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--- Wednesday --- January 8, 1997 --- Vol. 7 --- No. 1 ---
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THE NATIONAL UPDATE ON AMERICA'S EDUCATION REFORM EFFORTS
A service of the National Education Goals Panel
MUMBO JUMBO __________ __________
For a humorous analysis of | SPOTLIGHT |
the Oakland Ebonics policy, | |
read "Ebonics According to | SHEDDING SOME LIGHT, |
Buckwheat," written by Jack | ALONG WITH THE HEAT |
White in TIME Magazine (1/13). | |
White "consulted" two experts | Controversy rekindled by |
in Black English by putting in | the Oakland school board's |
a call to Kingfish and | decision to designate black |
Buckwheat, of "Our Gang" fame. | English as a formal |
From Buckwheat, according to | language and to require |
White: "Farina, Stymie and I | teachers to understand its |
only spoke that way in the | language patterns, may |
movies because white people | "shed light as well as |
wrote the scripts. Our parents | heat," predicts Jonathan |
and teachers would never let us | Schorr, a reporter for THE |
get away with speaking anything | OAKLAND TRIBUNE. (#3) |
but proper English when we | |
weren't working. | The board's goal is to |
"The Kingfish usually speaks | help poor, black students |
properly too, but he's hoping | attain prowess in standard |
that since Black English is | English -- a goal shared |
back in vogue, he can make a | with detractors of Ebonics, |
comeback." | who claim that elevating |
White concludes with a quip | Ebonics only serves to |
from Kingfish: "Dis 'ere fuss | further disadvantage low- |
reminds me of one of dose | income black students. |
[African words that enrich | |
English]. Mumbo jumbo." | But educators may need to |
| move beyond battles over |
FOUR MORE YEARS | linguistic classifications |
U.S. Ed Sec Richard Riley | of Ebonics if they want to |
plans to keep his post for | shed light on effective |
President Clinton's second | ways to help black children |
term. | speak standard English.(#1) |
|_____________________________|
============== QUOTE OF THE DAY ==============
"This is great theater but not great policy." --
Peter Sack, a Mass. principal, on Massachusetts Board of
Education Chairman John Silber's flip-flop over the GED. (#4)
_______________________________________________________________
| A service of the National Education Goals Panel |
| Published by the Education Policy Network |
| 1255 22nd Street NW; Wash, D.C.; 20037; 202/632-0952 |
| The DRC hereby authorizes further reproduction and |
| distribution with proper acknowledgement. |
| Publisher: Barbara A. Pape |
Staff Writer: Rosemary Polanco |
|_______________________________________________________________|
============== TABLE OF CONTENTS ==============
GOAL THREE: STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND CITIZENSHIP
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA: An old battle resumes. (#1)
EBONICS: Commentaries from the WASH POST & NEW REPUBLIC. (#2)
MORE EBONICS: More comments. (#3)
STATESIDE
SURPRISE: Silber bullet strikes again. (#4)
CITY HALL
CLEVELAND: News briefs. (#5)
FROM COURTHOUSE TO SCHOOLHOUSE
IN THE WAKE OF McLAUGHLIN: Boston schools change course. (#6)
===== GOAL THREE: STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND CITIZENSHIP =====
*1 OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA: AN OLD BATTLE RESUMES
Is teaching black students Ebonics a "bridge to standard
English" or a bridge to nowhere? The question once again is open
for debate and stirring controversy -- this time in Oakland,
Calif. The Oakland school board has become the first board in
the nation to recognize black English as a formal language,
rather than a dialect or slang (multi cites).
Late last month, board members unanimously adopted a policy
that called for the city's schools to adopt a systemwide Ebonics
program. The two-page resolution requests that teachers "promote
the 'richness' of Ebonics even as they instruct students in
standard English," writes the WASH POST (Sanchez, 1/6). Ebonics
is a term coined by linguist Robert Williams in his 1975 book
"Ebonics: the true language of Black folks." The word is formed
by combining ebony and phonics.
Board members lamented the dismal test scores earned by
black students in the district. "Whatever we are using now is
not working," said board member Toni Cook. "Because someone says
'I be' does not mean someone is intellectually deficient." The
plan calls for providing teacher and parent training in black
English, recognizing Ebonics as distinct from standard English
and assisting black students who speak Ebonics to master standard
English, explains the WASH POST (Davidson, Reuter, 12/31).
