Who do I write to to advocate that Yu Ying join the common lottery?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're full of it. The Amherst MA school knocks itself out to attract and retain local native speakers. A college friend, a Cantonese-speaker, is an administrator there. She troops around to places where Chinese families gather in Western Mass trying to drum up interest. The school freely allows bilingual kids to replace drop-outs, just like the MoCo schools and others we've visited in San Fran and NYC.

The bottom line is that YY is popular, and works for the families it attracts (those not raising their kids bilingual). They're not shooting for the stars where the cultural and language component goes. It's good enough for DC in 2014, no matter who does or doesn't write in.

No. Everyone has to enter through the lottery and they cannot give preferences to kids who already know Chinese. I asked them b/c we are moving there and my kid knows Chinese and will be entering in upper elementary.

It's in Hadley, BTW, not Amherst.

Thank you PP for actually stating facts instead of trying to wind everyone up through false/incorrect information. I will never understand why some people who clearly have been engaged in this conversation for some time still refuse to acknowledge that this is a rule outside of YY's ability to change. And some of us (maybe not you PP or anyone else in this thread, but many out there) actually believe that equal access to the few spots for all DC residents is actually more important than giving preference to native speakers, so some of us would still fight for the current arrangement even if it was on the table to change it.

But for now, it's not a rule YY created or has the power to change. All the repetitive frustration towards YY for not changing it is a waste of everyone's energy.

You are welcome. The school in MA explained that their original charter only allowed them to take new students up to 1st grade w/o preference for language but the MA legislature changed the law for charters so that they now have to fill all spots from attrition including the upper grades without preference for language. The MA legislature seems to agree with you that since charter schools are supported by tax payers everyone should have equal access without regard to race, color, sex.... and language proficiency.

I'm the PP you're replying to. I do see how hard it must be to join a bilingual school in the later grades with no language proficiency at all, and I can only imagine how hard (almost impossible??) it must be to have classes in the 2nd language like Math, Science etc targeted to those who have been speaking the language since at least K or 1st grade, and then have someone enter in 7th grade with no proficiency.

To my mind, YY and other schools who cut off new students at 1st or 2nd grades (or LAMB who cuts off at K) have the right idea, and DCI comes in to address attrition AND to provide another opportunity for those with no proficiency in a 2nd language to start from scratch but *together* in a cohort of new students. That seems easier to plan for staff-wise and curricula-wise than having a few new students entering at every single grade and figuring out how to teach them at grade-appropriate and language-appropriate levels. But I wholly support the lottery remaining random at whatever entry grades a school chooses.

Do you know how that is going in MA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:YY certainly doesn't care what you think, and neither does DC Charter. We've written letters asking for ethnic Chinese and native speakers in their administration (signed by members of various local Chinese community organizations) and nobody replies.

And now the principal, the assistant principal, the special education coordinator and the school counselor are all AA. At least the Chinese program coordinator is Chinese

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YY certainly doesn't care what you think, and neither does DC Charter. We've written letters asking for ethnic Chinese and native speakers in their administration (signed by members of various local Chinese community organizations) and nobody replies.

And now the principal, the assistant principal, the special education coordinator and the school counselor are all AA. At least the Chinese program coordinator is Chinese

The way things run in DC, we won't be done with all of the bitching and fighting until there are so few students in YY who speak or want to learn Chinese that they can either replace the Chinese program coordinator with someone who is AA and non-Chinese speaking or get rid of the Chinese program altogether. It's as though any attempt at offering something beyond the lowest common denominator in DC is actively sabotaged.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're full of it. The Amherst MA school knocks itself out to attract and retain local native speakers. A college friend, a Cantonese-speaker, is an administrator there. She troops around to places where Chinese families gather in Western Mass trying to drum up interest. The school freely allows bilingual kids to replace drop-outs, just like the MoCo schools and others we've visited in San Fran and NYC.

The bottom line is that YY is popular, and works for the families it attracts (those not raising their kids bilingual). They're not shooting for the stars where the cultural and language component goes. It's good enough for DC in 2014, no matter who does or doesn't write in.

No. Everyone has to enter through the lottery and they cannot give preferences to kids who already know Chinese. I asked them b/c we are moving there and my kid knows Chinese and will be entering in upper elementary.

It's in Hadley, BTW, not Amherst.

