (Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator), capable of withstanding 1850 degrees Celsius (3360 degrees Fahrenheit), and gave it to SpaceX, who manufactured it. "Governments can develop new technology and do some of the exciting early exploration but in the long run it's the private sector that finds ways to make profit, finds ways to expand humanity. That's really our tack," he explained. This kind of cooperation has a long history, he pointed out. The age of discovery that led to the European colonization of the New World was funded by governments and royalty, while the process of getting out there, subduing the locals who were living there at the time and colonizing places, was a largely private operation. "Most of private individuals I've talked to about interest in settling on Mars, including Elon Musk, talk about in the next few decades they think the private sector will fund settlement missions - whether to the Moon, Mars, or asteroids. As a government laboratory our job is to develop to enable those kinds of things by developing technology and early exploration, and we hope the private sector will find a way to do something like that," he said. Settling would involve one-way missions to Mars, something the private sector could do but NASA

could not he said. While he personally supported the idea of one-way trips, when NASA sends people out of the gravity well it plans to bring them back afterwards. Musk is not the only technologist with an itch to get into orbit; it's a feature of many firms in Silicon Valley. A lot of techies like science fiction and now technical companies have the kind of budget to try and turn those ideas into science fact. Take Tiffany Montague, who has the most interesting business card in Silicon Valley. Ms Montague, a former US Air Force high-altitude pilot, has the official job title of Intergalactic Federation King Almighty and Commander of the Universe and is in charge of coordinating Google's operation of all things orbital and beyond. "Larry and Sergey are space enthusiasts, with and open-minded and optimistic view of the future," she told The Register. "Space is like any other engineering problem, and if Google can’t solve it we’ll incentivize it." The Google Lunar X Prize is offering $20m to any group that can safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, and move it at least 500 meters while sending back video, images, and data to Earth. The second team to manage it gets $5m, and there's $4m in bonus prizes if the robot can move at night, travel more than 5km, land next to a previous landing site or, crucially, find water. So far 26 teams are competing. Google's also got a team of engineers to work on the Google Moon and Mars mapping projects, and as new data comes in it will be added to the software. It's also working on technology that it can sell to NASA and other space companies. "We see an emerging market," she said. "Not everything we do is tied to immediate revenue; we take a long-range view of the world. That said, we hope in the very long run that they will make money too."

Mars Colonization is a necessity to ensure survival of our species Orwig 15 - Jessica Orwig is a senior video producer at Business Insider and a Master of Science in science and technology journalism from Texas A&M University and a Bachelor of Science in astronomy and physics from The Ohio State University (“5 undeniable reasons humans need to colonize Mars — even though it's going to cost billions,” The Business Insider Available Online at: http://www.businessinsider.com/5-undeniable-reasons-why-humans-should-go-to-mars-2015) Establishing a permanent colony of humans on Mars is not an option. It's a necessity. At least, that's what some of the most innovative, intelligent minds of our age — Buzz Aldrin, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson — are saying. Of course, it's extremely difficult to foresee how manned missions to Mars that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars each, could benefit mankind. It's easier to imagine how that kind of money could immediately help in the fight against cancer or world hunger. That's because humans tend to be short-sighted. We're focused on what's happening tomorrow instead of 100 years from now. "If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before," Hawking said in 2008 at a lecture series for NASA's 50th anniversary. That brings us to the first reason humans must colonize Mars: 1. Ensuring the survival of our species The only home humans have ever known is Earth. But history shows that surviving as a species on this tiny blue dot in the vacuum of space is tough and by no means guaranteed. The dinosaurs are a classic example: They roamed the planet for 165 million years, but the only trace of them today are their fossilized remains. A colossal asteroid wiped them out. Putting humans on more than one planet would better ensure our existence thousands if not millions of years from now. "Humans need to be a multiplanet species," Musk recently told astronomer and Slate science blogger Phil Plait. Musk founded the space transport company SpaceX to help make this happen. Mars is an ideal target because it has a day about the same length as Earth's and water ice on its surface. Moreover, it's the best available option: Venus and Mercury are too hot, and the Moon has no atmosphere to protect residents from destructive meteor impacts.

Colonization is possible and tech overcomes any barriersWilliams 15 - Matt Williams is a curator for Universe Today (“How Can We Live on Mars?” Universe Today Available Online at: http://www.universetoday.com/111462/how-can-we-live-on-mars)In order to survive the lack of air pressure and the cold, humans will need pressurized and heated habitats. Martians, the terrestrial kind, will also need a spacesuit whenever they go outside. Every hour they spend outside will add to their radiation exposure, not to mention all the complications that exposure to radiation brings. For the long term, we’ll need to figure out how to extract water from underground supplies, and use that to generate breathable air and rocket fuel. And once we’ve reduced the risk of suffocation or dying of dehydration, we’ll need to consider food sources, as we’ll be outside the delivery area of everyone except Planet Express. Care packages could be shipped up from Earth, but that’s going to come with a hefty price tag. We’ll need to produce our own food too, since we can’t possible hope to ship it all in on a regular basis. Interestingly, although toxic, Martian soil can be used to grow plants once you supplement it and remove some of the harsher chemicals. NASA’s extensive experience in hydroponics will help. To thrive on Mars, the brave adventurers may want to change themselves, or possibly their offspring. This could lead to genetic engineering to help future generations adapt to the low gravity, higher radiation and lower air pressure. And why stop at humans?

Human colonists could also adapt their plants and animals to live there as well. Finally, to take things to the next level, humanity could make a few planetary renovations.

Basically, we could change Mars itself through the process of terraforming. To do this, we’ll need to release megatons of greenhouse gasses to warm the planet, unleashing the frozen water reserves. Perhaps we’ll crash a few hundred comets into the planet to deliver water and other chemicals too.

BacklinesThe CyberCorps program promotes the next-generation development of cyber security experts for future service https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=504991Cyberspace has transformed the daily lives of people. The rush to

embrace cyberspace, however, has exposed its fragility and vulnerabilities :

corporations, agencies, national infrastructure and individuals have been victims of cyber-attacks. In December 2011, the National Science and Technology Council with the cooperation of NSF advanced a broad,

coordinated Federal strategic plan for cybersecurity research and education to "change the game," examine the misuses of cyber technology, bolster education and training in cybersecurity, establish a science of cybersecurity, and transition promising cybersecurity research into practice. To achieve this strategic plan, the Nation requires an innovative and efficient cybersecurity education system that results in an unrivaled cybersecurity workforce and citizenry capable of advancing America's economic prosperity and national security in the 21st century. The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014 (Public Law 113-274) authorizes the National Science Foundation, in coordination with the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Homeland Security, to offer a scholarship program to recruit and train the next generation of information technology professionals, industry control system security professionals and security managers.¶ The CyberCorps(R): Scholarship for Service (SFS) program seeks proposals that address cybersecurity education and workforce development. The Scholarship Track provides funding to award scholarships to students in cybersecurity. All scholarship recipients must work after graduation for a Federal, State, Local, or Tribal Government organization in a position related to cybersecurity for a period equal to the length of the scholarship. A proposing institution must provide clearly documented evidence of a strong existing academic program in cybersecurity. Such evidence can include: designation by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security as a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education/Cyber Defense (CAE IA/CD), in Cyber Operations or in Research (CAE-R); a specialized designation by a nationally recognized organization (for example, in forensics); or equivalent evidence documenting a strong program in cybersecurity.¶ The Capacity Track seeks innovative proposals leading to an increase in the ability of the United States higher education enterprise to produce cybersecurity professionals. Proposals are encouraged that contribute to the expansion of existing educational opportunities and resources in cybersecurity and focus on efforts such as research on the teaching and learning of cybersecurity, including research on materials, methods and interventions; curricula recommendations for new courses, degree programs, and educational pathways with plans for wide adoption nationally; teaching and learning effectiveness of cybersecurity curricular programs and courses; integration of cybersecurity topics into computer science, data science, information technology, engineering and other existing degree programs with plans for pervasive adoption; and partnerships between institutions of higher education, government, and relevant employment sectors leading to improved models for the integration of applied research experiences into cybersecurity degree programs.

The Cyber Corps program is critical in strengthening public cyber security by providing scholarships in exchange for service – the NSF has above a 93% government placement rate nowWennergren et al, October 15 – David Wennergren et al., Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer at Professional Services Council, Previously Worked at US Department of Defense, and Ramon Barquin, President & Chief Executive Officer at Barquin International, and Shelley Metzenbaum, Seniorr Fellow & Self-Employed, Previous Good Government Catalyst at Open Data Enterprise Event, Previous Founding President of the Volcker Alliance, Previous Associate Director of Performance and Personnel Management at the White House Office of Management and Budget, and Alan Shark, Executive Director and CEO of Public Technology Institute, All Authors are/were Fellows of the National Academy of Public Administration, “Increasing the Effectiveness of the Federal Role in Cybersecurity Education,” National Academy of Public Administration, October 2015, http://napawash.org/images/reports/2015/Increasing_Effectiveness_of_Federal_Role_in_Cyber_Education.pdfThe CyberCorps®: SFS program is an interagency program for scholarships and grants to colleges and universities , administered by the NSF with cooperation from DHS , NSA and the Office of Personnel Management

(OPM); it has been operating since 2001.13 According to the NSF, the SFS program is designed to increase and strengthen the cadre of federal information assurance professionals that protect the government’s critical information infrastructure . It supplies grants to schools for student scholarships . Grants are administered by the receiving school and the school takes responsibility for awarding scholarships to students . The students are required to find employment (including an internship) in the public sector upon graduation, to keep the scholarship from turning into a loan that has to be repaid to the government. As of FY 2010 (latest available data), the government placement rate was above 93%, according to NSF.14 The SFS program provides additional grants to the participating colleges and universities to improve their cybersecurity education programs , including capacity-building in academic departments (facilities, professors, and so on). These

capacitybuilding grants in recent years have ranged from $300,000 to $900,000, ranging from one to three years in length15 The grants are renewable if NSF approves an acceptable renewal grant application which includes a review of the past use of funds. The program was recently

reaffirmed by Congress in the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014.16 The Director of NSF is charged with determining the “eligible degree programs” and the “qualifications” a college or university must meet to participate in the program.17

CyberCorps scholarships are a key way to increase cyber talent – its meeting yearly needs nowGAO 4/4 – GAO, United States Government Accountability Office, “Federal Efforts Are Under Way That May Address Workforce Challenges,” GAO, 04/04/2017, http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/683923.pdfCyberCorps scholarship: According to the Partnership for Public Service, one way agencies can increase the supply of cyber talent is through the use of undergraduate and graduate scholarships to promising cybersecurity and STEM

students. One such program—the Scholarship for Service program operated by

DHS and NSF — provides scholarships and stipends to undergraduate and graduate students who are pursuing information security- related degrees, in exchange for 2 years of federal service after graduation. According to a November 2015 memo from the federal Chief Human Capital Officer Council,

since 2000 these scholarships have been awarded to more than 1,650 students. There are also nearly 400 graduating students in related academic programs to meet agencies’ cybersecurity needs each year .

2AC

2AC – H1B Visas CounterplanCongress has already expanded the visas programFrankel 16 – Judy Frankel, Founder and CEO of Writeindependent.org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)(4) organization that promotes voter education and participation in federal elections. She authored the Pledge for Honest Candidates, a stringent agreement that aims to remove money’s influence from government dealings. In 2015, Frankel released a book entitled In Search of the Next POTUS (President of the United States): One Woman's Quest to Fix Washington, a True Story in which she offers a six-step plan to make our government more representative of the people who live here. Frankel is a writer, political activist, long time entrepreneur and small business owner. She started four successful businesses in physical therapy, computer aided design, edible landscaping, and web-based political marketing and social networking. She studied comedy writing at UCLA and holds a Bachelors of Science degree from Pennsylvania State University, 2016 (“Insourcing: American Lose Jobs to H-1B Visa Workers”, Huffinton Post, July 26th, Available Online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judy-frankel/insourcing-american-lose-_b_11173074.html, Accessed 07-14-2017) Follow the Money Around Washington Before 1990, the visa program made it difficult for employers to hire guest workers. They had to explain why they needed a candidate with specialized skills, what training the specialist had that Americans don’t have, and they screened the applicant. Then Microsoft went to Washington. Ostensibly to hide the trail of money, an organization named Business Software Alliance (BSA) acted as cover while lobbyists greased wheels in Congress. Microsoft spent more than $20 million during the critical years 1998-2000 to tweak H-1B legislation, such as giving students on an F-1 visa the ability to work. High tech firms and the

staffing agencies who help job seekers come to the U.S. are still getting around the 85,000 workers -per-year cap through a “H1B cap-exempt” workaround. Companies lobby for loosened visa legislation, then abuse the loopholes they created. In Washington, two laws created exemptions from the cap (then set at 65,000 H-1B visas per year). The first was disingenuously titled “The American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act of 2000”. One of the biggest funders of visa-friendly bills is the Information Technology Industry Council. Their member companies, some of the biggest names in the industry, hire, recruit, train, place, and/or subcontract foreigners. The following are just a snapshot of some of the bills making it easier to replace Americans with foreign nationals: S.2045 The American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act of 2000. Allowed more non -immigrant visas (H-1B’s) for years

1999 through 2003, and made those who were already granted visas exempt from being counted

toward the cap. HR. 4227 Amended the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate the cap on H-1B visas for 2000. HR. 4444 (1986) Repeals the visa application fingerprint requirement and certain related provisions. Repeals

existing requirements that immigrant visa applicants submit supporting

documentation in duplicate and that consular officers retain duplicates of all issued immigrant visas. In the works: HR. 2758 Allows non-agricultural immigrants a permanent exception to the annual limit. These changes have

already hurt Americans. “Statutory changes made to the H-1B program have, in combination

and in effect, increased the pool of H-1B workers beyond the cap and lowered the bar for eligibility,” reported the Government Accountability Office in a 2011 study of the guest worker program.

Prefer rigorous data – H1b visas crowd-out employment and crush employment wages Benderly 15 – Beryl Lieff Benderly, Science Careers contributing correspondent and a freelance writer who has contributed to a wide range of publications, including Scientific American, Scientific American Mind, Discover, and the New York Times–among many others. She is also author or co-author of eight nonfiction trade books and a children’s chapter book. She has been awarded prizes for her writing about the scientific labor force, biomedical engineering, cancer genetics, depression, women’s health, electronic medical records, apes that use sign language, and other topics by IEEE-USA, the American Association of University Professors, the American Psychological Association, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Radcliffe College, and other organizations. Her "Taken for Granted" column has appeared in Science Careers since 2003. Beryl has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, 2015, (“Economists: H-1B visas suppress wages”, Science Center, May 11th, Available Online athttp://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2015/05/economists-h-1b-visas-suppress-wages, Accessed 07-14-2017) The effect of foreign-born STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workers

on the U.S. economy and labor force has been a major political controversy for years. Proponents of increased high-skilled immigration argue, as in a document used at a Capitol Hill briefing for congressional staff on 24 April, that foreign workers are “good for America’s workforce and economy” because they create “jobs for U.S.-born workers,” increase patenting, and raise wages. Critics, on the other hand, argue that the evidence indicates that the opposite it true. While mostly used in tech companies, H-1B visas are also used to employ other kinds of scientists. A new study presented that same day at Harvard University provides strong evidence supporting the critics’ view.

It finds that adding employees on the H-1B visa, which is among the commonest and arguably most contentious vehicles for admitting highly skilled guest workers to the United States, has “ insignificant effect on patenting , … substantially crowd[s] out employment of other workers , [and] leads to lower average employee wages while raising firm profits.” [W]e robustly find that new H-1Bs cause no significant increase in firm employment . –Kirk Doran, Alexander Gelber, and Adam Isen The Effects of High-Skilled Immigration on Firms: Evidence from H-1B Visa Lotteries, by economists Kirk Doran of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, Alexander Gelber of the University of California, Berkeley, and Adam Isen of the Office of Tax Analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, uses an innovative analytical approach to gauge the effect on companies of adding H-1Bs. The authors used data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services , the Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to track outcomes

for firms that won the lottery and, thus, received new H-1B workers. “Our paper is the first we know to isolate the effect of an additional H-1B visa given to a particular firm on outcomes at that firm,” they write in the paper. “We demonstrate that H-1Bs given to a firm on average do not raise the firm’s patenting and/or other employment, contrary to firms’ frequent claims. Overall our results are more consistent with the second [i.e., the critics’] narrative, in which H-1Bs replace other workers to

some extent, are paid less than alternative workers, and increase the firm’s profits

(despite little, if any, effect on firm patenting).” In addition, “we robustly find that new H-1Bs cause no significant increase in firm employment . New H-1Bs substantially

and statistically significantly crowd out median employment of other workers,” they continue.

