January 8, 2026 (educationnext.org) – Standardized testing plays an important role in American education. National and state tests make it possible to compare academic achievement across schools, identify gaps, and track progress over time. However, many of the skills that families and employers say they want students to have, especially soft skills, decision-making, and intellectual curiosity and grit, are hard to capture in a short, fixed-response format.
One practical way to teach and assess those skills is structured debate. Debate guides students to make a claim, support it with evidence, and engage seriously with counterarguments, while also providing an entertainment catalyst to drive engagement.
Because debate takes a lot of work to execute, applying it at scale is difficult. Organizations like the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues help expand opportunities, but many students are not exposed to debate or opt not to participate in it as an extracurricular program. Enter Artificial intelligence. AI has the potential to facilitate debate-centered instruction, mitigate the high costs of participation, and improve students’ learning experiences during the school day. Testing remains essential to learning and assessment, but AI could become a complementary tool for cultivating reasoning and communication skills in the classroom.