Bilingual Kids in Language Immersion ES Programs, Which Programs Have Many & Strive to Attract Them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: 7:22, will you tell us which school you're talking about? I hear what you're saying.

At our school, LAMB, parents believe that the Montessori method provides us with a better tool to integrate the target language-speaking kids (not all of whom are bilingual on arrival! apparantly this is the case at YY) and English-speaking kids than traditional programs have at their disposal. I think we do a great job with the lower elementary Montessori program, but am not as sold on the "Piscataway" 50/50 immersion approach for all upper elementary kids.

Some parents privately wonder if YY didn't do the right think in creating a separate English-intensive track, mostly serving low-SES kids. There is no way in hell that a 2nd track would fly at LAMB, although I suspect that it would help kids who struggle with English more than the serial "Response to Intervention" (RtI) remedial inputs the program provides. A 2nd track would also help retain high-SES families at the Piscataway stage. Many LAMB parents know about the considerable flak YY has taken for moving to create the 2nd track, which nobody wants here in NW.

This spring we will graduate our 3rd group of 5th graders, too many of whom won't have scored proficient in English on the DC-CAS. Some have talked about pushing for a DC-CAS for Spanish proficiency, where our performance would surely be stronger overall than in English, but we are not meeting with much interest from the testing powers-that-be.

When YY PPs fuss about non-Chinese speaking admins, we wonder what planet you're on! No question that our admins wouldn't speak Spanish, or do a lot of direct outreach to the Spanish-speaking community. If the board must look to cities around the country to find the right sorts (with Montessori experience), and have them schooled them in the ways of running DC Metro area elementary schools, that's what happens.
.

How many Spanish speakers live in the US? How many bilingual Mandarin speakers? Nevermind who out of these groups are qualified to run a school? To expect a Mandarin immersion school to be run exactly like a Spanish immersion school is unrealistic - Hey! We do it why can't you! You should be counting your lucky stars rather than criticizing others when you have it easier simply due to demographics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are only 112 students in all of DCPS preK-12 that are listed as coming from China (most recent data I could find was 2009-10) and 208 listed as having Chinese as their home language. Note that all dialects are lumped together for their totals.
Let's say for argument that ~1/4 of those kids listed would be age eligible. That would mean 52 kids in a school of +400 kids. It would be great, but it would still not be full two-way immersion. No matter what the level of outreach there simply are not enough native or home speakers of Chinese in the city. Compare this to 5,120 Spanish speakers.

This is what the home language survey looks like. It doesn't allow for dialect differentiation and it wouldn't be a question the school would be able to collect data on and then report to the public. http://dc.gov/DCPS/Files/downloads/In-the-Classroom/DCPS-Home-Language-Survey-for-SY2008-09.pdf

Good points and link, though the data seems somewhat dated, and the estimates low. These stats don't belie the fact that the great majority of DC immigrant parents won't put in for the lottery, or won't enroll if they get in, not after visiting. We rub shoulders with many parents of age-eligible bilingual kids. Hardly any are interested in YY, for social reasons. These are not the highly assimilated types you tend to meet at the school, more parents taking kids to MoCo heritage school playgroups. Some complain on DCUM, but most don't; they are families accustomed to "the jokes going over our heads" as my spouse puts it, those who look to MCPS for schooling.

[Anonymous]

When YY PPs fuss about non-Chinese speaking admins, we wonder what planet you're on! No question that our admins wouldn't speak Spanish, or do a lot of direct outreach to the Spanish-speaking community. If the board must look to cities around the country to find the right sorts (with Montessori experience), and have them schooled them in the ways of running DC Metro area elementary schools, that's what happens.



How many Spanish speakers live in the US? How many bilingual Mandarin speakers? Nevermind who out of these groups are qualified to run a school? To expect a Mandarin immersion school to be run exactly like a Spanish immersion school is unrealistic - Hey! We do it why can't you! You should be counting your lucky stars rather than criticizing others when you have it easier simply due to demographics.

