Age range

Website: www.budl.org

Mission/Goals: The Baltimore Urban Debate League has focused on improving literacy skills, academic achievement, school attendance, graduation rates, and matriculation into higher education for underachieving students in Baltimore’s neighborhood high schools.

Note: Twelve middle school sites and four high school sites will be added over the course of the program year.

Type of Evaluation: Quasi-experimental (pretest, posttest evaluation)

Note: A formative and pretest, posttest outcomes monitoring evaluation of the Baltimore Urban Debate League using student surveys, coach surveys, school records, focus groups, and observations, was also conducted. Although the results were conducted early in the program's history and used a small sample size for the follow-up survey, in the few cases in which
significant differences were found, they were positive (higher internal locus of control, for instance). Though most cross-year differences were non-significant, the data showed general trends towards
improvements across the program year.

Objective: To assess the effectiveness of debate leagues for improving high school students' reading, self-esteem, and risk-taking behaviors.

Impact/Outcomes: The national evaluation found that the gains made across the school year in reading were significantly higher for debaters as compared to non-debaters. The gains in GPA across the school year were significantly higher for debaters compared to non-debaters.