1). This natural tension also extends to school boards and parents as well as the search for academic best practices continues (Vermette & Foote, 2001)
Even Black intellectual and political leaders joined in the criticisms of the Oakland experiment. Reverend Jesse Jackson, arguably the most powerful Black leader in America, was quoted as saying that the Oakland School Board's action made "slang talk a second language" and that allowing its use as a way of "talking down" to students (Applebome)
The entire essence of the debate regarding Ebonics centered on the value of students learning to effectively use what has been described as standard English. The theory was that the acquisition of such skills was a guarantee for success socially and economically in American society but, in reality, it has never served as such a guarantee (Norton)
This approach by the School Board may have been a legitimate recognition that the language used by Black students in the District utilized a language (Ebonics) that was different enough from standard English as to qualify as a separate language but there was also a pragmatic reason for the Board's actions. By declaring Ebonics to be a separate language the Board qualified the District for significant Federal funds that were intended to be used for foreign language programs (Ramirez)
Subsequent to the Oakland school controversy, however, the debate over the value and application of Black English or Ebonics continued among linguists and educators. The nation's leading linguistic organization, the Linguistic Society of America, stressed the importance of recognizing the legitimacy of nonstandard languages and their usefulness in teaching the standard languages (Rickford)
It was never their intent to teach students Ebonics. The idea was to treat what they described as standard English, that is, what most school systems throughout the country taught, as a type of foreign language and teach it as such to Oakland students (Williams)