ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 25, 1996 TAG: 9612260048
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: HOLIDAY
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
THE EDUCATION BOSS says federal bilingual education funds cannot be used to support black English in schools.
Treating black students who say ``He bin'' instead of ``He has been'' like foreign language students is no way to raise academic standards in American classrooms, says Education Secretary Richard Riley.
Responding to the Oakland, Calif., School Board's recent decision to recognize black English as a second language, Riley on Tuesday reiterated the Clinton administration's policy: Ebonics is a nonstandard form of English and not a foreign language.
Riley said the administration has determined that federal bilingual education funds cannot be used to support black English in schools.
This month, the Oakland School Board voted to recognize black English as a legitimate language. It also voted to create a program to train teachers to understand it so they can teach students standard English.
District educators say standard English is a second language for some black students who make up 53 percent of its enrollment. They say recognizing black English is a way to reach out to students who feel their spoken language is being ignored.
Riley disagrees.
``Elevating black English to the status of a language is not the way to raise standards of achievement in our schools and for our students,'' he said in a statement.
On Sunday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson urged the School Board in Oakland to reverse its decision because he felt it underestimated the learning potential of young blacks. He said the district, believed to be the first in the nation to recognize Ebonics, had become a ``laughingstock of the nation.''
He said he sympathized with education officials' efforts to reach out to children. But Jackson, head of the Rainbow/PUSH Action Network, said it amounted to ``unacceptable surrender, borderlining on disgrace.''
Controversy over the board's decision prompted Oakland school administrators to release a statement Saturday to emphasize that the district was not teaching Ebonics. The administrators said it was providing teachers and parents with the tools to address students' diverse languages.
According to the American Speech, Language and Hearing Association, black English simplifies consonants at the end of words. The word ``hand,'' for example, is pronounced ``han'' and ``walking'' is ``walkin.'' The final ``th'' at the end of a word often is pronounced as an ``f'' and the word ``with'' becomes ``wif.''
Those who speak black English also tend not to conjugate the verb to be, as in ``She be here.'' They drop the final ``d'' after vowels, turning ``good'' into ``goo.'' And they use double and triple negatives, turning the sentence ``He doesn't have any money'' into ``He ain't got no money.''
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB