The Black English Controversy: Implications from the Ann Arbor Case.

Abstract

bered by many American educators as a significant date in the controversy over children's reading. During that summer, Judge Charles W. Joiner of the U.S. District Court of Michigan heard the case of Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School Students vs. The Ann Arbor, Michigan, School District Board. Ostensibly the case concerned two questions. (1) Is Black English (BE) a separate language or simply a dialect? (2) What is the relationship between BE and school achievement? Actually, as the trial brought out, lawyers for the plaintiffs and the defense were debating a question often heard by classroom teachers: Why do poor Black children fail to achieve at comparable academic levels with their White middle-class peers? The children in this case, ages 6 to 13, came from an all Black lowincome housing project in Ann Arbor. Their attorney argued that under the provisions of the 1974 Equal Educational Opportunity Act, the specific dialect spoken by these childrn constituted a distinct language barrier which, in turn, directly caused their failure to learn to read and write in school. Consequently, these children, it was argued, had been denied access to an equal education. Lawyers representing the Ann Arbor School Board, however, argued that the students' rights had not been violated. Furthermore, the school system considered Black English a

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