Willie Hamilton, an Oakland high school principal who was a
member of the commission that recommended the Ebonics program,
explained that the plan does not call for teachers to teach
Ebonics, but to have them "understand the language" spoken by a
vast majority of their students, writes the DETROIT FREE PRESS
(Lcoke, AP, 12/20).
Immediately after the vote, critics attacked the resolution
as harmful to black students. The Reverend Jesse Jackson called
the plan "an unacceptable surrender bordering on disgrace."
Jackson retreated from his initial charge after meeting with
Oakland school officials. "They're not trying to teach black
English as a standard language. They're looking for tools to
teach children standard English so they might be competitive," he
said, adding that he endorses any attempt to "make our children
proficient in standard American English.
American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker, in
his weekly N.Y. TIMES column, writes that "Ebonics is basically a
self-esteem strategy, a pat on the head for African-American
students. If black English is a real language, and not just a
dialect or slang, then students are not wrong when they use it in
class, just different. This is supposed to help kids feel better
about themselves, but it will make raising their proficiency in
mainstream English harder, not easier." (1/5)
And John McWhorter, a U of California at Berkeley professor,
also criticized the Oakland plan. "The idea of treating little
black kids as bilingual is an abomination, and I say that as a
black linguist. This is political correctness gone awry."
Supporters of Ebonics claim that the program will help black
children learn standard English. Oakland school board members
passed the Ebonics measure hoping that black students would see
that their language patterns are rooted in a distinct culture and
that they would be awarded special help to master standard
English (Sanchez, WASH POST, 12/20). They point to a pilot
program underway in Oakland in which about 100 teachers have
begun using classroom exercises that "focus on helping African
American students make the transition from black English to
standard English," writes the paper. School officials note that
students involved in the pilot program have increased language
scores significantly.
The POST points out that earlier this month the Linguistics
Society of America adopted a resolution that supported the school
board's intentions (Sanchez, 1/6). The linguists concurred that
using black English as a bridge to standard English could be an
effective strategy. "The whole point is to get children from the
language they have been using to standard American language,"
said Walt Wolfram, an English professor at North Carolina State U
and chairman of the society's linguistics in schools committee.
"It is not to keep them using the same language."
*2 EBONICS: COMMENTARIES FROM THE WASH POST & NEW REPUBLIC
The Oakland struggle with Ebonics is not the first time the
teaching of black English has emerged as a way to assist students
learn language skills. Both the WASH POST and the NEW REPUBLIC
present brief histories and commentaries on Ebonics in the
American classroom.
"As soon as someone opens his mouth, we make judgments,"
said Stanford U linguist Merritt Ruhlen to the POST. "It's
almost as visible as skin color." (Weiss, 1/6). "People used to
believe that African American English was illogical, poorly
constructed and inadequate for any cognitive or linguistic
growth," said John Rickford, a Stanford U professor who serves on
the Linguistic Society of America's governing board. "This is
the same view we're hearing now from some white people who are
upset that this should get any quarter in the schools. But while
it is certainly different from standard English, it is not
inferior," he added.
Rickford goes on to explain indicators of a language. "Is
it systematic, regular and complex insofar as it involves a
vocabulary or lexicon, a phonology or sound system, and a grammar
-- a set of rules." According to Rickford, black English meets
those requirements, writes the paper.
The POST also notes that some linguists classify black
English as a dialect. The paper details the four types of
dialects, as distinguished by Harold Fleming, a retired Boston U
linguist and founder of the Association for the Study of Language
in Prehistory. The four include: regional dialects -- such as
American Southern English; occupational dialects; ideolects,
which are personal dialects, noticed in William Buckley's
"hallmark English;" and social dialects, "of which black English
is representative," writes the paper.
Whether black English is deemed a language or a dialect, the
debate persists over how to help black students learn standard
English. Rickford said several studies have been conducted
suggesting that a "bridge system" can help students move from a
dialect to a standard language.
However, William Labov, a professor of linguistics at the U
of Pennsylvania who has examined black English, said there is
only limited evidence of the effectiveness of Ebonics. "Because
of all the emotional reactions to this, we just don't have very
much," he said. "It's such a politically loaded situation. But
it's something we really ought to confront. It would be wrong to
think any Ebonics program is going to have a tremendous effect on
all the problems these students have, but if something has any
chance of reversing even some of them, it's worth trying and
studying."
