Oakland Unified School District strongly disagrees with the linguists and the Board of Education opinion of lowering student's academic standards and proposes its ambitious professional development goal: ensuring that teachers understand the structural details of AAVE so that they can draw on Black students' linguistic proficiency. Attitudes toward the vernacular dialect may well have to be overhauled, and some fairly extensive

C. Ebonics is a genetically inherited speech pattern from African ancestry.

It might be fair to show what the proponents are saying about Ebonics:

As far as Ebonics being genetically inherited from ancestors from the Swahili language and thus is a natural form of speech within African decent (view used by Oakland for support for the federal bilingual funding), is not being supported by many linguists. "Black English is a dialect -- it is not a separate language," said John McWhorter, a professor of linguistics and African-American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Even though many scientists disagree with Ebonics being a foreign language, Oakland wants the House of Representatives to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to ensure that funds provided under such Act will be used to promote the teaching or use of regional or group dialect.

At the heart of the "American dream" is the concept that every child, in every neighborhood, should have an equal chance to succeed in life. The primary responsibility of the educational system is to qualitatively educate students and prepare them for career success and equal participation in California's communities to give them a chance to succeed. Ebonics is opposite this educational goal; it embraces academic underperformance and creates inequality in standards.

In the last decade many studies of so-called Black Educational Programs have been conducted and most of them have failed to incorporate and provide the right education. Ebonics not only fails academically, but also ethically ruining Black students self-esteem and making them feel like they are not good enough or maybe just not smart enough to be thought in standard English. "It's saying in the most racist way that black kids are stupid and they can't learn English so let's not bother with that," said U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley. "It's black people shooting themselves in the foot. Oakland is implying that black people are incapable of learning a language."

linguistic training will need to occur. Teachers will need to know how to weave dialect instruction into reading, writing, and oral language development in order to connect it to real communicative functions.

According to the California State Department of Education, over 300 schools statewide already participate in a little-known government program established by the State Board of Education in 1981--the "Standard English Program for Speakers of Black Language." That program is apparently a failure. Now, other school districts throughout the state are poised to follow Oakland's disastrous lead in retraining its teachers to accommodate Ebonics in the classroom.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Black Language, Black English, Board Education, President Kennedy, English VBE, Asian Appalachian, African American, Education Education, Legislature Sacramento, Swedish Norwegian, standard english, black english, african american, african american vernacular, black students, american vernacular, board education, bilingual education, vernacular english, lower standards, american vernacular english, ebonics genetically inherited, education education, vernacular black english, aave vernacular black,
Approximate Word count = 1883
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)