history, linguistic theory, california's clad, and the oakland public schools resolution on...

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History, linguistic theory, California's CLAD, and the OaklandPublic Schools resolution on Ebonics: what are the connections?

MICHAEL CROGHAN*

Abstract: In this paper, I will trace the historical, linguistic, and educational contexts for the resolutionpassed by the Oakland Public Schools (OPS) School Board on December 18, 1996. I will argue that theOPS resolution did not spring from some spontaneous urge, nor from a drive to acquire federal funds. Onthe contrary, the OPS resolution is: (a) a sensible and sagacious extension of the linguistic and culturalhistory of the African-American community; (b) a reasonable and logical implementation of research andtheory that has come to light from linguistics and education research over the past 25 years, and (c) anatural and intrinsic desire on the part of African-American parents to have their children's teachersacquire the principles, strategies, and competencies that frame California's Crosscultural, Language, andAcademic Development (CLAD) Teacher Certification and Credential.

It is necessary to provide some of the evidence from the cultural, linguistic history of African

people in Diaspora, and to provide in detail the nature of the bi-lingual and bi-cultural [sic]

experiences involved. It is crucial that academics, scholars, teachers, students, parents, and

members of our community groups have the opportunity to learn to respect these experiences.

(DeFrantz, 1995: 54, emphasis added)

1. INTRODUCTION

This paper is organized in five sections. Section 1 provides an overview, section 2 willoutline the history and origins of the Ebonics language. Section 3 discusses how linguisticsresearch and theory provide guidance and frameworks for classroom pedagogy. Section 4informs the reader about California's requirements and expectations regarding teacherpreparation and the final section provides summary and conclusions.

Within the text, reference will be made to the Oakland Public Schools (OPS) resolution.The reader will find the resolution in Appendix A at the end of the chapter. The resolutionhas been divided into Points of Rationale and Points of Resolution. Points of rationale arethe `Whereas' premises that constitute the basis of the resolution. The points of resolutionare, in turn, the decisive, prescriptive points the (OPS) Board intended for implementation.I have numbered each of the points so that while reading the text, the reader can refer tothe corresponding portion of the resolution (e.g., rationale point 5 or resolution point 4).

Appendix B contains California's Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development(CLAD) competencies. References to this appendix will be found in section 4.

The central point of this paper is that the Board's resolution came after considerabletime and effort on the part of a Task Force that was commissioned by the Board. ThisTask Force on the Education of African-American Students studied and investigated formonths before reporting back to the Board and making its recommendations. Neither thework of the Task Force that provided a reasoned and researched basis for the resolutionnor the full or even partial text of the resolution was included in the media's reporting of

A Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

World Englishes, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 73±87, 2000. 0883±2919

* College of Education, University Hall 315, California State University, San Marcos, CA 92096-0001, USA.E-mail: [email protected]


the story. The media were able, however, to provide misinformation, misrepresentation,and disinformation. (For an in-depth analysis of media coverage of the resolution, see Bingand Woodward, 1998.) For example, a common myth was created that the resolution wasfueled by the board's desire to get federal funding for bilingual education under theElementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title VII. Only in Rationale point 6(Appendix A) is Title VII mentioned ± to gird the resolution in federal policy, not to makean overture for funding. What the board could be criticized for in using this rationale is thewording. `[Title VII] mandates [emphasis added] that local educational agencies . . . '(Rethinking Schools, 1997). Title VII, like all Titles under the ESEA, is a discretionary, nota mandatory policy. Federal mandates in education are barred by the Constitution.Through ESEA, the federal government provides funding opportunities to states andlocal districts that are at the option and discretion of the states and districts. Corres-pondingly, nothing in the ESEA or Title VII mandates any policy or practice for schools(Croghan, 1997).

But why this misrepresentation by the media? Is it the power of language? Becauseeverybody has a language, everybody has an opinion about language. Unlike nuclearphysics, neurology, and corporate behavior, language and schooling draw impassionedperspective and powerful convictions from all quarters ± with and without study orexpertise. And biases concerning language can create unusual bedfellows as the followingquote suggests.

How is it that long-time Civil Rights activists ended up on the same side of the barricade with their

adversaries? How did it happen that Jesse Jackson, Kwesi Mfume, and Maya Angelou joined with

William Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, and Pete Wilson to take aim at the Oakland decision? (Perry,

1997: 3).

A focal point of this paper is that the public backlash and misunderstanding of theresolution could have been avoided had the press presented the story more completely,with greater care, and with a deeper understanding of the experience, research andknowledge upon which the resolution was founded. In contrast to the media's portrayal,I will show that the resolution was framed and driven by a compelling historical context aswell as sound linguistics and educational theory, research, and practice.

2. HISTORY AND ORIGINS OF EBONICS

Àfrican-American Vernacular English' (AAVE), Àfrican Language Systems', `PanAfrican Communication Behaviors', `Black Dialect', `Noble Language of the Ghetto' ±these and other terms have been used over the generations to name and describe the uniquelanguage varieties spoken by generations of African Americans. A few of these termswere cited by the African-American Task Force when they submitted À report andRecommendations' to the OPS School Board. Indeed, some were written into the Board'smotion (rationale point 1). Because the term Ebonics has been so closely associatedwith the OPS resolution and because African-American Language (AAL) is so widelyused among linguists, these two terms will be the ones most often used in this discussion.A third term, community language, is a generic term used to describe non StandardAmerican English (SAE) languages spoken by the hundreds of ethnic groups whohistorically and currently make up the US and more particularly California's school-children. Examples of California's community languages are Korean, Tagalog, Spanish,

A Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

Michael Croghan74


Hmong, and varieties of English, including Ebonics. My preference is to put a positive spinon languages people use rather than a negative or limited spin such as `Limited EnglishProficient (LEP)'.

Hoffman (1998) provides a useful outline for studying the second half of the twentieth-century policy dialogue about Ebonics. He divides his discussion into three `incarnations'each of which emerges from African-American community advocacy or activism. The firstincarnation occurred during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s. Hoffman had a directrole in that incarnation as a linguistics research assistant. Identification by linguists ofdistinct language patterns among African Americans was followed by discussion of poorschool performance among AAL-speaking children. The poor school performance wasseen in the light of the data gathered by the linguists which led naturally to the conclusionthat ` . . . linguistic interference [added] another subtler problem to pupils' more obviousenvironmental and economic problems' (Hoffman, 1998: 77). In other words, languagewas added to the economic, social, and cultural `disadvantages' of African-Americanchildren. Be it one or a combination of these factors, this deficit or `language as problemorientation' (RuõÂz, 1984) anchored the thinking and explanations for the poor schoolperformance of African-American schoolchildren.

Hoffman's second incarnation centers upon the successful lawsuit by African-AmericanParents in Ann Arbor, Michigan (1979). Without doubt, the Oakland Task Force andSchool Board were referring to the Ann Arbor case when they coined rationale point 5 ofthe resolution (Cook, 1999). More than accident and serendipity couple this lawsuit andthe resolution with the Lau decision (1974). In Lau, the Supreme Court ruled that the civilrights of students were being violated when schools made no attempt to teach them in alanguage that was comprehensible to them. The US Office of Civil Rights Remedies thatfollowed the decision, and the momentum of bilingual education programs of the late1970s and early 1980s, increased the awareness and search for meaningful and effectivepractices for educating community language speakers.

Add to this political, judicial, and educational context the fact that linguists during thelate 1960s and through the 1970s, changed their thinking about the evolution and status ofAAL (cf. Christopherson, 1953; Dillard, 1975; Stewart, 1967a, 1967b, 1971). The newresearch and outlook were conclusive in saying that rather than being a creole that drewonly from the English vernaculars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, AAL wasclearly and distinctly shaped and influenced by languages brought from West Africa (seesection 3) (rationale point 3 and resolution point 2). During the Ann Arbor trial, linguisticsscholars presented testimony that Ebonics was a language like any other and not a vulgarcorruption or vernacular distortion of Standard American English (SAE). Parents ofEbonics-speaking children used these new discoveries by linguists to urge that teachersbe aware and understand the language competencies of their children and to use thosecompetencies as a bridge to teach SAE to the children (Cook, 1999; DeFrantz, 1995).Later, I will cite a few examples of schools and teachers who followed this strategy.Language biases die hard, however, even among educators.

Hoffman's third incarnation is the Oakland School Board's Resolution. While his workoutlines 33 years of history, thereby developing a context for the (OPS) resolution,Hoffman does not pretend to cover the full history of the research and debate overEbonics. A proper understanding of the resolution comes only from a knowledge of thehistory and evolution of AAL. Without that knowledge, the resolution appears to be ahair-brained idea with no precedent or context. As mentioned, the impression created by

History, linguistic theory, California's CLAD and Oakland's resolution on Ebonics 75



the media was that the resolution was a scheme with no history, origin, or genesis. I hopeto correct this misrepresentation in the following paragraphs.

In his Introduction to Perspectives on Black English, Dillard (1975) uses several re-printsof scholarly works and articles that date back to the last century. He makes reference tonon-English European languages spoken in the colonies and the early days of the US andhow these languages combined with features of West African languages to form `BlackSpanish', `Black French', and `Black Dutch' (rationale point 2 and resolution point 1).

He also puts a distinctive spin on contributions of AAL to SAE by demonstrating that`Insofar as the slaves had influence on the children of the master caste [thereby serving asthe children's language models], their language varieties must have influenced languagevarieties of the New World' (p. 20). Hence, for Dillard, while forms and varieties of Englishbecame the lingua franca of Africans, so too those varieties of English spoken byAmericans were influenced by the languages of Africans and their descendants.