Jacob Heilbrunn writes in THE NEW REPUBLIC that the Oakland
Ebonics plan is "in no way novel," since it has been a component
of some California schools since 1989 (20 January 1997). In that
year, San Diego Superintendent of Schools Thomas Payzant approved
a pilot program of four schools that featured an Ebonics program.
The program eventually was expanded to include all San Diego
schools, writes Heilbrunn. Pomona Unified and the Los Angeles
school districts also feature Ebonics. Heilbrunn also points out
that Oakland already operates 26 schools that train teachers to
understand black English.
The 1991 book "Black Communications," by Evelyn Baker Dandy,
describes the methods used in the Calif. programs. Specifically,
they "include using 'call-response' techniques, in which the OnT
(time) method encourages students to praise the teacher for being
timely in his or her recitation by affirming "shonuff," "ooooo-
wee!"; and favors group "mumble reading" so as to avoid
embarrassing individual children about pronunciation," writes
Ebonics.
While Heilbrunn is skeptical of the benefits of Ebonics, he
concedes that the program is based on "decades of scholarship
conducted at America's most distinguished universities."
According to Heilbrunn, the "historical work that laid the
foundations for Ebonics began in the 1960s. . . . With the rise
of Black Power, a new generation of linguists who might be called
'creolists' set about overturning the received wisdom," which
holds that Africans acquired the English of other groups they
came into contact with. The 1960s scholars claimed that the
"pidgin English slaves had learned on the west African coast
evolved into its own language on Caribbean and American soil,"
writes Heilbrunn.
Specifically, this "'bridge language' had developed in
eighteenth-century coastal west Africa itself -- between
languages such as Ewe, Twi, Mende, Mandingo, Igbo, Nupe, Mossi
and Kanuri," reports Heilbrunn. The author also notes that one
of the initial attempts to "link 'Creole' scholarship with the
teaching of African American children came in a special June 1979
issue of the JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES." Temple U professor
Molefi Kete Asante was and continues to be the editor of the
journal, which was devoted to "Ebonics (Black English):
Implications for Education."
Also in 1979, a group of Ann Arbor, Mich., parents brought a
lawsuit against the school district in Martin Luther King Jr.
Elementary School Children v. Ann Arbor School District Board to
force the district to teach their children in Ebonics, writes
Heilbrunn. U.S. District Court Judge Charles Joiner ruled in
favor of the parents.
According to Heilbrunn, Ebonics received its major boost in
the 1980s when black parents and educators became aware of funds
available to new immigrants for bilingual language programs.
However, U.S. Ed Sec Richard Riley quickly ruled out federal
education funds to Oakland for Ebonics (Harris, WASH POST,
12/25). Riley: "Elevating 'black English' to the status of a
language is not the way to raise standards of achievement in our
school and for our students. The administration's policy is that
'Ebonics' is a nonstandard form of English and not a foreign
language."
Heilbrunn concludes that the "votaries of Ebonics" simply
are "enslav[ing] a new generation in the chains of ignorance."
*3 MORE EBONICS: MORE COMMENTS
Oakland's decision to elevate black English to a language
and require teachers to understand and respect the language
spoken by a vast majority of their students has become the hot
education topic covered by news media nationwide. Following are
some editorial comments regarding the Oakland policy.
BOSTON GLOBE: "Certainly the board's impulse seems
worthwhile: Make students care about school, and ultimately
about themselves by respecting the way they talk. . . . But
Oakland risks staging a nasty educational parody."
The editors advise Oakland to "take a serious approach: Run
classes that chronicle the cultural debt that Americans owe to
black English . . . And finally, point out to the young that
their conversations are laboratories for tomorrow's songs,
speeches, plays and ideas. But stress that whether it's
language, jazz or rocket science, the best innovators master the
basics."
"The Oakland school board is at a crossroads. It could make
bold educational strides or stumble through ill-conceived
policies. Either way, black English will thrive. It's Oakland's
students who are at risk."
CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER: "Black English ought to be seen as
a second or separate language, Oakland's school board president
says, because 'what we have been doing is not working.' By that
logic, the Baltimore Ravens ought to get points for fumbles and
interceptions. . . . Oakland's action is a foul confluence of
turf wars among interest groups, impotence among administrators
and the platitudes of the politically correct. It would doom
young people so adults can masquerade as competent."
