Why does everyone prioritize language immersion?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because the challenges of immersion study deters most parents of FARMs students from applying to charters, unless they speak the target language at home (Spanish).

With immersion in the mix, you get an overwhelmingly SES student bodies at a few charters (e.g. YuYing, 10% FARMs) like at JKLM, Brent etc.

Also, immersion adds extra challenge in a city without formal GT programs.

Immersion works to get high SES parents what they want when they can't afford Upper NW or the priciest Cap Hill real estate. Few will admit this but that's the story.

Total BS.

Pathway through to HS has become a strong reason. Since no other charter has this.

Except Haynes.
And Cap City.
And KIPP.
And Friendship.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because the challenges of immersion study deters most parents of FARMs students from applying to charters, unless they speak the target language at home (Spanish).

With immersion in the mix, you get an overwhelmingly SES student bodies at a few charters (e.g. YuYing, 10% FARMs) like at JKLM, Brent etc.

Also, immersion adds extra challenge in a city without formal GT programs.

Immersion works to get high SES parents what they want when they can't afford Upper NW or the priciest Cap Hill real estate. Few will admit this but that's the story.

But the SES case you are making isn’t playing out at DCB, MV or Stokes. And only Oyster is a wealthy school among the DCPS dual language schools.

[Anonymous]

Not everyone prioritizes language immersion for school. We are teaching our kids another language, but don’t see the schools as high priority. The language immersion program boosters tend to be overly zealous and not easy to reason with. Especially the ones that think that non-immersion school kids are stupid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's how you avoid the stupid, unmotivated kids in the general program.

+1

Because it's the only way to go to a "good" elementary school in DC.

OK this is offensive and ridiculous. Stupid and unmotivated kids? Come on. If you must be insulting, these kids can be in any language.

But my answer is, I have always worked/studied internationally whenever possible, and am well aware of the advantages of learning languages early on as well as how common it is globally for people to grow up with multiple languages. I thought it was because others are like me, in global DC. That's for those coming from US, monolingual.

NP and I agree with the first 2. Many parents aren’t willing to put in the work for their child to become bilingual. This board loves to pick on YY, but I’ve heard some really poor French coming from students here who have studied it for 5+ years. They are hardly ahead of kids who picked it up in middle school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because the challenges of immersion study deters most parents of FARMs students from applying to charters, unless they speak the target language at home (Spanish).

With immersion in the mix, you get an overwhelmingly SES student bodies at a few charters (e.g. YuYing, 10% FARMs) like at JKLM, Brent etc.

Also, immersion adds extra challenge in a city without formal GT programs.

Immersion works to get high SES parents what they want when they can't afford Upper NW or the priciest Cap Hill real estate. Few will admit this but that's the story.

OP here, and I agree that parents, consciously of not, use the immersion screen to narrow down to school with "people like them." You start with this giant list of of schools and you have to make sense of it somehow.

I just find it interesting that now that my family has settled at our school, all the things I thought were so important really weren't that important. And the things I didn't consider have turned out to be way more important than I thought. But when I try to share these insights with others going through the process, it falls on deaf ears. Maybe someone tried to share wisdom with me when I was going through it and I didn't hear it either.

I guess in the end, at this time of year, I'm struck by all the hand wringing. School choice is in many ways a burden and creates endless opportunities for parents to feel like they aren't doing the best for their kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not everyone prioritizes language immersion for school. We are teaching our kids another language, but don’t see the schools as high priority. The language immersion program boosters tend to be overly zealous and not easy to reason with. Especially the ones that think that non-immersion school kids are stupid.

+1

My husband speaks five languages and is actually against sending our kid to an immersion elementary. We value learning other languages, but immersion is not always the best way, and it's certainly not the only way, to do that. There are trade-offs with an immersion school, especially if you don't speak the language that your kids are being taught in. I feel like, while there are certainly benefits to immersion, some parents are just on the bandwagon because it's trendy, others are using it as a proxy for school quality, etc. I think that you have to consider all the factors--instructional methods and quality, commute/convenience, the benefits of a neighborhood school, etc., and decide whether a given immersion school is what's best for your actual kid.

