I'm interested in knowing more about Ebonics and the performance of African-American students in the classroom. Any recommendation?
As a social problem, I have heard nothing about Ebonics for a long time.
Many educators faced with students who speak a dialect of English that is not closely related to "Standard English," have adopted the idea that speaking a local or social dialect is OK, but one also needs a "Money Language" or "Green Speech" (based on American money being green), or some other similar term. In essence, I think this has always been the strategy, but the social outcry of a generation had to be met with some innovation to pose the task appropriately.
I read the article found by Tatiana (thank you), and as a linguist, I do not find it convincing. I hold that Ebonics (or AAVE) is a dialect of English. I further hold, as the article explains, that dialects are not somehow inferior systems grammatically to other dialects, including the standard dialect. Indeed, I do not find Standard English inferior to "Ebonic" for not having an overt frequentative or habitual marker in the auxiliary. They are just different. Socially, however, speaking in a way that the people who have the money speak has its social advantages, and that is the point of standardization.
If this is still of interest, then there's a chapter on Ebonics in Milroy and Milroy's most recent edition of 'Authority in Language'.
There is still considerable discussion about African American English (aka Ebonics) although this is taking place in the research literature rather than the communities of educational practitioners. However, this is some activity insofar as creating "research based" interventions that is intended to help prevent reading difficulties for young African American children living in poverty. ToggleTalk® is a new, federally-funded supplemental K-1 language awareness/code switching program developed by researchers at the University of Michigan over the past three years. At the moment, the researchers are looking for urban schools in which to field test this curriculum and seeking experts in the field to evaluate it. Although I have not seen or reviewed the curricular material, so I can not vouch for it, one of my colleagues met the researchers who are working with this curriculum and has asked me if I would be interested in reviewing the material
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