Amidst our glee at the Ebonics explosion of the last 48 hours (see Blogpulse chart here), we missed news about last week’s release of the 2004 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Good news for those who believe in testing and accountability — scores, particularly for younger kids, are up:

9-year-olds:
• Average reading and mathematics scores in 2004 were higher than in any previous assessment year.
• White, Black, and Hispanic students’ scores were all higher in both subjects than in the first and most recent prior assessment years. Much of the gains have been seen since the last assessment in 1999 with the scores of those racial/ethnic groups increasing by 9, 13, and 17 points respectively in mathematics.

Even the typically anti-reform New York Times said:

The results, considered the best measure of the nation’s long-term education trends, show that 9-year-old minority students made the most gains. In particular, young black students significantly narrowed the longtime gap between their math and reading scores and those of higher-achieving white students, who also made strong gains.

Polipundit pointed us to Thomas Sowell’s comments on the NEAP results. Sowell notes a recent study found that “ninety two percent of the professors of education said that teachers should be “facilitators” rather than engaging in what is today called “directed instruction” — and what used to be called just plain teaching.” He writes “This is all part of a larger vision in which children “discover” their own knowledge rather than have teachers pass on to them the knowledge of what others have already discovered. The idea that children will “discover” knowledge that took scholars and geniuses decades, or even generations, to produce is truly a faith which passeth all understanding.”

Allowing Ebonics into schools is a direct result of this passive, learn-on-your-own philosophy (and don’t educational theories have such a proud history — whole language reading, anyone? — ed.). If teachers and administrators buy into this, you can see why they don’t push black kids to learn Standard American English. Although not explicit, the thought process is probably something like “it will be easier to not bother — but we’ll say they’re on a journey of discovery and wrap it in theory.” If they somehow learn to speak “proper” english, the theory worked; if they didn’t, that’s where their journey led them.

Black kids need more teaching, not surrender. They already face an uphill battle at school: doing well has a major social price, and their parents may not have prepared them well (see our post Poor Parenting + Peer Pressure = Two Strikes Against Black Kids). If they aren’t learning schoolbook English at home, then the only place they are going to pick it up is at school, from teachers.

The NEAP results show that focusing on results works. What are the odds that bizarre accomodation to out-of-the-mainstream dialects will do better? Hmmm …

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We’re all over the Ebonics debacle. We also write a lot about education in general.

(For a look at a similar failed theory, whole language, and the damage it did to a generation of California children, see Jill Stewart’s long article here.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 at 12:45 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under California Schemin', (Un)education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.