Amid all the furor over the Oakland school board's decision to recognize ebonics as a distinct language, one key point seems to have been lost: The goal is to help black students master standard English.

For the second day running, radio talk shows were abuzz over the board's unanimous vote, and anyone tuning in could easily have come away with the impression that Oakland is giving up on conventional English and diverting black kids into classes taught in slang.

``It's saying in the most racist way that black kids are stupid and they can't learn English so let's not bother with that,'' said Jim Boulet, executive director of the national organization English First. ``These kids deserve a little better than the latest social engineering scheme.''

Oakland school officials, a bit surprised by the ferocity of the nationwide response, were going to great pains yesterday to explain what they have in mind.

``This is about improving English proficiency skills,'' said Superintendent Carolyn Getridge, emphasizing that no classes in ebonics are planned and that all students will be expected to learn the kind of English used in American workplaces.

The resolution adopted Wednesday by the board is largely a symbolic manifesto declaring ebonics, or black English, a distinct language with African roots and agreeing to use it as a tool, districtwide, to improve student performance.

The Oakland School Board was to meet this morning, and Board Member Toni Cook said she expects the board to discuss how to respond to the national uproar. The discussion may include whether to clarify some of the language in the resolution that is causing confusion.

The new policy is part of a broader effort to stop blaming children and start demanding more accountability from teachers and administrators in a district where the average grade among African American students is a Dplus, said Alan Young, the district's director of state and federal programs.

``If people are not willing to accept ebonics as a second language,'' Young said, ``then they should at least accept that African American students are not achieving at the level they need to, and we need to do something about it.''

Just what the district will do remains to be seen.

District leaders said they might at some point seek federal bilingual funds -- which federal officials say would probably be denied -- but for now, the resolution merely instructs administrators to come up with a plan.

One approach now being tried in about two dozen Oakland schools is training teachers to recognize and respect ebonics as the everyday language of many African American students and, instead of declaring them wrong when they use it, helping them translate to standard English.

``We have found these programs to be more effective with our African American students,'' Young said, ``and the idea would be to offer them across the district.''

Even without a plan, though, the very notion of legitimizing ebonics and somehow incorporating it into the curriculum is drawing sharp attacks from many quarters.

In one of about 120 e-mail messages to The Chronicle's feedback line, Margo Koller of Tucson, Ariz., said she is glad she moved from Oakland four years ago. ``We are appalled,'' she wrote. ``They are creating a subculture that will never learn any kind of responsibility to society.''

BLACK OPPOSITION

Criticism came from some prominent blacks as well. ``I think it's tragic,'' said Ward Connerly, the University of California regent who led the successful campaign for Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative action initiative that passed last month.

``These are not kids who came from Africa last year or last generation even,'' Connerly said. ``These are kids that have had every opportunity to acclimate themselves to American society, and they have gotten themselves into this trap of speaking this language -- this slang, really -- that people can't understand. Now we're going to legitimize it.''

To many familiar with the long debate over black English, however, the shrill response to the Oakland policy smacks of racism.

``The whole thing has really gotten overblown because people are jumping on the racist bandwagon,'' said Robert Allen, senior editor of the Black Scholar, the nation's largest black scholarly journal. ``They're really misconstruing what the school board is trying to do and letting their minds run wild.''

LINGUISTIC CONFUSION

Among linguists, meanwhile, the question of ebonics' standing is hardly a settled matter.

Ebonics -- more often referred to as black English or African American English -- is widely recognized among experts as a distinct system of speech and syntax, a linguistic legacy of slavery and years of cultural isolation. While some linguists consider it a language, most do not.

``Black English is a dialect -- it is not a separate language,'' said John McWhorter, a professor of linguistics and African American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

``It's black people shooting themselves in the foot,'' McWhorter said of the Oakland policy. ``They're implying that black people are incapable of learning a language which is so close to theirs that it's not a different language.''

John Baugh, a Stanford University professor of education and linguistics who is currently a visiting scholar at Swarthmore College, sees more value in the district's policy.

``Given the large number of African Americans in the Oakland school district, I'm sympathetic to their desire to do something,'' he said, ``even though I might quibble with their linguistic terminology.''