Hardy vs. DCI

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCI is an incredibly diverse school with the most ambitious mission in DC. We have been so happy with our children’s experience there. Looking forward to seeing It continue to grow and flourish even without the families with big money, without preferential admissions, and without the boundary restrictions that other schools rely on to strengthen test scores and prestige.

Prestige? Come on, DC public schools are the dregs of urban America. No prestige to speak of in the mix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCI is an incredibly diverse school with the most ambitious mission in DC. We have been so happy with our children’s experience there. Looking forward to seeing It continue to grow and flourish even without the families with big money, without preferential admissions, and without the boundary restrictions that other schools rely on to strengthen test scores and prestige.

You do realize this describes a lot of the charters in DC, right? Also, what’s the point of having a mission statement if your actions contradict it? The mission statement is meaningless when the people in charge perpetuate many of the harmful things they claim to be against. Your child must be one of the lucky ones to never have had a teacher fired or quit in the middle of the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What you're describing is the same story with the YY leadership since the get go. We aren't continuing on to DCI because we've had more than enough.

+1. This is why we wouldn't send our kid to DCI. In retrospect, we wish we had bailed on YY sooner.

Same here. Our kid always earned top grades across the board at YY. When we switched to a private in the upper grades where we were told that the kid's Chinese wasn't too hot for a child who'd been in 50% immersion for years, he needed remedial ELA, and his math barely cut it. He's caught up by now, but getting there was work, money and time we weren't planning to spend.

Same here. Grades were good, but then in middle school (we opted against DCI), we were seeing that ELA was abysmal (still catching up). Math was fine because we did tutoring. However, now kid is in advanced math with the proper teaching, and no longer needs tutoring. We feel cheated because we expected fluency in Chinese, and DC's 5th grade class ranges from barely speaking any Chinese to speaking some Chinese. The idea of bilingualism is a joke at YY. We gave up so much and didn't get the level of Chinese we were promised.

Once people found out we were going to DCI, parents came out of the woodwork to discuss their concerns with YY and DCI. Some others had similar experiences to what you're describing after going to privates, Latin, Basis, and Deal. Then of course there are the boosters who got angry when we opted against DCI. One of them even texted me disparaging the school path we chose and crying about how we won't have bilingualism. I resisted telling her her kids won't get bilingualism either from YY and DCI. Parents can get very upset when you don't want the schools they chose for their own kids. Many of them don't have better options or don't want to give up commute etc. so they can get pretty nasty if you choose differently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCI is an incredibly diverse school with the most ambitious mission in DC. We have been so happy with our children’s experience there. Looking forward to seeing It continue to grow and flourish even without the families with big money, without preferential admissions, and without the boundary restrictions that other schools rely on to strengthen test scores and prestige.

Translation: DCI lacks many of the key components that help make other schools better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCI is an incredibly diverse school with the most ambitious mission in DC. We have been so happy with our children’s experience there. Looking forward to seeing It continue to grow and flourish even without the families with big money, without preferential admissions, and without the boundary restrictions that other schools rely on to strengthen test scores and prestige.

Translation: DCI lacks many of the key components that help make other schools better.

No kids at Hardy or DCI but are you kidding? PARCC scores are not the be all and end all but its a marker of how many kids are at least grade level and above. For being 7 years or however old, they are doing a good job considering kids come from all over the city and not living in million dollar plus houses WOTP.

It’s quite funny because Latin, when they started, got the same criticism and disdain. I suggest you research how long it took Latin to get where DCI is in peer group. In fact, only recently did Latin get buy in from families for high school.

It’s always easy to criticize on an anonymous board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What you're describing is the same story with the YY leadership since the get go. We aren't continuing on to DCI because we've had more than enough.

+1. This is why we wouldn't send our kid to DCI. In retrospect, we wish we had bailed on YY sooner.

