Yu Ying - Do/Can Non-Native Kids Actually SPEAK Chinese?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but the Spanish immersion charters still attract a good many native speaking students, and strive to meet their particular academic needs. The Mundo Verde student body is thought to be at least one quarter native speakers. YY has never had more than 1 or 2 kids per grade who are truly native speakers (equally at home with Chinese and English, or speaking more Chinese than English), literally a handful of more than 500 students.

But that's due to the demographics of DC. How many Chinese speaking 3 year olds are there in DC?

There are some (one in my house) but their parents rarely put in for the YY lottery.

Sure, YY parents (at least 98% of whom aren't fluent in any dialect of Chinese) who stay with the program are happy. But many have real concerns about the way DCI is shaping up. They should be concerned. There's only so much you can do with MS partial language immersion without any native speakers. There isn't a single one at DCI on a Chinese track. Also, there is effectively no academic tracking in science, social studies or English in a school with a high needs mostly Latino population.

Chinese speaking parents don't put their kids in the YY lottery, because it's a school designed to teach beginning Chinese to children who don't already speak it. I don't see what the appeal of such a school would be to parents of kids who speak the language fluently, and, given the demographics of DC, even if every Chinese speaking 3 year old entered the DC lottery, the class would still be largely kids who didn't speak any Chinese at entry.

2 way immersion is a great model. But it's just one model for immersion, and not one that DC has the demographics to support, at least given the current charter school law. So, criticizing Yu Ying for not being 2 way immersion, is absurd, and criticizing DC's Chinese parents for not choosing a 1 way immersion school, is equally absurd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but the Spanish immersion charters still attract a good many native speaking students, and strive to meet their particular academic needs. The Mundo Verde student body is thought to be at least one quarter native speakers. YY has never had more than 1 or 2 kids per grade who are truly native speakers (equally at home with Chinese and English, or speaking more Chinese than English), literally a handful of more than 500 students.

But that's due to the demographics of DC. How many Chinese speaking 3 year olds are there in DC?

NP, from the Brent district. Brent now has a % of kids of Chinese of descent in PreS3-2nd grade to rival Thomson & YY.

What those who argue that the dearth of Chinese-speaking kids at YY is all due to "the demographics of DC" don't get is this is only half the story.

Looking for an alienating experience as a bilingual Chinese-speaking family? Attend a YY open house. I've done that twice, six years apart, and wound up leaving early both times. I left thinking, wow, the principal and vp aren't even allowing for the fact that a bilingual Chinese-speaking family might be in this room.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but the Spanish immersion charters still attract a good many native speaking students, and strive to meet their particular academic needs. The Mundo Verde student body is thought to be at least one quarter native speakers. YY has never had more than 1 or 2 kids per grade who are truly native speakers (equally at home with Chinese and English, or speaking more Chinese than English), literally a handful of more than 500 students.

But that's due to the demographics of DC. How many Chinese speaking 3 year olds are there in DC?

There are some (one in my house) but their parents rarely put in for the YY lottery.

Sure, YY parents (at least 98% of whom aren't fluent in any dialect of Chinese) who stay with the program are happy. But many have real concerns about the way DCI is shaping up. They should be concerned. There's only so much you can do with MS partial language immersion without any native speakers. There isn't a single one at DCI on a Chinese track. Also, there is effectively no academic tracking in science, social studies or English in a school with a high needs mostly Latino population.

Chinese speaking parents don't put their kids in the YY lottery, because it's a school designed to teach beginning Chinese to children who don't already speak it. I don't see what the appeal of such a school would be to parents of kids who speak the language fluently, and, given the demographics of DC, even if every Chinese speaking 3 year old entered the DC lottery, the class would still be largely kids who didn't speak any Chinese at entry.

2 way immersion is a great model. But it's just one model for immersion, and not one that DC has the demographics to support, at least given the current charter school law. So, criticizing Yu Ying for not being 2 way immersion, is absurd, and criticizing DC's Chinese parents for not choosing a 1 way immersion school, is equally absurd.