Whoah, fair point that LAMB is going the extra mile to hire Spanish-speaking Montessori trained admins (probably not a gazillion hanging around the Metro region), if she can be believed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are only 112 students in all of DCPS preK-12 that are listed as coming from China (most recent data I could find was 2009-10) and 208 listed as having Chinese as their home language. Note that all dialects are lumped together for their totals.
Let's say for argument that ~1/4 of those kids listed would be age eligible. That would mean 52 kids in a school of +400 kids. It would be great, but it would still not be full two-way immersion. No matter what the level of outreach there simply are not enough native or home speakers of Chinese in the city. Compare this to 5,120 Spanish speakers.

This is what the home language survey looks like. It doesn't allow for dialect differentiation and it wouldn't be a question the school would be able to collect data on and then report to the public. http://dc.gov/DCPS/Files/downloads/In-the-Classroom/DCPS-Home-Language-Survey-for-SY2008-09.pdf

Good points and link, though the data seems somewhat dated, and the estimates low. These stats don't belie the fact that the great majority of DC immigrant parents won't put in for the lottery, or won't enroll if they get in, not after visiting. We rub shoulders with many parents of age-eligible bilingual kids. Hardly any are interested in YY, for social reasons. These are not the highly assimilated types you tend to meet at the school, more parents taking kids to MoCo heritage school playgroups. Some complain on DCUM, but most don't; they are families accustomed to "the jokes going over our heads" as my spouse puts it, those who look to MCPS for schooling.

As for the data, I took it directly from the DCPS website and it only includes numbers for students already enrolled in DCPS and does not charter schools. Clearly, this wouldn't apply for families who go out to MoCo. This data is also dependent upon self reporting which is notoriously faulty with recent immigrants and language learners, even when the forms are available in the target language.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are only 112 students in all of DCPS preK-12 that are listed as coming from China (most recent data I could find was 2009-10) and 208 listed as having Chinese as their home language. Note that all dialects are lumped together for their totals.
Let's say for argument that ~1/4 of those kids listed would be age eligible. That would mean 52 kids in a school of +400 kids. It would be great, but it would still not be full two-way immersion. No matter what the level of outreach there simply are not enough native or home speakers of Chinese in the city. Compare this to 5,120 Spanish speakers.

This is what the home language survey looks like. It doesn't allow for dialect differentiation and it wouldn't be a question the school would be able to collect data on and then report to the public. http://dc.gov/DCPS/Files/downloads/In-the-Classroom/DCPS-Home-Language-Survey-for-SY2008-09.pdf

Good points and link, though the data seems somewhat dated, and the estimates low. These stats don't belie the fact that the great majority of DC immigrant parents won't put in for the lottery, or won't enroll if they get in, not after visiting. We rub shoulders with many parents of age-eligible bilingual kids. Hardly any are interested in YY, for social reasons. These are not the highly assimilated types you tend to meet at the school, more parents taking kids to MoCo heritage school playgroups. Some complain on DCUM, but most don't; they are families accustomed to "the jokes going over our heads" as my spouse puts it, those who look to MCPS for schooling.

And despite all their faults they are not exactly hurting in their enrollment.... Your criteria for who YY "fails to serve" seems to be shrinking: going from all Chinese ~ dialect speakers ~ Now to: none assimilated Chinese immigrants who speak a dialect. And of course, everyone who does not get in through the lottery.

Ultimately, it does not serve your family. Not every school is right for everyone.

Good luck to you and hopefully you can find a school that is a good fit.

[Anonymous]

And despite all their faults they are not exactly hurting in their enrollment.... Your criteria for who YY "fails to serve" seems to be shrinking: going from all Chinese ~ dialect speakers ~ Now to: none assimilated Chinese immigrants who speak a dialect. And of course, everyone who does not get in through the lottery.



Huh, this post makes no sense. Faults? Not exactly hurting their enrollment? I thought we were talking about YY parents wanting more than a tiny number of truly bilingual kids in the school, and how to attract more. It makes sense to me that the most assimilated families wouldn't generally be high on the fluency scale, at least not for kids. Mandarin is only one dialect, as well as the lingua franca of China.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: 7:22, will you tell us which school you're talking about? I hear what you're saying.

