the DC International Public Charter School (DCI)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My guess is that many parents who don't speak the immersion language, or necessarily know much about the culture behind it, are threatened by those who do and, hence, don't want to see bilingual kids being given preferential treatment in the admissions process. Really too bad when you consider that academics who study bilingual immersion programs (e.g. Canadian educators looking at French programs) have found that the "two-way" immersion model, where kids learn language from one another as much as from instructors, is more effective than the "one-way" model, where kids only learn the immersion language from teachers (e.g. Yu Ying).

Bad guess. I'm a non-Chinese YY parent and I'd love to see a separate application process for native speakers. The more native speakers we can get in the classrooms, the stronger our kids' Chinese will be. I do not, however, believe the law allows is.

Another YY parent who feels the same, though I would point out that YY is a Mandarin school. I see no reason to offer preferential admission to Cantonese speakers, even if it were legal. Most of the vitriol I see on these boards from bilingual families seems to favor preferential treatment for speakers of any Chinese dialect, which I do not agree with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My guess is that many parents who don't speak the immersion language, or necessarily know much about the culture behind it, are threatened by those who do and, hence, don't want to see bilingual kids being given preferential treatment in the admissions process. Really too bad when you consider that academics who study bilingual immersion programs (e.g. Canadian educators looking at French programs) have found that the "two-way" immersion model, where kids learn language from one another as much as from instructors, is more effective than the "one-way" model, where kids only learn the immersion language from teachers (e.g. Yu Ying).

Bad guess. I'm a non-Chinese YY parent and I'd love to see a separate application process for native speakers. The more native speakers we can get in the classrooms, the stronger our kids' Chinese will be. I do not, however, believe the law allows is.

Another YY parent who feels the same, though I would point out that YY is a Mandarin school. I see no reason to offer preferential admission to Cantonese speakers, even if it were legal. Most of the vitriol I see on these boards from bilingual families seems to favor preferential treatment for speakers of any Chinese dialect, which I do not agree with.

Ditto. I'm also not a native Chinese speaker (I'm not a Chinese speaker at all - Mandarin or Cantonese!), but I also would think theoretically it would be great to have native speaking Mandarin children in YY. But I also understand that part of being a charter means not having entrance criteria beyond entering the lottery, and if you can't test for language skill level, how do you have an immersion/bilingual program where kids are entering in the older grades with little or no language experience? What is the point, beyond just being a school that offers some kids an aggressive language program in later years but you can't learn with the ones who are native speakers or been learning since Pre-K?

I'm not threatened at all, but I don't see the point in pushing a policy that the current charter rules don't allow. Here's an idea - when you get the policy changed, get back to us and we'll work together to get in native speakers at any grade to fill vacant spots!

Here's a question though - if middle school or later admissions were allowed to an immersion or even bilingual school, would native speakers (of any language) have to also test at a certain level in English? Because if the assumption is that high school is too late to teach an English speaker a new language that they can also be instructed in other languages in, why would we assume you can teach a non-English speaking student other high school topics in English?

[Anonymous]

Testing for anything even English proficiency isn't allowed for charters. A test in magnet charter school simply is not going to happen anytime soon.

[Anonymous]

Is there a website for the dci?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Similar to Oyster, wouldn't you have to have a written/oral test in the immersion language to qualify for entry? You can't just have English-only kids plopped into a middle school with immersion tracks. So very few kids would qualify outside of Stokes, Oyster and LAMB, etc.

Even if there are true "immersion" tracks at DCI it is perfectly plausible to program intro level language offerings for newcomers to language study who lottery into the school's available spaces. The model for this is the private Washington International School Structure, which organizes students into an immersion "humanities/social studies" class in the target language for at-grade level literate students, an intermediate level and an intro level. While DCI may not accomodate with all those bells and whistles, I'm sure they will give thoughtful attention to how to support newcomers and third language acquisition among the bilinguals. I am confident there will be opportunities for students to join DCI from a lottery and to benefit from language offerings tailored to their level. Without that, the model is a non-starter because there is no way to maintain necessary enrollment goals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My guess is that many parents who don't speak the immersion language, or necessarily know much about the culture behind it, are threatened by those who do and, hence, don't want to see bilingual kids being given preferential treatment in the admissions process. Really too bad when you consider that academics who study bilingual immersion programs (e.g. Canadian educators looking at French programs) have found that the "two-way" immersion model, where kids learn language from one another as much as from instructors, is more effective than the "one-way" model, where kids only learn the immersion language from teachers (e.g. Yu Ying).

