Paradigms and Principles: Creating Judging Norms in LD
Judging LD is harder than it looks. On any given weekend there are a myriad of true judgment calls on issues for which there is little or no community consensus. My primary goal with this column is to solicit discussion so that we can start to form the basis for that consensus. I believe it is incumbent upon judges (present and future) to be thoughtful about our role in the activity and to attempt to improve our skills and sensibilities as best we can. I hope coaches, judges and students of all stripes will feel free to offer their perspectives.
This week I would like to discuss speaker points. There are a variety of questions we could take up in this topic area, but I will limit myself to one:
What goal should judges have in mind when assigning speaker points?
Three immediate approaches come to mind. The first we might call the “traditional” approach; speaker points should be assigned according to the debaters’ communication skills. Presumptively this is favored by judges who feel that teaching these skills is a fundamental goal of the activity and that incorporating communication directly into the “scoring” of the event is therefore appropriate.
A second approach is to use speaker points to rank the aggregated debate skills displayed by a particular competitor against the ideal performance. In other words, a debater who has a so-so AC, is time inefficient in the 1AR, and makes poor strategic choices in the 2AR is always a 26 (obviously I’m oversimplifying). The perfect debater is a 30, and the debater with virtually no debate skill at all is a 20 (or a maybe a zero). The points assigned do not presumptively shift depending on the tournament or the division. A performance deserving a 26 in the Junior Varsity division of the West Overshoe Invitational is the same as a performance deserving a 26 in Varsity at Greenhill. As debaters become more experienced and more skilled, they aspire to debate nearer and nearer a thirty.
A third approach is to use speaker points to rank debaters’ performances relative to the rest of the field in which they are competing. For example, if 27 represents an average performance in the field, it is much harder to get a 27 at Greenhill than at the West Overshoe Invitational. Speaker points are seen as a way to improve the accuracy of preliminary rounds as a mechanism to parse out who is the “best” debater (or the best 8, 16, or 32 debaters depending on the level to which the tournament breaks). They tell us who is debating well in the field on a given weekend, but not what his or her “objective” skill level is.
At present I indicate in my paradigm that I subscribe to the last approach. I offer the following rubric for the speaker point range:
30: Your performance in the round is likely to beat any debater in the field.
29: Your performance is substantially better than average likely to beat most debaters in the field and competitive with students in the top tier.
28: Your performance is above average likely to beat the majority of debaters in the field but unlikely to beat debaters in the top tier.
27: Your performance is approximately average you are likely to have an equal number of wins and losses at the end of the tournament.
26: Your performance is below average you are likely to beat the bottom 25% of competitors but unlikely to beat the average debater.
25: Your performance is substantially below average you are competitive among the bottom 25% but likely to lose to other competitors.
Below 25: I tend to reserve scores below 25 for penalizing debaters for rude or unethical conduct.
Which approach is the most appropriate? Is there a different approach I’ve failed to mention?
Similar Posts:
- Paradigms and Principles: Ballot Writing
- LD Debate Video: Mercer Island SA vs. Harvard-Westlake JS
- The Necessary but Insufficient Burdens of Self-Defense by Stephen Babb
- Teaching Weakness: The Indulgent Logic of Mutual Judge Preferences by Stephen Babb
- Registration for the College Prep School Invitational Now Open
