Urban debate league

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The urban debate league is a group of high school policy debate teams from urban high schools. Because each school may have a number of individual teams, there can be a very large number of students who have participated in an urban debate league.

Contents

[edit] History

The first Urban Debate Leagues were established simultaneously in Atlanta, GA and in Philadelphia, PA under the auspices of a three year $5,000.00 urban debate league challenge grant (for three consecutive years) sponsored by Phillips Petroleum and by the National Forensic League in the late 1980s and early 90s. These grants were spearheaded by the visionary President of the NFL, James Copeland, who envisioned the grants as ways to establish pilot programs in urban debate in various cities in the United States.

The Atlanta Urban Debate Grant was to the (Alban)Barkley Forum of Emory University, which founded the Atlanta Urban Debate League in 1985, in partnership with Atlanta Public Schools. A search in the 1990s by George Soros' foundation, the Open Society Institute (OSI), led to debate coach Melissa Maxcy Wade, assistant Larry Moss and the local success of urban debate in Atlanta. This program formed the basis for a national model where nonprofit groups, university debate programs and interested academics received additional grants from OSI to create additional Urban Debate League pilot projects and outright UDLs in other cities. OSI is an organization committed to increasing public participation in social institutions and increasing awareness about public policy. They aspire to help local neighborhoods in terms of rule of law, education and health care. These grants covered the cost of tournament operations, local administration and participation in debate leagues for Title I high schools. Melissa Maxcy Wade since 1972 has been the championship level Debate Coach of the Barkley Forum Debate Team at Emory University in Atlanta and has frequently participated as a judge of UPI and/or AP Presidential Debate Panels in Presidential Election Years, including recently 1992 & 1996.

Simultaneous with the founding of the Atlanta Urban Debate League in 1985, the Philadelphia Bar Ass'n under the leadership of Leonard Bernstein, Esquire and the Young Lawyers Division of the PBA also founded an Urban Debate League in Philadelphia, which provided lawyer volunteers to each of the philadelphia public high schools, and also sponsored an annual tournament held at Temple University, with the final rounds of Lincoln-Douglas Debate held at the Federal Courthouse in Downtown Philadelphia. Art Kyriazis, a former Harvard debater and an elected member of the Executive Board of the Young Lawyers Division of the Philadelphia Bar Ass'n, and Cathy Olanich Raymond, Esquire, a former Villanova Debate Coach, jointly ran the debate and outreach programs for several years with the assistance of hundreds of lawyer volunteers, the voluntary cooperation of Temple University, the Philadelphia Bar Ass'n, et al. Special thanks were due to President Peter J. Liacouras of Temple University. The founding of the Philadelphia Debate League antedated the Phillips Grants by five years, and in fact, the success of the Philadelphia Debate Program prompted Mr. Copeland to visit Philadelphia and take a look at the successes of the urban debate program there. It was then that he decided to fund not only Philadelphia, but also Atlanta and one additional pilot program. Thus, Philadelphia was the original urban debate league which led to all the others in the United States.

The Philadelphia Bar Ass'n debate program was also assisted by John Meany, the coach of Claremont College Debate, as an advisor, as well as by Dallas Perkins, the coach of Debate at Harvard, who also was an advisor, along with Tuna Snider of Univ of Vermont who also advised informally. Thus, the Philadelphia program was the first pilot program in the United States to receive NFL recognition for their work, the first urban debate league pilot program to receive funding from the National Forensic League, and the first to receive recognition from a debate organization like the NFL for their work. Also, in 1989, the Philadelphia Bar Ass'n received an ABA Award in 1989 for their work on the debate and urban outreach programs, and the Young Lawyers Division was voted most outstanding YLD in the nation under Len Bernstein's Leadership. Moreover, through their debate contacts, the heads of the philadelphia program had advised all of the major debate coaches in the US of the program; and of course Copland had advised all of the grant recipients of the activities of the other pilot projects, so Atlanta knew what Philadelphia was doing as well since they, too, were a Phillips Petroleum/NFL grant recipient (see Barkley Forum, Wikipedia).

The urban debate program was part of a broader thrust at the high schools, including a mock trial program, an oratory program, a laywer in the classroom program, and other similar programs aimed at urban speech and debate outreach in Philadelphia. Many of the pilot program ideas in Philadelphia were widely floated in debate coaching circles and made known to other debate coaches, and it is widely believed that the urban debate league movement was shaped to some degree by the NFL-Philadelphia Bar Ass'n experience in Philadelphia. The Debate Tournament in Philadelphia, which began in 1987, the bicenntennial of the U.S. Constitution, was known as "Federal Courts 200" and will be in its 20th year in 2007. The Philadelphia Program is currently under the joint auspices of the Philadelphia Bar Ass'n Young Lawyers Division and a new urban debate outreach group which is centered in Philadelphia, currently independent, but which will eventually hope to integrate with the existing urban debate structures. They are staffed by volunteers and grants from the PBA-YLD and run a summer institute along with the rest of the program. It should be noted that the Philadelphia Bar Ass'n Young Lawyer's Division, having had a budget of nearly $50,000 annually even in the 1980s, had no need for outside funds from George Soros or any charitable groups; to the contrary, the mission of the YLD and PBA was to spend the money they had charitably and to give volunteer time of attorneys charitably back to the community in which they made their living. Approximately $5,000.00-$7,5000.00 was allotted annually to running the Philadelphia program in debate and this usually covered all costs completely, especially as judges and coaches by and large worked for free. NFL grants by and large went to pay for school NFL chapter fees for schools which had no money for NFL chapter fees (there were 31 high schools in Philadelphia).

