Black English and the Task of Reading

Abstract

Both parents and educators have been greatly concerned about the poor reading achievement evident among many black urban youths. National reports that black children score lower on reading achievement tests than their white counterparts with the same socioeconomic and residential status have increased this concern. Cohen (1969) reported that, in New York City, 83% of disadvantaged black children and 45% of disadvantaged white children were already one to three years retarded in reading by grade three. Similarly, Coleman, Campbell, Hobson, McPartland, Modd, Weinfeld, and York (1966) indicated that average black northeastern metropolitan students at grade six were 1.8 years behind average white northeastern metropolitan students in reading comprehension as measured by the School Survey Tests. In an attempt to discover the underlying cause or causes of the poor reading performance of black inner-city children, several explanations have been suggested. Some have argued that these children show a cultural, cognitive, and/or linguistic deficit resulting from either genetic pathology (Jensen, 1969) or from an impoverished environment (Bereiter & Englemann, 1966; Bernstein, 1961; Blank & Solomon, 1968; Clark & Richards, 1966; Deutsch, Brown, Deutsch, Goldstein, John, Katz, Levinson, Peisach, & Witeman, 1967). Regardless of the etiology, many educators and psychologists have held that many black children come to school with a deficient language system that militates against making progress in academic subjects, especially reading. Intensive language remediation is therefore considered a prerequisite to the task of learning to read. Language programs such as DISTAR (Engelmann & Osborn, 1970) reflect this perspective.