In a somewhat different vein, the dominant interpretation of the history of Ebonicsamong linguists has undergone radical change in the last 35 years. For a long time,linguists believed that AAL was a derivative of British dialects of the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries. That idea has given way to the notion that the roots of modernEbonics reach also to Africa. As early as the 1950s, Christopherson (1953) was leading theway in this regard. Christopherson was followed by others who corroborated thatpidginization of African and European languages was occurring in the earliest days ofthe slave trade. This is not at all surprising given that pidginization would be expectedanytime two languages come in contact ± elements of both languages contributing to thepidgin. In retrospect, then, it seems odd that earlier researchers and analysts would arguethat this would not apply to African/European (English) language contact in the NewWorld ± as though all over the world and throughout history when two or more languagescame in contact, they contributed to a pidgin and subsequently, in most cases, to a creoleexcept for English and African languages (see Romaine, 1994: 179).

I believe four points make for a compelling argument that Ebonics and the influence ofAfrican languages on New World languages, including English, are inescapable and thatwithout them, the evolution of languages in the New World cannot be clearly explained orunderstood. In the first place,

. . . there are many facets of culture and linguistic history which are and should be obvious. Some

of these are:

1. Languages of Africans in Diaspora are all Africanized languages [emphasis in original].

2. Colonial languages are used to control and reduce the functioning of the cultures of the

colonized.

3. African languages do not belong to Indo-European languages. The phonological features,

syntactical features and lexical features [sic], are different from the features of English, Spanish,

French; Dutch, German, and Portuguese. (DeFrantz, 1995: 57)

Secondly, as already mentioned, abundant historical and linguistic evidence points tothe presence of `Black Spanish', `Black French', and `Black Dutch'. Certainly, there musthave been ± and there still is ± a `Black English' or an Africanized English.

Next, it would be the rarest of all cases for speakers of a language to come in contactwith speakers of another language and totally shift from their L1 to an L2. It is equallyabsurd to conclude that when two languages are in contact, language A is in no wayinfluenced by language B and vice versa. English-speaking Americans living in San Diego


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and Spanish-speaking Mexicans living in Tijuana, for instance, use language that is coloredby their border experiences and is thereby different from the English spoken in Madison,Wisconsin or the Spanish spoken in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico.

The final point is one touched on earlier. Pidgins were evolving from African andEuropean languages in the earliest days of the slave trade (Dillard, 1975; Stewart, 1967b).Linguists use two different lines of reason to arrive at this conclusion. One is based onresearch of travel commentaries written during the times. Europeans logged theirobservations of the communication patterns and systems as they traded and exploredthe West African Coast (Dillard, 1975). The second perspective is represented in thefollowing observation.

One possible explanation why this kind of pidginized English was so widespread in the New

World, with widely separated varieties resembling each other in so many ways, is that it did not

originate in the New World as isolated and accidentally similar instances of random pidginization,

but rather originated as a lingua franca in the trade centers and slave factories of the West African

Coast. (Stewart, 1967: 229)

Not all scholarly analysis has given credence or status to AAL, however. Some pastexperts have written about the community language of African Americans in patronizingand condescending terms. Note in the following quote how language is coupled with`intellectual caliber'. `The humor and naõÈveteÂ [change in original] of the Negro are featureswhich must not be overlooked in gauging his intellectual caliber and timbre; much of histalk is baby-talk, of an exceedingly attractive sort to those to the manner born; he deals inhyperbole, in rhythm, in picture-words, like the poet . . . ' (Harrison (1884) in Dillard,1975: 144). This quotation not only plays to the lengthy history of the discussion aboutAAL, but also tells us that the negative reactions and attitudes that greeted the OPSresolution (many coming from SAE-speaking African Americans) are not new.

The point here is that Ebonics is a legitimate, rule-governed language variety withhistory and roots in African and European traditions and languages (Labov, 1972;Rickford, 1996). In the next section, we will see that knowledge of how languages areacquired and awareness of the language resources of Ebonics-speaking children can helpteachers more effectively serve those children. Writing in the same year as ESEA Title VII,the first federal Bilingual Education Act passed by the federal government, Stewart (1968in Dillard, 1975), takes a step in this direction by saying,

For the teacher, this means that [differences in language usage among African-American students]

should not be ascribed to greater carelessness, laziness or stupidity on the part of Negroes, but

rather should be treated as what they really are ± language patterns which have been in existence

for generations and which their present users have acquired, from parent and peer, through a

perfectly normal kind of language-learning process. (p. 234) (rationale point 3)

3. BRIDGING BETWEEN EDUCATION AND

LINGUISTICS RESEARCH AND THEORY

In this section, the focus changes from a historical perspective to one that is more relatedto research in education and linguistics. In the past, the only educators who might havehad an interest in what linguists said about language acquisition would be high-schoolteachers of modern languages. In California, this is changing as all pre-service and




credentialed teachers are being required to learn about language structures and substruc-tures, the uses of language, and especially the processes of acquiring primary andsecondary languages. An applied linguist who has offered a great deal to educatorsregarding second language acquisition theory is Krashen (1994). His 5 hypotheses providethe uninformed classroom teacher with a theoretical and practical framework that helps toexplain and guide the use and mastery of both primary and second languages whilechildren learn the conventional skills and knowledge of schooling. Especially useful for ourdiscussion here are his hypotheses about affective filter and comprehensible input.

