ALL languages do that as long as they aren't standardized. That's how dialects (and new languages) come into existence. All of them.

It's almost as if the degree and kind of change is incredibly important to the discussion. Appalachian hasn't changed a fraction as much as AAVE has since the 70s.

In the end, whether it's a dialect or not is entirely beside the point. It's not something that we should be promoting. And while everyone here will call me racist for it, there is a good reason: There is an achievement gap.

Washington completed a four-year study of almost 1,000 low-income elementary-school students in a southern city—the most extensive study ever of the dialect’s role in education—which led her to a similar conclusion. Strikingly, she discovered that African American students’ lagging growth in reading was accounted for almost entirely by the low scores of the students who speak the heaviest dialect. And location mattered: The majority of kids in the city she studied, Washington found, use a regional variety of AAE that is especially far from standard English. This suggests to her that children who speak one of the dialect’s “really dense” varieties are having an experience in the classroom not unlike that of, say, native Spanish speakers.

Julie Washington is taking this an arguing "we should teach schools to understand their dialect and teach them in this dialect" but this is insanity. The majority of the highly achieving world uses standard English. Does it make sense to try to create basically "Spanish class" for AAVE and treat AAVE as second language speakers as English speakers? Or does it make more sense to promote literacy and fluency in the language that will best serve the lifetime needs of these children

I actually enjoy listening to AAVE. I don't hate it at all. But letting parents teach their kids a dialect which puts them in a position where they can't learn in the same sphere as peers across the country and reach the same levels of achievement is a massive disservice.

Everyone is so preoccupied with "respecting the dialect" and cultural acceptance that they ignore people might actually be ok with that but at the same time say "you should still be making sure your kids can excel in a much more meaningful language environment. Not meaningful in a "your culture is worse" kind of way. In a "this will help you achieve more success kind of way".

Let me put it this way: dual language kids can read that book listed in Washington's anecdote in English. Why? Because their parents taught them Spanish/Japanese/Korean AND English and both were a priority to be "right". But AAVE is not seen as a second language. This is problematic.