The Real Need Is Good Education

The last thing the Los Angeles Unified School District needs is a divisive controversy over “Ebonics” that pits one segment of the district against another.

The Oakland school board’s designation of Ebonics as a separate, “genetically based” language made it the laughingstock of the nation and obscured its intended goal of improving academic achievement. The furor overshadowed what could have been a valuable debate over how to help failing students make the grade.

Los Angeles school board member Barbara Boudreaux acknowledges, as now does the Oakland school board, that black English is in no way genetic. But she does plan to introduce a motion on Monday that would expand the district’s special efforts to help children master standard English, including a special program now operating at 31 predominantly black campuses in central L.A.

There is a waiting list of schools wishing to participate, but can Boudreaux make the case that the program is needed broadly throughout the district? There are only 92,000 black students in an enrollment of 667,000 in the LAUSD. How many need this special help? Boudreaux knows full well, as we hope most people do, that most black children speak standard English, and without special help.

Poor, racially isolated black children are more likely to use the speech patterns commonly known as black English. The program Boudreaux wants to expand should not be widened until there is more information on its effectiveness. UCLA is developing an evaluation process.

The current program costs $3 million. How much more would an expansion cost? How much of the push for more targeted school dollars--a push coming especially from Latinos, blacks and San Fernando Valley groups--is fueled less by education concerns than by “let’s-make-sure-we-get-ours” group competition?

Many black parents are justifiably worried about whether public schools are teaching their children well. Many white, Latino and Asian American parents worry about the same thing. That is the fundamental issue, and the Los Angeles school board must not lose sight of that simple and commonly held concern.