To acquire a second language effectively, the learner must feel a sense of confidence andbelonging. Put another way, mastery of language is frequently impeded when the learner isfeeling rejected, devalued, or excluded (see also Brown, 1994). Underlying this thinking isthe assumption that language is an integral part of self. To put a positive spin on the point,the student who feels that her language is being recognized and validated is likely to feelthat she is being valued and recognized. This sense of value and recognition is likely tolower the affective filter. The learner gains confidence and feels better about her place inschool which in turn increases her chances for success in schooling and second languagelearning. In short, when the student's affective filter is down, the greater the chance forsuccessful acquisition of the second language (resolution point 3).

A second major contribution from Krashen is his `comprehensible input' hypothesis.Resonating strongly with Vygotsky's learning theories (cited in Cole et al., 1978), especiallythe zone of proximal development (ZPD), Krashen promotes the concept that the mosteffective instruction results from building upon and connecting to what the learner alreadyknows and then extending that knowledge a bit further. For the second language learner,comprehensible input is language parsing that s/he has mastered mixed with parsing andstructures that are yet to be learned. The mastered primary language repertoire provides acontext or resource bank for the learner as he develops and tests hypotheses about themeaning of second language terms and structures. According to Krashen, teachers'effectiveness at gauging comprehensible input is directly proportional to student learning.

Cummins (1994) is another major benefactor to the theoretical framework that underliesclassroom pedagogy and second language acquisition. A prolific writer, Cummins'sgreatest offering to educators are the five principles he outlines in `Primary LanguageInstruction and the Education of Language Minority Students'. Here, I will talk aboutonly two of those principles because they lend the best understanding of the OPSResolution.

Cummins's psychoeducational principles echo strongly with what was just described asKrashen's affective filter. Essentially, Cummins argues that if a child feels like s/he has aplace in school and that s/he belongs, then the chances for success are greater. ForCummins, a large part of the child's sense of belonging stems from whether his/hercommunity culture and language is represented, legitimated, and validated. Put anotherway, to the degree that a child senses that a language and culture are to be added to thecompetencies and resources he brings to school rather than displacing or subtracting thosecompetencies and resources, the greater the child's chances for success in school (see Moll's(1992) Funds of Knowledge for more on this concept).

Closely connected to this sense of belonging are Cummins's notions about cultural matchand mismatch. For Cummins, the greater the match between school culture and communityculture, the greater the chances of effective learning and successful schooling for thestudents. The converse also applies. To the degree that the language and culture of schools


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do not match well with the language and culture of the learner, so are the chances foreducational success for those children limited (rationale point 8).

Turning to a more macro level of discussion, RuõÂz (1984) talks about three languageplanning orientations. For RuõÂz, an orientation is `pre-rational' thinking, a paradigm thatis shaped by the values and beliefs of a person and community. This orientation leads toattitudes and beliefs that in turn drive national, school, and classroom policies andpractices. However, the thinker or practitioner is scarcely in touch with or aware of his/her orientation. To fully understand what this orientation is and where it lies, one must keyin on RuõÂz's use of the term `pre-rational thinking'. Only in this way can one understandthe subliminal nature of his orientations. When an individual or group of individuals isdevising a language plan, the orientation that drives the plan may be one he calls `languageas problem', `language as right', or `language as resource'. Only the first and thirdorientations will be discussed here.

To explain by example, if a school and its teachers look upon a child who speaks acommunity language as a problem, then what will be put into the attitudes and practices atthat school are approaches and methods that are designed to fix or remediate a problem. Ifon the other hand, the language competencies of a child or group of children are seen as aresource, then the attitudes and practices that follow will be designed and intended todevelop and nurture a resource ± quite different from remediating a problem (rationalepoint 3). Put within the context of this article, did the teachers of Ebonics-speakingchildren see their students as learners with a language problem or a language resource? (Seerationale point 3 for more on this point.)

Before transitioning the discussion to some examples of school performance research, Iwould ask the reader to combine and synthesize the messages and meanings that Krashen,Cummins, and RuõÂz promote. A language-as-resource orientation leads to an increasedlikelihood that the affective filter of the learner is going to be open or `down' and thelearner's psychoeducational sense of belonging will be enhanced. The language and cultureof the community is more closely matched with the language and culture of the school.These are the considerations and factors that shaped the Task Force's recommendationsand constitute the structure of the resolution (Cook, 1999).

