The SY2015 Allstate Expanding Opportunities Incentives

Here in the 2014/15 school year, Allstate is once again a very generous corporate sponsor of the Chicago Debate League.

Facilitated by the work of the Chicago Debate Commission, Allstate is generously funding the Allstate Expanding Opportunities Initiative. This Allstate Initiative focuses resources on schools that work with very high percentages of lower-income students with the objective that they will undertake and sustain the extra effort necessary to include students who may need these skills the most into the competitive debate league. Allstate Expanding Opportunities Initiative incentives are provided to schools for increasing participation in competitive academic debate this year over last year — for expanding the opportunities of lower-income students by using what may be the most powerful academic tool in secondary schools: argumentation based on and in evidence drawn from complex texts. Allstate and the CDC are committed to allocating resources to educator-coaches working in the most challenging conditions and producing results.

The schools in the Expanding Opportunities category are schools with 80% or more Title I (from low-income families) students. The following 34 high schools (69% of the 49 total high schools in the CDL) are part of the Allstate Expanding Opportunities Incentive Program, shown here with their Title I student percentage:

Amundsen
Bogan
Clark
Ellison
Harlan
Harper
Hubbard
Hyde Park
Juarez
Julian
Kelly
Kelvyn Park
Kennedy
Marine
Marshall
Morgan Park
North Grand
North Lawndale
Perspectives Joslin
Perspectives Calumet
Phoenix
RTC Medical Prep
Schurz
Senn
Solorio
UNO Garcia
UNO Soccer
Urban Prep Bronzeville
Westinghouse
Williams
U. of Chicago Woodlawn
Zapata

At the end of each semester — that is, after T3 and then again after T6 — Allstate Expanding Opportunities Incentives will be disbursed to the top 20 Expanding Opportunities schools in Participation Changes (SY2015 over SY2015, adjusted — which means that first-year schools are posited a baseline of 4 debaters per tournament against which its performance this year is compared), in these amounts:

1st – 5th Place — $500
6th – 10th Place — $250
11th – 20th Place — $125

This is a total of $10,000 in Allstate Expanding Opportunities Incentives for the year.

Chicago’s-own Allstate corporation has made a tremendous investment in the Chicago Debate League, and in particular in incentivizing CDL coaches from our high-Title I schools to expand the opportunities for their students by working harder and investing more of their own time to increase the level of their student participation in competitive academic debate.