At Middle School 50 in Brooklyn, New York, principal Benjamin Honoroff and his students have experienced a dramatic transformation that has turned the school around in a decade, according to a report on CBS Evening News.
“We were on a list of persistently dangerous schools, and there’d been some pretty drastic enrollment decline from over a thousand students to 160 students,” Honoroff says.
The former high school debate coach had an idea: integrate debate into every class, across all grade levels. He also expanded the debate team, and a third of the students enrolled with a select group traveling to tournaments.
Debate is infused into every subject, including math. “For example, a ratio problem — are they going to use a ratio table, are they going to use a double number line? And what we find is when students explain their mathematical reasoning, it really deepens their conceptual understanding,” Honoroff says.
His debate-in-every-class idea has paid off. Within a few years, test scores started to rise, enrollment increased and the debate team started to win. Proficiency scores, which had been in the single digits, jumped up to 60% in English and 70% in math, Honoroff says.
Erick Williams and his debate partner, Anedwin Moran, first found success at the local state level. “I felt like it kind of gave us an edge when we went to tournaments because we were kind of already used to it,” Williams says.
This past June, as eighth graders competing at the largest middle school debate tournament in the country, they won the national championship in policy debate.
“When I realized what we had accomplished, it took me back to when we were in sixth grade, I wasn’t even a registered debater. It felt like a journey worth taking,” Williams says.
The journey started with a principal who believed in the power of debate.
“There’s a deep, deep pride in this school as a community hub. It’s inspiring every day to walk down the block and have people say, ‘I went to that school and, you know, keep it going, keep it going’,” Honoroff says.
CBS Evening News