This result conflicts with the widely repeated claim that foreign workers create American jobs, which is based, as we have previously reported, partly on the work of economist Madeline

Zavodny of Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. Furthermore, “[o]ur results are consistent with the possibility that H-1B and non-H-1B workers are perfect

substitutes. This is notable in light of frequent claims that H-1Bs have unique skills that cannot easily be

obtained elsewhere.” The authors of this “important” study “have done an exhaustive analysis, given the data available, and they have better data than anyone to date, best I can tell,” says labor force expert Hal Salzman of Rutgers University in New

Brunswick, New Jersey, by e-mail. “And their findings are consistent with all the other analyses that were done competently—and consistent with what the companies themselves state is the function of H-1B (to lower wage costs and raise profits).”

FailsH1B visa’s system sucks the CP fails because it still is a lottery system that doesn’t give it to the most qualified applicants, only the aff is able to solve, and even if it would solve Trump would roll it backNatarajan 4/19 (Nikhila, Senior editor at FirstPost worker at the observer research foundation , "Trump signs executive order on H1B visa review, says lottery system is all wrong" , http://www.firstpost.com/world/trump-signs-executive-order-on-h1b-visa-review-says-lottery-system-is-all-wrong-3391920.html //ghs-st)After months of screw tightening measures, the H1B visa got hammered some more - this time

by the US President Trump on a gorgeous, wind swept spring afternoon in Wisconsin as he ratcheted up his old campaign war cry of ‘Buy American, Hire American’ in front of a 500 strong gathering of workers and local stars, including the White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, a Kenosha native. Trump won an upset victory against Hillary Clinton here in Wisconsin and this latest executive order comes at a difficult time for the White House unable to show much in terms of legislative overhaul and the sweeping 'Muslim ban' blocked by courts. Although we will continue to hear pundits say that Trump's H1B move is all talk and the sheer complication involved in implementing real change is a mirage, fact is that the H1B has already been hammered even without this executive order. Since Trump

took office in January this year, the H1B has come in for a three pronged attack from the Justice Department, D epartment o f H omeland Security and the U nited States Citizenship and Immigration Services . H1B workers and the body shops that contract them out to clients in the US are sweating, this much is clear. Speaking to workers at Snap-On Tools in Kenosha, Wisconsin which falls on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, Trump made his most pointed remarks yet on the H1B, turning the knife in,

showing he has done his homework and/ or been briefed in great detail by his innermost circle. Trump's dishevelled chief strategist Stephen Bannon, just the man who may have scribbled this sort of 'nationalist' headline grabber, marked attendance in WI. Trump has put his official stamp on the “H1B lottery is bad” idea and going by how much has become tougher in the last few months for H1B

workers even without Trump speaking on the topic, this is a clear indication that the H1B lottery system will be the next one for the meat cleaver. “…we are going to enforce the Hire American rules that are designed to protect jobs and wages of workers in the United States. We believe jobs must be offered to American workers first. Does that make sense? Right now, widespread abuse in our immigration system is allowing American workers of all backgrounds to be replaced by workers brought in from other countries to fill the same job for sometimes less pay . This will stop. American workers have long called for reforms to end these visa abuses. And today, their calls are being answered for the first time. That includes taking the first steps to set in motion a long-overdue reform of H1B visas. “Right now, H1B visas are awarded in a totally random lottery -- and that's wrong. Instead, they should be given to the most-skilled and highest-paid applicants, and they should never , ever be used to replace Americans.

No one can compete with American workers when they're given a fair and level playing field, which has not happened for decades.” Link to Donald

Trump’s latest H1B remarks On the campaign trail and in his tough talking inaugural address, Trump promised an " America First " method . Less than 100 days into his Presidency and faced with rising anxiety among his voter base that he’s gone soft on the hard choices, Trump Wisconsin speech shows a certain hark back to the campaign in a bid to win back the

base. Remember that Trump is already collecting money for his 2020 run and no

other President has done that so early into their first term. This is a base Trump won’t want to lose to even another Republican, forget about Democrats. Already being flayed for ousting Stephen Bannon from his prized National Security Council,

Trump’s H1B remarks will warm the heart of his hardcore voters faraway from the more hip New York and Washington D.C. Indian nationals are the largest single group of recipients of the 65,000 H1B visas issued yearly to new applicants under a Congress mandated cap. Exemptions on the cap are available to up to 20,000 applicants who have a US master’s degree. The actual number of Indian nationals working in the United States under the H1B programme is significantly higher, however, because H1B visas typically roll over in a three year plus three year cycle. From the time George W. Bush signed into law the Immigration Act of 1990 which opened the H1B floodgates for Indians till 2016, never before has the H1B been in such sharp focus as it has been in the last 100 days. As it turns out, the H1B backlash is the one 'America First' campaign promise that Trump has delivered on for his vote base. Everything else - from Obamacare to tax reform is meeting a dumpster fire in Congress.

Aff TurnA system of hiring outside talent fails, a lack of good physics and STEM programs lead to drop out, and it collapses the economy, innovation, and democracyMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: https://www.aps.org/about/governance/task-force/upload/ttep-synopsis.pdf //ghs-st)The potential negative consequences of maintaining the s tatus quo are far-reaching, both for physics as a discipline and for the U.S. economy and society

as a whole. As international competition for science and engineering talent continues to increase, the United States’ ability to recruit foreign-born talent to fuel the nation’s technological innovation will become increasingly threatened. Interested in STEM fields but uninspired by physics instruction and unprepared for the challenges physics offers, an ever-smaller fraction of U.S. STEM majors are pursuing physics, and many drop out of STEM completely. Moreover, at a time of unprecedented scientific and technological complexity, many U.S. citizens are unable to participate in STEM -related economic opportunities or informed democratic decision- making. Executive Summary In response to the shortage of physics teachers in the U.S. and concerns about their effectiveness, the American Physical Society, American Association of Physics Teachers, and American Institute of Physics formed the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP). T-TEP was charged with documenting the state of physics teacher preparation and with making recommendations for the development of exemplary physics teacher education programs.

UnsustainableCP is terminally unsustainableMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: https://www.aps.org/about/governance/task-force/upload/ttep-synopsis.pdf //ghs-st)14However, dependence on foreign-born S&E workers is not a sustainable strategy over time . A National Science Board task force has warned that

“global competition for S&E talent is intensifying , such that the United States may not be able to rely on the international S&E labor market to fill unmet skill needs .”15

2AC – AT: Brightest WorkersThe brightest workers don’t come and leave to build offshore businessesKaste 13 – Martin Kaste, Reporter and Journalist at the National Public Radio, 2013 (“Who's Hiring H-1B Visa Workers? It's Not Who You Might Think”, National Public Radio, April 3rd, Available Online at http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134694/Whos-Hiring-H1-B-Visa-Workers-Its-Not-Who-You-Might-Think, Accessed 07-14-2017) But that "best-and-brightest" argument doesn't quite match up with reality —

especially when you look at which companies are using the most H-1Bs. Who Is Using the Visas? If you scroll through the government's visa data, you notice something surprising. The biggest employer of foreign tech workers is not Microsoft — not by a long shot. Nor is it Google , Facebook or any other name-brand tech company. The biggest users of H-1Bs are consulting companies, or as Ron Hira calls them, "offshore-outsourcing firms."

" The top 10 recipients in [the] last fiscal year were all offshore- outsourcers. And they got 40,000 of the 85,000 visas — which is astonishing," he says. Hira's a professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He's also the son of Indian immigrants and has a personal interest in questions of labor flow across borders. For the past decade, he's been studying how consulting firms use temporary work visas to help American companies cut costs. He says they use the visas to supply cheaper workers here , but also to smooth the transfer of American jobs to information-technology centers overseas . "What these

firms have done is exploit the loopholes in the H-1B program to bring in on-site workers to learn the jobs [of] the Americans to then ship it back offshore," he says. "And also to bring in on-site workers who are cheaper on

the H-1B and undercut American workers right here." The biggest user of H-1B last year was Cognizant, a firm based in New Jersey. The company got 9,000 new visas. Following close behind were Infosys, Wipro and Tata -- all Indian firms. They're not household names, but they loom large in tech places like the Seattle suburbs.

2AC – AT: Cap on VisasTheir numbers deflate – visa programs are circumvented Frankel 16 – Judy Frankel, Founder and CEO of Writeindependent.org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)(4) organization that promotes voter education and participation in federal elections. She authored the Pledge for Honest Candidates, a stringent agreement that aims to remove money’s influence from government dealings. In 2015, Frankel released a book entitled In Search of the Next POTUS (President of the United States): One Woman's Quest to Fix Washington, a True Story in which she offers a six-step plan to make our government more representative of the people who live here. Frankel is a writer, political activist, long time entrepreneur and small business owner. She started four successful businesses in physical therapy, computer aided design, edible landscaping, and web-based political marketing and social networking. She studied comedy writing at UCLA and holds a Bachelors of Science degree from Pennsylvania State University, 2016 (“Insourcing: American Lose Jobs to H-1B Visa Workers”, Huffinton Post, July 26th, Available Online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judy-frankel/insourcing-american-lose-_b_11173074.html, Accessed 07-14-2017) Americans are losing jobs to foreigners and training their replacements. Disney laid off 850 American workers, some of whom were given 90 days to train their replacements with the threat of losing their severance pay if they didn’t stay to the end. “We all felt humiliated when the foreign workers sat next to us and watched everything that we did,” wrote one Disney employee going through the experience. The training sessions prove that the H-1B workers don’t hold special skills that American workers lack. “If our own pool of IT professionals were so incompetent, then why would companies like Disney have us train our replacements and spend months teaching them?” wrote the displaced worker. So many staff spoke Hindi during their training period that a departing employee remarked, “I really felt like a foreigner in that building.” Disney calls the practice “knowledge transfer” whereby IT professionals chart the step-by-step processes of the job, audiotaping conversations and recording their computer screens. “We were then astonished as everything that we did on our job was documented and read right back to us for further critiquing.” By the end of the 90 days, new workers had an instruction manual to which they could refer after the Americans left. Employers Have Reasons to Abuse Foreign Guest Visas Carly Fiorina is legend for replacing American workers with low wage visa workers at Hewlett-Packard. Employers aren’t required to pay minimum wages, don’t have to offer benefits, and social security taxes are waived for five years, reducing costs by 17 to 21.5% of their total salaries, saving employers billions of dollars annually. High tech giants Google, Xerox, and Facebook have taken advantage of H-1B workers. Corporations such as Toys ‘R Us, Xerox, Molina Medical, Pfizer, and Microsoft used H-1B “guest” workers to reduce their payroll costs. Utility company Southern California Edison laid off 500 employees, warning SCE workers to train their replacements in 90 days or they wouldn’t receive severance. The Numbers of Replaced American Workers are Staggering In 2015, the number of visas issued to all immigrants crossing the borders legally was almost 11 million,

according to statistics collected at Foreign Service Posts. Supposedly, the government has set a cap of 85,000 new H-1B’s each year for the entire country. But many workers come in

using other types of visas such as: OPT: Optional Practical Training F-1: student B-1: business J-1: exchange visitor CPT: ( Curricular Practical Training ) interns who are recruited later Q: Special Disney-invented visa for workers who are “authentic to the Epcot experience” Workers then switch to an H-1B. Switches are not recorded as part of the 85,000 cap and there are no checks and balances in place to

reign in visa clearances. The Department of State, who issues worker visas, reports

figures for all 16 different types of work-eligible visas, showing that 70 million have been issued since 2007. When the Government Accountability Office studied the H-1B visa program in 2011, they reported reasons why the numbers of guest workers are impossible to track : The total number of H-1B workers in the U.S. at any one time—and information about the length

of their stay—is unknown, because (1) data systems among the various agencies that process

such individuals are not linked so individuals cannot be readily tracked, and (2) H-1B workers

are not assigned a unique identifier that would allow for tracking them over time—particularly if and when their visa status changes. The AFL-CIO reported in 2009 that as many as 25% of

imported workers have fraudulent visas. Today, this translates to as many as 17 .5 million foreign employees gaming the system .

2AC – AT: EmploymentThere’s no evidence of increased employmentDoran et. al 14 – Kirk Doran, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. Doran received his B.A. in Physics from Harvard University in 2002, his S.M. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 2002, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 2008, where his dissertation won Princeton's labor economics dissertation award, Alexander Gelber, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, Adam Isen, Ph.D in Applied Economics at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennslyvania, 2014, (“The Effects of High-Skilled Immigration Policy on Firms: Evidence from H-1B Lotteries”, November, Available Online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w20668, Accessed 07-14-2017) Table 6 shows our baseline estimates of the effect of extra H-1B visas on total firm employment in Q1 to Q4. Our main finding is that we bound any increase in employment below a moderate level. In the baseline median regressions, the top end of the 95 percent confidence interval in firms with 10 or fewer employees is 0.11, indicating that an extra unexpected H-1B visa leads to an increase in total employment of at most 0 .11 workers . Although the point estimate is below zero, it is insignificant . We do not conclude from the point estimate that unexpected H-1B visas decrease employment, because our confidence interval is compatible with an increase in employment; of course, this is why confidence intervals are useful in determining what we can rule out with a standard degree of statistical certainty. Similarly, in this specification in firms with 30 or fewer employees, the top end of the confidence interval is 0.37. In the full sample of firms, we can rule out an increase greater than 0.57. All of these estimates are significantly

different from 1 at the 1 percent level, suggesting crowdout of other employment. In the 2SLS specification among firms with 10 or fewer employees, the top end of the confidence interval with more controls is 0.68, again significantly different from 1 at the 1 percent level, but compatible with a moderate positive effect. With 30 or fewer employees, we can rule out a coefficient of 0.71 or greater (p<0.01). In the full sample of firms, the 2SLS results are extremely imprecise. Figure 2 plots the coefficient and confidence interval on unexpected lottery wins from the baseline median employment specification, as a function of the employer size threshold. We focus on the upper end of the 95 percent confidence interval; across all 50 choices of the employer size threshold, in the most positive case we are able to rule out an increase in employment of more than 0.6. In all cases, the estimate is significantly less than 1 at the 1 percent level. The point estimates are always negative and insignificantly different from zero. We also find no significant effect in firms with over 500 employees. Appendix Table 12 shows that re-weighting the sample to the characteristics of the full population of firms and workers again shows comparable results to the baseline. Appendix Table 13 shows that in each quarter from Q1 to Q4 individually, we are typically able to rule out a coefficient of 1, particularly in smaller firms. Appendix Table 14 shows that several other specifications yield comparable results: winsorizing instead at the 99th percentile; letting the dependent variable be the IHS of the first difference in employment (as in the IHS patenting specifications); winsorizing the IHS of the first difference in employment at the 99th percentile (to address the long right tail further); winsorizing the IHS of the level of employment at the 99th percentile; and running median regressions when the dependent variable is the first difference of employment (rather than controlling for the lag of employment). Appendix Tables 15 and 16 verify that unexpected wins are also unrelated to whether the firm is in business.25 Appendix 3 describes how the results are generally similar when other patenting or employment specifications are run to make the full set of specifications exactly parallel in the patenting and employment contexts. Quantiles other than the median also show no evidence of increases in employment.

