Give Your Students OWNERSHIP OF THEIR VOICE, BEFORE THE WORLD CLAIMS IT.
The National Speech & Debate Association is launching a school-based middle school league in Los Angeles, and the first season begins in January 2027. Students don't need any experience to compete, and teachers don't need any experience to coach.
What speech and debate does for students who compete
Sources: Snider & Lawrence (2011), Debate: Important for Everyone; Los Angeles Metropolitan Debate League Impact Report, 2024
What middle school students deserve
Middle school students deserve to be prepared for a world that will tell them not to speak up for themselves. That world hands them answers, rewards scrolling over speaking up, and makes disagreement look like something to avoid. Speech and debate is that preparation. In Los Angeles, most families looking for speech and debate will find a for-profit academy. When a school runs a team, all its students have access.
The antidote to AI
AI does not just find answers. It produces the reasoning too, finished and confident, and students who accept it never have to do the thinking themselves. A round gives them no way around it. They have to build the argument, know why the evidence supports it, and defend it against someone arguing the opposite.
Purposeful Reading
Every student in the league reads the same research packet all season. They read it knowing they will have to use that evidence out loud in a round, which is different from reading a chapter assigned for a quiz.
Discovery over scrolling
An algorithm decides what students see next, and it chooses more of what they already agree with. A debate season requires the opposite. Teams argue both sides of the resolution across rounds, so every student has to make the case they came in disagreeing with.
Disagreement without the escalation
Online, the fastest and most personal response gets the most attention. A debate round is scored on the opposite behavior. Students have to listen to the argument on the other side, answer it with evidence, and stay respectful.
I work at a school
Advising takes about an hour a week for practice, plus six meets of two to three hours each between January and March, and a championship to close the season. No debate background is required. If you are not the person who decides, this page has what you would need to bring to whoever is.
See what it takesI am a parent or a student
Families and students can bring the league to a school that does not have it yet. Founding Student Ambassadors set up a short meeting between someone at the school and league staff, and Mike makes the case from there.
Become an ambassadorI want to support this
Meets need volunteer judges. A new league also needs people who can introduce it to schools in their own neighborhoods, and sponsors who can back a school through its first season.
Find a role