In response to the problem of high rates of referral of black students to special education and related services due to their use of non-standard English (African American Vernacular English, AAVE), a project was undertaken to assess and address the issue in Baltimore (Maryland) public schools' special education services. An ethnographic study of classroom interaction indicated that students used standard and non-standard English in patterned ways, suggesting that a more important issue is the infrequent opportunities for extended academic talk, the linguistic register of success at school and beyond. Resulting efforts include the following: research with speech/language pathologists that has developed a regionally-normed profile of AAVE for more accurate student assessment; training of teachers in interactive instructional strategies to enhance academic talk; and development of teacher training materials and curricular materials for students designed to recontextualize language and dialect varieties as cultural resources rather than social problems. (MSE)