What to Expect Coaching Policy Debate
Policy Debate is a two-on-two event that focuses on a policy question for the duration of the academic year. This format tests a student’s research, analytical, and delivery skills. Policy Debate involves the proposal of a plan by the affirmative team to enact a policy, while the negative team offers reasons to reject that proposal. Throughout the debate, students have the opportunity to cross-examine one another. A judge or panel of judges determines the winner based on the arguments presented. Tim Ellis describes what it is like to coach the event.
What makes coaching Policy Debate unique?
Policy Debate is a distinct event for a variety of reasons, but most notably because of the depth of learning that the event provides. In Policy Debate, students debate the same topic for the entirety of the season, providing the opportunity for in-depth exploration of a topic and the analyses of the prompt from a variety of different angles. While this might seem like it has the potential to generate stale discussions, it’s the opposite. Topics are carefully constructed to provide a nearly limitless number of angles to approach the core controversy of the assigned topic. The open-ended nature of the assigned resolution is designed to encourage research-driven practices that are critical to developing lifelong skills that will help students both inside and outside of competitions. The broad design of the topic, coupled with a rotation of international and domestic topics from year to year, virtually guarantees that despite the depth of learning on an individual issue, students will also learn about a broad array of adjacent topics along the way.
In addition to the topic itself, the design of the debate round is specifically tailored to increase scrutiny and depth of argumentation. While other debate events offer the opportunity for refutation, the length of speeches (eight minutes and five minutes) in Policy Debate lends itself to exploration of arguments that is impossible in other events. Students often go through several iterations of back and forth in a single debate, allowing for more complex thinking and more focus on quality research and logic in argumentation, rather than pure skill in presentation. Coupling these two benefits makes Policy Debate truly special because it allows students the opportunity to explore a variety of proposals, critically consider their pros and cons, and then conduct additional research to fine tune and improve their original proposals.
How does competing in Policy Debate benefit your students?
In a world of increasing misinformation and disinformation, Policy Debate offers a unique opportunity for students to critically evaluate the trustworthiness of research provided during a round. The format of competitive Policy Debate means that students have the time to scrutinize evidence, point out flaws in credentials or reasoning, and perform their own research to disprove the quality and validity of an opponent’s claim.
Left to right: Zach Willingham, Jiyoon Park, and Tim Ellis
Tim Ellis is a two-diamond coach at Washburn Rural High School in Topeka, Kansas. He coached teams to the 2019 and 2022 NSDA National Tournaments in Policy Debate, including the top two teams in 2019. He has coached over 20 teams to elimination rounds in Policy Debate at the NSDA National Tournament and has also coached elimination round participants at the Tournament of Champions (TOC) and National Debate Coaches Association (NDCA) National Championships, including the 2022 NDCA champions. Since 2017, he has coached 10 state champion Policy Debate teams and individual state champions in eight different forensic events. He also works as an instructor at the University of Michigan debate camp where he teaches rising juniors the intricacies of Policy Debate.
[S]tudents develop listening, researching, and critical thinking skills that will translate far beyond the debate round and help improve student outcomes even after they leave speech and debate.
Students are expected to make the full text of their evidence available to opponents, and the expectation from judges is that evidence will be discussed thoroughly and compared in terms of its timeliness, expertise, and bias. This particular benefit is of increased importance in a world of artificial intelligence, which has the ability to so thoroughly disrupt every aspect of our society. The in-depth nature of the research and refutation in Policy Debate makes it much more difficult for artificial intelligence to displace the thoughts of debaters in rounds.
In addition to the benefits of critical research, Policy Debate also offers the opportunity to evaluate both sides of an issue and hone their arguments based on feedback from opponents and judges. Policy Debate requires students to switch sides and challenge dogmatic beliefs. Adults and students alike are increasingly able to tailor their news and information to create an echo chamber that supports their beliefs, but Policy Debate offers the opportunity to challenge that line of thinking. By requiring students to discuss both sides of an issue, the debaters have to challenge any of their pre-existing assumptions and consider a variety of alternatives to their prior knowledge and opinions. Students become more open-minded and accepting of others’ opinions.
What do you most appreciate about coaching Policy Debate?
What I appreciate the most about Policy Debate is the holistic growth of the students involved. While other events might target specific skills, like speaking fluidity or command over facial expressions, Policy Debate is designed to train the students as critical thinkers.
Affirmative teams must research their proposal and be prepared to answer negative arguments from nearly every angle. Affirmative teams must be forward thinking, predict the arguments that the negative might make, and then be prepared to respond to arguments before they are even proposed by the negative. This means that affirmative strategy is often focused on high-quality research and taking advantage of advanced preparation to make them competitive against the negative advantages (back-to-back speeches) within the debate round itself.
Negative teams are tasked with responding to the individual affirmative proposal, not the broader resolution itself. As a result, students in the round must be reactive to the actions of the affirmative. This design means that students must listen critically to the arguments proposed by their opponent and then quickly think and problem solve to derive a strategy that responds to their specific proposal.
Since teams are required to debate on both the affirmative and negative, all students develop listening, researching, and critical thinking skills that will translate far beyond the debate round and help improve student outcomes even after they leave speech and debate.
What should a new coach know about coaching Policy Debate?
There is really no way around it: Policy Debate is hard. But in its difficulty lies its beauty. The design of the activity is to challenge students to think more deeply, research more thoroughly, and engage more meaningfully than any other activity that high school has to offer. As a coach, the challenge is rising to the expectations needed for success and encouraging students to rise with you. While students may initially balk at some of the expectations of competitive success in Policy Debate, the joy in coaching it is the process and what students learn along the way.
Policy Debate is also a welcoming community that loves to share its resources and expertise in order to help improve the experience of everyone involved. Dozens of resources are made available by the National Speech & Debate Association (and other organizations) to help new coaches find their way. Evidence produced from summer camps is posted online (for free!) for students and teachers to use. Lesson plans and activities are routinely shared online to help those who are entering the activity. Ultimately, the Policy Debate community wants more students and educators involved in this life-altering activity.