|
|
Dear Coach, At the National Speech & Debate Association, we strive to see and maintain relationships with members throughout all stages of a speech and debate career -- middle school student, high school student, alumnus, judge, and coach. Currently, however, how members interact with us online changes depending on what role they play, and, in the NSDA virtual membership system, they essentially become a new member to us with each new stage. This has created some confusion for members in the past and we are taking the necessary steps to streamline membership and maximize your online experience based on feedback we’ve received.
As such, we’ve created a unified database of members that allows a person to maintain a single account (or digital identity) for the full duration of their membership. For instance, a middle school competitor who goes on to compete in high school, judge or coach while in college, and/or become a program advisor after that will maintain the same merit number throughout their career. A person could maintain a single merit number and login for decades as they contribute to our community. This has the added benefit of allowing the NSDA to more accurately track and honor lifetime achievement and longevity awards.
In order to do that, we’ve had to make some fairly significant changes to the way our Honor Society functions. Please continue to read to find out what’s happening.
Overall changes:
- Starting in August 2019, the National Junior Forensic League will no longer be recognized as a separate honor society. At that time, all middle school coaches and students will automatically become a division of the National Forensic League (NFL) Honor Society.
- Members will maintain all their points in perpetuity, thus eliminating the need to convert their membership or transfer a fraction of points as their role evolves within the Association.
| |
Changes for students:
- The middle school points structure will change. Currently, middle school points are worth ⅔ of high school events. The new structure will value them at approximately ⅓ of high school events BUT they will maintain 100% of those points into high school, rather than transferring just 10% of those points. For a full breakdown, see the revised point structure at the bottom of this email.
- We hope that middle school participants will continue to explore speech and debate when they attend high school. If you are responsible for a high school program and add students with middle school points to your roster, they will transfer into your program with their points intact. As such, some may have already earned high school level degrees (Merit, Honor, Excellence, etc.). To facilitate the transition this year, the degrees earned to date will be based on a lump sum of half of all points earned by the student in the existing middle school point structure. In subsequent years, the students will earn the degrees as a matter of course and carry them all into high school. These degrees will count toward your school strength once you make the student a member of your high school program.
- Once you generate an invoice for the student, you will be issued a replicate membership certificate for the students with their degrees earned to date, in case the certificate does not make the transition to the high school with them.
| |
Changes for all coaches:
- Moving forward, coaches will earn all points earned by students, not 1/10 of the points. As such, all point values for coaching degrees have been inflated by 10 (for example: a first Diamond is now earned at 5 years and 15,000 points, rather than 1,500). Current points earned by coaches will also increase by the power of 10.
- Starting with the second Diamond, all Diamonds will be earned in 30,000 (previously 3,000) point increments.
| |
Changes for members who coach both middle and high school:
- Middle and high school points will now both contribute jointly to Diamond coaching awards (previously, they were on separate tracks). A year of service is based on actually years spent coaching at any level, but points will count from both levels within those years.
- Now that the honor societies are combined, middle school coaches have been given a lump sum of all middle school points earned up to this point in the existing structure. Middle school coaches will start earning points from their middle school students under the new structure at the new values in the 19-20 school year. To reiterate, all coaching points earned in the prior model will be maintained.
| |
Unified Degree Path Starting in 2019-2020, for all members
Coaches will earn all points earned by their students, not 1/10th. As such, the coaching level have been multiplied x 10 to ensure the same ratio.
| |
What’s not changing:
- The middle school stage of membership will remain $10, and the high school stage of membership will remain $20.
- Middle school and high school competition is still separate at the National Tournament, and only high school students participate in the district tournament series.
- We will continue to strive to provide equal and excellent support to all members of the National Speech & Debate Association.
- Though the thresholds for earning coaching degrees will inflate to match student points, the way high school students earn those degrees (their point structure) will not change.
| |
What’s Next:
- Moving forward, instead of creating new accounts for students when you believe they had a middle school membership, please ensure you use Transfer Student function on the School Roster.
- If you, as a coach, have more than one account with us, you will only have one login to go to for middle and high school membership from now on. Here are the instructions to merge your high school and middle school coaching logins so that you can manage all of your schools from a single NSDA account.
- Log in to the account you want to KEEP.
- Click "Merge Accounts" on the left.
- Follow the instructions to provide your username/password for the account you want to MERGE/ELIMINATE.
- Click the button.
| |
Parting Thoughts:
This change gives students credit for their middle school participation once they move onto high school. Although middle school should primarily be a time for learning and gaining comfort with speech and debate skills, making some progress toward points in the high school honorary is a nice reward for middle school efforts. Keeping the points at a fraction of high school points helps ensure that we recognize the higher level of rigor needed to compete at the high school level.
For many, the high school stage may be the end of their competitive speech and debate career, as official members of the NSDA, but for some, those who commit to share and to give back to our community, we now offer a seamless transition into stage three - the coaching stage of the membership cycle.
Questions can be directed to info@speechanddebate.org, otherwise you will receive another email when we’ve completed the transition. Thank you for reading!
| |
Revised Middle School Point Structure
- Current Middle School points formula:
- Debate - Win = 4 points, Loss/No Decision = 2 points
- Speech - Rank 1=5 points, Rank 2=4 points, Rank 3=3 points, Rank 4=2 points, Rank 5-=1 point
- Congress - 1-5 points up to 20/day max
- Service:
- Classroom Presentation - 1 point per presentation up to 2 per day
- Community Speaking - 2 points per speech up to 2 per day
- Theater - 3 points per performance
- Elementary Coaching - 2 points per hour
| |
- Future Middle School points formula:
- Debate - Win = 2 points, Loss/No Decision = 1 point
- Speech - Rank 1=3 points, Rank 2=2 points, Rank 3=1 point, Rank 4=1 point, Rank 5-=1point
- Congress - 1-5 points up to 10/day max
- Service:
- Classroom Presentation - 1 point per presentation up to 1 per day
- Community Speaking - 1 point per speech up to 1 per day
- Theater - 2 points per performance
- Elementary Coaching - 1 point per hour
| |
|
|
|
|
