Wow. And now, the anti-white racism rears its head. "Kansas?" Really? |
What does that mean, "YY differentiates instruction and there are some combination classes"? Especially the "combination classes", what does that mean or refer to? |
| I think that there is a 4/5 and a 5/6 class. Not sure if there are combination classes in the lower grades but that might be something to check into. |
Thank you for the suggestions. Learning Mandarin only two days a weeks is not sufficient, but I am grateful for the names of weekend programs. Searching the DC International page lead me to the website for Stokes. Stokes will accept third grade students via lottery, so we will apply there since my son also has a low to moderate level of proficiency in French. I had not considered applying to 2nd grade, that could be an option, but I don't know if my child would be bored in the 2nd grade, and if the differentiated instruction would keep him challenged the entire year. My child is not gifted, but earns A across the board. |
Apply for the 2nd grade lottery at YY. They assess Mandarin and Chinese regularly so if your child tests above grade level, they can put your child into the appropriate learning group. |
*should say mandarin and english*. Oy. Their differentiation is very good
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| YY uses a responsive classroom model. No desks but tables of ~5 kids per learning group. |
This is the most bizarre post! Who ever said all kids are the same? That is not the basis of anyone's argument here. But if funds were specifically allocated to DC to fund charter schools to provide other quality options for students with the worst options, why is ok with you that the funds effectively be siphoned off to fund schools that have cut off access? Your analogies are totally flawed. It isn't about whether everyone is cut out to play football. An accurate analogy to the charter system is if a school received federal funds for their girls' sports programs, and instead used the funds to start more teams for boys. Why are you ok with money going to a school or a school system for a specific, understood by all parties purpose, and then the school/system choosing to do something different with those funds that undermines the contracted purpose? |
So your answer is to cut out access to everyone at the expense of additional resources to the school, which affects all grade levels, including the lower grades that are serving the underprivileged children?
But you can defend that to the end and still admit that there's some point where it makes no sense to put someone with no mandarin experience in a classroom otherwise full of mandarin speakers, and actually disserves that person by setting them up to fail. You can defend randomness in early-grade admission while admitting that the spot could be filled by someone who does speak Mandarin, whether because they just moved here from another state or country, or because they speak Mandarin at home, or because they have tutors (though this last seems the least likely possibility), and that the school is better poised for success for all grade levels if its enrollment is not artificially limited. To defend a policy on principle when applied to situations where it does not serve any of the values behind the policy is asinine. |
What grade does this responsive classroom model begin in? Or is it from PreK through 6th grade? |
All grades, PreK - 5th. I don't know about DCI. |
I will do just that!!!!!! |
??? I'm not defending on principle, I'm defending based on how YY actually works now. What do you mean "admit that it makes no sense to put someone with no Mandarin experience in a class full of Mandarin speakers"? YY cuts off new admissions at 2nd grade, is moving towards doing it at 1st grade (or maybe now they already do?) and has support structures in place for catching new-to-Mandarin students up - exactly to make sure that students do not start so far behind they can't catch up. The whole reason YY fought to cut off new admissions earlier twas to avoid the scenario where new students are so far behind, it is a set up to fail. You are calling something "artificially limited", when it's far from "artificial" - YY is a school set up to educate urband students in Mandarin and English. Why is a 1st or 2nd grade cut off, and supports for the new-to-Mandarin 1st or 2nd grader, "artificial" in your eyes?? It's the whole premise of the school! Under YY's current admissions policy, or DCI's where the assumption is that new students will come in with no foreign language proficiency, where would it happen that as a regular occurrence students would enter into a classroom of "Mandarin speakers" and be so far behind they can't catch up? |
Your logic circuits clearly aren't working here. Let's try again and go through your arguments... To turn your argument against selective admissions around, why are you OK with Banneker "siphoning off public funds" when they cut off access due to selective admissions? Because that's what they do. So do some other DCPS schools If you are OK with Banneker then you should be OK with any other school doing it, to include charters. And, they aren't "siphoning off money" - they are educating kids with that money. What difference does it make if the kids are in Building A with Teacher B or if they are in Building X with Teacher Y - they are all getting taught. It's not as though money is being evaporated off into the ether. And where do you get this bizarre complaint about schools doing something different than what they agreed to? Nobody here said anything about that. The agreed-upon purpose of Ellington is a school for the arts. The agreed upon purpose of Phelps is construction and architecture. The agreed-upon purpose of St. Colettas is to serve special needs. The agreed-upon purpose of Yu Ying is Chinese immersion. And, that's what they all do. The agreed-upon purpose of one school can be different from the agreed upon purpose of another school, and that's fine. That's why they have charters and oversight. |
OP, if your child attended Stokes,they could eventually go to DCI and pick up the Mandarin again there. |