School Board Rejects Expansion of Ebonics, Seeks More Analysis

Los Angeles school board member Barbara Boudreaux’s effort to expand Ebonics programs was rejected Monday by the Board of Education in favor of further study of existing programs and the cost of broadening them, drawing groans as well as applause from the audience.

Though Boudreaux said little immediately after her colleagues voted 4 to 3 for additional analysis, due May 1, later she slammed the action as a political maneuver aimed at diffusing the controversy.

“The public now is very clear as to how political our board is and how they operate,” she said. “There’s no intention to educate African Americans at the highest level.”

The board’s action drew criticism from both detractors and supporters of Boudreaux’s motion, with opponents saying the alternative plan goes too far and proponents saying it does not go far enough.

The two camps agreed on only one thing: Voting for further study was a delaying tactic aimed at putting off a decision until after the district’s $2.4-billion bond bid appears on the April 8 ballot.

“I think we are all familiar with what they’re doing: Delay it and delay it and then it will go away,” said Emmett Simmons, an Eastside community activist who backed Boudreaux’s proposal.

Boudreaux, the board’s only black member, launched her drive last month to train all Los Angeles Unified School District teachers in understanding the speech patterns of some African Americans to help their students learn mainstream English. Her resolution followed a similar effort in the Oakland Unified School District that touched off a nationwide controversy.

But on Monday, board member Mark Slavkin and board President Jeff Horton joined forces to propose a multifaceted alternative that would:

* Gather academic achievement data on the district’s 93,000 African American students.

* Review existing language-oriented programs for those students--the Language Development Program for African American Students, the Proficiency in English Program and components of the 10 Schools program--and determine which is most effective.

* Recommend ways to expand or add programs and how to fold additional Ebonics training into current teacher training.

* Recommend funding for those changes.

Slavkin pointed out that even the Oakland school board made its move after completing an in-depth study of its students’ needs.

“We ought to take a hard look at it,” Slavkin said. “The question is, if they’re good [programs], should they be limited to just a few schools? Then, I would say no. If they’re bad, should they be funded at all? And I would say no.”

A second alternative proposed by board member David Tokofsky to improve reading instruction was turned down because the board considered the topic unrelated to Boudreaux’s motion and therefore inappropriate for the same discussion. Tokofsky joined Boudreaux and Vicki Castro in opposing the study.

After the meeting, Boudreaux expressed skepticism that the additional study would produce the results she desires.

“It will pit one program against another and that’s not good,” she said, adding that she does not trust that assessments will be fair because “evaluators can be biased in their own evaluations.”

Boudreaux vowed to continue her fight to bring attention to the flagging academic showing of African American students.

She said that in the coming months she will ask for ethnic breakdowns in other subjects, such as math, and ask the board to address the problems.

“Looking at math scores, we’ll see that African American and Latino scores are very low,” she said. “Then I’ll say, ‘All right, district, what do you want to do about it? Or do you want your children to continue to plummet?’ ”

Boudreaux said the struggles of African Americans is the main issue she intends to raise in interviews with candidates for the superintendent’s position, which is to be filled when Supt. Sid Thompson retires in June.

The district, the nation’s second largest, is currently 14% African American and 70% Latino, with African American students generally scoring lowest on standardized tests, slightly below scores of Latinos.