Bay Area Urban Debate Leauge

WHO WE ARE

Bringing Debate Education to Under-Resourced Schools in the Bay Area

Bay Area Urban Debate League (BAUDL) is a nonprofit organization that works with Bay Area public school districts to make competitive policy debate available to every public middle and high school student.

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.

Your Support Means Everything!

Every dollar counts to help fund our programs and change students' lives for the better. From buying pizza for after-school debate sessions, to covering the cost of evidence packets, to travel to tournaments and participation fees, our donors are how we make this opportunity open to all students in the Bay Area.

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HEAR FROM BAUDL STUDENTS ABOUT THE IMPACT DEBATE IS HAVING ON THEIR LIVES

Why Debate Education is Critical

Debate helps students become experts in critical reading, writing, and argumentation.

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 Urban Debate League showed that students with a year of debate under their belt improved over 60% more than non-debaters on a reading test. In a study across six Urban Debate Leagues, young people improved their GPA by 8-10% per year on average.

Building a Pathway to College

The students served by UDLs all have a significantly higher chance of going to college by virtue of participating in debate.

The program offers explicit connections to universities. Each team has a college student mentor that works with the coach to guide students. Tournaments and trainings often take place on college campuses, with college professors and students as judges. And, most importantly, all students participate in intensive college access programs.

Across all UDLs, 90% of students in debate graduate high school and 75% go on to attend a 4-year college or university. Many of these never imagined going to college before they began debating.

Since 2020, BAUDL students had a 100% graduation rate.

Creating a Powerful Network

Bay Area Urban Debate League students forge social ties that last throughout their lives, starting with the debate team at their school. This team builds school pride and group unity through competition with other high schools.

Adding to that is the league in which students compete. They become friends with a diverse group of minds.

But what is most unique about debate is the strong national community that young people join as they start traveling to tournaments. The national debate circuit puts students in contact with a diverse network of peers. Students maintain—and benefit from—the friends and contacts they make in debate, making connections across divides of race, culture, and class that gear them for a lifetime of accomplishment.

Grasping Political Advocacy

Debate prepares young people for passionate, informed political participation. Students in Bay Area public schools have plenty of political opinions, but the problem lies in connecting these opinions to hard evidence and rigorous proposals for change.

Urban debate leagues solve this problem by creating a competitive game in which students succeed by crafting and advocating informed policy positions. To win a round of debate, young people have to convince a judge that their plan is better-researched and more effective than any alternative offered by their opponents.

Urban debate leagues have repeatedly brought students in front of school boards, city councils, and state and national representatives to test their powers of argumentation on the problems of actual policymaking.