What's absurd is how droves of YY parents elect to believe what YY tells them, that their kids' spoken Chinese is good (along with their math and English without supplementing extensively at home). They seem desperate to believe that the kids are on track to score high on IBD exams. Sorry, nope.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but the Spanish immersion charters still attract a good many native speaking students, and strive to meet their particular academic needs. The Mundo Verde student body is thought to be at least one quarter native speakers. YY has never had more than 1 or 2 kids per grade who are truly native speakers (equally at home with Chinese and English, or speaking more Chinese than English), literally a handful of more than 500 students.

But that's due to the demographics of DC. How many Chinese speaking 3 year olds are there in DC?

NP, from the Brent district. Brent now has a % of kids of Chinese of descent in PreS3-2nd grade to rival Thomson & YY.

What those who argue that the dearth of Chinese-speaking kids at YY is all due to "the demographics of DC" don't get is this is only half the story.

Looking for an alienating experience as a bilingual Chinese-speaking family? Attend a YY open house. I've done that twice, six years apart, and wound up leaving early both times. I left thinking, wow, the principal and vp aren't even allowing for the fact that a bilingual Chinese-speaking family might be in this room.

Can you explain what they did or said that gave you that assumption?

[Anonymous]

Looking for an alienating experience as a bilingual Chinese-speaking family? Attend a YY open house. I've done that twice, six years apart, and wound up leaving early both times. I left thinking, wow, the principal and vp aren't even allowing for the fact that a bilingual Chinese-speaking family might be in this room.

Can you explain more about why these meetings felt alienating to you? Did you feel hostility toward bilingual Chinese-speaking families, or did you feel that the program was aimed at beginning speakers rather than bilingual speakers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but the Spanish immersion charters still attract a good many native speaking students, and strive to meet their particular academic needs. The Mundo Verde student body is thought to be at least one quarter native speakers. YY has never had more than 1 or 2 kids per grade who are truly native speakers (equally at home with Chinese and English, or speaking more Chinese than English), literally a handful of more than 500 students.

But that's due to the demographics of DC. How many Chinese speaking 3 year olds are there in DC?

There are some (one in my house) but their parents rarely put in for the YY lottery.

Sure, YY parents (at least 98% of whom aren't fluent in any dialect of Chinese) who stay with the program are happy. But many have real concerns about the way DCI is shaping up. They should be concerned. There's only so much you can do with MS partial language immersion without any native speakers. There isn't a single one at DCI on a Chinese track. Also, there is effectively no academic tracking in science, social studies or English in a school with a high needs mostly Latino population.

Chinese speaking parents don't put their kids in the YY lottery, because it's a school designed to teach beginning Chinese to children who don't already speak it. I don't see what the appeal of such a school would be to parents of kids who speak the language fluently, and, given the demographics of DC, even if every Chinese speaking 3 year old entered the DC lottery, the class would still be largely kids who didn't speak any Chinese at entry.

2 way immersion is a great model. But it's just one model for immersion, and not one that DC has the demographics to support, at least given the current charter school law. So, criticizing Yu Ying for not being 2 way immersion, is absurd, and criticizing DC's Chinese parents for not choosing a 1 way immersion school, is equally absurd.

What's absurd is how droves of YY parents elect to believe what YY tells them, that their kids' spoken Chinese is good (along with their math and English without supplementing extensively at home). They seem desperate to believe that the kids are on track to score high on IBD exams. Sorry, nope.

I looked up "IBD exams", and came up with exams for irritable bowel disease, and for the institute of brewing and distilling.

Are you possibly referring to IB exams? I'm skeptical that you're an expert on them, if you don't know the name.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but the Spanish immersion charters still attract a good many native speaking students, and strive to meet their particular academic needs. The Mundo Verde student body is thought to be at least one quarter native speakers. YY has never had more than 1 or 2 kids per grade who are truly native speakers (equally at home with Chinese and English, or speaking more Chinese than English), literally a handful of more than 500 students.

But that's due to the demographics of DC. How many Chinese speaking 3 year olds are there in DC?

NP, from the Brent district. Brent now has a % of kids of Chinese of descent in PreS3-2nd grade to rival Thomson & YY.

