Will the PCSB move to force LAMB to back-fill after PK4?

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know the last year that MV accepts new students?

IIRC, Stokes will take them at pretty much any grade, though it's hard to see them being very successful after a certain point.

[Anonymous]

I think that makes sense. Let's ruin lamb.

MV and Stokes accept at any age, and frankly it shows.

YU Ying has an English speaker track.

Let's go ahead and force this through to help a tiny handful of students who will be lost and become disruptions. They won't be familiar with the Montessori style and the bilingual atmosphere.

-not a lamb parent but tired of people who believe their kid can magically learn a language in a few weeks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know the last year that MV accepts new students?

IIRC, Stokes will take them at pretty much any grade, though it's hard to see them being very successful after a certain point.

according to myschooldc they are accepting students at all grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why mess with something that is working?

-Not a lamb parent / shut out at pk3 and pk4

Because it is possible that these barriers to access are a fundamental reason that it is working. And that is pretty important - both for LAMB and for other schools whose metrics are compared to LAMB's (see: charter school tiering process).

Put all the other Tier 1 elementary schools don't have the same policies. LAMB is an outlier. And now that other Montessori and immersion schools have come along and proven that you can be successful without these barriers it's harder for LAMB to argue in favor of them.

Except, as the LAMB admin tried to explain last night - other schools aren't doing both immersion and montessori. Just because you successfully integrate a 6 year old in an immersion setting or a montessori setting, doesn't necessarily mean you can do both at the same time.

BFD. Yu Ying does Mandarin AND the IB, which is every bit as complex.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think that makes sense. Let's ruin lamb.

MV and Stokes accept at any age, and frankly it shows.

YU Ying has an English speaker track.

Let's go ahead and force this through to help a tiny handful of students who will be lost and become disruptions. They won't be familiar with the Montessori style and the bilingual atmosphere.

-not a lamb parent but tired of people who believe their kid can magically learn a language in a few weeks.

If a couple of kindergarteners would ruin LAMB, that really says something about LAMB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why mess with something that is working?

-Not a lamb parent / shut out at pk3 and pk4

Because it is possible that these barriers to access are a fundamental reason that it is working. And that is pretty important - both for LAMB and for other schools whose metrics are compared to LAMB's (see: charter school tiering process).

Put all the other Tier 1 elementary schools don't have the same policies. LAMB is an outlier. And now that other Montessori and immersion schools have come along and proven that you can be successful without these barriers it's harder for LAMB to argue in favor of them.

Except, as the LAMB admin tried to explain last night - other schools aren't doing both immersion and montessori. Just because you successfully integrate a 6 year old in an immersion setting or a montessori setting, doesn't necessarily mean you can do both at the same time.

BFD. Yu Ying does Mandarin AND the IB, which is every bit as complex.

Nope Montessori is different than IB. iB program is not a different learning style. Get your facts straight.

- IB grad w/ child at Lee

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think that makes sense. Let's ruin lamb.

MV and Stokes accept at any age, and frankly it shows.

YU Ying has an English speaker track.

Let's go ahead and force this through to help a tiny handful of students who will be lost and become disruptions. They won't be familiar with the Montessori style and the bilingual atmosphere.

-not a lamb parent but tired of people who believe their kid can magically learn a language in a few weeks.

YY's Intensive-English has less than a dozen students, and is for students who need intensive support in their native language. It's for students with particular needs, it's not an alternate track.

Does MV even have testing yet? Seems a little early to slam them.

If LAMB can't handle backfilling a couple of slots in K or 1st then it really doesn't deserve its charter. It's already been widely demonstrated that both Spanish and Montessori can begin at K or 1st with excellent results. This just smells like an excuse to shirk their public duty, after suckling at the public teat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that makes sense. Let's ruin lamb.

MV and Stokes accept at any age, and frankly it shows.

YU Ying has an English speaker track.

Let's go ahead and force this through to help a tiny handful of students who will be lost and become disruptions. They won't be familiar with the Montessori style and the bilingual atmosphere.

-not a lamb parent but tired of people who believe their kid can magically learn a language in a few weeks.

YY's Intensive-English has less than a dozen students, and is for students who need intensive support in their native language. It's for students with particular needs, it's not an alternate track.

Does MV even have testing yet? Seems a little early to slam them.

If LAMB can't handle backfilling a couple of slots in K or 1st then it really doesn't deserve its charter. It's already been widely demonstrated that both Spanish and Montessori can begin at K or 1st with excellent results. This just smells like an excuse to shirk their public duty, after suckling at the public teat.

MV has test scores - 31% proficient or advanced in ELA and 40% in Math.

(not slamming, just sharing data).

[Anonymous]

I think they should take kids at K because, like it or not, some people are attending just for the benefit of free Pre-K and are ready to move on to something more permanent come Kindergarten.

[Anonymous]

Hey geniuses: if lamb backfilled for kindergarten, the number of kids admitted each year would not increase, as there would just be fewer pk3 and pk4 spots in their lower elementary school classes.

Oops.

It's really easy to comment when you haven't given two seconds of thought to the obvious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that makes sense. Let's ruin lamb.

MV and Stokes accept at any age, and frankly it shows.

YU Ying has an English speaker track.

Let's go ahead and force this through to help a tiny handful of students who will be lost and become disruptions. They won't be familiar with the Montessori style and the bilingual atmosphere.

-not a lamb parent but tired of people who believe their kid can magically learn a language in a few weeks.

If a couple of kindergarteners would ruin LAMB, that really says something about LAMB.

This.

[Anonymous]

As PP noted, the kindergarteners wouldn't ruin LAMB, they would just reduce the number of spots available to incoming PK4 students in lower elementary classrooms.

[Anonymous]

I am a LAMB parent and would be okay with admitting kids at K. The common thread of comments on here seems to be K admittance. Would people on this thread be okay ending admittance at K, by stepping back and objectively considering that LAMB's administrators may have a legitimate argument that trying to start a child in both Montessori AND Spanish at an older age presents unique challenges that more traditional school models don't face? I think the LAMB model could handle a few new kids at Kindergarten without having a detrimental impact on all kids concerned (new and existing). But I think that changes dramatically at 1st grade. Being a LAMB parent and experiencing it first hand, elementary Montessori is very different than primary Montessori and entering in 1st grade without background in either Montessori or Spanish would be so challenging.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hey geniuses: if lamb backfilled for kindergarten, the number of kids admitted each year would not increase, as there would just be fewer pk3 and pk4 spots in their lower elementary school classes.

Oops.

It's really easy to comment when you haven't given two seconds of thought to the obvious.

BFD. Replace the ones who left. The following year they move up to the next grouping. Slots continue to open in the youngest class.

It's obvious that everyone except you has, in fact, thought about this. You're grasping at straws in order to deny education to Kindergarteners. Nobody's talking about flushing the school, they're talking about backfilling a handful of children who are 5 and 6 years old. If LAMB can't handle that, it really has no business in education.

As someone else stated upthread: YY can handle the challenge of Mandarin and IB, and many DC schools backfill Spanish, some backfill Montessori as well.

LAMB also thought they couldn't handle running their illegal dual-lottery. Once they were forced to adapt to following the law, it turns out it worked just fine. Some people do the right thing voluntarily. Obviously in LAMB's case a little arm-twisting is necessary.

Considering how poorly they defended themselves to the PCSB, this looks like an "only a matter of time" adjustment.

[Anonymous]

They replace the PK4ers who leave with a new cohort of PK4ers.