HOUSTON CHRONICLE: "The Oakland board . . . [is] wrong to
want to elevate so-called black English to the level of a
distinct language. . . . But the Ebonics issue is otherwise a
tempest in a teapot. Oakland school board members say they never
intended to "teach Ebonics" to students or to use it in the
instruction fo other subjects as is done in bilingual education
programs. The raid-on-the-treasury threat was defused by
Education secretary Richard Riley. . . . And now some of the
harshest critics are softening. . . . Student performance in
English or any other subject can be improved by setting high
standards and holding students and teachers to them. That's the
path Oakland and every other school district should follow."
(1/7)
PATRICIA WILLIAMS, professor at Columbia Law School:
"Perhaps the real argument is not about whether ebonic is a
language or not. Rather, the tension is revealed in the
contradiction of black speech being simultaneously understood yet
not understood. Why is it so overwhelmingly, even colorfully
comprehensible in some contexts, particularly in sports and
entertainment, yet deemed so utterly incapable of effective
communication when it comes to finding a job as a construction
worker?" (N.Y. TIMES, 12/31).
JONATHAN SCHORR, reporter for THE OAKLAND TRIBUNE, and
former Pasadena, Calif., high school teacher: "The [Oakland]
board's proposal on 'ebonics' was part of a package of mostly
sensible measures intended to improve the performance of black
students . . But it clouded the issue by hastily adopting a
poorly drafted resolution, from which board members have begun to
retreat."
"Perhaps the ebonics debate will shed light as well as heat.
Perhaps it will remind us of the need to teach good languages
skills to all chidlren. And perhaps it will help us address the
social barriers that keep black children from learning the
language essential to their success." (N.Y. TIMES, 1/2)
===== STATESIDE =====
*4 SURPRISE: SILBER BULLET STRIKES AGAIN
Massachusetts Board of Education Chairman John Silber
astonished board members, the governor and others by reneging on
his plan for high school students to take the GED (Avenoso,
BOSTON GLOBE, 12/17). At a hearing last month before the Joint
Committee on Education, Silber said he will request that the
board forsake its recent decision to require the GED (Avenoso,
BOSTON GLOBE, 12/17). Silber said mandating the GED without
consequences attached is a "waste of time."
"Once the board voted to give it without consequences, they
reduced it to an impossibility," said Silber. "Why should
students bother to take it? ... I think I can read the tea leaves
sufficiently to now the test will never be given because the
students won't be there to take it."
Silber's first proposal to require the GED also came as a
surprise to board members, writes the paper. The board voted for
the proposal, but threatened to retract their votes after Silber
suggested students who failed the test be denied a high school
diploma and schools with high numbers of students not passing the
GED be taken over by the state. Gov. William Weld (R) and
lawmakers successfully persuaded several board members to support
a compromise that would "save face for Silber," writes the paper.
The compromise -- to give the test without consequences to
students or schools -- was passed by the board, according to the
GLOBE. Now, Silber wants to abandon the compromise.
"This is great theater but not great policy," complained
Peter Sack, principal of Swampscott High School. "If we ran our
schools the way the Board of Education is running its business,
the public would quickly become disenchanted." He added: "The
compromise was silly but board members were strong-armed to do it
to save face for Silber and Weld. Now because, the chair was not
getting his way, he wants to take his marbles and go home."
Weld, "caught off guard by news that Silber had decided to
break [the] recently negotiated deal" to require the GED,
responded that Silber is "making an omelette and you can't make
an omelette without cracking a few eggs and that's the kind of
guy he is."
==== CITY HALL ====
*5 CLEVELAND: NEWS BRIEFS
SCHOOL BOARD PRAYER -- U.S. District Judge David Dowd Jr.
ruled last month that the Cleveland School Board could open its
meetings with a prayer because the meetings are not "school
settings," like classes or graduation ceremonies (Rollenhagen,
Cleveland PLAIN DEALER, 12/18). The Cleveland case could set a
precedent if it is appealed because the U.S. Supreme Court has
never ruled on whether prayer is allowed at school board
meetings, reports the paper.
The suit was brought in 1992 by Gene Tracy, a middle school
math teacher, who said students often were required to attend
school board meetings. U.S. Magistrate Patricia Hemann concurred
that school board meetings "should fall under the same prayer
prohibitions the Supreme Court places on classroom or graduation
situations where a school could be viewed as promoting a religion
to children," writes the paper.
