BAY AREA URBAN DEBATE COMMISSION

The Bay Area Urban Debate League (BAUDL) makes competitive debate education available to Bay Area public schools so that all students have the opportunity to reach their full potential as engaged learners, critical thinkers, and capable civic advocates. BAUDL believes that debate increases student academic performance, enriches and expands their college and career opportunities, and provides the intellectual and networking tools for youth to thrive as active, responsible leaders in their communities. WHY DEBATE? ?Debate helps students become experts in critical reading, writing, and argumentation. The academic impact of Urban Debate Leagues is well documented, but deserves a few more words: these leagues create communities in which intellectual skills earn social esteem – in other terms, they make smart cool. In a debate, a deep understanding of text and argument makes the difference between victory and defeat. Critical reading, thoughtful speaking, and original research are skills that debaters spend countless hours of their own time mastering. In practices, tournaments, and late-night study sessions, students teach their peers about political arguments by decoding, interpreting, summarizing, and responding to difficult texts. A study of the Minnesota league showed that students with a year of debate under their belt improved over 60% more than non-debaters on a reading test; young people in a study cutting across six UDLs improved their GPA by 8-10% per year on average.