What those who argue that the dearth of Chinese-speaking kids at YY is all due to "the demographics of DC" don't get is this is only half the story.

Looking for an alienating experience as a bilingual Chinese-speaking family? Attend a YY open house. I've done that twice, six years apart, and wound up leaving early both times. I left thinking, wow, the principal and vp aren't even allowing for the fact that a bilingual Chinese-speaking family might be in this room.

Can you explain what they did or said that gave you that assumption?

Why, so I can be called a racist jerk by the YY boosters in denial who haunt these threads as their part-time job? Each time I post a thread about Chinese instruction in DC schools (seldom), I hear that from multiple nasty YY parents.

I'll put it this way, the entire presentation at a YY open house is geared at the type of parent who don't know that Mandarin is just one dialect of Chinese, and not the one spoken by 2/3 of immigrant families. I'll go further, reading between the lines, dialect speakers/tiger parents are there to learn that they're unfair competition YY doesn't want, a threat to the admins serving the Kool-Aid. We go, we listen, and are glad not to return. But, yea, but the kids don't speak good Mandarin because of the DC demographics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but the Spanish immersion charters still attract a good many native speaking students, and strive to meet their particular academic needs. The Mundo Verde student body is thought to be at least one quarter native speakers. YY has never had more than 1 or 2 kids per grade who are truly native speakers (equally at home with Chinese and English, or speaking more Chinese than English), literally a handful of more than 500 students.

But that's due to the demographics of DC. How many Chinese speaking 3 year olds are there in DC?

There are some (one in my house) but their parents rarely put in for the YY lottery.

Sure, YY parents (at least 98% of whom aren't fluent in any dialect of Chinese) who stay with the program are happy. But many have real concerns about the way DCI is shaping up. They should be concerned. There's only so much you can do with MS partial language immersion without any native speakers. There isn't a single one at DCI on a Chinese track. Also, there is effectively no academic tracking in science, social studies or English in a school with a high needs mostly Latino population.

Chinese speaking parents don't put their kids in the YY lottery, because it's a school designed to teach beginning Chinese to children who don't already speak it. I don't see what the appeal of such a school would be to parents of kids who speak the language fluently, and, given the demographics of DC, even if every Chinese speaking 3 year old entered the DC lottery, the class would still be largely kids who didn't speak any Chinese at entry.

2 way immersion is a great model. But it's just one model for immersion, and not one that DC has the demographics to support, at least given the current charter school law. So, criticizing Yu Ying for not being 2 way immersion, is absurd, and criticizing DC's Chinese parents for not choosing a 1 way immersion school, is equally absurd.

What's absurd is how droves of YY parents elect to believe what YY tells them, that their kids' spoken Chinese is good (along with their math and English without supplementing extensively at home). They seem desperate to believe that the kids are on track to score high on IBD exams. Sorry, nope.

I looked up "IBD exams", and came up with exams for irritable bowel disease, and for the institute of brewing and distilling.

Are you possibly referring to IB exams? I'm skeptical that you're an expert on them, if you don't know the name.

IBD = IB D(iploma) tests

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but the Spanish immersion charters still attract a good many native speaking students, and strive to meet their particular academic needs. The Mundo Verde student body is thought to be at least one quarter native speakers. YY has never had more than 1 or 2 kids per grade who are truly native speakers (equally at home with Chinese and English, or speaking more Chinese than English), literally a handful of more than 500 students.

But that's due to the demographics of DC. How many Chinese speaking 3 year olds are there in DC?

There are some (one in my house) but their parents rarely put in for the YY lottery.

Sure, YY parents (at least 98% of whom aren't fluent in any dialect of Chinese) who stay with the program are happy. But many have real concerns about the way DCI is shaping up. They should be concerned. There's only so much you can do with MS partial language immersion without any native speakers. There isn't a single one at DCI on a Chinese track. Also, there is effectively no academic tracking in science, social studies or English in a school with a high needs mostly Latino population.

