Sp or Ch language?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The thing is, YY is an American school where Chinese language is taught. It is not a Chinese school. If having an AA head of school and a predominantly AA student body is a problem for you please go fuck yourself.

Or, create your own ABC charter school. There is no need for YY to go without competition. Look at all the Spanish immersion schools that have popped up in the last couple of years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
It's nothing small at all. The lack of admission tests is part of the charter law, and it won't change in the next 25 years for two reasons:

* allowing an admission test at charters and not at public schools would reinforce the perception that (some) charters are actually exclusive clubs operating on the taxpayer dime. (Read any of the BASIS threads for examples of this fight.)
* DC's political class is terrified of setting children apart and calling them smarter than other kids. That's why there are no programs for gifted kids, and why the only admission-based schools are high schools.

As an aside, several posters have invoked the PA as a group that should be changing things. YY is run by its board and administrators appointed by the board. The PA exists to support the school, which has sometimes included individual parents doing pro bono legal work regarding amendments to the school's charter, but the PA has no legal standing to change anything at the Charter Board (or any other) level.

Thank you for this illuminating post, and your even handed-tone. Unfortunate situation, but at least you've taken the trouble to explain it. The PA may not have the legal standing to effect charter board outcomes, or even YY board outcomes, but focused groups of parents do have influence in DC Charter, and could surely exert more pressure to improve matters. It's just that YY wasn't supported by a Chinese community from the get go, meaning that involving one belatedly is highly unlikely.

I talk to Cantonese-speaking merchants in DC's Chinatown who chuckle when they describe how, when YY first came knocking, they convinced reps from the school that they didn't want their kids to focus on learning Mandarin. What they really didn't want were non-Chinese administrators and, yes, to deal with a slew of white and black families who judged and annoyed them. They sent their kids to cozy heritage Mandarin classes in MoCo now, and still do.

What I'd like to see are barriers between these communities broken down, however that works. Running YY as is may facilitate effective teaching of Mandarin, but it's fundamentally a lazy approach. Language learning without contending with a bothersome, insular Chinese community with much to teach outsiders, a community which includes includes everybody from waiters and street vendors to a member of the Cabinet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's nothing small at all. The lack of admission tests is part of the charter law, and it won't change in the next 25 years for two reasons:

* allowing an admission test at charters and not at public schools would reinforce the perception that (some) charters are actually exclusive clubs operating on the taxpayer dime. (Read any of the BASIS threads for examples of this fight.)
* DC's political class is terrified of setting children apart and calling them smarter than other kids. That's why there are no programs for gifted kids, and why the only admission-based schools are high schools.

As an aside, several posters have invoked the PA as a group that should be changing things. YY is run by its board and administrators appointed by the board. The PA exists to support the school, which has sometimes included individual parents doing pro bono legal work regarding amendments to the school's charter, but the PA has no legal standing to change anything at the Charter Board (or any other) level.

Thank you for this illuminating post, and your even handed-tone. Unfortunate situation, but at least you've taken the trouble to explain it. The PA may not have the legal standing to effect charter board outcomes, or even YY board outcomes, but focused groups of parents do have influence in DC Charter, and could surely exert more pressure to improve matters. It's just that YY wasn't supported by a Chinese community from the get go, meaning that involving one belatedly is highly unlikely.

I talk to Cantonese-speaking merchants in DC's Chinatown who chuckle when they describe how, when YY first came knocking, they convinced reps from the school that they didn't want their kids to focus on learning Mandarin. What they really didn't want were non-Chinese administrators and, yes, to deal with a slew of white and black families who judged and annoyed them. They sent their kids to cozy heritage Mandarin classes in MoCo now, and still do.

What I'd like to see are barriers between these communities broken down, however that works. Running YY as is may facilitate effective teaching of Mandarin, but it's fundamentally a lazy approach. Language learning without contending with a bothersome, insular Chinese community with much to teach outsiders, a community which includes includes everybody from waiters and street vendors to a member of the Cabinet.

Huh? Yu Ying is a public charter school, not a social agency, with a primary mission of providing a bilingual education to it's students. Are you seriously proposing they spend whatever their limited resources on cultural outreach with ABCs to don't have children there?

[Anonymous]

Agree wih suggestion for ABCs to start their own charter because his one was created for everyone. It's comical that anyone is supporting them given the crap YY has taken for being elitist on other threads. Behold what real elitism looks like.

[Anonymous]

Huh? Yu Ying is a public charter school, not a social agency, with a primary mission of providing a bilingual education to it's students. Are you seriously proposing they spend whatever their limited resources on cultural outreach with ABCs to don't have children there?


Russian-speaking poster here who didn't enroll my child.