Same here. Our kid always earned top grades across the board at YY. When we switched to a private in the upper grades where we were told that the kid's Chinese wasn't too hot for a child who'd been in 50% immersion for years, he needed remedial ELA, and his math barely cut it. He's caught up by now, but getting there was work, money and time we weren't planning to spend.

Same here. Grades were good, but then in middle school (we opted against DCI), we were seeing that ELA was abysmal (still catching up). Math was fine because we did tutoring. However, now kid is in advanced math with the proper teaching, and no longer needs tutoring. We feel cheated because we expected fluency in Chinese, and DC's 5th grade class ranges from barely speaking any Chinese to speaking some Chinese. The idea of bilingualism is a joke at YY. We gave up so much and didn't get the level of Chinese we were promised.

Once people found out we were going to DCI, parents came out of the woodwork to discuss their concerns with YY and DCI. Some others had similar experiences to what you're describing after going to privates, Latin, Basis, and Deal. Then of course there are the boosters who got angry when we opted against DCI. One of them even texted me disparaging the school path we chose and crying about how we won't have bilingualism. I resisted telling her her kids won't get bilingualism either from YY and DCI. Parents can get very upset when you don't want the schools they chose for their own kids. Many of them don't have better options or don't want to give up commute etc. so they can get pretty nasty if you choose differently.

What we couldn't take about YY was the lack of transparency in the way the school was run and outcomes. DCI seemed like more of the same. Weak test scores in ELA were excused by the immersion construct, when the immersion was half baked. There was no forum for parents to raise the issues, or lobby for change. The PA was just an ATM machine without power. If you spoke up to politely challenge with teachers, admins, the YY board or the DCPCS board, you were told that the school wasn't a good fit for your family. We've kept up with Chinese on weekends at a heritage language school in the burbs that rocks - high standards, better teaching, bilingual classmates We will plan to send him to Mandarin immersion camps (e.g. Concordia and in China) when he's older, once that's possible again after Covid dies down. I don't feel like we've lost anything but some money by jumping off the DCI path.

[Anonymous]

Some of us would go if we had the dough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What you're describing is the same story with the YY leadership since the get go. We aren't continuing on to DCI because we've had more than enough.

+1. This is why we wouldn't send our kid to DCI. In retrospect, we wish we had bailed on YY sooner.

Same here. Our kid always earned top grades across the board at YY. When we switched to a private in the upper grades where we were told that the kid's Chinese wasn't too hot for a child who'd been in 50% immersion for years, he needed remedial ELA, and his math barely cut it. He's caught up by now, but getting there was work, money and time we weren't planning to spend.

Same here. Grades were good, but then in middle school (we opted against DCI), we were seeing that ELA was abysmal (still catching up). Math was fine because we did tutoring. However, now kid is in advanced math with the proper teaching, and no longer needs tutoring. We feel cheated because we expected fluency in Chinese, and DC's 5th grade class ranges from barely speaking any Chinese to speaking some Chinese. The idea of bilingualism is a joke at YY. We gave up so much and didn't get the level of Chinese we were promised.

Once people found out we were going to DCI, parents came out of the woodwork to discuss their concerns with YY and DCI. Some others had similar experiences to what you're describing after going to privates, Latin, Basis, and Deal. Then of course there are the boosters who got angry when we opted against DCI. One of them even texted me disparaging the school path we chose and crying about how we won't have bilingualism. I resisted telling her her kids won't get bilingualism either from YY and DCI. Parents can get very upset when you don't want the schools they chose for their own kids. Many of them don't have better options or don't want to give up commute etc. so they can get pretty nasty if you choose differently.

What we couldn't take about YY was the lack of transparency in the way the school was run and outcomes. DCI seemed like more of the same. Weak test scores in ELA were excused by the immersion construct, when the immersion was half baked. There was no forum for parents to raise the issues, or lobby for change. The PA was just an ATM machine without power. If you spoke up to politely challenge with teachers, admins, the YY board or the DCPCS board, you were told that the school wasn't a good fit for your family. We've kept up with Chinese on weekends at a heritage language school in the burbs that rocks - high standards, better teaching, bilingual classmates We will plan to send him to Mandarin immersion camps (e.g. Concordia and in China) when he's older, once that's possible again after Covid dies down. I don't feel like we've lost anything but some money by jumping off the DCI path.

