ABSTRACT
The central thesis of this chapter is that debate shares common goals, processes, skills, and student outcomes with educational theories, pedagogical practices, and intervention strategies that educators are now using as alternatives to the zero-tolerance and exclusionary discipline policies that fuel the school-to-prison pipeline. It provides an overview of the school-to-prison pipeline phenomenon, what it is, whom it impacts, and how it fails both students and schools. The chapter examines the alternatives that educators are using to enhance student outcomes and conditions for learning within schools, and it posits that debate provides a structured pedagogical practice and sound strategy for engaging students, enhancing conditions for learning within schools, and disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline. Zero-tolerance policies are generally understood to be those school-or district-wide policies that mandate predetermined consequences for student misbehavior, regardless of the gravity of the behavior, mitigating circumstances, or the situational context.