Thank you PP for actually stating facts instead of trying to wind everyone up through false/incorrect information. I will never understand why some people who clearly have been engaged in this conversation for some time still refuse to acknowledge that this is a rule outside of YY's ability to change. And some of us (maybe not you PP or anyone else in this thread, but many out there) actually believe that equal access to the few spots for all DC residents is actually more important than giving preference to native speakers, so some of us would still fight for the current arrangement even if it was on the table to change it.

But for now, it's not a rule YY created or has the power to change. All the repetitive frustration towards YY for not changing it is a waste of everyone's energy.

You are welcome. The school in MA explained that their original charter only allowed them to take new students up to 1st grade w/o preference for language but the MA legislature changed the law for charters so that they now have to fill all spots from attrition including the upper grades without preference for language. The MA legislature seems to agree with you that since charter schools are supported by tax payers everyone should have equal access without regard to race, color, sex.... and language proficiency.

I'm the PP you're replying to. I do see how hard it must be to join a bilingual school in the later grades with no language proficiency at all, and I can only imagine how hard (almost impossible??) it must be to have classes in the 2nd language like Math, Science etc targeted to those who have been speaking the language since at least K or 1st grade, and then have someone enter in 7th grade with no proficiency.

To my mind, YY and other schools who cut off new students at 1st or 2nd grades (or LAMB who cuts off at K) have the right idea, and DCI comes in to address attrition AND to provide another opportunity for those with no proficiency in a 2nd language to start from scratch but *together* in a cohort of new students. That seems easier to plan for staff-wise and curricula-wise than having a few new students entering at every single grade and figuring out how to teach them at grade-appropriate and language-appropriate levels. But I wholly support the lottery remaining random at whatever entry grades a school chooses.

Do you know how that is going in MA?

The school has very low attrition and they don't advertise that anyone without prior knowledge of Chinese can apply to any grade through the lottery (and honestly, who in their right mind would?). The school is an IB candidate like YY and goes through high school. The entry yrs are K, 6, and 9 and they have it set up so kids can start in those grades without any prior knowledge of Mandarin.

The public schools are generally better and the private schools are less expensive than here so the people that apply really want Mandarin and are not trying to escape their public schools. Test score -wise, it has the highest scores in the area for reading and math. They use Singapore math.

You have to be a resident of MA to apply to their lottery by state law so you cannot apply from out-of-state unlike here. So far, every Public Chinese immersion school I've found is like this so YY is the exception.

[Anonymous]

My friend who works at the MA school, very near where I went to college, assures me that none of the admissions rules are set in stone. Because she does community outreach in Cantonese, Toisanese and Mandarin in W. Mass, and the parent community welcomes native speakers of all dialects to support the school's mission, community resistance is not a factor in recruiting native-speaking kids (there are hardly any in W. MA anyway). The feel of the school is very different from YY, however the MA charter law is written.

The school is in MA, the state performing best on the NAEP 4th and 8th grade assessments, where the politics of race and class are of course not nearly as combative as in DC. We have visited to pick up copies of Cantonese academic materials they've developed for young children to help them make the transition to Mandarin, in partnership with a private Cantonese school in Newton MA. Cantonese-speaking administrators welcome us, and shake their heads in disbelief when we tell them that nobody running YY is a native speaker of any dialect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My friend who works at the MA school, very near where I went to college, assures me that none of the admissions rules are set in stone. Because she does community outreach in Cantonese, Toisanese and Mandarin in W. Mass, and the parent community welcomes native speakers of all dialects to support the school's mission, community resistance is not a factor in recruiting native-speaking kids (there are hardly any in W. MA anyway). The feel of the school is very different from YY, however the MA charter law is written.

The school is in MA, the state performing best on the NAEP 4th and 8th grade assessments, where the politics of race and class are of course not nearly as combative as in DC. We have visited to pick up copies of Cantonese academic materials they've developed for young children to help them make the transition to Mandarin, in partnership with a private Cantonese school in Newton MA. Cantonese-speaking administrators welcome us, and shake their heads in disbelief when we tell them that nobody running YY is a native speaker of any dialect.

Well, glad to hear that! Western MA is lovely and a very welcoming place in general and we can't wait to go back. I also went to one of the five colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YY certainly doesn't care what you think, and neither does DC Charter. We've written letters asking for ethnic Chinese and native speakers in their administration (signed by members of various local Chinese community organizations) and nobody replies.