Visas decimate employment salaries Doran et. al 14 – Kirk Doran, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. Doran received his B.A. in Physics from Harvard University in 2002, his S.M. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 2002, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 2008, where his dissertation won Princeton's labor economics dissertation award, Alexander Gelber, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the

Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, Adam Isen, Ph.D in Applied Economics at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennslyvania, 2014, (“The Effects of High-Skilled Immigration Policy on Firms: Evidence from H-1B Lotteries”, November, Available Online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w20668, Accessed 07-14-2017) Table 8 shows the effect of unexpected H-1B visas on median firm payroll costs per employee during Years 0 to 3, calculated by dividing total firm payroll costs in a given year by the total number of employees at the firm in that year. It is possible that firms sponsoring H-1Bs could pay H-1Bs less relative to other comparable workers, for example if the frictions described earlier give sponsoring firms monopsony power. However, a reduction in average pay could appear not only if the firm pays the new H-1B less than an alternative worker, but also if the unexpected H-1B causes a reduction in average earnings of other employees at the firm. In firms with 10 or fewer, or 30 or fewer, employees, we find some evidence that the additional H-1B reduces median payroll costs per employee (p<0.05 in one estimate, and p<0.10 in

two other estimates, of the four total). The point estimates suggest substantial decreases in payroll costs per employee in these firms (with larger and more

significant estimates in the smaller size category), though the confidence intervals encompass much smaller effects. In the full sample of firms, an additional H-1B

worker typically reflects only a small percentage of total employment and

would be expected to influence payroll costs per employee little, and unsurprisingly we find no significant effect in these firms.27 Appendix Table 19 shows insignificant impacts in later years, consistent with the hypothesis that in

this later period the H-1B has typically left the firm and therefore no longer measurably reduces the firm’s average pay. Table 9 examines the effect of an

unexpected H-1B visa on the firm’s profits in Years 0 to 3, using median regressions. The point estimate is positive across all the firm size cutoffs considered and is sometimes significant. The point estimates generally cluster around showing an increase in profits of five to ten thousand dollars per year (in $2014).28 The median regressions do not converge for many firm size cutoffs, including among firms of all sizes and for firm size thresholds over 200 employees; thus, the largest firm size cutoff we show is 200 employees or fewer. Across thresholds between 30 and 200 for which the regressions converged, the regressions generally also cluster around showing a positive effect of approximately five to ten thousand dollars per year. Overall, we find some evidence of a positive effect on profits, though it is not robustly significant . Profits regressions for later years did not converge. Profits and payroll per employee are important outcomes, but we consider these results to be secondary because the results on profits and payroll per employee are less robust than others in the paper.29 Proxies for firm productivity are also of interest. Appendix Table 20 shows that the effects on revenue per employee, or total income per employee, are imprecise, which is again unsurprising given their large standard deviations.30

2AC – AT: PatentsVisas don’t increase patentsDoran et. al 14 – Kirk Doran, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. Doran received his B.A. in Physics from Harvard University in 2002, his S.M. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 2002, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 2008, where his dissertation won Princeton's labor economics dissertation award, Alexander Gelber, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, Adam Isen, Ph.D in Applied Economics at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennslyvania, 2014, (“The Effects of High-Skilled Immigration Policy on Firms: Evidence from H-1B Lotteries”, November, Available Online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w20668, Accessed 07-14-2017) Table 4 estimates the effect on patenting of unexpected H-1B visas, during the patenting baseline period of Years 0 to 8, as well as over the duration of the initial H-1B visa in Years 0 to 3. By “Years 0 to 8,” we mean that we pool the FY2006 lottery, for which we observe Years 0 to 8, with the FY2007 lottery, for which we observe Years 0 to 7. We also examine the effect on a dummy for whether the firm patented in each year, so that 1 represents the effect on the fraction of years that

firms patented. For each of the outcomes, we show the results with two alternative sets of

controls: (a) controlling for the number of patents in Year -1 (or for a dummy for patenting

in Year -1 when the patenting dummy is the outcome); or (b) additionally controlling for the expected number of lottery wins (conditional on the number of H-1B applications and the probability of winning the lottery in question). The results are similar either way; we take (b) as a baseline. The results are also similar when we add additional

controls, such as controlling additionally for the NAICS code of the firm, for the number of H-1B lottery applications n, or for dummies for each of the four lotteries. Finally, the results are also similar when preperiod patenting is measured over another time period rather than Year -1. In Table 4, we estimate a precise zero effect of unexpected visas on patenting. The point estimates are generally very close to zero. As the estimates are insignificant, we focus on the confidence intervals to determine what we can rule out with statistical confidence. When the dependent variable is the IHS of the number of patents in firms with 10 or fewer employees, the upper end of the 95 percent confidence interval in the baseline

rules out an increase greater than just 0.47 percent, relative to a “base” mean number of

patents of only 0.0098 per year.23 Our main conclusion—that any absolute increase in the quantity of patenting is at most modest —makes sense given our finding that only a

modest fraction of the sample patents. For firms with 30 or fewer employees, in the

baseline we bound the increase in patents below 1.3 percent , and in the full

sample, below 1.9 percent . When the dependent variable is the patenting dummy , the confidence interval also indicates at most a small impact (e.g. at most an increase of 0.0020 in firms with 10 or fewer employees). We also find no evidence that H- 1Bs increase high quantiles o f patenting , and bound any increase below a similarly small level. \ Our choices of the number of employees in our size thresholds (e.g. 10 or fewer) could be varied. Figure 1 plots the coefficient and confidence interval on unexpected H- 1B visas when the dependent variable is the IHS of number of patents over Years 0 to 8, as a function of the employer’s size, from under 10 employees to under 500, in increments of 10.24 The upper end of the 95 percent

confidence interval ranges from near 0 to just above 0.01 ; across all 50

choices of the employer size threshold shown, in the most positive case we are able to rule out an increase in

patents greater than around 1.5 percent (and usually the upper bound is substantially smaller). The point estimate is positive in only three of 50 cases —notably, for size thresholds of 10, 20, and 30—though it is insignificant and very small in all of these cases. We also find no significant effects in the largest firms (over 500 employees). Overall, we find no evidence of a notable increase in patenting and robustly rule out more than a small increase .

2AC – AT: Studies WrongA litany of studies support our argumentEsenbrey 15 – Ross Eisenbrey, Senior fellow at EPI after serving as vice president from 2003-2017. Eisenbrey is also a lawyer and former commissioner of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. Prior to joining EPI, he worked for many years as a staff attorney and legislative director in the U.S. House of Representatives, and as a committee counsel in the U.S. Senate. He served as policy director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 1999 until 2001. He has testified numerous times in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and has written scores of articles, issue briefs, and policy memos on a wide range of labor issues, 2015, (“H-1B Visas Do Not Create Jobs or Improve Conditions for U.S. Workers” Economic Policy Institute, May 18th, Available Online at http://www.epi.org/blog/h-1b-visas-do-not-create-jobs-or-improve-conditions-for-u-s-workers/, Accessed 07-14-2017) The common wisdom on Capitol Hill, carefully nurtured by corporate lobbyists and campaign cash, is that America needs more high-tech guestworkers, requiring a big increase in the number of H-1B guestworker visas made available each year. A number of senators, including Amy Klobuchar and Orrin Hatch, have introduced legislation to double or triple the number of non-immigrant tech workers who can be imported each year, despite evidence from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, independent researchers, and various media reports that the H-1B is used to lower wages and displace U.S. workers. The senators endlessly proclaim that H-1B employees are good for our economy, that businesses can’t find enough talent here, that the H-1Bs are innovative, the “best and the brightest,” and that importing them leads to more job creation. In support, they cite a paper by Agnes Scott College researcher Madeline Zavodny, which found that hiring H-1Bs creates jobs for Americans: specifically, that “adding 100 H-1B workers results in an additional 183 jobs among U.S. natives.” The problem is that it isn’t true. Zavodny’s research couldn’t discern whether the H-1Bs were hired

because the economy was growing and jobs were being created—for natives and

guestworkers alike—or whether the H-1Bs were responsible for the job growth. (The weakness of her results is demonstrated by another, completely implausible finding she reports, that H-2B unskilled guestworkers are associated with two-and-a-half times greater job creation than the college-educated H-1Bs: 464 jobs for every 100 H-2B guestworkers. The notion that hiring low - wage - earning landscapers and groundskeepers, hotel maids and dishwashers—most of whom have little or no college education—spurs spectacular job growth is ludicrous on its face .) Much more careful,

groundbreaking research on the effects of H-1Bs has recently been completed by

economists at Notre Dame, the University of California, Berkeley , and the Office of Tax Analysis at the U.S. Department of Treasury. Their findings should put an end to the notion that H-1Bs are in any way good for U.S. workers . The research solves the problem of causality by employing a natural experiment. Two types of businesses were studied, those that applied for and received visas through the H-1B random “lottery” (because more employers want H-1Bs than are annually available, the government has to allocate them via lottery), and those that applied but failed in the lottery. If the H-1B visa raised wages, led to job creation, or spurred innovation, the companies that were awarded the visas should do better on each of those counts. In fact, they did not. On the contrary, over the eight years following the hiring of an H-1B worker, U.S. workers were displaced, wages were lowered,

and there was no positive effect on innovation. As the authors write: “We

demonstrate that H-1Bs given to a firm on average do not raise the firm’s patenting and/or other employment, contrary to firms’ frequent claims. Overall our results are more consistent with the second [i.e., the critics’] narrative, in which H-1Bs replace other workers to some extent, are paid less than alternative workers, and increase the firm’s profits (despite little, if any, effect on firm patenting).” Far from adding 1.83 jobs for each additional H-1B, the researchers “robustly find that new H-1Bs cause no significant increase in firm employment. New H-1Bs substantially and statistically significantly crowd out median employment of other workers.”

Prefer our studies – they rely on random variation and firm comparisonDoran et. al 14 – Kirk Doran, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. Doran received his B.A. in Physics from Harvard University in 2002, his S.M. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 2002, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 2008, where his dissertation won Princeton's labor economics dissertation award, Alexander Gelber, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, Adam Isen, Ph.D in Applied Economics at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennslyvania, 2014, (“The Effects of High-Skilled Immigration Policy on Firms: Evidence from H-1B Lotteries”, November, Available Online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w20668, Accessed 07-14-2017) In several notable ways, our study is different from previous work on the effects of H-1Bs on outcomes in the receiving economy. First, ours is the only study that relies on random variation . Second, we examine the effects of H-1Bs given to a

particular firm on that firm’s outcomes (holding constant H-1Bs at other firms), but our empirical strategy does not estimate general equilibrium effects

like impacts on employment, innovation, pay, or profits in the entire U.S., or in specific areas of the

U.S. Third, some previous literature examines the effects of temporary visas in general, not specifically capped H-1B visas (though other literature is

identified from changes in the H-1B cap, e.g. Kerr and Lincoln 2010). Fourth, our results are estimated from the FY2006 and 2007 lotteries, whic h may differ from

other environments (e.g. Kerr and Lincoln 2010 exploit variation in the cap that also covers other time periods). At first pass, our results also apparently differ starkly from those in previous economics literature, as previous work has found very large positive effects of H-1Bs on patenting, and in some cases on employment.33 Though our paper focuses only on estimating the effects of additional capped H-1Bs on firm outcomes, future work could try to clarify to what extent the seeming divergence in results between our study and previous literature relates to any of the four factors above (or other factors). For example, large aggregate effects could potentially be reconciled with small firm-level effects through very large spillovers onto other workers, including very strongly increasing returns to scale. Finally, to address the effects of H-1Bs in other years, it could be helpful for those running the H-1B lotteries to begin regularly saving the data on lottery winners and losers.

States

FailsStates can't do effective equal implementation of the programMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: https://www.aps.org/about/governance/task-force/upload/ttep-synopsis.pdf //ghs-st)Federal and private funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department

of Education, should develop a coherent vision for discipline-specific teacher professional preparation and development.

a. Within each funding agency, all programs related to teacher preparation and professional development should be coordinated by a single entity . This entity should implement a coherent vision for professional preparation and support of math and science teachers. Ultimately, these funding efforts should be coordinated across all public funding agencies.

b. Teacher preparation efforts form a coherent continuum that includes recruitment, pre-service education, induction, and professional development. All teacher-preparation funds provided by each funding agency should be made available for any of the individual phases of this process or

for any well-integrated combination of phases.c. Public and private funds targeted at teacher preparation and teacher professional development should be directed toward exemplary university-based programs as well as to such programs in K-12 schools, and K-12/University partnerships.d. Both practicing STEM teachers who are new to teaching physics as well as prospective physics teachers should be eligible to receive funding sufficient to complete a high-quality program in physics teacher preparation.e. Federal funding distributed through the states (e.g., block grants) that is currently targeted at short-term or non-discipline-specific professional development programs for science teachers should be redirected to coherent, extended programs that are focused on subject-specific pedagogy and teacher preparation (in physics, chemistry, earth and space science, et cetera).

Needs to be interstate cooperation to make sure that there is effective implementationMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: https://www.aps.org/about/governance/task-force/upload/ttep-synopsis.pdf //ghs-st)As junior faculty members are mentored in research groups, new teachers also need an opportunity to be mentored by veteran teachers and become a part of a community of scholars. Creating a professional learning community of physics teachers will reduce

professional isolation and consequently should increase novice teacher retention. These communities should include both K-12 and university faculty and provide forums in which physics teachers can address instructional challenges , share lesson ideas , and continue to grow and develop professionally.

RacistStates fail, inconsistent regulations, ineffective funding, lack of regional centers, inevitable variation, and fails to move teachers to the schools that need it most. That exacerbates the racial divides in educationMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: https://www.aps.org/about/governance/task-force/upload/ttep-synopsis.pdf //ghs-st)The T-TEP recommendations address crucial issues associated with individual institutions and programs. However, an effective and coordinated national strategy in physics teacher education must go beyond individual implementation of

the aforementioned recommendations. An innovative national program is needed both to use all resources currently available, and to develop new resources , expertise , and capacity in order to meet current and future national needs. Toward this end, T-TEP recommends the establishment of regional centers in physics education. A regional center would serve the need for new teachers in its greater geographical area while also providing support to in-service teachers and addressing state and national issues in teacher education. Regional centers are needed because educational policies and regulations vary from state to state , and teachers tend not to go far from the institution from which they graduated. a. Regional centers would pool expertise in the research and practice of

physics teacher education, create vibrant communities of prospective and practicing physics

teachers, and be the home of regional physics teacher preparation and scholarly work on K-20 physics education. Such scholarship would include research on teacher preparation, investigation and assessment of student learning, development of instruments to assess teacher attributes and impacts, program evaluation, and development of educational policy.

2AC Compacts DA

2ACSTEM reforms are a federal issueNSF 16 (The National Science Foundation, “NSF at a Glance”, NSF: https://www.nsf.gov/about/glance.jsp //ghs-st)The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and

welfare; to secure the national defense..." NSF is vital because we support basic research and people to create knowledge that transforms the future. This type of support: Is a primary driver of the U.S. economy. Enhances the nation's security. Advances knowledge to sustain global leadership. With an annual budget of $7.5 billion (FY 2016), we are the funding source for approximately 24 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America's colleges and universities . In

many fields such as mathematics, computer science and the social sciences , NSF is the major source of federal backing.

State cooperation on federal issues is a state imposition and violates the compact clauseWPM 48 (didn’t say actual name but was an editor on the Virginia Law Review, 1/1/1948, accessed 7/7/17, “Regional Education: A New Use of the Interstate Compact?”, Virginia Law Review 1948, Vol. 34, No. 1, Jan., available on jstor at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1069610 //ghs-st)In addition to the historical antecedents, it has been suggested that the requirement of congressional consent was included in the compact clause because Congress is the logical agency to decide whether the agreement is a forbidden "Treaty, Alliance or Con- federation" or whether it is

a permissible compact.10 Based on Supreme Court dicta," the view has developed and is still

held in some quarters that congressional consent is required only for those com- pacts which are "political" in nature and which tend to enhance the power of the states as against the National Government. The better view, however, would seem to be that the plain words of the Constitution mean what they say and that all compacts require consent.

A violation of the compact clause sets a precedent where Congress is constantly circumvented and the states have too much powerVon Spakovsky 11 (Hans, an authority on a wide range of issues – including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration., 10-27-2011, accessed 7-7-2017, "Destroying the Electoral College: The Anti-Federalist National Popular Vote Scheme", Heritage Foundation: http://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/destroying-the-electoral-college-the-anti-federalist-national-popular //ghs-st)We should also not forget that one of the major purposes of the Bill of Rights is to protect us from majoritarian rule—otherwise, popular democracy could abolish freedom of religion, limit political speech, or restrict the ability to assemble and associate with unfavored minorities. The NPV movement seeks to create an unfair and unconstitutional system that diminishes the voting rights of citizens throughout the country and raises the prospect of increased voter fraud and post-election litigation contests over the outcome. The Unconstitutionality of the NPV: Compact Clause Supporters of the NPV

claim that because the Constitution gives state legislatures the power to determine how electors are

chosen, the NPV is constitutional and requires no approval by Congress. Such claims,

however, are specious. The NPV is unconstitutional because it would give a group of states with a majority of electoral votes “the power to overturn the explicit decision of the Framers against direct election. Since that power does not conform to the constitutional means of changing the original decisions of the framers, NPV could not be a legitimate innovation.”[17] The Constitution’s Compact Clause provides that “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress…enter into any Agreement or

Compact with another State.”[18] The Founders created the Compact Clause because they feared that compacting states would threaten the supremacy of the federal government in matters of foreign affairs and relations among the states.[19] If states could make agreements among themselves, they could damage the nation’s federalist structure. Populist states, for example, cannot agree to have their U.S.