[Anonymous]

OP, if you're really sold on having your kid learn another language (and it sounds like you're not at this point), and you don't speak one at home, there are other ways. Some schools offer multiple language classes weekly during the day or after school, you can put kids Saturday classes, immersion summer camp, etc.

[Anonymous]

In many places in the world people are taught the native language and English without even blinking because essentially you HAVE to know English to be successful. I can't tell you how many people I work with that have 3-4 languages with various levels of fluency and I'm frankly jealous. The language immersion boom just recognizing that the US is way behind in this and to learn languages best, you must start young. I didn't start language until 9th grade at public school- got to AP level, but would not even come close to calling myself fluent. Then switched languages in college (dumb choice, but oh well)- studied abroad, took the most advanced language class while abroad and again, wouldn't deem myself fluent in that language either and have all but lost it now 10 years later. I want better for my kids. My 18 month old daughter has a Spanish-speaking caregiver and understands a ton of Spanish when spoken to her, can speak probably 5-10 words and can count 1-10. I recognize this is pretty advanced for her age, but the point is the earlier the better and you have to keep it up. We hope to enroll her in an immersion pre-K and ES. The kool-aid tastes delicious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, if you're really sold on having your kid learn another language (and it sounds like you're not at this point), and you don't speak one at home, there are other ways. Some schools offer multiple language classes weekly during the day or after school, you can put kids Saturday classes, immersion summer camp, etc.

PP again. Oh, and for those that are really sold on immersion but have poor lottery luck, there is also private immersion (WIS, etc.).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because the challenges of immersion study deters most parents of FARMs students from applying to charters, unless they speak the target language at home (Spanish).

With immersion in the mix, you get an overwhelmingly SES student bodies at a few charters (e.g. YuYing, 10% FARMs) like at JKLM, Brent etc.

Also, immersion adds extra challenge in a city without formal GT programs.

Immersion works to get high SES parents what they want when they can't afford Upper NW or the priciest Cap Hill real estate. Few will admit this but that's the story.

But the SES case you are making isn’t playing out at DCB, MV or Stokes. And only Oyster is a wealthy school among the DCPS dual language schools.

DCB, MV, and Stokes have WAY smaller farms and at-risk percentages than my IB school, and many other DCPS schools. Based on DCPSdatacenter.com, my IB school has a higher at-risk percentage than any of the bilingual DCPS schools except Houston (and it's pretty close to Houston).

So for a lot of families, they want out of their IB schools. They'd take just about anything that was a step up, but learning another language is a bonus, and bilingual schools are able to attract some socioeconomic diversity.

[Anonymous]

There are good and bad reasons, hard to separate because they are generally true to some extent regardless of a given parent's actual weighing of factors and motivations.

* Bilingual education as more than normal elementary education. When someone asks if you want a better package as an option do you say no?
* Valuing cosmopolitan internationalism - many in DC are educated migrants or immigrants who view themselves as separate from monolingual whitebread America.
* The clear fact that almost anyone can learn a second language if it's started very early, like early elementary school, but almost no one can gain fluency without effort if started too late, e.g., during high school. And the typical American course of behavior is to start language courses at about 14, spend several years on it, and fail to achieve long-term useful language ability despite everything.