Ramirez' (1991) seminal and longitudinal study compared the effectiveness of structuredEnglish immersion, early, and late exit bilingual Spanish/English programs. He distin-guished early and late exit programs by whether or not students were fully transitionedinto English-only mainstream classes after English mastery was acquired. For Ramirez,late exit programs were designed to maintain and enrich primary language after mastery ofEnglish had been reached. Rather than examining only the level of English mastery,Ramirez used a wider and deeper matrix for comparison that included acquisition of theknowledge and skills that all children are expected to learn in school regardless of languagedifferences. The results balanced heavily in favor of late exit programs. Not only werestudents in these programs better at learning their academics, but they also tended todemonstrate greater mastery of English when compared to students in the other two typesof programs. While more research is called for, one telling point is worthy of mention.Students in late exit programs did no worse in their acquisition of English or in their schoollearning compared to the two other approaches. Since the children in the late exitprograms did no worse academically or in acquiring English and they were able todevelop a more balanced and enriched bilingualism, most analysts would agree thatthey were at a distinct advantage over children who were schooled using the subtractive




approaches of structured English immersion and early exit. Who would argue that astudent with a more balanced fluency in two languages and knowing the skills andsubstance of subject area content is not at an advantage?

Another relatively recent research project yielded similar outcomes. Thomas andCollier's longitudinal study (1995) looked at students' development of English proficiencyover the grade levels. They compared groups of children based on the programmaticapproach of the early years of schooling. The English learning curve for the Englishimmersion (submersion) approach rose more sharply in the early years compared tostructured immersion and early transition approaches. However, the gains fell offdramatically. In the later grades, those immersion and early exit students were registeringlower scores on tests of English proficiency compared to peers in late transition anddevelopmental programs. Hence, students whose early years of schooling were done in L1had a slower rate of English acquisition during the early grades, but showed an increasedproficiency in the upper grades (rationale point 8 and resolution point 3).

Do these theories and research results tell us much about how schools can moreeffectively serve school-aged AAL speakers? The question is best answered by the workof the Task Force itself.

The average grade point average for all students in the district was 2.4 . . . The average grade point

average for African-American students was 1.8. While African Americans made up 53% of

student population, they represented 80% of suspensions and 71% of students labeled as special

needs. Against this backdrop of this dismal picture of school failure, the above-average

performance of African American students at the Prescott Elementary School caught the

attention of members of the task force.

Prescott Elementary School was the only school in the Oakland school district where the

majority of its teachers had voluntarily chosen to participate in the Standard English Proficiency

program (SEP). This statewide initiative, begun in 1981, acknowledges the systematic, rule-

governed nature of Black English and takes the position that this language should be used to help

children learn to read and write in Standard English. (Perry and Delpit, 1997: 3, emphasis added.]

4. CALIFORNIA'S RESPONSE TO MULTILINGUALISM AND

MULTICULTURALISM IN SCHOOLS: THE CROSSCULTURAL,

LANGUAGE, AND ACADEMIC DEVELOPMENT (CLAD) CREDENTIAL

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, educators and policymakers in California took someconcerted steps to bring changes to the state's classrooms. The intent was to better servethe growing linguistic diversity and cultural richness brought to schools by the school-children. The majority of California's schoolchildren was literally changing color fromwhite to non-white and a growing number of them came to school speaking communitylanguages. In contrast, over 90% of California's credentialed and pre-credential teacherswere monolingual Standard American English-speaking European Americans. Theseglaring dissimilarities led teachers and policymakers to an examination and re-structuringof the curriculum used in teacher education programs. The outcome was a new credentialcalled the Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development (CLAD) credential.Schools and distincts in California that are serving community language speakers arerequired by the state to hire only teachers who have the CLAD credential. The state haseven gone so far as to require districts to develop and implement plans for staff training


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and development so that veteran teachers who have pre-CLAD credentials must takecourses and/or pass state examinations to demonstrate their CLAD competencies (seeAppendix B).

The awareness to make teachers smarter about the special culture and unique languageresources children of color bring to school has a genesis that extends back through theyears before the designing of the CLAD teaching credential. `For those whose locallanguage problem [sic] involves remedial English teaching primarily to disadvantagedNegroes, knowledge about the details of their language competence and performance will beof the utmost importance' (Stewart, 1971: 58, emphasis added). (Rationale point 9 andresolution points 3 and 4.) Stewart was writing in a time when Negroes was a commonlyaccepted term and `deficiency', `disadvantage', and `problem' were the paradigms ororientations (RuõÂz, 1984) through which the schooling performance of language- andculture-diverse children were analyzed. Even with this deficit orientation, though,Stewart's most profound message is that educators need to understand the languagecompetencies of their students. Stewart's point is important for understanding California'sCLAD not only because his message was sent out a quarter century before the CLAD wasdeveloped, but because Stewart sent the message after observing what was happening inclassrooms to AAL-speaking students. Indeed, Stewart wrote in another article about hishope that by having a better understanding of how languages are acquired and used,teachers of AAL-speaking students would be ` . . . less frustrated by failure to turn non-standard Negro dialect speakers into standard English speakers overnight, less impatientwith the stubborn survival of Negro dialect features in the speech of even educatedpersons, and less zealous on proclaiming what is ``right'' and ``wrong'' ' (1967: 231).

