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Leagues Revive Debate in City Schools

Judge Shorge Sato, left, listens to John Holland of Atlanta’s Grady High School.

—John Zich for Education Week

Activity Long Sired Careers In Law, Business, Public Life

Chicago

High school senior Cydney Edwards unclips a timer from the edge of her laptop screen and hovers briefly over the lectern that holds it. Up the aisle from her, here in the Abraham Lincoln moot court of Northwestern University's school of law, five judges hunch over their computers, gazing impassively in her direction.

And then she's off—with just eight minutes to set up the case that the U.S. government should substantially increase its public-health assistance to sub-Saharan African nations by lifting the rule that declares foreign aid off-limits to organizations that might have abortion-related activities.

Beating the air with her hands, gulping for breath between auctioneer-like runs of words intelligible mostly to the initiated, Cydney is practicing the arcane business of "policy" debate. She and her partner from Morgan Park High School on Chicago's South Side will face off against their two competitors from Atlanta's Grady High School six times across 90 minutes before this...