Senators vote to seat only one Senator from a less populous state. The very purpose of this clause was to prevent a handful of states from combining to overturn an essential part of the constitutional design. The plain text makes it clear that all

such state compacts must be approved by Congress. By circumventing the checks and balances of Congress, the NPV would risk setting a precedent that states can validate non –congressionally approved compacts as a substitute for a constitutional amendment. Undoubtedly, many liberal activist groups would like to create their own compacts or to

lobby states individually to join compacts. Such compacts could then create de facto

constitutional amendments regarding many different public policy issues—including purely federal matters.

Good ScenarioFederalism fails to respond to crises — cooperation is essential. Donahue & Tuohy 6 — Amy K. Donahue, an associate professor of Public Policy at the University of Connecticut, has served as a technical advisor to the Office and Department of Homeland Security, and served as Senior Advisor to the NASA administrator, holds a Ph.D. in Public Administration and a M.P.A. from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and Robert V. Tuohy, Vice President for Strategic Planning at Hicks & Associates, assists the Department of Homeland Security in assessing emergency response preparedness and addressing the nation’s Border & Transportation Security technology needs, served as the director of Science and Technology Plans & Programs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, holds a B.A. in Applied Behavioral Sciences from the National-Louis University, and an M.S. in Science and Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas at Austin, 2006 (“Lessons We Don’t Learn: A Study of the Lessons of Disasters, Why We Repeat Them, and How We Can Learn Them,” Homeland Security Affairs, Article 4, Summer, Available Online at https://www.hsaj.org/articles/167, Accessed 06-26-2017)Conclusions The fact that challenges to learning lessons persist , despite regular experience with them , is a serious concern. In today’s environment, where the emergency response mission space is expanding dramatically to include broader homeland security responsibilities, the ability to capitalize on experience and improve capacity is ever more important. But organizations cannot just be told to “change.” Enduring change needs to address the structure, system, and culture of an organization so that patterns of behavior can be adjusted. Truly institutionalizing a new process requires long-term commitment. This is what makes learning processes especially vulnerable: there are too many short-term distracters. Other political priorities, sensational concerns like terror ism , workforce turnover, other concurrent organizational change efforts , and daily missions all conspire to derail organizational transition. As a practical matter, then, the main problem with

lesson learning can be seen as a lack of will and commitment, rather than a lack of ability . If lessons

learned become a priority for leaders – especially local leaders who will be called to manage disasters directly – then lessons learned have a better chance of becoming a priority for everybody. Moreover, this commitment needs to be vertical; federal agencies must also commit to identifying and learning the lessons that are relevant to them. As one responder put it, “You can fix all the wagons locally, but if the wheels fall off FEMA’s wagon, the system fails.” An additional conclusion is that most big lessons are inter-agency lessons . Learning them requires learning within and across agencies. It is not enough for agencies to try to learn these kinds of lessons in isolation . Despite its profound advantages,

federalism gets in our way: we have national, state, and local gov ernments but few robust regional forums for decision-making. Our system lacks substantial support and incentives for regional (multi-state within the nation, or multi-local within and across states) activities and for broad integration across the response disciplines. Disasters are regional – they do not recognize jurisdictional boundaries or disciplinary parochialism. Our systems for learning from disasters must therefore span these barriers.

Unmitigated disasters increase the risk of war — new research.Carrington 16 — Damian Carrington, head of environment at the Guardian, internally citing Professor John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, 2016 (“Disasters linked to climate can increase risk of armed conflict,” The Guardian, July 25th, Available Online at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/25/disasters-linked-to-climate-can-increase-risk-of-armed-conflict, Accessed 06-28-2017, Lil_Arj)Climate-related disasters increase the risk of armed conflicts ,

according to research that shows a quarter of the violent struggles in ethnically divided countries were preceded by extreme weather . The role of severe heatwaves, floods and storms in increasing the risk of

wars has been controversial, particularly in relation to the long drought in Syria. But the new work reveals a strong link in places where the population is already fractured along ethnic lines. Previous work has shown a correlation between climate disasters and fighting but the new analysis shows the disasters precede the conflict, suggesting a causal link. Experts have warned that an increase in natural disasters due to global warming is a “threat multiplier” for armed violence. The scientists behind the new research say it could be used to predict where future violence might flare, allowing preventative measures to be taken. “Armed conflicts are among the biggest threats to people,

killing some and forcing others to leave their home and maybe flee to faraway countries,” said Prof John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and one of the research team. The combination of climate disasters and ethnic tensions make an “explosive mixture,” he said. “People have speculated about climate links with conflict: some people say yes, some say no. But we find a really robust link ,” Schellnhuber said. “Economic and social disruption caused by climate disasters are in general not significantly linked to the outbreak of armed conflict, except in one class of countries or regions: where you have pre-fracturing by ethnic difference. The analysis also shows clearly the shock precedes the conflict era and so this is the first step to unravel the causal tangle involved in this environment-conflict relationship.” The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that 23% of the armed conflicts in ethnically divided places were linked to climate disasters, compared to just 9% of all armed conflicts. Schellnhuber speculated that ethnic divisions might mean that the impact of a climate disaster would disproportionately impact one group more than another, due to their location or poverty level. “People immediately start scapegoating then,” he said. The research team concluded: “This has important implications for future security policies as several of the world’s most conflict-prone regions, including north and central Africa as well as central Asia, are both exceptionally vulnerable to [manmade] climate change and characterised by deep ethnic divides. “Recent analyses of the societal consequences of droughts in Syria and Somalia indicate that such climatological events may have already contributed to armed conflict outbreaks or sustained the conflicts in both countries.” Schellnhuber said the climate-conflict link will be even more important in the future: “In 50 years from now, under a business-as-usual scenario, 80-90% of disasters will be driven by climate change. Then the whole thing really explodes.” He said cross-referencing predictions of where extreme weather is likely to increase with places that are ethnically divided could provide a way to see trouble ahead. “You could construct a conflict ‘radar’ system to anticipate hotspots where the probability of armed conflict is high. Then you could try to diffuse certain things, or say, given the current migration debate, see where the potential sources of emigration are.” Prof Solomon Hsiang, at the

University of California Berkeley and not part of the new research, showed in 2011 that changes to the climate were linked to 20% of civil wars since 1950. He said: “The linkage between large-scale climatic changes and violence is a remarkable finding of the last several years and has major implications for societies around the world, both today and in the future.” “Recent studies have demonstrated that these patterns hold around the world, throughout human history, and at all scales of social organisation: from violence within families all the way up to full scale civil war,” Hsiang said. “This new study corroborates these earlier results, demonstrating that they can be recovered using an alternative statistical approach. It is important that these types of findings are replicated and demonstrated to be robust by numerous research teams since the consequences for society are so critical.” Previous work has focused on linking conflicts with meteorological data, such as temperature and

rainfall. The new analysis, however, used the economic impact of climate disasters, which takes into account the vulnerability of the nation

affected. “Both Syria and California have now experienced the biggest drought on record, but there is no civil

war in California,” said Schellnhuber. He said the new work showed another, very significant, benefit of action to halt global warming: “Our study adds evidence of a very special co-benefit of climate stabilisation: peace.”

ConstitutionThe Constitution is a moral decision rule. Ends-based disads can’t outweigh. Bayer 11 — Peter Brandon Bayer, Lawyering Process Professor at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, former Assistant Professor and Director of the Legal Research, Analysis, and Writing Program at St. Thomas University School of Law, holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, a J.D. from New York University School of Law, and an M.A. in Sociology from New York University, 2011 (“Sacrifice and Sacred Honor: Why the Constitution is a ‘Suicide Pact’,” William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal (20 Wm. & Mary Bill of Rts. J. 287), December, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)Introduction To be a true constitution , that which a society calls its constitution must enforce values so imperative , so fundamental, that the constitution comprises not only a way to live but more profoundly, a reason to die. Customarily through, for example, military service, individual citizens or groups of citizens may be required to risk their lives to preserve their constitution and the nation over which it presides. However, a true constitution rightfully demands that the entire constitutional order —the whole society regulated by that constitution — risk its own demise rather than betray the essential precepts that the constitution embodies . Only principles of such magnitude warrant inclusion in the supreme document of a particular people. n1

[*290] Simply believing that a particular constitution is worth dying for,

however, is not enough. To be a legitimate constitution—to actually be worthy of such

communal sacrifice—the given constitution must be moral; that is, both designed to enforce and actually capable of enforcing the abiding moral duties that demarcate legitimate from illegitimate governments. Pursuant to the character of true and legitimate constitutions, the Constitution of the United States defines who we are, what we are and , most importantly, why we are . Our Constitution purports to set the governing minima without which no society may be legitimate. Accordingly, and quite deliberately,

while a legal document, the Constitution is a profoundly moral thesis as well . It could not be otherwise because the Constitution's overarching endeavor is enforced morality, specifically " fundamental fairness " via due process of law n2 which, as Justice Felix Frankfurter aptly enthused, is "ultimate decency in

a civilized society . . . ." n3 America's validation stems from the morality of the Constitution and how steadfastly we maintain it. n4 In contravention of our constitutional duty is the long-standing chestnut: the Constitution is not a suicide pact. n5 Of course, no one would argue that the Constitution is literally a "suicide pact," meaning the Constitution requires those governed thereunder to kill themselves. n6 Nor would reasonable theorists claim it to be a suicide pact [*291] "in the sense that the Constitution was meant to fail." n7 Rather, commentators apply the not a suicide pact metaphor to support the Constitution of necessity , the premise that if circumstances raise significant jeopardy and lesser measures appear unavailing, government may do virtually anything—abridge or suspend any liberty—both to preserve the nation and to ensure the well-being of its institutions. n8 Several critics challenge that theory's empirical bases arguing, for example, that the

definition of "necessity" is overinclusive. n9 Critics further argue that the Constitution of necessity betrays pivotal American principles of law, rights, dignity and separation of powers. n10 However, criticism usually stops well short of accepting the Constitution as a metaphorical "suicide pact," averring instead that necessity is the ultimate "compelling state interest," overpowering liberty if the exigency is dire enough. n11 I join the very few n12 who respond that, even if limited to situations of actual imminent danger to the very continuation of American society, necessity as the Constitution's "first principle" defies the Constitution's true moral nucleus that explains and justifies our nation: due process of law. While many articles challenge the Constitution of necessity as anathema to the inherent nature of American government, n13 such arguments alone cannot explain why, under sufficiently urgent circumstances, we ought not to abandon all constitutional liberty if that is what it takes, for however long it takes, with the earnest intent to restore liberty the very moment the danger has passed. n14 [*292] Accordingly, this Article proposes a deeper grounding to explain why the Constitution is a suicide pact. Specifically, morality , the very fabric of the Constitution, forbids us from abandoning our basic moral-societal precept of due process, even when faithful abidance is extraordinarily dangerous . We must understand that more than simple liberty is essential to our constitutional government. Rather, we must

appreciate that government ensures liberty as integral to its unalterable duty to be moral. Liberty is not an end in itself , but a means; preserving morality is the end , the absolute goal of government . Thus, in a unique figurative sense, the Constitution must be a suicide pact, for as the prominent ethicist Immanuel Kant nobly appreciated regarding morality's overarching context, "Let justice be done even if the world should perish." n15 The proof takes several steps. Part I undertakes a thorough review of deontology, the philosophy arguing—correctly, I believe—that morality is transcendent, a set of a priori principles discernable through reason. Morality, then, does not care what the possible outcomes of a particular moral problem may be. n16 Pursuant to deontological philosophy, the "sacrifice," to which the title of this Article refers, is the duty to abide by morality no matter what the cost. n17 Thereafter, Part II argues that this Nation's originators were deontologists who declared in the Nation's founding document that government is legitimate only insofar as it safeguards morality derived from "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God,"

manifested as " unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." n18 For the preservation of those moral principles, the Founders pledged their "Lives," "Fortunes," and "sacred Honor," n19 meaning that it is the duty of all Americans—their

"sacred Honor"—to sacrifice, if necessary, their lives and property to defend legitimate government. We thus discover an interesting, informative and useful provenance linking

the sacrifices attendant to deontological morality with the birth of the United States. n20 The Founders understood that their appreciation of, and dedication to, morality was incomplete —a confession analysts find apt as evinced by the presence of slavery, [*293] along with several other strikingly unethical political and pragmatic arrangements surrounding both the Declaration and its later legal iteration, the Constitution . Indeed, the Founders expected future generations to enrich the moral bases of America, including repudiating ideas and practices that the Founders themselves accepted . n21 Part III asserts that the ethical theory of Immanuel Kant, as contemporarily understood, presents the improved moral philosophy hoped for by the Founders. Written shortly after the American Revolution, Kant's theory of dignity explains why obeying morality is more important than life itself ; n22 a principle applicable not only to

persons and groups, but also to nations and societies. Kantian ethics, therefore, explicate that the highest principle is not survival but , rather, moral rectitude. Kant's ideas should control the understanding of the Constitution , most particularly the commands of due process of law, as Part IV explains. Although

never explicitly cited as authority, Kant's dignity principle informs modern due process jurisprudence, which is sensible because the Constitution was drafted to enforce the moral quest commemorated in the Declaration. The comfortable application of Kantian ethics to constitutional due process demonstrates that, in the singular sense described above, the Constitution should be, must be and is a suicide pact.

Bad ScenarioIf we don’t set a precedent against compacts now, states will engage in climate regulationsAmirfar et. al, 6/2 (Catherine, Counselor on International Law to the legal advisor at the US DoS, received the State Department’s Superior Honor Award, clerked for DA Batts, graduated cum laude from NYU Law, editor on the NYU law review, got a BA with honors from Stanford, accessed 7/6, “The United States Withdraws From The Paris Agreement on Climate Change” Debevoise: http://www.debevoise.com/~/media/files/insights/publications/2017/06/20170602a_the_united_states_withdraws_from_the_paris_agreement_on_climate_change.pdf //ghs-st)The U.S. NDC states that the U.S. “intends to achieve an economy wide target of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 - 28% below its 2005 level in 2025 and to make

best efforts to reduce its emissions by 28%”. The NDC lists a number of regulatory actions that were underway to meet this target, including: • cut ting carbon pollution from new

and existing power plants; • promulgating post-2018 fuel economy standards for heavy-

duty vehicles; • developing standards to address methane emissions from landfills

and the oil and gas sector; • reducing the use and emissions of certain pollutants; and •

reducing building sector emissions. The Trump Administration has not addressed the NDC actions

explicitly, but has taken other steps to reverse or review climate regulation under

the Obama Administration. On March 28, 2017 President Trump signed an Executive Order on

“Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth,” revoking President Obama’s Clean

Action Plan and ordering a review of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. This Executive Order also lifted the Obama-era moratorium on new coal mining leases on federal lands, a move which has since been challenged in U.S. courts by California, New York, New Mexico and Washington as being in breach of the U.S. Government’s statutory duties. The U.S. state and municipal response is already unfolding. New York, California and Washington have established the U.S. Climate Alliance, convening those States that wish to uphold the commitments in the Paris Agreement. Notably, the U.S. Co nstitution vests the power to negotiate and enter into treaties to the federal government, but under the Compact Clause , states also have the authority to enter into “agreements” and “compacts” with Congressional approval , which may be explicit or implied. States may also be able to enter into such agreements without Congressional approval, provided that the ultimate effect does not “encroach upon the supremacy of the United States” (United Steel Corp v Multistate Tax Commission 1978). Regardless, it is highly likely that state-level regulation , such as emissions trading schemes and vehicle emissions limits will continue and even increase as progressive states seek to make up for the lack of federal regulation on climate change . If cities take similar action,

the proliferation of regulations could be highly burdensome for business. The concern for business is that these efforts will now be decentralised and not standardised at a federal level. It is also likely that litigation against the Federal Government will increase as progressive states seek to limit the environmental damage likely to be caused by the President’s position on climate change. Such litigation creates more uncertainty for business, leaving companies exposed both domestically and in their overseas operations. Major U.S. corporate stakeholders such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell and Peabody Energy have been broadly in support of the Paris Agreement. Many business organizations spoke out after the announcement of the withdrawal. Major concerns for business are the implications of the U.S. being “left behind” in the global energy transition, and “left out” of key international discussions. Recent reporting from Climate Action Tracker identified that both India and China were forecast to surpass their promised emissions reduction targets as they focus investment on renewables and limiting new greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover,

products and services exported internationally will still need to comply with potentially different (and perhaps more demanding) international and regional environmental standards (e.g. EU requirements), from which the U.S. will be increasingly isolated. Global investors increasingly conscious of the impact of their investments (e.g. funds divesting from fossil fuel investments) may also

favor investments outside of the United States in favour of countries adhering to the Paris Agreement. Commentators are already considering the legality of border carbon adjustments on U.S. products under international trade law. Such schemes would need to comply with World Trade Organisation prohibitions on arbitrary or unjustified discrimination and disguised protectionism