Voices and forces from within the education community joined with Stewart's andprecedents for the CLAD and the OPS resolution began to emerge. The Task Force thatwas commissioned by the OPS Board looked into the language and culture barriers thatteachers might encounter when working with Ebonics-speaking students. Toni Cook, theleader of this task force, was unequivocal in reporting that teachers who understood thevalue of the child's L1 had students who were more successful in their schooling. Incontrast, teachers who looked upon their students' language as a problem were lesseffective.

Well before CLAD, some professional organizations understood the usefulness ofbridging to school and second language learning by applying and valuing the child'sprimary language.

We believe that: The Black language system of itself is not a barrier to learning.

The barrier is. negative attitudes toward the language system. lack of information about the system. inefficient techniques for teaching language skills. and an unwillingness to adapt teaching styles to student learning needs (Statement from the

National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), emphasis in original.)

Important to note here is that these outlooks promote the child's learning and do notprescribe different, reduced, or `watered down' standards. Note in the following messagefrom DeFrantz (1995) that her purpose is to include while her focus is on the same standardeducational goals, curricula, and program delivery for all children. `Further, we mustprovide all of our children educational experiences which include our linguistic heritage,




our cultural perspectives, and African American epistemology in the educational goals andobjectives which inform our curricula and program delivery' (1995: 58).

If one agrees that attitudes and styles are strongly influenced by culture, then thecompetencies listed under Test 3 of CLAD are very telling. By acquiring these compe-tencies, teachers learn to examine and revise their own culturally shaped attitudes andstyles. In doing so, they begin to adapt their pedagogy. As teachers examine how theirculture shapes their work with children, they develop an acceptance to information aboutthe legitimacy of different language systems. Aware and sensitive teachers eventually adapttheir style to the needs of their students (rationale point 7).

Six years prior to the OPS resolution, educators within the Los Angeles Unified SchoolDistrict (LAUSD) composed a statement about the African-American child.

THERE IS A NEED TO:. Recognize and value African American language (Black Language) as a viable language with its

own system of rules, sounds, and meaning.. Teach standard English as a second language to speakers of nonstandard English whose needs

are not addressed in the Master Plan for the Education of Limited-English-Proficient Students

(Bilingual Master Plan).. Help students learn to switch from African American language to standard English, when

appropriate.. Use teaching strategies that capitalize on identified student strengths.

The Language Development Program for African American Students (LDPAAS) ofLAUSD is based on the following assumptions:

. Language is an integral part of one's identity and culture,

. The dignity of a person is not guaranteed unless the dignity of his or her people is preserved,

. The unique history, culture, and language of each child must be recognized and respected,

. Teaching methodology must accommodate the culture and language of the child,

. Language difference does not imply language deficit,

. Students are enhanced intellectually and academically by the mastery of languages.

In sum, for years prior to the state's creation of the CLAD credential, professionalteacher organizations and school districts had been setting precedents. Moreover and inkeeping with the focus of this discussion, the connections between the CLAD competenciesand the OPS resolution are clear and unmistakable.

In Appendix B, the reader will find a list of the CLAD competencies. The competenciesare listed under three `Tests';

Test 1: Language Structure and First- and Second-Language Development.

Test 2: Methodology of Bilingual, English Language Development, and Content Instruction, and

Test 3: Culture and Cultural Diversity.

The reader will see that Test 1 has two classifications of competencies while Tests 2 and 3have three classifications each. Given that this article centers on issues of language andlinguistics, the parts under Test 1 are of particular importance. Note the competencies thatrequire teachers to learn about language structure, use, and acquisition. Interesting, too, isto look at Test I, Part II, Competencies B and C through the prisms and theories ofVygotsky, Cummins, and Krashen that were presented in the previous section. Compe-tencies listed under Test 3, Part II, also have much to do with our discussion here. Note the


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direct connections between those Competencies and rationale points 3, 7, 8 and 9 of theOUSD resolution and resolution point 3.

A further note of interest is the fact that California's leading educators and policy-makers did not stop with the three Tests of the CLAD. For those teachers who areproficient in English and another language, California offers the B/CLAD credential. Likethe CLAD, competencies for this credential are listed under three Tests. B/CLADcompetencies are framed under the general areas of (a) language proficiency (listeningcomprehension, speaking, reading, and writing); (b) knowledge of the community'shistory, heritage, and culture; and (c) primary language pedagogy (i.e., ability to teachand interact with their students in the students' L1). Under the last mentioned, teacherslearn the value of developing and enriching children's primary language and how to usethat language as a vehicle for accessing the core curriculum of schooling and acquiringEnglish. In short, B/CLAD teachers must not only demonstrate their oral and writtenmastery of the community's language, they must also know about the culture of thecommunity. They must also understand how to develop their students' school learningwhile enriching their L2.

5. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

Looking at the OPS resolution on Ebonics as a decontextualized single event is anenormously and egregiously over-simplified misrepresentation that borders on bigotry.The resolution came after months of work by a task force and the entire effort is precededby a long history of community language evolution among African Americans and issustained by Supreme Court decisions made only a few years previously. Linguistic theory,expertise, and research fortify the reasoning and logic upon which the resolution isfounded. Finally, the board's awareness of California's CLAD competencies for teacherspreparing to teach in culturally and linguistically diverse schools compelled them to wantthose same competencies for the teachers of AAL speakers.

I have presented some historical, linguistic, theoretical, and pedagogical bases for theresolution. I will end with this point. If Ebonics and similar language varieties are crudeand `improper', the use and survival of those languages is in direct proportion to theisolation and exclusion of the speakers of those languages by SAE-speaking people andinstitutions. An underrepresented language community adopts and adapts to what isaround it and to its role within the larger society. Had speakers of AAL been an integralpart of the larger community, the shape, form, and distinctiveness of today's AAL mightbe considerably different. So, too, would the structures and style of SAE. To the degreethat SAE speakers term as illegitimate and improper Ebonics and its speakers, so also tothat degree must they inherit the responsibility for the illegitimacy and impropriety of thatlanguage.

Nowhere in today's world does a language community live in total isolation. The degreeof difference between AAL and SAE is in direct proportion to the historic and currentforced isolation and exclusion of African Americans and their language from America'smainstream. The resolution was a deliberate step toward ending the isolation andexclusion ± not by coercion, displacement, language evangelism, or hegemony, but byrespect, enrichment, and facilitation of student learning.




NOTES

1. This paper was presented as part of a panel at the International Association of World Englishes in November,1998 at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.

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Brown, Douglas H. (1994) Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Christopherson, Paul (1953) Some special West African English words. In Perspectives on Black English. Edited

by J. L. Dillard (1975). The Hague: Mouton & Co., pp. 202±211.Cole, M., John-Steiner, V., Scribner, S. and Souberman, E. (eds) (1978) Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press.Cook, Toni (1999) Personal Communication, August 8.Croghan, Mike (1997) Title VII of 1968; Origins, orientations, and analysis. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation.

University of Arizona, Tucson AZ.Cummins, Jim (1994) Primary language instruction and the education of language minority students. In Schooling

and Language Minority Students: A Theoretical Framework; Second Edition. Edited by Charles F. Leyba. LosAngeles, CA: Evaluation, Dissemination, and Assessment Center, CSULA.

DeFrantz, Anita P. (1995) Coming to cultural and linguistic awakening: An African and African Americaneducational vision. In Reclaiming Our Voices. Bilingual Education, Critical Pedagogy, and Praxis. Edited byJean Fredrickson. Ontario, CA: CABE (California Association for Bilingual Education), pp. 53±78.

Dillard, J. L. (1975) The writings of Herskovits and the study of the language of the Negro in the New World. InDillard, J. L. (ed.) Perspectives on Black English. The Hague: Mouton & Co., pp. 288±295.

Harrison, J. A. (1884) Negro English. In Perspectives on Black English. Edited by J. L. Dillard (1975). The Hague:Mouton & Co., pp. 143±195.

Hoffman, Melvin J. (1998) Ebonics, the third incarnation of a thirty-three year old controversy about BlackEnglish in the United States. Links and Letters, vol. 5. Universitat AuÂtonoma de Barcelona.

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Rethinking Schools Limited (1997) The Oakland Ebonics Resolution. Rethinking Schools, 12, 25.Romaine, Suzanne (1994) Language in Society. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University

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Sandra Lee McKay and Nancy Hornberger. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 159±94.RuõÂz, Richard (1984) Orientations in language planning. NABE Journal, 8(2), 15±34.Stewart, William A. (1967a) Observations (1966) on the problems of defining Negro dialect. In Perspectives on

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Unpublished manuscript.


Michael Croghan84


APPENDIX A

Resolution of the Board of Education Adopting the Report and

Recommendations of the African-American Task Force

Rationale points

1. WHEREAS, numerous validated scholarly studies demonstrate that African-American students

as a part of their culture and history as African people possess and utilize a language described in

various scholarly approaches as `Ebonics' (literally Black sounds) or `Pan-African Commun-

ications Behaviors' or `African Language Systems'; and

2. WHEREAS, these studies have also demonstrated that African Language Systems are genetically

based and not a dialect of English; and

3. WHEREAS, these studies demonstrate that such West and Niger-Congo African languages have

been officially recognized and addressed in the mainstream public educational community as

worth [sic] of study, understanding, or application of its principles, laws and structure for the

benefit of African-American students both in terms of positive appreciation of the language and

these students' acquisition and mastery of English language skills; and

4. WHEREAS, such recognition by scholars has given rise over the past fifteen years to legislation

passed by the State of California recognizing the unique language stature of descendants of

slaves, with such legislation being prejudicially and unconstitutionally vetoed repeatedly by

various California state governors; and

5. WHEREAS, judicial cases in states other than California recognized the unique language

structure of African-American pupils, and such recognition by courts has resulted in court-

mandated educational programs which have substantially benefited African-American children

in the interest of vindicating their equal protection of the law rights under the Fourteenth

