Yu Ying Lottery on Apr 7, anyone attend?

[Anonymous]

we applied for the lottery this year, but i was surprised to learn that the percentage of "native" speakers (that is, parents use chinese as first language at home) was alarmingly low - i believe the director mary schaffer told me less than 5%. it made me think twice about the school.

[Anonymous]

If you are not serious about supporting your child's language acquisition and/or your child cannot handle the advanced pace of the school then this is not the right environment for your family. To succeed at Yu Ying the students have to learn twice the material that regular DCPS schools are teaching. And if they cannot master Chinese by 3rd grade they are going to fall too far behind to ever catch up. This is just the reality of this curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we applied for the lottery this year, but i was surprised to learn that the percentage of "native" speakers (that is, parents use chinese as first language at home) was alarmingly low - i believe the director mary schaffer told me less than 5%. it made me think twice about the school.

Ind
The entire Asian population in the District of Columbia is less than 5%. You must then reduce the Asian population of every Asian ethnicity (Korean, Indian, Vietnamese, etc) to get to your Chinese speaking Mandarin population in the District of Columbia. The numbers are not there. The children attending public schools who speak Mandarin at home along with English, traditionally enter Strom. D.C. is not NYC or San Fran with large Mandarin speaking populations. Yu Ying's numbers are on par with the demographics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we applied for the lottery this year, but i was surprised to learn that the percentage of "native" speakers (that is, parents use chinese as first language at home) was alarmingly low - i believe the director mary schaffer told me less than 5%. it made me think twice about the school.

I am the op of the post above.

We ended up choosing to enroll our child in a local private with a reputation for vigorous academics, as well as a strong chinese language program (beginning in elementary and continuing through middle & high school), because we - like penguinsix mentioned - couldn't be sure that the academics at Yu Ying are a proven quantity (yet). A greater percentage of native speakers at Yu Ying might have been a tipping point for us when it came time to make a decision.

We too are a bi-lingual family and we decided that we could supplement Mandarin acquisition through Saturday school programs and social events within the local Chinese community. Yes, our community is small in DC, but I know there are larger populations of Mandarin speakers in Rockville, Arlington, Potomac, who for various reasons, have also chosen NOT to seek out Yu Ying's program. Which is all to say that I'm not sure the small percentage of native speakers at Yu Ying are simply a matter of demographics.

[Anonymous]

We ended up choosing to enroll our child in a local private with a reputation for vigorous academics, as well as a strong chinese language program (beginning in elementary and continuing through middle & high school), because we - like penguinsix mentioned - couldn't be sure that the academics at Yu Ying are a proven quantity (yet). A greater percentage of native speakers at Yu Ying might have been a tipping point for us when it came time to make a decision.

We too are a bi-lingual family and we decided that we could supplement Mandarin acquisition through Saturday school programs and social events within the local Chinese community. Yes, our community is small in DC, but I know there are larger populations of Mandarin speakers in Rockville, Arlington, Potomac, who for various reasons, have also chosen NOT to seek out Yu Ying's program. Which is all to say that I'm not sure the small percentage of native speakers at Yu Ying are simply a matter of demographics.


Residents of Rockville, Arlington and Potomac are not entitled to attend Washington Yu Ying. It is a publc charter school for residents of the District of Columbia. If Yu Ying had accepted students who resided outside of the city, Yu Ying would have violated the law. The waiting list for DC residents to attend Yu Ying is extremely long. For the District of Columbia the demographics is a matter for Yu Ying.

[Anonymous]

PP--How could the Mandarin speakers in Potomac, Arlington, Rockville, etc. "seek out Yu Ying's program". It is only for DC residents--it would seem to me incredibly dumb to move to DC just so you could play the very poor odds of Yu Ying's lottery.

I agree with you about the academics though--they are unproven. I have a child at Yu Ying and contrary to a previous poster, the school has never made it clear to me what they will do with students who can't keep up in Chinese--start failing them? Counsel them out? Yu Ying has a broad group of middle and upper class parents at the school, so I am guessing that test scores will be good for those groups. It also serves a significant population of low income children and I am unclear how Yu Ying will do in making sure those children are successful.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, PPs, my mistake, you are both right. I didn't realize that non DC residents were not entitled to apply / attend - it's amazing that we survived this application season at all, given my iffy understanding of district rules and regulations.

I was trying to offer was our perspective, as a bi-lingual (Mandarin & English) family, on why we chose to go with another school - with a proven reputation for Chinese language instruction - over the immersion program at Yu Ying.

Sorry if I offended anyone with my post!

[Anonymous]

My son attends Yu Ying, and I must say it is truly a world school! My son is in second grade and I am amazed with what he is learning. I actually had an in depth conversation about the recent oil spill with my son. The second graders, that will take the DC-CAS, are extremely bright. I think alot of people will be amazed when next year's DC-CAS scores come out.

