This paper examines and evaluates 11 ERIC documents dealing with the manner and extent to which nonstandard dialects differ from standard English. The relative importance of each document to the issue is implicit in the comments concerning that article. The author presents and explains the deficit and difference models of explicating language varieties. Before actually evaluating the ERIC articles he discusses briefly the basic assumptions about the nature of language with which the deficit model is in conflict. Special notation is made of the articles which the author feels are of crucial importance. (DO)