At our school, LAMB, parents believe that the Montessori method provides us with a better tool to integrate the target language-speaking kids (not all of whom are bilingual on arrival! apparantly this is the case at YY) and English-speaking kids than traditional programs have at their disposal. I think we do a great job with the lower elementary Montessori program, but am not as sold on the "Piscataway" 50/50 immersion approach for all upper elementary kids.

Some parents privately wonder if YY didn't do the right think in creating a separate English-intensive track, mostly serving low-SES kids. There is no way in hell that a 2nd track would fly at LAMB, although I suspect that it would help kids who struggle with English more than the serial "Response to Intervention" (RtI) remedial inputs the program provides. A 2nd track would also help retain high-SES families at the Piscataway stage. Many LAMB parents know about the considerable flak YY has taken for moving to create the 2nd track, which nobody wants here in NW.

This spring we will graduate our 3rd group of 5th graders, too many of whom won't have scored proficient in English on the DC-CAS. Some have talked about pushing for a DC-CAS for Spanish proficiency, where our performance would surely be stronger overall than in English, but we are not meeting with much interest from the testing powers-that-be.

When YY PPs fuss about non-Chinese speaking admins, we wonder what planet you're on! No question that our admins wouldn't speak Spanish, or do a lot of direct outreach to the Spanish-speaking community. If the board must look to cities around the country to find the right sorts (with Montessori experience), and have them schooled them in the ways of running DC Metro area elementary schools, that's what happens.
.

There are definitely some critical differences between the two schools. For one thing, Spanish is the easiest language for English speakers to master, whereas Chinese is among the hardest.

For another, there's no way our administration would push for testing the DC-CAS in a language other than English! At the end of the day, a second language is a luxury, but English proficiency is a necessity. Yu Ying hasn't yet graduated a class of 5th graders. The one we have didn't come up through the school, they entered at 1st or even 2nd. There's no way our community would stand for allowing those students to not be proficient in their native language. We wonder what planet you'd have to from, to be okay with that. We're all looking forward to seeing how our current 3rd-graders do - the first class which, like LAMB's, has students who entered in PreK (though not all of them, as our students can enter up to 2nd grade).

Finally, it's easy to sniff and get the vapors at the mere thought of administrators who don't speak the target language - when there's an enormous population of target-language-speakers in the city. Easy to get on your high horse when you climbed up a ladder to get there - harder when you have to actually jump. To use another metaphor, for staffing, you're fishing in a sea, we're fishing in a backyard water-feature, so I'm surprised you can't understand the difference between the orders of magnitude. If that is still unclear, you should consider brushing up on your math.

[Anonymous]

Substantially different undertakings in terms of ambition:


http://mylanguages.org/easy_languages.php

http://mylanguages.org/difficult_languages.php

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a YY parent and also want the school to serve all children. In fact, I wanted my child there and not in our fairly homogeneous IB school.

But as 00:11 notes, the school gives off a very weird vibe when the tour guides, administrators, parents at Open Houses are so defensive when asked basic questions about Chinese language and cultural issues surrounding the school that you don't see at Spanish immersion schools -- governed by the same laws. It is really frustrating and I think does not serve our school well.

Um, could it be that the school is weird? I, single mom, went with MV after being offered a PreK YY slot. Knowing zilch beyond web site info before a visit, I assumed that a small bilingual community had been involved all along. An open house disabused me of the notion.

MV has a bilingual Latino community firmly behind it, which serves our school well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a YY parent and also want the school to serve all children. In fact, I wanted my child there and not in our fairly homogeneous IB school.

But as 00:11 notes, the school gives off a very weird vibe when the tour guides, administrators, parents at Open Houses are so defensive when asked basic questions about Chinese language and cultural issues surrounding the school that you don't see at Spanish immersion schools -- governed by the same laws. It is really frustrating and I think does not serve our school well.

Um, could it be that the school is weird? I, single mom, went with MV after being offered a PreK YY slot. Knowing zilch beyond web site info before a visit, I assumed that a small bilingual community had been involved all along. An open house disabused me of the notion.

MV has a bilingual Latino community firmly behind it, which serves our school well.