Climate regulations collapse the economyLoris 15 (Nicolas, an economist who focuses on energy, environmental, and regulatory issues as the

Herbert and Joyce Morgan fellow., 7-7-2015, accessed 7-7-2017, "The Many Problems of the

EPA’s Clean Power Plan and Climate Regulations: A Primer", Heritage Foundation: http://www.heritage.org/environment/report/the-many-problems-the-epas-clean-power-plan-and-climate-regulations-primer //ghs-st)Energy is a key building block for economic opportunity. Carbon-

emitting fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas, provided 87 percent of America’s energy needs in the past decade and have been the overwhelming supplier for over a

century.[4] Throughout that time, particularly during the Industrial Revolution, access to energy was a critical catalyst to improved health, comfort, progress , ingenuity, and prosperity .[5] Evidence in the United States and around the world

demonstrates that the availability of energy positively impacts economic growth or, at the very least, the two jointly impact one another.[6] On the other hand, restricting the production of carbon-emitting conventional fuels with heavy-handed

regulations, such as the Clean Power Plan, will significantly harm the U.S. economy. Americans feel the pain of higher energy prices directly, but also indirectly through almost all of

the goods and services they buy, because energy is a necessary component of production and service. Companies will pass higher costs on to consumers or absorb the costs , which prevents hiring and new investment . As prices rise , consumer demand falls, and companies will drop employees , close entirely, or move to other countries where the cost of doing business is lower. The result is fewer opportunities for American

workers, lower incomes, less economic growth, and higher unemployment . Without the details of the final regulations, and given the complexities of state plans, it is difficult to fully model the economic effects of the

Administration’s Clean Power Plan; however, economic models can provide a snapshot of the economic losses that CO2 regulations would impose . The economic consulting firm NERA projects that whether or not a plan is state-administered or EPA-administered, electricity prices will increase considerably. If states administer the plan , electricity prices will increase by an average of 12 percent between 2017 and 2031, but if the rulemaking is left to the EPA, prices will rise an average of

17 percent during that time period.[7] But the economic pain is felt beyond electricity prices, and the Administration’s climate agenda extends beyond power plants. The federal government has enacted greenhouse-gas regulations through fuel-efficiency standards, proposed methane regulation for hydraulic

fracturing, stalled on project decisions like the Keystone XL pipeline, and spent stimulus money on inefficient and expensive renewable technology. In the U.S. climate agreement with China, President Barack Obama promised country-wide carbon-emissions cuts of 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.[8]

DA

Link non-uqLink massively non-uq – tons of past stem education reformsZhao 9 (Yong, associate Professor at the School of Environmental Science and Engineering (Tianjin University, China), has a doctoral degree in chemical engineering from Tianjin University, 9-1-2009, accessed 7-14-2017, "Recent Education Reform in the United States", ASCD: http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/109076/chapters/Recent-Education-Reform-in-the-United-States.aspx //ghs-st)No Child Left Behind has undoubtedly been the most significant component of recent education reform efforts in the United States. Although it intends to ensure that every child receives a good education so no child is left behind, its definition of good education is good scores on standardized tests in reading and math. The law requires that all children be given state assessments in reading and math in grades 3 through 8. If a child fails the test, she is judged not to have received a good education from the school. If the school does not make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) on student test scores, the school is considered not providing a good education to its students and is labeled "in need of improvement." The school then faces serious sanctions—from allowing its students to move to other schools to being restructured. Schools that produce good scores are considered good education providers. Those that see significant increases in test scores, such as Greeley, are rewarded and honored. Although the current version of NCLB does not focus on high schools, it requires reading and math to be tested at least once from grades 10 to 12, and testing in science was proposed by the Bush administration. In addition, 22 states have enacted burgeoning high school reforms requiring students to pass a state exit exam to receive their high school diploma. In 2006, 65 percent of the nation's high school students and 76 percent of its minority high school students were enrolled in school in these 22 states. Math, reading, and perhaps science have become the most valued content of education. Students who perform poorly on a state math or reading test are considered at risk, no matter how well they do in other areas. Schools, too, are judged by their students' performance on math and reading tests, regardless of what other educational opportunities they provide. As Bush said during his visit to Greeley, his philosophy started with a "refusal to accept school systems that do not teach every child how to read and write and add and subtract" (Bush, 2008). The virtually exclusive emphasis on math, reading, and science is also evidenced by the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) Bush proposed in his 2006 State of the Union address: [W]e need to encourage children to take more math and science, and to make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations. We've made a good start in the early grades with the No Child Left Behind Act, which is raising standards and lifting test scores across our country. Tonight I propose to train 70,000 high school teachers to lead advanced-placement courses in math and science, bring 30,000 math and science professionals to teach in classrooms, and give early help to students who struggle with math, so they have a better chance at good, high-wage jobs. If we ensure that America's children succeed in life, they will ensure that America succeeds in the world. The high school reforms in many states show the same tendency. Many states have increased the number of required courses in math, English, and science. And in most states, the high school exit exams are primarily in those three subjects. The almost exclusive emphasis on math, reading, and sc ience is also clearly evidenced by funding appropriations. For example, NCLB's Reading First program has received more than $5 billion since 2002. No other subjects have received the same attention. A U.S. Department of Education initiative titled Strengthening Education: Meeting the Challenge of a Changing World was released in February 2006, following Bush's State of the Union address. The document lists Bush's education agenda for 2006. It states, "The American Competitiveness Initiative [ACI] commits $5.9 billion in FY 2007, and more than $136 billion over 10 years, to increase investments in research and development, and strengthen education and workforce training" (U.S. Department of Education, 2006). Programs on Bush's 2006 education agenda fall into four categories: The FY 2007 commitment to education is $380 million, which emphasizes math instruction from the earliest grade levels and ensures that high schools offer more challenging coursework. The High School Reform Initiative will bring high standards and accountability to high schools by aligning their academic goals and performance with the No Child Left Behind Act. Additional Current Math and Science Initiatives: The Department of Education's FY 2007 overall request for math and science initiatives, including funding for ACI, is a 51.3 percent increase over the 2006 amount. The National Language Security Initiative will address our shortage of people who speak languages critical to our national security and global competitiveness by encouraging earlier and stronger coursework in critical need foreign languages from kindergarten through postsecondary education; increasing proficiency among all speakers; and providing incentives for government service and teaching critical need foreign languages (U.S.

Department of Education, 2006). Foreign language education is the only other subject mentioned besides reading, math, and science, but it is the last item, and no specific dollar amount or actions are specified. And the mere $114 million for the National Language Security Initiative actually requested by Bush for FY 2007 was to be shared across the departments of Education, State, and Defense, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. As a result, the Department of Education requested $57 million, almost a rounding error compared with the amount devoted to Reading First.

PTX

PopularTrump gets a win with the planMervis 5/25 (Jeffrey, Reporter on Science Policy in the United States and Internationally, Covering Science Policy for 30+ Years, including work at Nature and with ScienceMag for 24 years, 5-25-2017, accessed 7-13-2017, "How NSF cut 11% from its budget", Science | AAAS: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/how-nsf-cut-11-its-budget //ghs-st)The two biggest numerical losers in the request appear to be graduate research fellowships, down $86 million to $245 million, and EPSCoR, a program to help states with relatively small amounts of NSF funding, which would fall $60 million from its current level of $160 million. Even so, Córdova insists that training the next generation of scientists and maintaining geographic diversity across NSF’s portfolio were high priorities . Despite all the

reductions, which total $841 million, Córdova says the president’s 2018 request sends a positive message to researchers. “It’s not about what we can’t do, it’s about what we do for the American taxpayer,” she asserts. “I believe this administration thinks that basic research is important. And $6.65 billion is a

solid investment.” The next step will be to see how Congress reacts to the NSF

proposal. In general, for example, both fellowships and EPSCoR have enjoyed bipartisan support. Fellowships are part of NSF’s investment in a tech-savvy workforce, a professed priority for every lawmaker. EPSCoR’s popularity stems from its ability to ensure that every state receives at least a bit of NSF funding even if it doesn’t host a top-tier research university.

Empirically bipartisanMervis 16 (Jeffrey, Reporter on Science Policy in the United States and Internationally, Covering Science Policy for 30+ Years, including work at Nature and with ScienceMag for 24 years, 6-23-2016, accessed 7-13-2017, "Senators introduce bipartisan bill to support U.S. research and education", Science | AAAS: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/senators-introduce-bipartisan-bill-support-us-research-and-education//ghs-st)The U.S. science community got a big pat on the back today from members of

the Senate commerce and science committee. The senators delivered their encouraging

message in the form of a bipartisan bill that would reauthorize programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

and tweak policies on science education and innovation across the federal government. Two years in the making, the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act finally makes its appearance as the Senate’s proposed replacement of the 2010 America COMPETES Act that expired in 2013. The new bill (S.3084) was crafted by Senators Cory Gardner

(R–CO) and Gary Peters (D–MI) and has the backing of the committee’s chairman, Senator John Thune (R–SD), and ranking member Senator Bill Nelson (D–FL). It is

much closer to the community’s view of the federal role in research and education than a sheaf

of legislation adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives in the past year. It endorses NSF’s current approach to choosing what research to fund , urges the executive branch to find ways to reduce the amount of time that universities and scientists spend complying with rules governing recipients of federal

research dollars, and calls for the spread of NSF ’s wildly popular Innovation Corps program to train budding academic entrepreneurs. Research lobbyists hope that the bill’s support for the two criteria NSF uses to select the best research—scientific quality and broader �societal impacts—will put to rest the 3-year battle between scientists and the House science committee. The committee’s chairman, Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), and other Republican legislators have repeatedly ridiculed dozens of NSF grants that they feel are frivolous or a waste of money, and their versions of an NSF reauthorization bill proposed a different metric, namely, that NSF certify every grant is “in the national interest.” They have also urged NSF to narrow the scope of its research portfolio by reducing spending in the social sciences and geosciences. But the senators flatly reject those arguments and strongly defend the agency’s practices .

K

Bottom upThe aff is negative state action that functions through bottom up reforms – the perm is justifiedNSF 16 (The National Science Foundation, “NSF at a Glance”, NSF: https://www.nsf.gov/about/glance.jsp //ghs-st)NSF 's task of identifying and funding work at the frontiers of science and engineering is not a "top-down" process. NSF operates from the "bottom up,"

keeping close track of research around the United States and the world,

maintaining constant contact with the research community to identify ever-moving horizons of inquiry, monitoring which areas are most likely to result in spectacular progress and choosing the most promising people to conduct the research.

Changes EpistemologyTeaching people physics makes them change their epistemologyJohansson 15 (Anders, getting a PhD in gender research and Physics education research at the Uppsala university in Sweden, accessed 7/13/17, “Uniformity in physics courses and student diversity: A study of learning to participate in physics” Uppsala: https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:872763/FULLTEXT01.pdf //ghs-st)PER researchers have , like other science education researchers, been interested in studying students’ and teachers’ attitudes and beliefs . This research aims at understanding e.g. how students and teachers view physics learning, general attitudes towards science, and what epistemologies students use to make sense of physics; all these questions evaluated in the light of what may lead to the best learning of physics (Docktor & Mestre, 2014, p. 35). Both qualitative and quantitative methods have been used to explore these issues, with several large surveys developed to assess student populations (see below), but also interview studies with students (Hammer, 1994) and teachers (Henderson & Dancy, 2007). These studies have shown that there are often problems for students learning physics , related to what learning approaches and epistemological views they hold (Elby,

2001, 2010). One example of this is that “students perceive ‘trying to understand physics well’ to be a signifi- cantly different activity from ‘trying to do well in the course’” (Elby, 1999, p. 52). The problems have also in this case been formulated as a transition from journeyman to expert “epistemological skills” (Bing & Redish, 2012).

Case

AT: CharetteCharette concludes that aff is a good and necessary idea – learning subjects in school is still necessary.Charette 13 – Robert Charette, Acknowledged International Authority on Information Technology and Systems Risk Management, Editor of IEEE Spectrum’s Risk Factor Blog, Author of Multiple Books and Articles on Risk Management, Project and Program Management, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, 35-year-long member of IEEE, Recipient of 2008 IEEE Computer Society’s Golden Core Award, “The STEM Crisis is a Myth,” The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Spectrum, 08/30/2013, http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-mythClearly, powerful forces must be at work to perpetuate the cycle. One is obvious: the bottom line. Companies would rather not pay STEM professionals high salaries with lavish benefits, offer them training on the job, or guarantee them decades of stable employment. So having an oversupply of workers, whether domestically educated or imported, is to their benefit. It gives employers a larger pool from which they can pick the “best and the brightest,” and it helps keep wages in check. No less an authority than Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said as much when in 2007 he advocated boosting the number of skilled immigrants entering the United States so as to “suppress” the wages of their U.S. counterparts, which he considered too high.¶ Governments also push the STEM myth because an abundance of scientists and engineers is widely viewed as an important engine for innovation and also for national defense. And the perception of a STEM crisis benefits higher education, says Ron Hira, because as “taxpayers subsidize more STEM education, that works in the interest of the universities” by allowing them to expand their enrollments.¶ An oversupply of STEM workers may also have a beneficial effect on the economy , says Georgetown’s Nicole

Smith, one of the coauthors of the 2011 STEM study. If STEM graduates can’t find traditional STEM jobs, she says, “they will end up in other sectors of the economy and be productive .”¶ The problem with proclaiming a STEM shortage when one doesn’t exist is that such claims can actually create a shortage down the road, Teitelbaum says. When previous STEM cycles hit their “bust” phase, up-and-coming students took note and steered clear of those fields, as happened in computer science after the dot-com bubble burst in 2001.¶ Emphasizing STEM at the expense of other disciplines carries other risks. Without a good grounding in the arts, literature, and history, STEM students narrow their worldview—and their career options. In a 2011 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Norman Augustine, former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, argued that point. “In my position as CEO of a firm employing over 80 000 engineers, I can testify that most were excellent engineers,” he wrote. “But the factor that most distinguished those who advanced in the organization was the ability to think broadly and read and write clearly.”¶ A broader view, I and many others would argue, is that everyone needs a solid grounding in science , engineering , and math . In that sense, there is indeed a shortage—a STEM knowledge shortage. To fill that shortage, you don’t necessarily need a college or university degree in a STEM discipline, but you do need to learn those subjects , and learn them well , from childhood until you head off to college or get a job . Improving everyone’s STEM skills would clearly be good for the workforce and for people’s employment prospects , for public policy debates , and for everyday tasks like balancing checkbooks and calculating risk s . And, of course, when science, math, and engineering are taught well, they engage students’ intellectual curiosity about the world and how it works.¶ Many children born today are likely to live to be 100 and to have not just one distinct career but two or three by the time they retire at 80. Rather than spending our scarce resources on ending a mythical STEM shortage, we should figure out how to make all children literate in the sciences , technology, and the arts to give them the best foundation to pursue a career and then transition to new ones . And

instead of continuing our current global obsession with STEM shortages, industry and government

should focus on creating more STEM jobs that are enduring and satisfying as well.

