Political Downside of ‘Ebonics’

The Los Angeles school board is still dithering over what to do with a well-intentioned but politically foolish proposal to expand the district’s focus on “Ebonics,” or black English.

Following the Oakland school board’s polarizing motion recognizing Ebonics as a separate language--a motion that it eventually backed away from--it’s not enough to argue that the Los Angeles proposal is more reasonable in its wording, which it is. The overriding issue is the school bond measure that voters in the L.A. Unified School District will be asked to approve in April. And this is where some board members seem unable to see the forest for the trees.

The Ebonics motion is now in committee and is not scheduled to be heard before the full board until Feb. 10. That is mere weeks before the election, in which a two-thirds majority will be required for passage of the crucial bond issue. Can’t the board, which agrees that the schools desperately need this money, see that prolonged debate over Ebonics is hardly the route to a super-majority victory?

School board member Barbara Boudreaux’s motion cannot be separated from the stigma of the national controversy regardless of her admirable intent, which is to improve the standard English fluency and literacy of the district’s lowest-achieving black pupils. Her motion is not the best way to address the legitimate concerns of African American constituents who worry that the public schools are not educating their children. Every parent with a child in public school worries about the quality of education. The board would be wise to stress commonalities.

Board President Jeff Horton says he sees no gain to be made in a narrow discussion focusing on one group’s poor achievement; the district has only 92,000 black students, and most enter school speaking standard English. He properly prefers a broad discussion of how the district can best meet the needs of all 667,000 of its students.

Mindful of the general obligation school bond measure on the April ballot, which if approved will raise $2.4 billion to finance repairs and improvements on every campus, Horton says he would like the public to have a favorable perception of the school system. There’s a better chance for that if some school board members could contain their misguided impulses at least until then.