CDL Tournament Reporting Notebook, Updated Post-T4

The CDL Tournament Reporting Notebook [a reminder to download the documents, using the down-arrow button on the lower-right corner after you click on the document] has been updated following Tournament Four over last weekend.

Here are a few analytic comments relative to each of the three sheets.

(i) Participation Standard

You can see how you’re doing on the single most important metric in the Chicago Debate League: attainment of the Urban Debate League Participation Standard of 8 debaters per tournament (4 debaters per tournament for first-year schools). This standard is our best temperature gauge on the health of each of our approximately 75 debate programs throughout the city.

A great season on this metric is attainment at all 6 CDL tournaments, a good/very good season is attainment at 5 of 6 tournaments. And for district schools, the Coach Stipend Allocation System describes the close connection between coach stipend disbursement and attainment.

Overall, the CDL dipped from previous tournaments in its collective attainment of the UDL Participation Standard, to 68%, though the season-long attainment is still a very high 78%, much higher than last year’s season-long attainment of 63%.

The CDL administration’s plan is to contact schools that missed the standard at T4 to discuss and/or meet about the strategy to meet the standard at T5 and T6. (Note that T6 enforces the Participation Standard, as one of the 6 regular CDL tournaments. We’ll explain the specific details of the T6 Participation Standard in another post.)

(ii) Participation Numbers

Overall, T4 dipped from T3, as it has in past years, though it was still 13% larger in student’s involved than T4 was last year. And the season-long expansion in the HS CDL is 14% relative to last season (19% higher than the Allstate Baseline from last year). Continued substantial increases in student involvement in competitive academic debate in a mature and already large program such as ours.

The current Top 15 Schools in Tournament Participation after T4 are:

(iii) Participation Changes

You can see what direction your debate program is going at this stage of the year, relative to last year’s level of student engagement in competitive academic debate at your school. If a school is attaining the UDL Participation Standard consistently or pretty consistently, changes in participation year over year that are +/-15% from 0% are “statistical noise,” likely not significant. The significance of this sheet is that it documents larger trends, up or down, for schools.

The Top 15 Schools in Participation Change after T4 are:

Plenty of season left, to maintain or improve your performance on all of the above. We’re here to help you do that.