Cyber War RealCyberattacks are an existential threatSchlosser 16- Eric Schlosser (investigative journalist, has a graduate degree in British Imperial History from Oxford). “World War Three, By Mistake.” The New Yorker. December 23rd, 2016. http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/world-war-three-by-mistakeAt about one-thirty in the morning, on October 23, 2010, fifty Minuteman III missiles deployed at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, in Wyoming, suddenly went offline. Launch officers could no longer communicate with their missiles. The letters “LFDN” appeared on their computer screens: Launch Facility Down. Every so often, an underground control center would lose contact with missiles, briefly. It wasn’t a big deal. But having an entire squadron go down at once—and remain offline—was a highly unusual event. For almost an hour, officers tried to regain communication with the missiles. When it was reëstablished, remotely, by computer—the control centers are miles away from the missiles—closed-circuit-television images from the silos showed that the fifty missiles were still down there. As a precaution, Air Force security officers were dispatched to all the silos in the early-morning hours. The Air Force denied that someone had hacked into the computer network and disabled the missiles. A subsequent investigation found that a circuit card, improperly installed in a weapon-systems processor, had been dislodged by routine vibration and heat. The misalignment of the circuit card sent messages to the missiles in the wrong timing sequence. The Minuteman III’s complicated launch procedures were designed to allow the missiles to be fired even if some command centers were destroyed, and to prevent rogue officers from firing them without proper authorization. As a result, the fifty missiles in each squadron are connected by coaxial cable to ten control centers, assuring redundancy and enabling one center to veto another’s launch decision. Throughout the day, at designated times, each control center sends a signal to the missiles, checks their status, and receives a reply. By disrupting the time sequence, the misaligned circuit board created a cacophony of signals and blocked all communication with the missiles. The system jammed itself. Although the Air Force publicly dismissed the threat of a cyberattack on the nuclear command-and-control system, the incident raised alarm within the Pentagon about the system’s vulnerability. A malfunction that occurred by accident might also be caused deliberately. Those concerns were reinforced by a Defense Science Board report in January, 2013. It found that the Pentagon’s computer networks had been “built on inherently insecure architectures that are composed of, and increasingly using, foreign parts.” Red teams employed by the board were able to disrupt Pentagon systems with “relative ease,” using tools available on the Internet. “The complexity of modern software and hardware makes it difficult, if not impossible, to develop components without flaws or to detect malicious insertions,” the report concluded. In a recent paper for the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, Andrew Futter, an associate professor at the University of Leicester, suggested that a nuclear command-and- control system might be hacked to gather intelligence about the system, to shut down the system, to spoof it, mislead it, or cause it to take some sort of action—like launching a missile. And, he wrote, there are a variety of ways it might be done. During the Cold War, as part of an espionage effort known as Project gunman, Soviet agents managed to tamper with the comb-support bars in sixteen I.B.M. Selectric typewriters at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and the U.S. Mission in Leningrad. Between 1976 and 1984, every keystroke from those typewriters was transmitted by radio to nearby Soviet listening posts. The tampering was so ingenious that it took twenty-five engineers at the National Security Agency (N.S.A.), working six days a week for several months, with X-ray equipment, to figure out how it was done. Today’s integrated circuits contain billions of transistors. As the Defense Science Board notes in its report, a “subversive” chip “could destroy the processor and disable the system by simply shunting power to ground, change the processor output to incorrect results for specified inputs, or allow information leakage to the attackers.” A subversive chip would look identical to a normal one. The cybersecurity of the Minuteman III, aging and yet still on alert, is also questionable. About five thousand miles of underground cable link the control centers to the missiles, as part of the Hardened Intersite Cable System. The cable mainly traverses privately owned land. “One of the difficult parts about fixing missile cable is . . . that the wires are no longer in production,” a newsletter at Minot Air Force Base explained a few years ago. The wires are copper, like old-fashioned telephone lines, surrounded by pressurized air, so that attempts to tamper with the cable can be detected. But in the early nineteen-seventies, during Operation Ivy Bells, the United States attached recording devices to similar underwater cable used by the Soviet Navy, tapping into it without piercing it. The mission was accomplished using divers and a submarine, at a depth of four hundred feet, in the Sea of

Okhotsk. Digging up part of the Hardened Intersite Cable System in the middle of the night, three to eight feet under a farmer’s back yard in Wyoming, would be less challenging. (The Air Force declined to comment on the specific vulnerabilities of the Minuteman III.) Even if the hardware were pristine, malware could be inserted into the system. During Operation Orchard, in September, 2007, Israel may have hacked into Syria’s early-warning system—either shutting it down completely or spoofing it into displaying clear skies—as Israeli fighters entered Syrian airspace, bombed a nuclear reactor, and flew home undetected. In 2012, the Stuxnet computer worm infiltrated computers running Microsoft Windows at nuclear sites in Iran, collected information about the industrial process there, and then issued instructions that destroyed hundreds of centrifuges enriching uranium. A similar worm could surreptitiously enter a nuclear command-and-control system, lie dormant for years, and then create havoc. Strict precautions have been taken to thwart a cyberattack on the U.S. nuclear command-and-control system. Every line of nuclear code has been scrutinized for errors and bugs. The system is “air-gapped,” meaning that its networks are closed: someone can’t just go onto the Internet and tap into a computer at a Minuteman III control center. At least, that’s the theory. Russia, China, and North Korea have sophisticated cyber-warfare programs and techniques. General James Cartwright—the former head of the U.S. Strategic Command who recently pleaded guilty to leaking information about Stuxnet—thinks that it’s reasonable to believe the system has already been penetrated. “You’ve either been hacked, and you’re not admitting it, or you’re being hacked and don’t know it,” Cartwright said last year. If communications between Minuteman control centers and their missiles are interrupted, the missiles can still be launched by ultra-high-frequency radio signals transmitted by special military aircraft. The ability to launch missiles by radio serves as a backup to the control centers—and also creates an entry point into the network that could be exploited in a cyberattack. The messages sent within the nuclear command-and-control system are highly encrypted. Launch codes are split in two, and no single person is allowed to know both parts. But the complete code is stored in computers—where it could be obtained or corrupted by an insider. Some of America’s most secret secrets were recently hacked and stolen by a couple of private contractors working inside the N.S.A., Edward Snowden and Harold T. Martin III, both employees of Booz Allen Hamilton. The N.S.A. is responsible for generating and encrypting the nuclear launch codes. And the security of the nuclear command-and-control system is being assured not only by government officials but also by the employees of private firms, including software engineers who work for Boeing, Amazon, and Microsoft. Lord Des Browne, a former U.K. Minister of Defense, is concerned that even ballistic-missile submarines may be compromised by malware. Browne is now the vice-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit seeking to reduce the danger posed by weapons of mass destruction, where he heads a task force examining the risk of cyberattacks on nuclear command-and-control systems. Browne thinks that the cyber threat is being cavalierly dismissed by many in power. The Royal Navy’s decision to save money by using Windows for Submarines, a version of Windows XP, as the operating system for its ballistic-missile subs seems especially shortsighted. Windows XP was discontinued six years ago, and Microsoft warned that any computer running it after April, 2014, “should not be considered protected as there will be no security updates.” Each of the U.K. subs has eight missiles carrying a total of forty nuclear weapons. “It is shocking to think that my home computer is probably running a newer version of Windows than the U.K.’s military submarines,” Brown said. In 2013, General C. Robert Kehler, the head of the U.S. Strategic Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the risk of cyberattacks on the nuclear command-and-control system. He expressed confidence that the U.S. system was secure. When Senator Bill Nelson asked if somebody could hack into the Russian or Chinese systems and launch a ballistic missile carrying a nuclear warhead, Kehler replied, “Senator, I don’t know . . . I do not know.” After the debacle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union became much more reluctant to provoke a nuclear confrontation with the United States. Its politburo was a committee of conservative old men. Russia’s leadership is quite different today. The current mix of nationalism, xenophobia, and vehement anti-Americanism in Moscow is a far cry from the more staid and secular ideology guiding the Soviet Union in the nineteen-eighties. During the past few years, threats about the use of nuclear weapons have become commonplace in Moscow. Dmitry Kiselyov, a popular newscaster and the Kremlin’s leading propagandist, reminded viewers in 2014 that Russia is “the only country in the world capable of turning the U.S.A. into radioactive dust.” The Kremlin has acknowledged the development of a nuclear torpedo that can travel more than six thousand miles underwater before devastating a coastal city. It has also boasted about a fearsome new missile design. Nicknamed “Satan 2” and deployed with up to sixteen nuclear warheads, the missile will be “capable of wiping out parts of the earth the size of Texas or France,” an official news agency claimed. The

bellicose pronouncements in Moscow suggest that Russia is becoming a superpower again, modernizing its nuclear arsenal and seeking supremacy over the United States. In fact, Russia’s arsenal is more inferior today and more vulnerable to a surprise attack than it was forty years ago. The Kremlin’s recent propaganda brings to mind some of Nikita Khrushchev’s claims from 1959: “Now we have such a stock of missiles, such an amount of atomic and hydrogen warheads, that if they attack us we could raze our potential enemies off the face of the earth.” The

Soviet Union did not have a single intercontinental ballistic missile when Khrushchev made those remarks. At the moment, Russia has newer land-based missiles than the United States does, but it also has about a hundred fewer. During the Cold War, Russia possessed hundreds of mobile missiles that were hard to spot from satellites; today, it has only a hundred and fifty, which are rarely moved from their bases and more readily detected by satellite. Russia’s ten ballistic-missile submarines now spend most of their time in port, where they are sitting ducks. An American surprise attack on Russian nuclear forces may have the best chance of success since the days of the Kennedy Administration. During the Cold War, as many as five warheads were targeted at each enemy missile to assure its destruction. In an age of cyber warfare, those missiles could be immobilized with just a few keystrokes. The United States Cyber Command—which reports to the U.S. Strategic Command—has been assigned the mission of using “cyber operations to disrupt an adversary’s command and control networks, military-related critical infrastructure, and weapons capabilities.” Russia’s greatest strategic vulnerability is the lack of a sophisticated and effective early-warning system. The Soviet Union had almost a dozen satellites in orbit that could detect a large-scale American attack. The system began to deteriorate in 1996, when an early-warning satellite had to be retired. Others soon fell out of orbit, and Russia’s last functional early-warning satellite went out of service two years ago. Until a new network of satellites can be placed in orbit, the country must depend on ground-based radar units. Unlike the United States, Russia no longer has two separate means of validating an attack warning. At best, the radar units can spot warheads only minutes before they land. Pavel Podvig, a senior fellow at the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research, believes that Russia does not have a launch-on-warning policy—because its early-warning system is so limited. According to Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear-policy expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, the deficiencies in Russia’s command-and-control system feed the country’s long-standing fears of encirclement by enemies ready to strike. During the twentieth century, Russia was attacked with little warning by both Germany and Japan. “I think the Russian leadership is terrified of a decapitation strike,” Lewis told me recently. “Perhaps some of that is paranoia, but, on the other hand, the United States opened Operation Iraqi Freedom, in 2003, by striking Dora Farm—a failed decapitation strike against Saddam Hussein.” Russia’s fierce opposition to an American missile-defense system in Europe is driven by fear of the role it could play in a surprise attack. During a crisis, Russia’s inability to launch on warning could raise the pressure on a Russian leader to launch without any warning. The logic of a first strike still prevails. As John Steinbruner, a renowned nuclear theorist, explained more than thirty years ago, shooting first “offers some small chance that complete decapitation will occur and no retaliation will follow. . . . [It] is probably the only imaginable route to decisive victory in nuclear war.” Vladimir Putin now wields more power over Russia’s nuclear forces than any leader since Khrushchev. Putin has displayed great boldness and a willingness to take risks in foreign affairs. A surprise attack on the United States, given its nuclear superiority and largely invulnerable ballistic-missile submarines, would probably be suicidal. And yet the alternative might appear worse. Putin has described an important lesson he learned as a young man in Leningrad: “When a fight is inevitable, you have to hit first.” For the past nine years, I’ve been immersed in the minutiae of nuclear command and control, trying to understand the actual level of risk. Of all the people whom I’ve met in the nuclear realm, Sidney Drell was one of the most brilliant and impressive. Drell died this week, at the age of ninety. A theoretical physicist with expertise in quantum field theory and quantum chromodynamics, he was for many years the deputy director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator and received the National Medal of Science from Obama, in 2013. Drell was one of the founding members of jason—a group of civilian scientists that advises the government on important technological matters—and for fifty-six years possessed a Q clearance, granting him access to the highest level of classified information. Drell participated in top-secret discussions about nuclear strategy for decades, headed a panel that investigated nuclear-weapon safety for the U.S. Congress in 1990, and worked on technical issues for jason until the end of his life. A few months ago, when I asked for his opinion about launch-on-warning, Drell said, “It’s insane, the worst thing I can think of. You can’t have a worse idea.” Drell was an undergraduate at Princeton University when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed. Given all the close calls and mistakes in the seventy-one years since then, he considered it a miracle that no other cities have been destroyed by a nuclear weapon—“it is so far beyond my normal optimism.” The prospect of a new cold war—and the return of military strategies that advocate using nuclear weapons on the battlefield—deeply unnerved him. Once the first nuclear weapon detonates, nothing might prevent the conflict from spiralling out of control. “We have no experience in stopping a nuclear war,” he said. During the recent Presidential campaign, the emotional stability of the Commander-in-Chief became an issue, with some arguing that a calm disposition might mean the difference between peace on Earth and a nuclear apocalypse. The President of the United States has the sole power to order the use of nuclear weapons, without any legal obligation to consult members of Congress or the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ideally, the President would never be short-tempered, impulsive, or clinically depressed. But the mood of the Commander-in-Chief may be irrelevant in a nuclear crisis, given the current technological constraints. Can any human being reliably make the correct decision, within six minutes, with hundreds of millions of lives at stake? Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin confront a stark choice: begin another nuclear-arms race or reduce the threat of nuclear war. Trump now has a unique opportunity to pursue the latter, despite the bluster and posturing on both sides. His admiration for Putin, regardless of its merits, could provide the basis for meaningful discussions about how to minimize nuclear risks. Last year, General James Mattis, the former Marine chosen by Trump to serve as Secretary of Defense, called for a fundamental reappraisal of American nuclear strategy and questioned the need for land-based missiles. During Senate testimony, Mattis suggested that getting rid of such missiles would “reduce the false-alarm danger.” Contrary to expectations, Republican Presidents have proved much more successful than their Democratic counterparts at nuclear disarmament. President George H. W. Bush cut the size of the American arsenal in half, as did his son, President George W. Bush. And President Ronald Reagan came close to negotiating a treaty with the

Soviet Union that would have completely abolished nuclear weapons. Every technology embodies the values of the age in which it was created. When the atomic bomb was being developed in the mid-nineteen-forties, the destruction of cities and the deliberate targeting of civilians was just another military tactic. It was championed as a means to victory. The Geneva Conventions later classified those practices as war crimes—and yet nuclear weapons have no other real use. They threaten and endanger noncombatants for the sake of deterrence. Conventional weapons can now be employed to destroy every kind of military target, and twenty-first-century warfare puts an emphasis on precision strikes, cyberweapons, and minimizing civilian casualties. As a technology, nuclear weapons have become obsolete. What worries me most isn’t the possibility of a cyberattack, a technical glitch, or a misunderstanding starting a nuclear war sometime next week. My greatest concern is the lack of public awareness about this existential threat, the absence of a vigorous public debate about the nuclear-war plans of Russia and the United States, the silent consent to the roughly fifteen thousand nuclear weapons in the world. These machines have been carefully and ingeniously designed to kill us. Complacency increases the odds that, some day, they will. The “Titanic Effect” is a term used by software designers to explain how things can quietly go wrong in a complex technological system: the safer you assume the system to be, the more dangerous it is becoming.

K-12 Key/Aff Solves/State policies badStudents choose which major based off high school, without a strong physics program, students are deterred from STEMMeltzer, et, al. 12 (David E., Associate Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Monica Plisch, Associate Director of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, Stamatis Vokos, Professor of Physics, Seattle Pacific University, accessed 6/29/17, “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action: A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP)”. T-TEP: https://www.aps.org/about/governance/task-force/upload/ttep-synopsis.pdf //ghs-st)Several recent reports underline the importance of high school physics in influencing career choices at the post-secondary level. For example, a study

commissioned by Microsoft surveyed undergraduate college students who are pursuing

a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) degree. The overwhelming majority of these

students (78%) reported that they had decided to study STEM before they entered college, and a clear majority had made the decision while they were still in high school. More than half reported that it was “a teacher or class” that got them interested in STEM.22 (This was consistent with a 1970 study which showed that 44% of physics majors had chosen science as their major field of interest during high school, and that 95% made the decision before entering college.23) Another study examined Florida high school graduates who had gone on to earn bachelor’s degrees from 4-year public universities in Florida. Of those graduates who had taken high school physics, 19% had earned their bachelor’s degree in a STEM field, more than double the rate for students who had not taken physics.24 In view of the nation’s growing need for STEM workers, such findings strongly suggest that it is increasingly critical to focus attention on the state of high school physics instruction . Poor physics instruction in high school sets up a downward spiral that, without intervention, will continue to perpetuate itself. As a result of

weak or non-existent high school physics classes , few high school students are inspired to pursue further study of physics . This limits the number of future college physics majors , and thus the supply of qualified high school teachers . The vicious circle is often completed by state accreditation agencies that respond to the shortage by setting a low bar for acquiring an endorsement to teach high school physics, thereby propagating a legacy of mediocrity. 22. Societal and funding implications for the physics community The state of high school physics affects the overall health of the physics profession. The shortage of adequately prepared physics teachers limits high school student achievement in physics, interest in physics, and motivation to pursue physics in college. The resulting small supply of potential physics majors has had a significant and increasingly damaging impact on college and university physics departments. In fact, about half of all college and university physics programs award fewer than 5 bachelor’s degrees per year.25 Moreover, the fraction of undergraduate STEM degrees awarded to physics majors has decreased substantially over the last several decades (see Figure 4).26 Small numbers of undergraduate physics majors make it difficult to justify a more substantial faculty and other resources for physics departments. Moreover, an increasing number of physics degree programs have come under threat of closure due to low enrollments. The overall small number of physics bachelor’s also limits the ability of physics doctoral programs to attract qualified U.S. graduate students. Despite a recent uptick, the number of U.S. citizens who earn a physics Ph.D. has declined since a peak in the early 1970s, and more than half of physics Ph.D.s granted by U.S. institutions from 2002-2008 were awarded to foreign citizens.27 Since global competition for top science talent is increasing,28

the low proportion of U.S. citizens among the ranks of doctoral degree holders raises a concern for the future of the U.S. physics enterprise.