Chinese speaking parents don't put their kids in the YY lottery, because it's a school designed to teach beginning Chinese to children who don't already speak it. I don't see what the appeal of such a school would be to parents of kids who speak the language fluently, and, given the demographics of DC, even if every Chinese speaking 3 year old entered the DC lottery, the class would still be largely kids who didn't speak any Chinese at entry.

2 way immersion is a great model. But it's just one model for immersion, and not one that DC has the demographics to support, at least given the current charter school law. So, criticizing Yu Ying for not being 2 way immersion, is absurd, and criticizing DC's Chinese parents for not choosing a 1 way immersion school, is equally absurd.

What's absurd is how droves of YY parents elect to believe what YY tells them, that their kids' spoken Chinese is good (along with their math and English without supplementing extensively at home). They seem desperate to believe that the kids are on track to score high on IBD exams. Sorry, nope.

I looked up "IBD exams", and came up with exams for irritable bowel disease, and for the institute of brewing and distilling.

Are you possibly referring to IB exams? I'm skeptical that you're an expert on them, if you don't know the name.

IBD = IB D(iploma) tests

But that's not what they're called.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Looking for an alienating experience as a bilingual Chinese-speaking family? Attend a YY open house. I've done that twice, six years apart, and wound up leaving early both times. I left thinking, wow, the principal and vp aren't even allowing for the fact that a bilingual Chinese-speaking family might be in this room.

Can you explain more about why these meetings felt alienating to you? Did you feel hostility toward bilingual Chinese-speaking families, or did you feel that the program was aimed at beginning speakers rather than bilingual speakers?

They won't have confidence unless there is, at a minimum, a principal or HOS who is fluent in Chinese.

This isn't an irrational concern; not long ago DCPS put a principal in charge of a dual-immersion Spanish-English elementary and the parents went crazy. That principal was replaced shortly thereafter.

[Anonymous]

I heard about that program. Most of the parents probably studied Spanish at one point, and Spanish is effectively America's second language.

YY parents feel too lucky to have escaped going nowhere in-boundary schools to complain, and don't have any power with DCPC anyway.

[Anonymous]

The principal's language fluency matters. At a minimum I wouldn't want to manage teachers who are delivering instruction in core subjects in a language I can't understand.

[Anonymous]

Not at YY, the PA has been defending her to the hilt for over a decade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Looking for an alienating experience as a bilingual Chinese-speaking family? Attend a YY open house. I've done that twice, six years apart, and wound up leaving early both times. I left thinking, wow, the principal and vp aren't even allowing for the fact that a bilingual Chinese-speaking family might be in this room.

Can you explain more about why these meetings felt alienating to you? Did you feel hostility toward bilingual Chinese-speaking families, or did you feel that the program was aimed at beginning speakers rather than bilingual speakers?

They won't have confidence unless there is, at a minimum, a principal or HOS who is fluent in Chinese.

This isn't an irrational concern; not long ago DCPS put a principal in charge of a dual-immersion Spanish-English elementary and the parents went crazy. That principal was replaced shortly thereafter.

But what exactly was it about the meeting that felt "alienating"? That is a very strong word to use, so I'm wondering what made the meeting feel that way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Looking for an alienating experience as a bilingual Chinese-speaking family? Attend a YY open house. I've done that twice, six years apart, and wound up leaving early both times. I left thinking, wow, the principal and vp aren't even allowing for the fact that a bilingual Chinese-speaking family might be in this room.

Can you explain more about why these meetings felt alienating to you? Did you feel hostility toward bilingual Chinese-speaking families, or did you feel that the program was aimed at beginning speakers rather than bilingual speakers?

They won't have confidence unless there is, at a minimum, a principal or HOS who is fluent in Chinese.

This isn't an irrational concern; not long ago DCPS put a principal in charge of a dual-immersion Spanish-English elementary and the parents went crazy. That principal was replaced shortly thereafter.

But what exactly was it about the meeting that felt "alienating"? That is a very strong word to use, so I'm wondering what made the meeting feel that way.

Was the meeting conducted in two languages? Is that how the parents association operates?

That's how it is done at a dual-language schools that want to welcome native speakers of the target language. Not doing this is enough to make a family feel alienated, especially at a school that is supposed to be an immersion school.