Amendment to the United States Constitution; and

6. WHEREAS, the Federal Bilingual Education Act (20 U.S.C. 1402 et seq.) mandates that local

educational agencies `build their capacities to establish, implement and sustain programs of

instruction for children and youth of limited English proficiency; and

7. WHEREAS, the interests of the Oakland Unified School District in providing equal opportu-

nities for all of its students dictate limited English proficient educational programs recognizing

the English language acquisition and improvement skills of African-American students are as

fundamental as is application of bilingual education principles for others whose primary

languages are other than English; and

8. WHEREAS, the standardized tests and grade scores of African-American students in reading

and language arts skills measuring their application of English skills are substantially below state

and national norms and that such deficiencies will be remedied by the application of a program

featuring African Language Systems principles in instructing African-American children both in

their primary language and in English; and

9. WHEREAS, standardized tests and grade scores will be remedied by the application of a

program with teachers and aides who are certified in the methodology of featuring African

Language Systems principles in instructing African-American children both in their primary

language and in English. The certified teachers of these students will be provided incentives

including, but not limited to salary differentials.

Resolution points

1. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Board of Education officially recognizes the

existence, and the cultural and historic bases of West and Niger-Congo African Language

Systems, and each language as the predominantly primary language of African-American

Students; and

2. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board of Education hereby adopts the report,




recommendations and attached Policy Statement of the District's African-American Task Force

on language stature of African-American speech; and

3. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Superintendent in conjunction with her staff shall

immediately devise and implement the best possible academic program for imparting instruction

to African-American students in their primary language for the combined purposes of main-

taining the legitimacy and richness of such language whether it is known as `Ebonics,' `African

Language Systems,' `Pan-African Communication Behaviors' or other description, and to

facilitate their acquisition and mastery of English language skills; and

4. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board of Education hereby commits to earmark

District general and special funding as is reasonably necessary and appropriate to enable the

Superintendent and her staff to accomplish the foregoing; and

5. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Superintendent and her staff shall utilize the input of

the entire Oakland educational community as well as state and federal scholarly and educational

input in devising such a program; and

6. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that periodic reports on the progress of the creation and

implementation of such an educational program shall be made to the Board of Education at least

once per month commencing at the Board meeting of December 18, 1996.


Michael Croghan86


APPENDIX B

Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development (CLAD) Competencies



TEST 1: LANGUAGE STRUCTURE TEST 2: METHODOLOGY TEST 3:

AND OF BILINGUAL, ENGLISH CULTURE AND

FIRST- AND SECOND-LANGUAGE LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, CULTURAL DIVERSITY

DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT INSTRUCTION

I. Language Structure and Use: I. Theories and Methods of Bilingual I. The Nature of Culture

Universals and Differences Education

(including the structure of English)

A. The sound systems of language A. Foundations A. Definitions of culture

(phonology)

B. Word formation (morphology) B. Organizational models: B. Perceptions of culture

What works for whom?

C. Syntax C. Instructional strategies C. Intragroup differences (e.g., ethnicity,

race, generations, and micro-cultures)

D. Word meaning (semantics) II. Theories and Methods for D. Physical geography and its effects

Instruction In and Through English on culture

E. Language in context A. Teacher delivery for both English E. Cultural congruence

language development and content

instruction

F. Written discourse B. Approaches with a focus on English II. Manifestations of Culture: Learning

language development About Students

G. Oral discourse C. Approaches with a focus on content A. What teachers should learn about

area instruction (specially designed their students

academic instruction delivered in

English)

H. Nonverbal communication D. Working with paraprofessionals B. How teachers can learn about

their students

II. Theories and Factors in First- and III. Language and Content Area C. How teachers can use what they learn

Second Language Development Assessment about their students (culturally

responsive pedagogy)

A. Historical and current theories and models A. Purpose

of language analysis that have implications

for second-language development and pedagogy III. Cultural Contact

B. Psychological factors affecting first- and B. Methods A. Concepts of cultural contact

second-language development

C. Socio-cultural factors affecting first- and C. State mandates B. Stages of individual cultural contact


D. Pedagogical factors affecting first- and D. Limitations of assessment C. The dynamics of prejudice


E. Political factors affecting first- and E. Technical concepts D. Strategies for confict resolution


IV. Cultural Diversity in US and CA

A. Historical perspectives

B. Demography

C. Migration and immigration

history, linguistic theory, california's clad, and the oakland public schools resolution on...

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