Space

AT: AsteroidsThere’s no way that asteroids cause a war Wall 11 - Mike Wall is a senior writer for space.com. (“Why Asteroids Make Lousy Space Weapons” 11/4/11 http://www.space.com/13515-asteroid-deflection-space-weapons.html)If you lie awake at night worrying about some supervillain steering giant asteroids toward your hometown, you really should relax, experts say. It's not going to happen anytime soon. Humanity does indeed have the technical skills to move space rocks around, and we may employ this know-how at some point to avoid a catastrophic impact like the one that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But the odds of any rogue state using asteroids to rain death down on its enemies are minuscule, experts say. "It's a lousy weapon," said former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, chairman of the B612 Foundation, a

group dedicated to predicting and preventing cataclysmic asteroid impacts on Earth. "You get a chance to use one once every several hundred years," Schweickart said during a recent panel discussion called "Moving an Asteroid" at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "And even then, you can only deflect it to hit someplace along a sort of arbitrary line across the Earth." [Top 10 Space Weapons] Serious spaceflight skills Changing the orbit of a massive asteroid hurtling through deep space sounds like a daunting task, but our species knows how to do it. For example, we could launch a spacecraft that would rendezvous with an asteroid, then travel alongside it for months or years. Over time, the probe's modest gravity would tug on the space rock, pulling it into a different orbit, Schweickart said. Given enough time to act, this so-called "gravity tractor" method could work in quite precise and predictable ways. And we've demonstrated the skills necessary to make it happen. Multiple missions have met up with asteroids in deep space. For example,NASA's Dawn spacecraft is currently in orbit around Vesta, the second-largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. And in 2005, Japan's Hayabusa probe rendezvoused with a space rock called Itokawa. The craft even scraped some samples off Itokawa and sent them back to Earth for analysis. It's a good thing we possess these potential asteroid-moving skills, Schweickart said, for they may save our bacon someday. Earth has been pummeled by many dangerous asteroids throughout its history, and there's no reason to think the barrage will stop in the future. Space rocks big enough to cause major damage and disruption to the global economy and society (were they to strike a populated area today) have hit Earth, on average, every 200 or 300 years, Schweickart said. An artist's impression of a giant space rock slamming into Earth 65 million years ago near what is now Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. A consortium of scientists now says this was indeed what caused the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. Credit: NASA/Donald E. Davis Firing a weapon once every 300 years That bombardment rate is scarily frequent to

anyone worried about the long-term survival of human civilization. But it's not nearly frequent enough to make asteroids good weapons of mass destruction, according to Schweickart. [5 Reasons to Care About Asteroids] "You're going to have an opportunity once every two or three hundred years to go up and have a weapon to hit Baghdad," Schweickart said. "Of course, the problem is that by that time, the Zambian space program is the world's premier space program, and Baghdad is a buddy of yours." Potential asteroid wranglers also wouldn't be able to direct a space rock just anywhere on Earth, he added. For the foreseeable future, we'll be able only to speed up or slow down an asteroid, moving it in an "east-west" direction along its trajectory. Moving it in the "north-south" plane is not an option. "If you do anything other than speed up or slow down the asteroid, it has almost no effect," Schweickart said. "You've got to go along that line; it's the only way physics lets you do it." So anyone wishing to asteroid-bomb the United States would have to manipulate a space rock whose trajectory already crossed American territory. The trick would be tweaking its velocity enough to ensure an impact on American soil. In practice, therefore, the wait for a suitable asteroid weapon could be considerably longer than 200 or 300 years. Protecting Earth Schweickart and other panelists argued that humanity will need to deflect a killer asteroid away from Earth someday. It would be a shame, they said, if unfounded fears about possible nefarious uses of asteroid-moving technology impeded its development. "The public perception of asteroids can be pretty scary," Schweickart said. "There's going to be a lot of scare stuff. It's already out there, it's going to get worse and that is going to be a very serious challenge that we on the technical side will have to deal with." People worried about death from above should focus their anxiety elsewhere, fellow panelist Bill Nye said. There are plenty of much more viable space weapons than asteroids already up there. "Space is already pretty weaponized," said Nye, executive director of the Planetary Society and former host of the science-themed TV show "Bill Nye the Science Guy." "The global positioning system that we all know and love was designed to guide weapons. So using an asteroid as a weapon is sort of coming late to the party."

AT: Infeasible - CropsNASA now has technology to grow food on Mars— makes colonization possibleChina Daily 15 - China Daily is internationally recognized newspaper reporting on the PRCLOS ANGELES - The six astronauts currently living on the International Space Station (ISS) have become the first to eat food grown in space, the US space agency NASA said Monday . In a video released by NASA,

the three astronauts Scott Kelly, Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui are seen eating the fruit of their labor. "It tastes good," US astronaut Kelly said, following a brief

three-way toast with lettuce leaves in hand. "It kind of tastes like arugula." The fresh red romaine lettuce accompanying the crew's usual freeze-dried fare is far from the first crop grown on the space station. For decades, scientists have experimented with plants in space which have typically been sent to Earth for examination rather than eaten. This step is significant in that NASA's eventual manned journey to Mars may rely heavily on a crew's ability to sustain themselves on food sown and harvested exclusively in the microgravity of space. A number of technologies have been explored for these space-farming experiments. Orbital Technologies (ORBITEC), for example, partnered with Kennedy Space Center to develop the plant growth system, known as Veggie, that produced this most recent crop of lettuce. Plants will be an integral part of any life-support system for extended missions, providing food and oxygen and processing waste, NASA said. Further significant advances will be necessary, and each of them promises to bring new innovations to agriculture here on Earth

Vegetation is key to colonize --- it’s the first sign of settlement permanence and has psychological benefits Mackenize 11 - Bruce Mackenzie is a lead researcher in Mars Colonization, (“The Mars Homestead For An Early Mars Scientific Settlement”, http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars153.html, 01/2011) Using Vegetation as a Fundamental Aspect of Settlement Life Internal vegetation will be an integral part of the Mars settlement’s social structure and sustainability, as it will be used as a symbol, life support component, mediator of exterior views, green belt for breaking up social spaces, and overall mediator of social life, (Alexander, 1997). As a symbol, vegetation will hold a special place immediately between the main entrance and the formal meeting space, as the settlers will plant trees on arrival. These plants will symbolize hope and the permanence of the settlement. The trees will grow as the settlement expands, and when people arrive from Earth, the first thing they will see as they enter is the grove of trees. These trees could also provide an occasional fruit or nut. As a life support component, plant-rated greenhouses will optimize atmosphere, light, structure, and safety for specially designed plants.

The farmers will plant seedlings and harvest the crops from inside a pressurized area with the aid of robots. As a mediator of views within the settlement structure, plants will be

placed in front of any windows to the outside, allowing settlers to look at the red of Mars through the soothing green of Earth vegetation . This added "touch of home" aids in settler psychology and stability. Additionally, every private suite has a small garden area in front of its window, and connector segments will terminate with small gardens and a window onto Mars. As a green belt, vegetation will separate heavily traveled areas from work spaces. As a mediator of social life , plant life can be located either at the center of, or on the periphery of, social spaces. Where plants are in the center, the various social spaces are arranged around the periphery and every social space has views through the vegetation to the other social spaces. Those space with plants around the edge are like a "clearing in the woods" or a "Chinese garden", where the social space is surrounded and protected by trees. The edges of the space will be hidden, thus obscuring the limited size of the space. Finally, the lifecycle of the vegetation will provide seasonal visual changes in the living space, (Alexander, 1977).

AT: ImpossibleColonization coming nowAnderson 13 - Eric C. Anderson 13, co-founder and chairman of Space Adventures Ltd., he is widely credited as having established the market for commercial spaceflight, (“The Coming Age of Space Colonization,” interview in The Atlantic conducted by James Fallows, 3/20, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/the-coming-age-of-space-colonization/273818/)JF: Why should people be excited about what lies ahead?

EA: In the next generation or two—say the next 30 to 60 years—there will be an irreversible human migration to a permanent space colony. Some people will tell you that this new colony will be on the moon, or an asteroid—in my opinion asteroids are a great place to go, but mostly for mining. I think the location is likely to be Mars. This Mars colony will start off with a few thousand people, and then it may grow over 100 years to a few million people, but it will be there permanently. That should be really exciting, to be alive during that stage of humanity's history.JF: I have to ask—really? This will really happen?

EA: I really do believe it will. First of all, the key to making it happen is to reduce the cost of transportation into space. My colleague Elon Musk is aiming to get the cost of a flight to Mars down to half a million dollars a person. I think that

even if it costs maybe a few million dollars a person to launch to Mars, a colony could be feasible. To me the question is, does it happen in the next 30 years, or does it

happen in the next 60 to 70 years? There's no question it's going to happen in this century, and that's a pretty exciting thing.JF: Apart from the cost of transport, what are the challenges in making that a reality? Are they cost and engineering challenges, or are they basic science problems?

EA: I think it's all about the economics. There is no technological or engineering challenge.One key to making all this happen is that we need to use the resources of space to help us colonize space. It would have been pretty tough for the settlers who went to California if they'd had to bring every supply they would ever need along with them from the East Coast.

That's why Planetary Resources exists. The near-Earth asteroids, which are very, very close to the Earth, are filled with resources that would be useful for people wanting to go to Mars, or anywhere else in the solar system.

They contain precious resources like water , rocket fuel , strategic metals . So first there needs to be a reduction in the cost of getting off the Earth's surface, and then there needs to be the ability to "live off the land" by using the resources in space.

NASA + Private Company Coop KeyPublic-Private Partnerships are key to space explorationNyshka Chandran, 2-13-2017, "NASA bets big on private sector to put humans on Mars," CNBC, http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/13/nasa-private-sector-to-put-humans-on-mars.htmlNASA   will continue tapping the private sector to fund space exploration efforts under President   Donald Trump , a continuation in policy that began under former President George W. Bush." Public-private partnerships are the future of space exploration ," Dava Newman, a former NASA deputy administrator who resigned before Trump took office, told CNBC on Tuesday. " I call it the new NASA."In total, 22 companies — all American — have won contracts with the agency across a diverse range of sectors, from in-space manufacturing to engine development.Boeing   and   Elon Musk's   SpaceX will be delivering NASA astronauts to international space stations, while   Orbital ATK , Sierra Nevada and SpaceX will transport NASA cargo to space stations, said Newman, who is now chair of the Apollo Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.NASA is a part of the U.S. government but remains independent while still receiving federal funds — a structure originally conceived by McKinsey & Co. In the 1950s, the management consultancy suggested the idea of a separate government office dedicated to space research.Other countries have also fixed their sights on the private sector. Last year, the Indian Space Research Organisation invited firms to build a full spacecraft as Prime Minister Narendra Modi looks to open up the country's satellite manufacturing industry, according to local news.One specific goal of NASA's public-private partnerships is   putting humans on Mars   by the 2030s, a journey that's already underway. A robotic rover that's been exploring Mars since 2012 has helped confirm evidence that   water once flowed on the red planet , suggesting the

existence of streams and lakes billions of years ago. NASA intends to launch another rover in July 2020.President Barack Obama made no apologies for curbing the agency's exploration ambitions, and it's not yet clear how NASA will be impacted under Trump, who has said little on space exploration.Some strategists believe the real estate billionaire will be keen to push property development on the moon, a scenario that Newman believes will spark excitement "in the next decade."

Space Cooperation from the public and private sectors is key to broader colonization efforts Masunga and Puzzanghera 16 - Samantha Masunaga and Jim Puzzanghera, 10-11-2016, "Getting humans to Mars will require NASA and private companies to team up, Obama says," latimes, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-obama-mars-20161011-snap-story.htmlP resident Obama   hammered home his goal to send humans to Mars by the 2030s, while acknowledging that accomplishing it would require public and private collaboration.Obama first said in 2010 he wanted to send astronauts “to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth” by the mid-2030s with “a landing on Mars” to follow.In an opinion article Tuesday on CNN.com, Obama said the ultimate ambition was not only to send humans to Mars and bring them back, but to “remain there for an extended time.”

“Getting to Mars will require continued cooperation between government and private innovators, and we're already well on our way,” he said.Obama’s article comes two weeks after SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk laid out an ambitious plan to eventually send 1 million people to colonize the red planet and turn humans into a multiplanetary species within 40 to 100 years.In a speech at the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico, Musk similarly called for a public/private partnership.NASA   is working with Hawthorne-based SpaceX and aerospace giant Boeing Co. to develop crew capsules to take astronauts to the International Space Station. NASA relies on SpaceX and aerospace firm Orbital ATK to deliver supplies and cargo to the space station.This week, Obama will speak at the White House Frontiers conference in Pittsburgh, an event that will focus on innovations in science and technology, including a future Mars mission. Executives from companies such as SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and moon mining firm Moon Express are also set to speak at the conference.“It just underlines the theme that’s run through   the Obama administration, which is encouraging partnerships with the private sector, providing additional opportunities for work and, when appropriate, doing business in a slightly different way,” said John Logsdon, professor emeritus of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.“It’s mainly about leaving a legacy,” he said.Analysts said a public/private partnership recognizes the reality of the space business today, as well as financial limitations.“On the commercial side, there are a lot of innovative ideas,” said Bill Ostrove, aerospace and defense analyst at Forecast International.

“But they need that backing from the government both in the know-how …   (and) the government’s financial resources.” Smaller space start-ups that don’t usually work with the government could benefit most from Obama’s goal, said Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation trade group.“I think it gives a level of excitement to a variety of different players,” he said. “You don’t know who the next SpaceX could be, or the next Blue Origin,” referring to the space tourism company started by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.

SpaceX, whose full name is Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has said its first test flight of an interplanetary vehicle could come in four years. A crewed mission could launch in late 2024 and arrive on Mars in 2025.Developing the interplanetary transport system could cost SpaceX $10 billion.In an email, SpaceX spokesman Phil Larson said it was “exciting to see President Obama advocate for the next frontier in human space flight,” and that the company was looking forward to “participating in the journey.” The company’s plan to send an unmanned Dragon spacecraft to the red planet as early as 2018 will provide an early chance to demonstrate how private space companies and NASA can work together, said Charles Lurio, publisher of the Lurio Report newsletter on entrepreneurial spaceflight.SpaceX will use the flight to test landing capabilities, interplanetary navigation and other systems. NASA will provide some technical support for the mission because it is interested in the entry, descent and landing data.Read more: Elon Musk's Mars plan involves giant reusable rockets, spaceships flying 100 people »Marco Caceres, senior space analyst at the Teal Group, estimated that a mission to Mars done the “traditional way” by NASA could cost at least $1 trillion. Oftentimes, large space programs can get delayed if Congress does not grant the requested funding amount, or if there are technical problems along the way.A public/private partnership may speed up the timeline and could lower that cost below $1 trillion, Caceres said.

But one of the biggest questions is whether such a program could get funding from Congress, said Ostrove of Forecast International.“There is some desire to do the actual exploration,” he said. “I think that there’s maybe not necessarily the political will to spend the money on these types of programs when there’s so many other things we’re facing now.”One question still to be answered is who will build the massive rockets needed to get to Mars.NASA plans to send its Space Launch System   rocket to an asteroid in the mid-2020s and to Mars in the 2030s. Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg has said he thinks the first person to land on Mars will “arrive there riding a Boeing rocket,” a reference to the company’s role on the SLS project.That is a challenge to Musk, who described a rocket booster measuring 39 feet in diameter. When stacked with the SpaceX Mars spaceship, the interplanetary transport system would be 400 feet tall. In a statement Tuesday, John Elbon, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space Exploration, said that sending humans to Mars is “an achievable and inspiration goal for this country.” “This isn’t science fiction,” he said.   “We’re building real hardware right now and NASA has a solid plan to get there.”Meanwhile, new research pointed out the risks of any Mars flights.   Scientists studying the potential effects   of cosmic rays on astronauts’ brains during deep space missions to Mars or beyond found that rodents who were exposed to radiation still suffered from brain inflammation and neural damage six months later.Achieving Obama’s Mars ambition, of course, will be out of his hands. SpaceNews reported last month that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said she supported plans to send humans to Mars in response to a questionnaire on science policy from ScienceDebate.org. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump praised space exploration but did not say he supported a human Mars mission.

