Announcing the 2010/11 Allstate CDL Coaching Incentives

Allstate has committed to helping the CDL incentivize and reward the additional effort and professional effectiveness required to expand student participation in competitive academic debate, and to become one of the city’s leading debate programs. Therefore it is offering the following Allstate CDL Coaching Incentives.

(i)
CDL schools will receive a $100 Allstate Coaching Incentive at the mid-way point in the season, after Tournament Three, for every additional six tournament debaters over their 2009/10 at the mid-way point in last season. We chose the number six because this is the equivalent of sending one more team to each of the first three tournaments. These incentives will be mailed out to coaches on December 6th.

So let’s take a hypothetical example. Chicago Ag had 29 tournament debaters after T3 last year, and let’s say that they have 44 tournament debaters after T3 this year. This is an increase of 15 tournament debaters. Chicago Ag would receive an Allstate Coaching Incentive of $250. As this example illustrates, we will round off to the nearest $50 interval, once a school reaches the threshold of 6 more debaters after T3 than they had last year after T3. The attached tracking form shows each school’s total number of tournament debaters for last season (after T3 and after T6), and its total number of tournament debaters so far this season. Note that attending National Circuit Program tournaments or additional CDL tournaments –e.g., the Performance Trust Public Debates, the McDermott Will and Emery JV Invitational, etc. – counts toward a school’s total number of tournament debaters. In other words, any formal debate tournament that your school attends, not only the 6 required CDL tournaments, are included in your total number of tournament debaters.

For first-year schools, we are plugging in the number 12 tournament debaters after T3 (24 debaters after T6) as the mark to expand beyond to earn an incentive. The logic here is that 4 debaters per tournament is the CDL Participation Standard for first-year schools. We will likely be announcing a similar incentive for the full season –i.e., an incentive for every 12 tournament debaters that schools have by the end of the year above their 2009/10 total tournament debaters.

(ii)

CDL schools will receive a $350 Allstate Coaching Incentive if they are in the Top Ten in tournament participation at the end of the season. CDL schools will receive a $150 Allstate Coaching Incentive if they are 11th – 25th place in tournament participation at the end of the season.

These rankings can be found in the CDL Tournament Reporting Notebook. They include all schools, unlike the Allstate “Expanding Opportunities” Incentives, which are limited to schools with 85% or higher Title I student populations.

These incentives will be disbursed at the 2011 Chicago Debate Championship, Saturday, March 26th.

(iii)

Coaches will be asked to inform us who the incentive checks should be made out to. We expect that these checks will be written to coaches – it is coach performance that is being incentivized and rewarded here. But coaches can designate another debate-related use for the incentive money. Here are a few possibilities:

Bus transportation
T-Shirts or polo shirts with debate team logo or motto
Summer debate institute scholarship/subsidy
Team banquet/party