Turning back to Atlanta and OSI, OSI convened a summit meeting of leading academics and debate activists in Atlanta for the first-ever IDEAFEST to share thoughts about strategies for bringing debate to needy populations. Open Society Institute formed a partnership with the Barkley Forum and the IMPACT Coalition to replicate the model in New York City in 1996. Later in 1997 with the assistance of lead consultants, Melissa Wade and Larry Moss, and OSI program officer, Beth Breger, the New York Urban Debate League (NYUDL) was founded in 1997 with 14 schools and 140 students with the local assistance of IMPACT. OSI also helped fund Urban Debate League start-ups in 16 other cities across the country, including Baltimore, Chicago, Kansas City, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

As it began to phase out its funding of urban debate, OSI formed the National Urban Debate Initiative in 2002, which evolved into the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues (NAUDL) in 2005. The NAUDL's mission is to increase the number of urban debaters across the country. The NAUDL comprehensively reviewed the record of the first decade of the Urban Debate Network and, based on these results, formulated an Organizational Model that institutionalizes UDLs in urban school systems and establishes a UDL Advisory Board to bring together community leadership to support the school-based project. The NAUDL is led by Honorary Board members David Boies, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Penny Pritzker, Lawrence H. Summers, Laurence H. Tribe, and Paul G. Vallas, and a Governing Board made up of corporate, legal, and academic professionals with a national profile, including four former national collegiate debate champions. With the continuing support of the founder of the Urban Debate Network, OSI, the NAUDL has developed a range of programs that build, expand, and connect Urban Debate Leagues around the country.

In 2003, urban debate moved into national prominence with an article in US News & World Report and a feature story on 60 Minutes about the Baltimore Urban Debate League. The sudden attention and the reduction of OSI support led to the formation of the National Debate Project in Atlanta and domestic activities by the International Debate Education Association (IDEA). The National Debate Project is a consortium of colleges and local practitioners dedicated to building new debate leagues, creating assessment tools for debate and supporting new models of debate. At about this time Urban Debate Leagues began to develop their connections with the growing after-school programs movement: in 2004 and 2005 the NAUDL was invited to make presentations at the National Institute for Out of School Time and the Alliance for Excellent Education annual conferences.

2005 saw the formation of The Associated Leaders of Urban Debate (ALOUD), led by New York University (NYU) President John Sexton and Pitney Bowes CEO Michael Critelli represents the leading force for making debate available to the general public and fosters educational partnerships among urban debate communities, universities and school systems in cities around the United States. ALOUD promotes the work of the National Debate Project, NAUDL and IDEA as a unifying force within the urban debate landscape possessing the media savvy to coordinate national marketing efforts and the academic credentials to garner attention on Capitol Hill. John Sexton is himself a former championship debating coach who coached in the urban milieu prior to attending the Harvard Law School, and his devotion to New York City and other urban areas should not be underestimated.

It is estimated that 34,000 at-risk youth have participated in UDL programs, of which more than 75% have gone on to college. Over 100 colleges and universities now recruit intercollegiate debaters in cities with UDLs offering millions in scholarship support.

First Lady Laura Bush recognized the National Debate Project’s success of Atlanta’s computer-assisted debate program.

[edit] Funding

The goal of the OSI's Urban Debate Program was to offer initial support to fund debate programs within urban communities, develop local stakeholders (e.g. university partners, community funders and/or school system support) and then to exit the equation. The concept was once local actors see the value of the program, sustaining imvestment in debate would become easier.

Today, with OSI finishing up its funding of local urban debate programs, Urban Debate Leagues are funded primarily by one of three local institutions: urban public school systems, non-profit organizations dedicated to establishing a local UDL, or university debate programs engaged in community outreach.

[edit] How it Works

To see how Urban Debate Leagues work, one of the best places to look is at the league websites (listed below). One can get a sense of how these Leagues have developed in their own way to serve their communities and yet how the overarching goal is still to encourage high school students from urban areas to participate in debate activities.

Starting an Urban Debate League is not easy. There is a lot of administrative work that is entailed, including starting teams at schools, finding schools, and, most importantly, finding coaches. Most Urban Debate Leagues recruit and train urban educators as coaches, though many also use university debaters or former debaters within the community to serve as assistant coaches. While all UDLs attempt to recruit volunteer support (tournament judges, tournament "tab room" coordinators, lecturers at debate workshops for students, etc.), certain core costs of a UDL must be funded in order for the program to be sustainable: coach stipends, debate materials, transportation to tournaments. UDLs have demonstrated a very high level of cost-effectiveness -- averaging less than $650 per student for a year's involvement in a program that researchers and media observers have widely recognized as unusually intensive in its academic focus, relative to other after-school programs.

Local debate programs have spawned other methods to integrate debate into their communities. Urban debate has expanded to include debate across the curriculum (a classroom learning tool), public debates (partnering with community-based organizations), debates in prisons, and middle school competitions. Urban debate is now about even more than starting high school policy debate leagues.

[edit] External links

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