Bad guess. I'm a non-Chinese YY parent and I'd love to see a separate application process for native speakers. The more native speakers we can get in the classrooms, the stronger our kids' Chinese will be. I do not, however, believe the law allows is.

Another YY parent who feels the same, though I would point out that YY is a Mandarin school. I see no reason to offer preferential admission to Cantonese speakers, even if it were legal. Most of the vitriol I see on these boards from bilingual families seems to favor preferential treatment for speakers of any Chinese dialect, which I do not agree with.

Folks, to clarify -- Chinese has lots of dialects, of which Mandarin and Cantonese are the two most well known in the West.
ALL dialects use the same Chinese characters.
Cantonese-speaking students tend to pick up Mandarin very quickly. The characters are the same, the grammar and structure are similar.

To further clarify -- not all kids who speak Chinese are ethnically Chinese. Some are from mixed families. Others have lived a few years in China or Taiwan with their families and learned the language that way. Still others are from overseas communities all around the world which have heritage language speakers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Similar to Oyster, wouldn't you have to have a written/oral test in the immersion language to qualify for entry? You can't just have English-only kids plopped into a middle school with immersion tracks. So very few kids would qualify outside of Stokes, Oyster and LAMB, etc.

Even if there are true "immersion" tracks at DCI it is perfectly plausible to program intro level language offerings for newcomers to language study who lottery into the school's available spaces. The model for this is the private Washington International School Structure, which organizes students into an immersion "humanities/social studies" class in the target language for at-grade level literate students, an intermediate level and an intro level. While DCI may not accomodate with all those bells and whistles, I'm sure they will give thoughtful attention to how to support newcomers and third language acquisition among the bilinguals. I am confident there will be opportunities for students to join DCI from a lottery and to benefit from language offerings tailored to their level. Without that, the model is a non-starter because there is no way to maintain necessary enrollment goals.

Seems to me you're missing one of the key points to this being a joint venture between 3 or 4 feeder schools: the point being, if you assume attrition and know you can't screen/test for language comprehension levels because you're a charter, having a certain number of feeder schools that feed into this middle and high school may very well provide the "numbers" you need to keep a middle and high school going, without losing what - given again that they can't test for language level of new incoming students - is a very specific educational model that requires consistency throughout the school years after the last entry grade.

If this was just YY or just Stokes, you'd be right, with attrition how could they maintain the numbers? But with 4 feeder schools, why do you doubt they'd be able to keep the overall level of enrollment where it needs to be, and they'd just need to figure out within the school what the language immersion looks like with 3 (currently) languages included in the school.

So inother words, one ofthe whole points of this proposal is for them to be able to do this exactly because they do NOT want to take kids in later grades if they can't test for language level of new students. This gets them a middle and high school withough compromising their models.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Similar to Oyster, wouldn't you have to have a written/oral test in the immersion language to qualify for entry? You can't just have English-only kids plopped into a middle school with immersion tracks. So very few kids would qualify outside of Stokes, Oyster and LAMB, etc.

Even if there are true "immersion" tracks at DCI it is perfectly plausible to program intro level language offerings for newcomers to language study who lottery into the school's available spaces. The model for this is the private Washington International School Structure, which organizes students into an immersion "humanities/social studies" class in the target language for at-grade level literate students, an intermediate level and an intro level. While DCI may not accomodate with all those bells and whistles, I'm sure they will give thoughtful attention to how to support newcomers and third language acquisition among the bilinguals. I am confident there will be opportunities for students to join DCI from a lottery and to benefit from language offerings tailored to their level. Without that, the model is a non-starter because there is no way to maintain necessary enrollment goals.

Have you looked at WIS lately? Maybe they once had an intro level for older grades, but currently part of their selection criteria is language "assessment" for older incoming students, and they do not admit those with no proficiency in their choice language. Don't they expect all graduates to test for the IB diploma? How can you enter as an 8th or 9th grader and develop the proficiency you'd need by 12 grade to succeed in the subjects taught in the 2nd language as well as master that 2nd language enough to pass the IB diploma test? WIS is not an example of what you're suggesting is possible. Indeed, are there any examples of what you're saying? Because it doesn't make sense that it could work in a school serious about graduating IB diploma holders. Not without testing anyway, which we've already established DC charters can't do!