[Anonymous]

Hello, our son is maybe going to attend Yu Ying in the fall and I wanted to ask somebody from the forum ( because I see very interesting postings and also from parents whose children are attending the school) if they can share some of their thoughts about the school and the program. Do the kids from first/second grade bring homework at home? How are we parents supposed to help them with Chinese homework if we don't know the language? My main concern is since nobody in our family speaks Chinese ( although we are a bilingual family and our kids are trilingual - since we lived oversees for couple of years) is how am I going to be able to help him with anything from school that is in Chinese. He has been taking Chinese lessons for the last 6 months and its been really difficult to help...Please advise. Thank you!

[Anonymous]

16:38 -- I hope so, I hope the test scores are good. But the DC CAS assumes total instruction time on English (reading, comprehension, vocabulary, etc.) and math (a LOT of story problems and English terms ["degree" "percentage" "angle" "perpendicular"]), not characters and phonetics in a language unrelated to English. YOU might be surprised at the DC CAS scores for your school. It's terribly depressing to have your children (and their cohort) evaluated only on 50% of what they are learning in school as if it were 100% of what they are learning. It makes the bilingual aspect of their education so undervalued.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:16:38 -- I hope so, I hope the test scores are good. But the DC CAS assumes total instruction time on English (reading, comprehension, vocabulary, etc.) and math (a LOT of story problems and English terms ["degree" "percentage" "angle" "perpendicular"]), not characters and phonetics in a language unrelated to English. YOU might be surprised at the DC CAS scores for your school. It's terribly depressing to have your children (and their cohort) evaluated only on 50% of what they are learning in school as if it were 100% of what they are learning. It makes the bilingual aspect of their education so undervalued.

If your kids is getting a good education, who cares what the CAS scores say?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a child at Yu Ying and contrary to a previous poster, the school has never made it clear to me what they will do with students who can't keep up in Chinese--start failing them? Counsel them out? Yu Ying has a broad group of middle and upper class parents at the school, so I am guessing that test scores will be good for those groups. It also serves a significant population of low income children and I am unclear how Yu Ying will do in making sure those children are successful.

Aren't charters required to keep kids in school even if they are failing, like DCPS? Is counselling out voluntary, i.e. parents could say no, unless there is a discipline problem? I've heard this is a growing challenge for charters where "founding" families leave in upper grades and schools have to admit whomever applies, including kids who may have failed out of other schools.

Seems odd that they can't give parent a straight answer on this. Or at least their best guess based on other charters.

Thank you to YY parents for weighing in.

[Anonymous]

A feature that YY shares with LAMB is that past a certain grade no new students are admitted. LAMB accepts only preS 3 and preK 4 students. YY accepts students up to and including 2nd grade. After that, the class is closed. This addresses some of the problem of needing to "take all comers". It creates another problem, that of shrinking class size as kids drop out (for whatever reason -- family moves, prefer a larger school, prefer a school without Chinese immersion, kicked out for discipline issues), and the class cannot be replenished.

I have heard YY administrators say that the last entrance year may be moved even lower, like K or 1st.

The reason is that after a class has had several years of instruction in Chinese, it is not possible to "catch up" new students to the point where they can function in the Chinese classroom for half of their instructional time.

Students fluent in Chinese can't be admitted to fill the vacant slots because the DC Charter law does not allow screening based on any criterion (accept sibling & founders) for admission. So Oyster, which is a DCPS school, can screen for OOB admission to upper grades. English dominant students can be admitted if they pass a Spanish assessment. YY does not have that option.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hello, our son is maybe going to attend Yu Ying in the fall and I wanted to ask somebody from the forum ( because I see very interesting postings and also from parents whose children are attending the school) if they can share some of their thoughts about the school and the program. Do the kids from first/second grade bring homework at home? How are we parents supposed to help them with Chinese homework if we don't know the language? My main concern is since nobody in our family speaks Chinese ( although we are a bilingual family and our kids are trilingual - since we lived oversees for couple of years) is how am I going to be able to help him with anything from school that is in Chinese. He has been taking Chinese lessons for the last 6 months and its been really difficult to help...Please advise. Thank you!

I have two children at Yu Ying. Homework is meant to reinforce what is learned in the classroom, so really it should not be anything new. Also, the children are given a homework packet for the week on Monday and it goes back on Friday. Teachers can be emailed if there is something that the parents do not understand. I am not a native speaker and have found that it is very easy to look characters up online. I also find I pick up words from the kids (although I am always being told by my kids that my tones are terrible).

What is really cool is to hear my kids on playdates and even sometimes with one another use a mixture of English and Chinese.

[Anonymous]

To the PP regarding helping students when you don't speak chinese:
We have that problem. None of of in the house speak it, but we now have two at Yu Ying. I have found myself learning more and more in order to help out with the basics, but they have already outpaced my feeble attempts by a long shot! The Chinese teachers are great with communicating directions and things like that. There is also afternoon homework help in both Chinese and English during the after school program (REEF) and that has helped enormously. They are also building a rather impressive collection of online resources from scratch.