Urban Debate Leagues (UDLs) provide students in over 20 cities around the US the opportunity to participate in competitive policy debate, an extracurricular activity that is hypothesized to improve academic engagement and performance through its emphasis on critical engagement with non-fiction texts. This talk will (1) review prior empirical research on debate and achievement; (2) describe an ongoing pilot study aimed at examining the relationship between debate performance and non-cognitive skills in the Chicago UDL, and (3) discuss a project that will go into the field this spring that is aimed at evaluating the impact of three UDLs (Boston, Chicago, and Houston) on academic achievement over a 5-year period using administrative records.