The above post, this whole discussion, and the environment at YY, reminds me so much of the way I learned English at elite Moscow schools in the waning days of the Soviet Union. We had Native English-speaking teachers and learned a great deal of grammar and vocabulary from them. We would even host visiting private school groups from the US. It was only after I immigrated to this country that I realized how little I'd actually understood about American culture and values during my studies. This was because I'd hardly interacted with ordinary Americans, particularly peers or their parents, before. We had studied English on Soviet terms, which limited us. Many aspects of Western culture shocked me, and a lot of what was said to me was lost in translation for a long time.

I want my kid to learn a language from those who expose him to the good, the bad and the ugly of the culture the language is rooted in, whatever language it happens to be. If I weren't an immigrant, I might not have minded all those black and white faces at YY.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree wih suggestion for ABCs to start their own charter because his one was created for everyone. It's comical that anyone is supporting them given the crap YY has taken for being elitist on other threads. Behold what real elitism looks like.

Haven't posted since page 2, but this is out of hand. You folks just don't get it. The Russian chick does. The ABCs don't want their own charter, or support. If the parents see to it, their kids learn Chinese, and all about the culture. Chinese culture is so strong that ABCs tend to know more than you might think, meaning that the YY crowd would benefit from harnessing their expertise. Listen to them, with few exceptions, they're more than willing to stay away.

YY does resemble the Soviet model, nicely described. If you're not interested in having your kid learn the realities of the culture, which looks inward, other than from some seriously subordinate teachers who clean it up in the telling, why keep your kid in the school? You think the ABCs are bad, try some of the influential Chinese on the mainland. I've done business there in the high tech industry for a long time, which has given me ulcers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's nothing small at all. The lack of admission tests is part of the charter law, and it won't change in the next 25 years for two reasons:

* allowing an admission test at charters and not at public schools would reinforce the perception that (some) charters are actually exclusive clubs operating on the taxpayer dime. (Read any of the BASIS threads for examples of this fight.)
* DC's political class is terrified of setting children apart and calling them smarter than other kids. That's why there are no programs for gifted kids, and why the only admission-based schools are high schools.

As an aside, several posters have invoked the PA as a group that should be changing things. YY is run by its board and administrators appointed by the board. The PA exists to support the school, which has sometimes included individual parents doing pro bono legal work regarding amendments to the school's charter, but the PA has no legal standing to change anything at the Charter Board (or any other) level.

Thank you for this illuminating post, and your even handed-tone. Unfortunate situation, but at least you've taken the trouble to explain it. The PA may not have the legal standing to effect charter board outcomes, or even YY board outcomes, but focused groups of parents do have influence in DC Charter, and could surely exert more pressure to improve matters. It's just that YY wasn't supported by a Chinese community from the get go, meaning that involving one belatedly is highly unlikely.

I talk to Cantonese-speaking merchants in DC's Chinatown who chuckle when they describe how, when YY first came knocking, they convinced reps from the school that they didn't want their kids to focus on learning Mandarin. What they really didn't want were non-Chinese administrators and, yes, to deal with a slew of white and black families who judged and annoyed them. They sent their kids to cozy heritage Mandarin classes in MoCo now, and still do.

What I'd like to see are barriers between these communities broken down, however that works. Running YY as is may facilitate effective teaching of Mandarin, but it's fundamentally a lazy approach. Language learning without contending with a bothersome, insular Chinese community with much to teach outsiders, a community which includes includes everybody from waiters and street vendors to a member of the Cabinet.

So Yu Ying came knocking to get the support of the Chinese community and they sent them away for racist reasons?

As for lobbying the Council, it's enough to try to get funding parity with failing DC schools. On top of that you think YY should pursue policies to get more of the Chinese community involved, where you admit the Chinese community isn't interested?

You really are a peach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

YY does resemble the Soviet model, nicely described. If you're not interested in having your kid learn the realities of the culture, which looks inward, other than from some seriously subordinate teachers who clean it up in the telling, why keep your kid in the school? You think the ABCs are bad, try some of the influential Chinese on the mainland. I've done business there in the high tech industry for a long time, which has given me ulcers.

So to get the YY kids familiar with the culture, we should recruit ABCs with the same racist, insular attitudes from the old country who have no interest in the school and where they clearly will not fit in. OK.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous [/quote wrote:

So Yu Ying came knocking to get the support of the Chinese community and they sent them away for racist reasons?

As for lobbying the Council, it's enough to try to get funding parity with failing DC schools. On top of that you think YY should pursue policies to get more of the Chinese community involved, where you admit the Chinese community isn't interested?