And now the principal, the assistant principal, the special education coordinator and the school counselor are all AA. At least the Chinese program coordinator is Chinese

Where are all these magic native speakers you speak of who want to be administrators at a DC Charter School? The Asian population of DC is like 3 or 4 percent. That is Asian-- not Chinese specifically. These jobs are professional positions pulling middle class salaries. It is not shocking that there would be a high percentage of AA applicants.

[Anonymous]

If any qualified Chinese speakers (any dialect) had applied to be the AP, the SPED coordinator, I'm sure they would have been offered a job in a heartbeat!

Mass. has huge numbers of Cantonese speakers (not sure about Hadly though!). FWIW. DC? Not so much.

I am from Mass.

[Anonymous]

I think the lack of qualified candidates has more to do with the horrible pay and the unwillingness to provide compensation for experience. It is also responsible for the high staff turnover and the abundance of teachers in their first 1-3 years of teaching. There are many thousands of native speakers of Chinese in the area just a few miles outside of city limits. For example, schools in Montgomery County have no trouble staffing all of their Chinese programs with native speakers with many years of teaching experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the lack of qualified candidates has more to do with the horrible pay and the unwillingness to provide compensation for experience. It is also responsible for the high staff turnover and the abundance of teachers in their first 1-3 years of teaching. There are many thousands of native speakers of Chinese in the area just a few miles outside of city limits. For example, schools in Montgomery County have no trouble staffing all of their Chinese programs with native speakers with many years of teaching experience.

If charters got anywhere near the money that DCPS got then charters could afford to pay their teachers more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YY certainly doesn't care what you think, and neither does DC Charter. We've written letters asking for ethnic Chinese and native speakers in their administration (signed by members of various local Chinese community organizations) and nobody replies.

And now the principal, the assistant principal, the special education coordinator and the school counselor are all AA. At least the Chinese program coordinator is Chinese

If this bothers you and you have kids there I hope you'll be removing them immediately! No way would someone like you allow for your children to be tainted in such an AA-led environment! Double

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YY certainly doesn't care what you think, and neither does DC Charter. We've written letters asking for ethnic Chinese and native speakers in their administration (signed by members of various local Chinese community organizations) and nobody replies.

And now the principal, the assistant principal, the special education coordinator and the school counselor are all AA. At least the Chinese program coordinator is Chinese

The way things run in DC, we won't be done with all of the bitching and fighting until there are so few students in YY who speak or want to learn Chinese that they can either replace the Chinese program coordinator with someone who is AA and non-Chinese speaking or get rid of the Chinese program altogether. It's as though any attempt at offering something beyond the lowest common denominator in DC is actively sabotaged.

So have you founded and run a successful Chinese bilingual charter yet? No? Yeah, didn't think so. No one should hold their breath waiting for you to either, since you obviously have no clue about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If any qualified Chinese speakers (any dialect) had applied to be the AP, the SPED coordinator, I'm sure they would have been offered a job in a heartbeat!

Mass. has huge numbers of Cantonese speakers (not sure about Hadly though!). FWIW. DC? Not so much.

I am from Mass.

Ssssssshhhh! Don't muddy the waters with actual facts! The YY haters in this conversation want DCUM to buy into an evil AA plot to keep native speakers away from the school entirely, eventually! Don't burst their absurd "YY is anti-Chinese language" bubble!

[Anonymous]

Give us a break, YY could surely hire at least one native-speaking Chinese administrator (and not necessarily ethnic Chinese, there are expatriates with native fluencey) if they tried very hard. I know a highly qualified native Mandarin speaker in the DC suburbs who has submitted a resume several times in the last five years. Nobody ever gets back to her; the school must be hiring insiders.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Give us a break, YY could surely hire at least one native-speaking Chinese administrator (and not necessarily ethnic Chinese, there are expatriates with native fluencey) if they tried very hard. I know a highly qualified native Mandarin speaker in the DC suburbs who has submitted a resume several times in the last five years. Nobody ever gets back to her; the school must be hiring insiders.

I don't know what the school does and doesn't do to recruit Chinese Admins. I don't know who they've considered for positions. You don't know either. DCUM is loaded with anonymous voices who think they know more than the people who do all the hard work to open and run schools like YY. And yet the reason thousands of people applied to these HRCSs is they are obviously not simple to open and run because demand greatly exceeds supply. So not gonna worry about changes to the Administrators of the HRCSs if kids are learning another language and doing comparatively well in basic classes.