[Anonymous]

DCI as a school will offer MULTIPLE languages. Students can and will enter its grades. Most DCI students will graduate having studied at least 3 languages and will be fluent in at least 2

For example, a Yu Ying student might have excellent Chinese by grade 7 but no exposure to Spanish. He'll start Spanish as a third language.

Meanwhile, a student from LAMB might be bilingual English/Spanish but have no exposure to Chinese. She can get that as soon as she starts at DCI.

Having multiple languages makes it unnecessary to test students or worry about new students starting at a disadvantage. All students will start a "new" language at some point in DCI.

DCI will, of course, be a language-focused charter. A student with no interest or aptitude for foreign languages would probably want to look elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

All the feeders have their main entry yr at preK-3, preK-4 and only accept new students to replace students who leave until 2nd grade. If you look at the proposal, DCI estimates they will take around 20 new students total for grades 6-9 a year. This is based on the estimate that less than 2/3s of students from the feeders come to DCI. Probably an underestimate and either way, DCI will remain primarily a middle and high school for kids who entered the feeder schools as 3-4 yr olds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All the feeders have their main entry yr at preK-3, preK-4 and only accept new students to replace students who leave (until 2nd grade for YY, no new students for LAMB after prek4). If you look at the proposal, DCI estimates they will take around 20 new students total for grades 6-9 a year. This is based on the estimate that less than 2/3s of students from the feeders come to DCI. Probably an underestimate and either way, DCI will remain primarily a middle and high school for kids who entered the feeder schools as 3-4 yr olds.

Fixed .

[Anonymous]

All the feeders have their main entry yr at preK-3, preK-4 and only accept new students to replace students who leave until 2nd grade. If you look at the proposal, DCI estimates they will take around 20 new students total for grades 6-9 a year. This is based on the estimate that less than 2/3s of students from the feeders come to DCI. Probably an underestimate and either way, DCI will remain primarily a middle and high school for kids who entered the feeder schools as 3-4 yr olds.

Time will tell whether the estimates are correct. Until then, it will be a wait and see.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

All the feeders have their main entry yr at preK-3, preK-4 and only accept new students to replace students who leave until 2nd grade. If you look at the proposal, DCI estimates they will take around 20 new students total for grades 6-9 a year. This is based on the estimate that less than 2/3s of students from the feeders come to DCI. Probably an underestimate and either way, DCI will remain primarily a middle and high school for kids who entered the feeder schools as 3-4 yr olds.

Time will tell whether the estimates are correct. Until then, it will be a wait and see.

Time will tell but I think the estimate for the number of kids from the feeders who continue at DCI for middle and high school are low. There simply aren't many alternatives for language, none for Mandarin/YY, and no GT that siphon kids off like MoCo and Fairfax. Also, the IB degree is enough of a carrot to keep upper middle class, professional families like ours who had planned on leaving for private second thoughts about leaving. We are at one of the feeders and the school is amazing not only the education/immersion but the sense of community and diversity. Expect DCI to be the same.

[Anonymous]

No doubt the quality of education will be high. However, Washington DC is a high-turnover town. People's average stay here is around 3.5 years. So even if DCI is the best school inside the beltway (which it will be) there will still be lots of attrition. Thus the need to bring new students in at each grade level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCI as a school will offer MULTIPLE languages. Students can and will enter its grades. Most DCI students will graduate having studied at least 3 languages and will be fluent in at least 2

For example, a Yu Ying student might have excellent Chinese by grade 7 but no exposure to Spanish. He'll start Spanish as a third language.

Meanwhile, a student from LAMB might be bilingual English/Spanish but have no exposure to Chinese. She can get that as soon as she starts at DCI.

Having multiple languages makes it unnecessary to test students or worry about new students starting at a disadvantage. All students will start a "new" language at some point in DCI.

DCI will, of course, be a language-focused charter. A student with no interest or aptitude for foreign languages would probably want to look elsewhere.

Oh man, oh man, oh man, oh man, oh man... I SO WANT Sela to beg, borrow, or steal a way into this school.