MAYORAL TAKEOVER: Cleveland citizens who packed a community
meeting at the Harvard Community Services Center last month
agreed on one thing: Mayor Michael White should not be given
control of the Cleveland schools, "at least not without a vote of
the people," writes the PLAIN DEALER (Stephens, 12/18).
The plan to give White control of the schools is the
"centerpiece" of a bill to be introduced next month by state
legislators, according to the paper.
UNDER STAFFED: The Cleveland Teachers Union complained at a
press conference last month that school officials have yet to
fill 150 to 200 vacant teaching positions. Joanne DeMarco, a
union leader, said the school district "Denied qualified teachers
employment while teachers without state certification to teach
high school subjects worked in the district for years." The
union is seeking compensation from the district for teachers who
were laid off or denied employment.
Rick Ellis, district director of communication, blamed the
fiscal crisis for forcing layoffs and keeping hiring to a
minimum, reports the paper.
GOVERNOR'S AGENDA: In an interview with the Cleveland PLAIN
DEALER, Ohio Gov George Voinovich (R) gave a preview of his
priorities that he will expound on in his 14 January State of the
State address (Hallett, 12/19). Continued emphasis on education,
particularly programs that affect urban schools and disadvantaged
children, top the governor's agenda.
Head Start and other early childhood intervention programs
would continue to receive "generous" funding, under Voinovich's
budget. According to the paper, funding for Head Start is the
highest in the nation. Voinovich holds that his strategy of
advancing programs for the young would "pay dividends in higher
graduation rates and fewer prison sentences," writes the paper.
"What's the alternative?" asked Voinovich. "Once I leave here,
if the legislature will continue to commit to the things we're
doing ... we will not see this explosion of crime that everyone's
predicting." Voinovich plans to run for the U.S. Senate.
The governor also said he plans to target more funds to low-
wealth school districts, including funds for building
improvement, reports the paper. He added that he expects the
Legislature to "copy a Cleveland experiment" by passing
legislation that allows big-city mayors to take over local
schools when "certain conditions" exist," writes the paper.
===== FROM COURTHOUSE TO SCHOOLHOUSE =====
*6 IN THE WAKE OF McLAUGHLIN: BOSTON SCHOOLS CHANGE COURSE
Julia McLaughlin, a white student, has single-handedly
changed the course of the Boston Public Schools admission policy
for exam schools. McLaughlin, who was denied admission to the
prestigious Boston Latin School although her scores on the
school's entrance exam were higher than those of minorities
granted admission, filed a lawsuit and eventually was admitted to
the school.
Late last month, Boston School Superintendent Thomas Payzant
recommended to the school committee that 300 students who last
year were denied entrance to Boston's exam schools because of
racial quota policies be able to transfer into the school
(Avenoso, BOSTON GLOBE, 12/20). School officials added that new
applicants would not be affected, writes the paper.
The paper notes that the McLaughlin lawsuit was not a class-
action suit (Avenoso, BOSTON GLOBE, 12/19). Consequently U.S.
District Judge Arthur Garrity ruled that the school department
"was not required to admit other students who also would have
been accepted into the exam schools if admissions were based on
merit alone," reports the paper. However, parents of other white
students denied admission based on race began threatening
lawsuits after the McLaughlin decision, which prompted action on
the part of school officials.
The school committee approved a new admission policy that
calls for admitting half of exam school students based on a
combination of entrance exam scores and grade point average, with
the rest admitted based on the percentage their racial group
makes up in the remaining applicant pool, writes the paper.
"This ensures diversity and at the same time emphasizes that
student excellence is an essential part of what the exam schools
provide," said School Committee President Robert Gittens.
However, parents of white, Asian and minority students are
unhappy with the new admission plan. "Boston Latin School is not
a private school to be reserved for the privileged and those
fortunate enough to have the necessary resources to prepare
themselves," said Nora Toney, president of the Black Educators
Alliance of Massachusetts.
Susan Hughes, a parent whose daughter now is eligible to
enter Boston Latin, said she objects "to any admissions policy
which gives preference to any group of students based on race,
household income levels, or whether they come from a private,
parochial, or public school."
The GLOBE reports that several plans designed to better
prepare minority students for the exam school entrance exam are
part of the new admission policy, including the development of
advanced classes and accelerated elementary and middle school
programs and the expansion of summer-school programs designed to
prepare sixth-grade students for the entrance exams.
The school committee is expected to vote on Payzant's
proposal to admit the 300 students denied enrollment in one of
the exam schools at their meeting next month.
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