Yucky factors:
* there is a stereotype that children of Hispanic immigrant families are compliant and safe for upper class children to be with, contrasting this with children of DC's black dysfunction, who are perceived to put DCUM children at risk.
* language-based programs because of their specialization limit entry. From the beginning they are only for those who choose them - no one goes there by default, which cuts down on lazy and uninvolved parents.
* They cause the children in these programs to cohort together, meaning the pool of children mixing with DCUM children to be limited in absolute numbers and programmatically.
* The programs do not allow entry for children who have not been in these programs in the past and they do not allow entry at all after cutoff grades - the cohorts can really only get smaller. Your children are thus at decreased risk of being joined by children who have bounced around from school to school (the "churn" that happens in DC schools), e.g., no one expelled by a charter for biting their classmates goes into a bilingual program after winter break if the program is full. The general education classroom in their home DCPS for their grade gets that kid. No homeless third grader is likely to join your kid's bilingual class.
* It allows access to specialized schooling channels outside the DCPS system, e.g., the DCI secondary schools, based on a principle that is not facially based on distaste for the core longstanding population of gentrifying parts of DC - black families with poor educational and career outcomes and trauma in their lives which they are transmitting on to children with whom your DCUM child would be placed in school. Instead of having to say, negatively, that you are against having your child next to someone you think will act out and fail tests, you can then say that you want your child to be in a unique program of particular positive value to your family. And the results will effectively be the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are good and bad reasons, hard to separate because they are generally true to some extent regardless of a given parent's actual weighing of factors and motivations.

* Bilingual education as more than normal elementary education. When someone asks if you want a better package as an option do you say no?
* Valuing cosmopolitan internationalism - many in DC are educated migrants or immigrants who view themselves as separate from monolingual whitebread America.
* The clear fact that almost anyone can learn a second language if it's started very early, like early elementary school, but almost no one can gain fluency without effort if started too late, e.g., during high school. And the typical American course of behavior is to start language courses at about 14, spend several years on it, and fail to achieve long-term useful language ability despite everything.

Yucky factors:
* there is a stereotype that children of Hispanic immigrant families are compliant and safe for upper class children to be with, contrasting this with children of DC's black dysfunction, who are perceived to put DCUM children at risk.
* language-based programs because of their specialization limit entry. From the beginning they are only for those who choose them - no one goes there by default, which cuts down on lazy and uninvolved parents.
* They cause the children in these programs to cohort together, meaning the pool of children mixing with DCUM children to be limited in absolute numbers and programmatically.
* The programs do not allow entry for children who have not been in these programs in the past and they do not allow entry at all after cutoff grades - the cohorts can really only get smaller. Your children are thus at decreased risk of being joined by children who have bounced around from school to school (the "churn" that happens in DC schools), e.g., no one expelled by a charter for biting their classmates goes into a bilingual program after winter break if the program is full. The general education classroom in their home DCPS for their grade gets that kid. No homeless third grader is likely to join your kid's bilingual class.
* It allows access to specialized schooling channels outside the DCPS system, e.g., the DCI secondary schools, based on a principle that is not facially based on distaste for the core longstanding population of gentrifying parts of DC - black families with poor educational and career outcomes and trauma in their lives which they are transmitting on to children with whom your DCUM child would be placed in school. Instead of having to say, negatively, that you are against having your child next to someone you think will act out and fail tests, you can then say that you want your child to be in a unique program of particular positive value to your family. And the results will effectively be the same.

A lot of truth here. Many upper middle class people will only say the "yucky" things to themselves, but you can hear more palatable versions publicly if you listen for them.

-- upper middle class parent at an immersion school who doesn't want to admit all those things about myself, but can be honest that most of them have crossed my mind. and who has seen friend groups clearly stratify by language, race, economics. Still very happy to have my kid in a diverse school that works really hard to help the poorer kids. Alternatives in DC are pretty much either: school with 85-95% kids living in poverty, or move WOTP and get much less racial, language and economic diversity.

[Anonymous]

FARMs? SES? Can someone clue the rest of us in?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FARMs? SES? Can someone clue the rest of us in?

FARMs = free and reduced meals
SES = Socioeconomic status

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FARMs? SES? Can someone clue the rest of us in?

FARMs = free and reduced meals
SES = Socioeconomic status

Classism, frequently