Programming and Services

The NAUDL has begun a three-year Expansion Plan through which it will significantly increase participation in urban debate by building, strengthening, expanding, and connecting Urban Debate Leagues (UDLs) across the country.

Building Urban Debate Leagues
The NAUDL is working over a three year period to build seven new UDLs in cities whose districts serve nearly 330,000 urban public high school students:

• Dallas (launched in fall 2007)
• Denver
• Houston
• Los Angeles
• Memphis
• Oakland/Bay Area
• St. Louis
• Tampa

The NAUDL has honed an approach to building UDLs that reflects “best practices” in the Urban Debate Network over the past eleven years. This approach includes a four- or five-year building process, with discrete projects and benchmarks each year.

Year One - Founding (Sometimes Merged with Year Two)
Year Two - Forming
Year Three - Launching
Year Four - Establishing
Year Five - Transitioning (to Full Self-Sufficiency)

The NAUDL’s “best practices” approach builds UDLs that are locally sustainable, with highly rigorous and research-tested programming, structured around a public-private partnership between the urban public school system and a local non-profit organization dedicated specifically to this mission and made up of civic leadership from the legal, business, academic, and the non-profit sectors.

Strengthening Urban Debate Leagues
The NAUDL is working over a three year period to strengthen already existing but struggling UDLs in districts serving an additional 250,000 high school students, including:

• Boston
• Detroit
• Rhode Island

The NAUDL’s ultimate objective with Leagues that it strengthens is the same as its objective with Leagues that it builds: locally sustainable, highly educational urban debate programs. The NAUDL uses an advanced Screening Grid to make comparative assessments about where it will invest its resources to build or strengthen a UDL. The Leagues the NAUDL strengthens are struggling and are not likely to be sustainable within three years without NAUDL involvement.

The reason that these Leagues are struggling and need the NAUDL’s intensive support is that they lack one or more of the partners necessary for long-term UDL sustainability and success, according to the NAUDL’s “best practices” approach. The NAUDL’s approach to strengthening these Leagues is to build or restore school district investment, and to develop a UDL Advisory Board, so that the public-private partnership is balanced and strong.

The NAUDL’s approach to strengthening Leagues spans two years, and within which there are discrete projects and benchmarks.

Year One - Forming the Partnership
Year Two - Strengthening the Partnership

Expanding Urban Debate Leagues
The NAUDL is working over the next three years to expand the scope and quality of debating in all UDLs. The NAUDL provides a full slate of debate instructional and competitive materials that are designed to expand the capacity, both in reach and impact, of all UDLs. The NAUDL Argument and Research Kit provides all UDL schools with an expansive set of debate arguments on this year’s national high school debate topic, researched and assembled relative to a widely recognized set of educational criteria. The NAUDL also produces and distributes a full slate of instructional manuals for teachers and students in UDLs. These are designed to improve the quality of debate coaching and instruction. And the NAUDL is working on expanding the scope of urban debate programming across the country by investigating the development of professional Curricular Debate materials, which would enable academic debate principles to be applied to teaching methodology throughout the regular curriculum, and middle school debate league applications.

Connecting Urban Debate Leagues
The NAUDL is working over the next three years to connect existing UDLs in the following cities through networking programs and services, including administrator conferences and the Chase Urban Debate National Championship:

• Atlanta
• Austin
• Baltimore
• Chicago
• Kansas City
• Miami
• Milwaukee
• Minneapolis
• New York
• Newark
• Providence
• Seattle
• Orange County
• Washington, DC

Administrator conferences bring urban debate leaders and practitioners from around the country together to share ideas, strategies, and innovations in a professional environment that facilitates networking and relationship building so that standards, methods, and outcomes can all be improved. In addition, the NAUDL hosts the annual Chase Urban Debate National Championship, a unique event that brings together the best of urban debate from across the country. Top urban debaters convene at the Championship to compete, to demonstrate their achievements, and to disseminate their standard of excellence throughout the Urban Debate Network. Additionally, the Chase National Championship features administrator and educator conferencing and professional development to help top urban debate leaders and teachers share knowledge and work together in advancing the urban debate mission.

Help make all this possible.