PP here. Your experience is exactly what I keep hearing from so many others. Spot on regarding the PA and attacks when parents dared to raise concerns. I'm ashamed to admit that I too kept quiet in front of groups of parents to avoid the hostilities against those who dared to say the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. The transparency issue is huge, especially regarding the budget. Then one year, we raised a lot of money for teacher salaries, and then the board approved a salary increase for executives that almost exactly matched the amount raised. There was no transparency to show how the money we raised was allocated (could have even just said we spent $x on Chinese teacher salary increases, $x on specials teacher salary increases, etc.). I felt like we raised money for executives instead of teachers, and I never would have supported anything to keep the awful executives we had.

*My post shuld have read "Once people found out we *weren't* going to DCI . . . "

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What you're describing is the same story with the YY leadership since the get go. We aren't continuing on to DCI because we've had more than enough.

+1. This is why we wouldn't send our kid to DCI. In retrospect, we wish we had bailed on YY sooner.

Same here. Our kid always earned top grades across the board at YY. When we switched to a private in the upper grades where we were told that the kid's Chinese wasn't too hot for a child who'd been in 50% immersion for years, he needed remedial ELA, and his math barely cut it. He's caught up by now, but getting there was work, money and time we weren't planning to spend.

Same here. Grades were good, but then in middle school (we opted against DCI), we were seeing that ELA was abysmal (still catching up). Math was fine because we did tutoring. However, now kid is in advanced math with the proper teaching, and no longer needs tutoring. We feel cheated because we expected fluency in Chinese, and DC's 5th grade class ranges from barely speaking any Chinese to speaking some Chinese. The idea of bilingualism is a joke at YY. We gave up so much and didn't get the level of Chinese we were promised.

Once people found out we were going to DCI, parents came out of the woodwork to discuss their concerns with YY and DCI. Some others had similar experiences to what you're describing after going to privates, Latin, Basis, and Deal. Then of course there are the boosters who got angry when we opted against DCI. One of them even texted me disparaging the school path we chose and crying about how we won't have bilingualism. I resisted telling her her kids won't get bilingualism either from YY and DCI. Parents can get very upset when you don't want the schools they chose for their own kids. Many of them don't have better options or don't want to give up commute etc. so they can get pretty nasty if you choose differently.

Honestly, why are parents so unrealistic? No secret that there are only a handful of bilingual Chinese-English speaking students at YY. That's been true for since day 1, for 13 years. Hint: the school doesn't send communication home in Chinese and the principal doesn't speak Chinese well. YY just doesn't have the set up for kids to gain even advanced proficiency in Chinese without massive inputs from home, e.g. a family hosts Chinese au pairs for many years.

The emphasis at YY and DCI/Chinese track is diversity and inclusion, not immersion/partial immersion. For real immersion, you need a lot of native speaking families. You might as well have a kid learn Chinese independently from Hardy through a good heritage program with native speakers if you can afford it. If you want DCI for other reasons, go for it.

[Anonymous]

Hey, we got a "you do realise ____, right?"

Always a classic on DCUM. Right up there with "by your logic."

[Anonymous]

Hardy.

[Anonymous]

Real Hardy beats fake Mandarin any day.

[Anonymous]

DCI is a wonderful school. So sad to see people denigrating it. It really is great.

[Anonymous]

Maybe for Spanish. DCI has failed to attract a single native speaker of Chinese since it opened. Partial Chinese immersion my foot. Try no immersion.

Denigrate? Translation: using common sense to evaluate.

Hardy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe for Spanish. DCI has failed to attract a single native speaker of Chinese since it opened. Partial Chinese immersion my foot. Try no immersion.

Denigrate? Translation: using common sense to evaluate.

Hardy.

+1.