NSF continued funding is good – laundry listMullins and Jolicoeur 17 - Lisa Mullins and Lynn Jolicoeur 4-3-2017, "National Science Foundation Director On Potential Cuts To Research Funding," No Publication, http://www.wbur.org/all-things-considered/2017/04/03/atc-nsf-2wayNortheastern University on Monday opened a   nearly-quarter-billion- dollar hub for science and engineering research .

The facility on Columbus Avenue was funded with help from the National Science Foundation.

Research there will range from cybersecurity, drug discovery, robotics and climate change.The opening comes at a precarious time for scientific research in the U.S.. President Trump has proposed cutting billions of dollars from the   National Institutes of Health   and the   Environmental Protection Agency. The director of the National Science Foundation, France Córdova, was at the ribbon cutting at Northeastern.Massachusetts has a lot at stake in the discussion about funding. The state reaps big rewards from the foundation: Last year $450 million went to more than 30 universities and more than 30 small businesses in the state.Córdova   says it's a prime place for research. She joined WBUR's All Things Considered to discuss Massachusetts's role in research funding, and the future of scientific programs.

AT: DiseaseColonization of Mars spurs new technology, prevents disease Rampelotto 11 – Pabulo Rampelotto “Why Send Humans to Mars? Looking Beyond Science”, Pabulo, February 24, 2011, Federal University of Santa Maria, available online at: http://bruceleeeowe.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/why-send-humans-to-mars-looking-beyond-science/)The engineering challenges necessary to accomplish the human exploration of Mars will stimulate the global industrial machine and the human mind to think innovatively and continue to operate on the edge of technological possibility. Numerous technological spin-offs will be generated during such a project, and it will require the reduction or elimination of boundaries to collaboration among the scientific community. Exploration will also foster the incredible ingenuity necessary to develop technologies required to accomplish something so vast in scope and complexity. The benefits from this endeavor are by nature unknown at this time, but evidence of the benefits from space ventures undertaken thus far point to drastic improvement to daily life and potential benefits to humanity as whole. One example could come from the development of water recycling technologies designed to sustain a closed-loop life support system of several people for months or even years at a time (necessary if a human mission to Mars is attempted). This technology could then be applied to drought sufferers across the world or remote settlements that exist far from the safety net of mainstream society. The permanence of humans in a hostile environment like on Mars will require careful use of local resources. This necessity might stimulate the development of novel methods and technologies in energy extraction and usage that could benefit terrestrial exploitation and thus improve the management of and prolong the existence of resources on Earth. The study of human physiology in the Martian environment will provide unique insights into whole-body physiology, and in areas as bone physiology, neurovestibular and cardiovascular function. These areas are important for understanding various terrestrial disease processes (e.g. osteoporosis, muscle atrophy, cardiac impairment, and balance and co-ordination defects). Moreover, medical studies in the Martian environment associated with researches in space medicine will provide a stimulus for the development of innovative medical technology, much of which will be directly applicable to terrestrial medicine. In fact, several medical products already developed are space spin-offs including surgically implantable heart pacemaker, implantable heart defibrillator, kidney dialysis machines, CAT scans, radiation therapy for the treatment of cancer, among many others. Undoubtedly, all these space spin-offs significantly improved the human’s quality of life.

No chance – that’s not how science worksBrin, 11 – (David, PhD in philosophy, Masters in applied physics, known scientist and author, “A Contrarian Perspective on Altruism: The Dangers of First Contact,” The Frontiers Collection (2011), Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence SETI Past, Present, and Future, pt. 3, ed. by H. Paul Shuch, pg. 429-449, SpringerLink)

On the other hand, arguing from earthly experience, it seems that cross-infection follows a curve not too dissimilar to that of interspecies altruism! The more genetically remote ae given species is from us, the less likely it is to transmit a lethal agent to us. A lot of the most lethal agents (e.g.,

HIV, monkey B virus) seem to have started off in other primates, albeit in modified form. But as you move away on the genetic continuum, these events are fewer. Once you leave mammals, you have parrot fever and various flu viruses from birds, little or

nothing from amphibians, reptiles or fish. Insects, which make up most of the eukaryotic biomass of the planet, serve as carriers for a few things like malaria, but these are more incidental vectors than hosts. If you assume that ET is very far from us genetically, the likelihood of cross-infection seems pretty low.

But earth diseases cause extinction and are inevitable – colonization solvesHighfield 1 (Roger, Science Editor, “Colonies In Space May Be The Only Hope, Says Hawking,” http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F210%2F16%2Fnhawk16.xml)THE human race is likely to be wiped out by a doomsday virus before the Millennium is out, unless we set up colonies in space, Prof Stephen Hawking warns today. In an interview with The

Telegraph, Prof Hawking, the world's best known cosmologist, says that biology, rather than physics, presents the biggest challenge to human survival. "Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do," said the Cambridge University

scientist. "In the long term, I am more worried about biology. Nuclear weapons need large facilities, but genetic engineering can be done in a small lab. You can't regulate every lab in the world. The danger is that either by accident or design, we create a virus that

destroys us. "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars." Current theories suggest that space travel will be tedious, using spaceships travelling slower than light. But Prof Hawking, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge,

says that a warp drive, of the kind seen in Star Trek, cannot be ruled out. This method of space exploration and colonisation, apparently the stuff of science fiction, could be one possible escape from the human predicament.

Colonization of Mars spurs new technology, prevents disease Rampelotto 11 ( “Why Send Humans to Mars? Looking Beyond Science”, Pabulo, February 24, 2011, Federal University of Santa Maria, http://bruceleeeowe.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/why-send-humans-to-mars-looking-beyond-science/)The engineering challenges necessary to accomplish the human exploration of Mars will stimulate the global industrial machine and the human mind to think innovatively and continue to operate on the edge of technological possibility. Numerous technological spin-offs will be generated during such a project, and it will require the reduction or elimination of boundaries to collaboration among the scientific community. Exploration will also foster the incredible ingenuity necessary to develop technologies required to accomplish something so vast in scope and complexity. The benefits from this endeavor are by nature unknown at this time, but evidence of the benefits from space ventures undertaken thus far point to drastic improvement to daily life and potential benefits to humanity as whole. One example could come from the development of water recycling technologies designed to sustain a closed-loop life support system of several people for months or even years at a time (necessary if a human mission to Mars is attempted). This technology could then be applied to drought sufferers across the world or remote settlements that exist far from the safety net of mainstream society. The permanence of humans in a hostile environment like on Mars will require careful use of local resources. This necessity might stimulate the development of novel methods and technologies in energy extraction and usage that could benefit terrestrial exploitation and thus improve the management of and prolong the existence of resources on Earth. The study of human physiology in the Martian environment will provide unique insights into whole-body physiology, and in areas as bone physiology, neurovestibular and cardiovascular function. These areas are important for understanding various terrestrial disease processes (e.g. osteoporosis, muscle atrophy, cardiac impairment, and balance and co-ordination defects). Moreover, medical studies in the Martian environment associated with researches in space medicine will provide a stimulus for the development of innovative medical technology, much of which will be directly applicable to terrestrial medicine. In fact, several medical products already developed are space spin-offs including surgically implantable heart pacemaker, implantable heart defibrillator, kidney dialysis machines, CAT scans, radiation therapy for the treatment of cancer, among many others. Undoubtedly, all these space spin-offs significantly improved the human’s quality of life.

AT: RadiationRadiation isn’t an issue in colonization – the effects are minimal Lansdorp 13 - Bas Lansdorp a Mars One co-founder and CEO of colonization programs, “Radiation Fears Shouldn't Hold Back Mars Colonization (Op-Ed),”Space Available Online at: http://www.space.com/21813-mars-one-colony-space-radiation.html) On Mars, radiation exposure is considerably less than the exposure in space. Thanks to the shielding provided by the planet itself and its atmosphere, Mars' surface receives 30 microsieverts (0.03 millisieverts) of radiation per hour during solar minimum, according a NASA technical paper entitled "Space Radiation Cancer Risk Projections for Exploration Missions: Uncertainty Reduction and Mitigation." The research, conducted by Francis Cucinotta, chief scientist at the NASA Space Radiation Program and his colleagues, found that the exposure is reduced by about 50 percent during solar maximum because solar particles actually decrease galactic rays. The Mars One habitat will be covered by a necessary layer of soil that provides shielding even against galactic cosmic rays. Sixteen feet (5 meters) of Martian soil provides the same protection as the Earth's atmosphere — equivalent to 1,000 grams per square cm(227.6 ounces per square inch) of shielding. The Mars One habitat can support a soil layer 36 feet (11 m) thick. If the settlers spend, on average, two hours per day outside the habitat, their individual exposure adds up to 22 mSv per year.

Public-Private Partnerships are key to space explorationNyshka Chandran, 2-13-2017, "NASA bets big on private sector to put humans on Mars," CNBC, http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/13/nasa-private-sector-to-put-humans-on-mars.htmlNASA will continue tapping the private sector to fund space exploration efforts under President Donald Trump , a continuation in policy that began under former President George W. Bush. " Public- private partnerships are the future of space exploration ," Dava Newman, a former NASA deputy administrator who resigned before Trump took office, told CNBC on Tuesday. " I call it the new NASA." In total, 22 companies — all American — have won contracts with the agency across a diverse range of sectors, from in-space manufacturing to engine development. Boeing and Elon Musk's SpaceX will be delivering NASA astronauts to international space stations, while Orbital ATK , Sierra Nevada and SpaceX will transport NASA cargo to space stations, said Newman, who is now chair of the Apollo Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. NASA is a part of the U.S. government but remains independent while still receiving federal funds — a structure originally conceived by McKinsey & Co. In the 1950s, the management consultancy suggested the idea of a separate government office dedicated to space research. Other countries have also fixed their sights on the private sector. Last year, the Indian Space Research Organisation invited firms to build a full spacecraft as Prime Minister Narendra Modi looks to open up the country's satellite manufacturing industry, according to local news. One specific goal of NASA's public-private partnerships is putting humans on Mars by the 2030s, a journey that's already underway. A robotic rover that's been exploring Mars since 2012 has helped confirm evidence that water once flowed on the red

planet, suggesting the existence of streams and lakes billions of years ago. NASA intends to launch another rover in July 2020. President Barack Obama made no apologies for curbing

the agency's exploration ambitions, and it's not yet clear how NASA will be impacted under Trump, who has said little on space exploration. Some strategists believe the real estate billionaire will be keen to push property development on the moon, a scenario that Newman believes will spark excitement "in the next decade."

Space Cooperation from the public and private sectors is key to broader colonization effortsMasunga and Puzzanghera 16 - Samantha Masunaga and Jim Puzzanghera, 10-11-2016, "Getting humans to Mars will require NASA and private companies to team up, Obama says," latimes, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-obama-mars-20161011-snap-story.htmlP resident Obama hammered home his goal to send humans to Mars by the 2030s, while acknowledging that accomplishing it would require public and private collaboration. Obama first said in 2010 he wanted to send astronauts “to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth” by the mid-2030s with “a landing on Mars” to follow. In an opinion article Tuesday on CNN.com, Obama said the ultimate ambition was not only to send humans to Mars and bring them back, but to “remain there for an extended time.” “Getting to Mars will require continued cooperation between government and private innovators, and we're already well on our way,” he said. Obama’s article comes two weeks after SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk laid out an ambitious plan to eventually send 1 million people to colonize the red planet and turn humans into a multiplanetary species within 40 to 100 years. In a speech at the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico, Musk similarly called for a public/private partnership. NASA is working with Hawthorne-based SpaceX and aerospace giant Boeing Co. to develop crew capsules to take astronauts to the International Space Station. NASA relies on SpaceX and aerospace firm Orbital ATK to deliver supplies and cargo to the space station. This week, Obama will speak at the White House Frontiers conference in Pittsburgh, an event that will focus on innovations in science and technology, including a future Mars mission. Executives from companies such as SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and moon mining firm Moon Express are also set to speak at the conference. “It just underlines the theme that’s run through the Obama administration, which is encouraging partnerships with the private sector, providing additional opportunities for work and, when appropriate, doing business in a slightly different way,” said John Logsdon, professor emeritus of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. “It’s mainly about leaving a legacy,” he said. Analysts said a public/private partnership recognizes the reality of the space business today, as well as financial limitations. “On the commercial side, there are a lot of innovative ideas,” said Bill Ostrove, aerospace and defense analyst at Forecast International. “But they need that backing from the government both in the know-how … (and) the government’s financial resources.” Smaller space start-ups that don’t usually work with the government could benefit most from Obama’s goal, said Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation trade group. “I think it gives a level of excitement to a variety of different players,” he said. “You don’t know who the next SpaceX could be, or the next Blue Origin,” referring to the space tourism company started by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. SpaceX, whose full name is Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has said its first test flight of an interplanetary vehicle could come in four years. A crewed mission could launch in late 2024 and arrive on Mars in 2025. Developing the interplanetary transport system could cost SpaceX $10 billion. In an email, SpaceX spokesman Phil Larson said it was “exciting to see President Obama advocate for the next frontier in human space flight,” and that the company was looking forward to “participating in the journey.” The company’s plan to send an unmanned Dragon spacecraft to the red planet as early as 2018 will provide an early chance to demonstrate how

private space companies and NASA can work together, said Charles Lurio, publisher of the Lurio Report newsletter on entrepreneurial spaceflight. SpaceX will use the flight to test landing capabilities, interplanetary navigation and other systems. NASA will provide some technical support for the mission because it is interested in the entry, descent and landing data. Read more: Elon Musk's Mars plan involves giant reusable rockets, spaceships flying 100 people » Marco Caceres, senior space analyst at the Teal Group, estimated that a mission to Mars done the “traditional way” by NASA could cost at least $1 trillion. Oftentimes, large space programs can get delayed if Congress does not grant the requested funding amount, or if there are technical problems along the way. A public/private partnership may speed up the timeline and could lower that cost below $1 trillion, Caceres said. But one of the biggest questions is whether such a program could get funding from Congress, said Ostrove of Forecast International. “There is some desire to do the actual exploration,” he said. “I think that there’s maybe not necessarily the political will to spend the money on these types of programs when there’s so many other things we’re facing now.” One question still to be answered is who will build the massive rockets needed to get to Mars. NASA plans to send its Space Launch System rocket to an asteroid in the mid-2020s and to Mars in the 2030s. Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg has said he thinks the first person to land on Mars will “arrive there riding a Boeing rocket,” a reference to the company’s role on the SLS project. That is a challenge to Musk, who described a rocket booster measuring 39 feet in diameter. When stacked with the SpaceX Mars spaceship, the interplanetary transport system would be 400 feet tall. In a statement Tuesday, John Elbon, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space Exploration, said that sending humans to Mars is “an achievable and inspiration goal for this country.” “This isn’t science fiction,” he said. “We’re building real hardware right now and NASA has a solid plan to get there.” Meanwhile, new research pointed out the risks of any Mars flights. Scientists studying the potential effects of cosmic rays on astronauts’ brains during deep space missions to Mars or beyond found that rodents who were exposed to radiation still suffered from brain inflammation and neural damage six months later. Achieving Obama’s Mars ambition, of course, will be out of his hands. SpaceNews reported last month that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said she supported plans to send humans to Mars in response to a questionnaire on science policy from ScienceDebate.org. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump praised space exploration but did not say he supported a human Mars mission.

NSF continued funding is good – laundry listMullins and Jolicoeur 17 - Lisa Mullins and Lynn Jolicoeur 4-3-2017, "National Science Foundation Director On Potential Cuts To Research Funding," No Publication, http://www.wbur.org/all-things-considered/2017/04/03/atc-nsf-2wayNortheastern University on Monday opened a nearly-quarter-billion- dollar hub for science and engineering research . The facility on Columbus Avenue

was funded with help from the National Science Foundation. Research there will range from cybersecurity, drug discovery, robotics and climate change. The opening comes at a precarious time for scientific research in the U.S.. President Trump has proposed cutting billions of dollars from the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency. The director of the National Science Foundation, France Córdova, was at the ribbon cutting at Northeastern. Massachusetts has a lot at stake in the discussion about funding. The state reaps big rewards from the foundation: Last year $450 million went to more than 30 universities and more than 30 small businesses

in the state. Córdova says it's a prime place for research. She joined WBUR's All Things Considered to discuss Massachusetts's role in research funding, and the future of scientific programs.