Since it was changed from half-points to tenth-points (a process that began in the 2010-2011 season before becoming standardized in 2011-2012), the speaker point scale in high school policy debate has dramatically evolved. It is helpful to systematically review point distributions to ensure that students, coaches, and especially judges are aware of the actually-existing scale. To figure out what speaker points mean in today’s scale, I analyzed points from several major national tournaments held during the 2015-2016 school year: Greenhill, St. Mark’s, Michigan, Glenbrooks, Blake, MBA, and Emory. I confirmed that the results of this survey accurately reflected the speaker point scale at the recently-concluded NDCA National Championships. Below the fold, I will provide a summary of the results as well as a descriptive speaker point scale that judges might consider using to align their points with the evolving norms.
Category Archives: Results
Damien Becomes First School To Win Two NDCA National Championships
The National Debate Coaches Association National Championships has quickly grown to become one of the most prestigious high school debate tournaments in the United States. Since relaunching in 2006, the NDCA National Championships have brought together the vast majority of the nation’s best policy debate teams for an intense postseason tournament. This year’s champion was Nadeem Farooqi and Pablo Gannon from Damien High School in La Verne, California. The win marks Damien’s second in the past three years and gives them the honor of being the first team ever to win the NDCA National Championships twice.
The results from each of the six NDCA National Championships tournaments are presented along with some statistics below the fold.
Speaker Point Inflation: Real or Imagined?
One common request over the past few months has been for an assessment of the effects of the new .1 scale on speaker points in high school debate. With most if not all tournaments now utilizing this system (or its 100-point variant), it is now possible to look back and analyze how the new scale has impacted speaker point assignment. Four major national circuit tournaments—two in the first semester and two in the second semester—were included in this study: Greenhill, Glenbrooks, MBA, and Emory. How has the .1 scale effected speaker points at these tournaments? The answer (in graphical form) is below the fold.
Fun With Numbers: More Statistical Breakdowns of This Year's Season
The final qualifying tournaments for the 2011 Tournament of Champions were held this past weekend. With the postseason now beginning, we can look back at the regular season and assess the performances of some of the country’s best teams. Who earned the most bids to the TOC? Who earned the best bids to the TOC? Who won the most preliminary rounds at octafinals-level qualifying tournaments? Who had the best winning percentage on the affirmative and negative? The answers are below the fold.
BFHS Rap Up
You can find the results packet, bracket, and all 21 ballots from the final round here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Baker Award Standings Updated
The unofficial National Debate Coaches Association David P. Baker Award for Season Long Excellence standings have been updated and are available below the fold. This update includes partial results from the Georgetown Day School tournament, full results from the Lexington tournament, and a few corrections from last week’s version. I will release another update along with the full spreadsheet after the Barkley Forum.
New Additions To The 3NR Results Archive
A large number of results packets have been added to The 3NR Results Archive over the past few days. We have about 50 packets in the queue to process and post and will continue adding them to the archive as they are finished. A big thank you to Tim Alderete for his contribution to this project: almost all of what is currently available from the 1990s is courtesy of Tim’s personal archive.
Many gems can be found in these results.
The Top Speakers of the 2010-2011 Season
Using the model developed for last year’s post, Daniel Taylor of the Westminster Schools calculated the top speakers so far in the 2010-2011 season. Data was compiled for octafinals bid tournaments and the numbers were crunched for every speaker that appeared in the top ten speaker list at least once. The current standings are available below the fold.
2010-2011 Tournament Statistics
I have created a publicly-available spreadsheet (accessible via Google Docs) that compiles entry statistics from all of the policy debate tournaments held so far this season that are qualifiers for the Tournament of Champions. The spreadsheet includes the number of entries at each tournament as well as the number of states that were represented (including a list for double check purposes), the TOC bid level of the tournament, and the strength of the tournament in the NDCA Baker Award formula (DTM+: the number of entries multiplied by the Diversity of Tournament Multiplier).
The list of tournaments that have been included is below the fold. With only a few exceptions, the results for these tournaments are available in The 3NR’s results archive at results.the3NR.com.
The 3NR Announces New High School Policy Debate Results Archive
To help preserve debate’s institutional memory, The 3NR has begun curating an archive of results from (mostly “national circuit”) high school policy debate tournaments. While we are still in the process of organizing and uploading all of the results that we have compiled over the years (including an extensive collection from Tim Alderete), we wanted to let our readers know about this new resource now. Our goal is to provide as many results packets and elimination round results as possible from previous seasons. With due credit to Phil Kerpen’s old High School Debate Archive site, the archive is extremely bare-bones and simple to navigate. If you have results packets to contribute, please email Bill Batterman.