I'm a white YY parent who will give the school another year to see if the English instruction improves. Hurrah for the ABC posters who tell it like it is. We haven't heard nearly enough from them until recently.

As things stand, why in the world would the Chinese community be very interested?

I don't like the fact that there are only 2 or 3 bilingual children (speaking any Chinese dialect) in my DC's grade. I'm at YY because I got lucky in the lottery (after striking out in a dozen others), my IB school sucks, and I can't afford to move, not because I'm convinced that the value-added ethnic Chinese community is welcome there.

The more you beat on Chinese parents for diplomatically explaining where they're coming from for the benefit of the rest of us, the more you help cut off YY's nose to spite its face. Cut it out, grow up or just go away. It seems that most of them already have. Sigh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

So to get the YY kids familiar with the culture, we should recruit ABCs with the same racist, insular attitudes from the old country who have no interest in the school and where they clearly will not fit in. OK.

Does it sound like the ABCs are racist, describing how hard they've tried to fight deep-rooted racism in their families on this thread?

If a mixed socioeconomic group of ethnic Chinese can't fit into an immersion school set up to teach Mandarin it's the school environment that's the problem, not the Chinese.

Shut up already about the ABCs, they're just being honest, and themselves. You're the one who comes across as mean-spirited and intolerant.

[Anonymous]

NP here--also weighing YY against another school. Could you please expand on what the problems with the Englisj instruction have been, 13:58?

Other YY parents, do you agree with 13:58's assessment?

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So to get the YY kids familiar with the culture, we should recruit ABCs with the same racist, insular attitudes from the old country who have no interest in the school and where they clearly will not fit in. OK.

Does it sound like the ABCs are racist, describing how hard they've tried to fight deep-rooted racism in their families on this thread?

If a mixed socioeconomic group of ethnic Chinese can't fit into an immersion school set up to teach Mandarin it's the school environment that's the problem, not the Chinese.

Shut up already about the ABCs, they're just being honest, and themselves. You're the one who comes across as mean-spirited and intolerant.

Have you read the posts... Yeah, many if not most of the ABCs sound racist and intolerant. Whiny, bitter, complaining when they have no connection to the school. They want preferential admissions for bilingual kids but that's not allowed by the charter board. No public charter except for LAMB which was grandfathered under a previous regime is. Not even an YY issue...

[Anonymous]

I don't agree with 13:58's whole assessment-- I do agree with part. The part I do agree with is that Many parents get into Yu Ying because it is the best of their choices (compared to poor DCPS options or other charter lottery choices)--safe; active parent body; nice facility; nice peer group, etc. They are interested in language and culture and are trying the best they can for their kids. This doesn't necessarily mean they are into Chinese culture, into learning Chinese for the long haul, have a connection to China, etc. There are many immigrants from non Asian backgrounds as well. There is a group of parents (both Chinese and non Chinese) who do have direct connections to China but they are a smaller group than your larger group just trying to educate their kid in a decent way while living in the city.

I hope they school continually works on their outreach to the Chinese community, but think they have so many other pressing issues that it takes a back seat. Finding a building, working on a middle school, trying to work on instruction, etc. etc.

I'm glad that my kids are learning Chinese and I don't expect them to be fluent or have a good accent. It is a hell of lot better than having them attend my inbound school which is in the bottom 5 performers citywide.

[Anonymous]

YY parent here who disagrees that English instruction is deficient.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:YY parent here who disagrees that English instruction is deficient.

YY parent who thinks it's OK, nothing special. My kid got a little bored in 1st and we won't stay past 2nd if he can lottery into one of the better Hill schools. We provide him with more challenge at home than YY does, particulary in math. Reading/writing instruction is better than math by a long shot, but I've heard from MS teachers (a good friend teaches math at Latin) this is the case throughout DCPS and DC Charter, even WOP.

Because of all the time spent on the Mandarin, you really have to supplement if you don't want your kid falling behind WOP, Hill and suburban peers. Also, there were some discipline problems in his 1st grade class that I caught onto rather late. Basically, there were half a dozen really rowdy kids (mostly low-income but also one or two better-off kids) who the Chinese teachers tended to let act up. Some of the kids struggle to understand these teachers, so they can get wild in class. The English teachers are stricter, but the discipline from their end can be too little, too late.

We aren't inclined to leave because of the quality of the English instruction, but it's a contributing factor. We ended up at YY mainly because our IB Hill school doesn't have middle-class families past pres. We're no longer sure that the schlep to YY is worth it for school that isn't all that rigorous when the admin team isn't very user friendly and Mandarin isn't terribly important to us. Looking ahead, I don't like how many of the families in 3rd and 4th do seem to be hiring tutors.

Good luck with your decision.