You applied to both?!? It's good that you went with MV and Spanish rather than Mandarin which is harder to support on all levels and is a harder language to learn. PreK at YY is currently all in Mandarin - which helps the people who are mainly looking for a decent school option and aren't serious about Mandarin away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Yu Ying hasn't yet graduated a class of 5th graders. The one we have didn't come up through the school, they entered at 1st or even 2nd. There's no way our community would stand for allowing those students to not be proficient in their native language.

To use another metaphor, for staffing, you're fishing in a sea, we're fishing in a backyard water-feature, so I'm surprised you can't understand the difference between the orders of magnitude. If that is still unclear, you should consider brushing up on your math.

This is such BS. A college friend, a kick ass admin at a W. Coast Mandarin immersion school, and a dialect speaker, has responded to YY's advertisements for admins several times. S/he has family in the MD burbs Chinese community and is eager to relocate. S/he gets nowhere. Just an anecdote,right, but where's the evidence that YY does its damdest to find Chinese-speaking admins, let alone an ethnic one?

As for your community not standing for students not to be proficient in their native language, you have dozens of Chinese-speaking kids with undocumented parents? Illiterate parents? Parents who are so poor that a dozen family members crowd into a one-bedroom apartment? Parents who loiter in Home Depot parking lots hoping for day jobs or work as cleaning ladies? Do you have a single bilingual FARMs kid? The ethnic YY parents I know are lawyers, doctors, accountants and consultants who went to Ivy League schools.

[Anonymous]

^ Because the Asian kids in DC basically have the same background/socioeconomic level as the White kids in DC. Hard to find a FARM White kid in DC at any school: Are there FARM Asian kids in DC? I wouldn't be surprised if really low to nonexistent given the # of Chinese in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Yu Ying hasn't yet graduated a class of 5th graders. The one we have didn't come up through the school, they entered at 1st or even 2nd. There's no way our community would stand for allowing those students to not be proficient in their native language.

To use another metaphor, for staffing, you're fishing in a sea, we're fishing in a backyard water-feature, so I'm surprised you can't understand the difference between the orders of magnitude. If that is still unclear, you should consider brushing up on your math.

This is such BS. A college friend, a kick ass admin at a W. Coast Mandarin immersion school, and a dialect speaker, has responded to YY's advertisements for admins several times. S/he has family in the MD burbs Chinese community and is eager to relocate. S/he gets nowhere. Just an anecdote,right, but where's the evidence that YY does its damdest to find Chinese-speaking admins, let alone an ethnic one?

As for your community not standing for students not to be proficient in their native language, you have dozens of Chinese-speaking kids with undocumented parents? Illiterate parents? Parents who are so poor that a dozen family members crowd into a one-bedroom apartment? Parents who loiter in Home Depot parking lots hoping for day jobs or work as cleaning ladies? Do you have a single bilingual FARMs kid? The ethnic YY parents I know are lawyers, doctors, accountants and consultants who went to Ivy League schools.

This is probably true. YY is not interested in dialect speakers. They are a Mandarin immersion school so unless the admin is proficient in Mandarin, they won't be interested. Unlike the W. Coast school probably, YY has no Cantonese population to speak of (or if they do, they all speak English) so a Cantonese speaker would not be hired unless they also spoke Mandarin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ Because the Asian kids in DC basically have the same background/socioeconomic level as the White kids in DC. Hard to find a FARM White kid in DC at any school: Are there FARM Asian kids in DC? I wouldn't be surprised if really low to nonexistent given the # of Chinese in DC.

Yes, they go to Thomson. They live with their grandparents in the Wah Luck house in Chinatown while their parents work multiple jobs. YY focuses strictly on "embassy" Chinese and pretends these children don't exist. The parents of these children find the academics (both English and Mandarin) at Yu Ying to be weak, not to mention the attitude of the administration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ Because the Asian kids in DC basically have the same background/socioeconomic level as the White kids in DC. Hard to find a FARM White kid in DC at any school: Are there FARM Asian kids in DC? I wouldn't be surprised if really low to nonexistent given the # of Chinese in DC.

Yes, they go to Thomson. They live with their grandparents in the Wah Luck house in Chinatown while their parents work multiple jobs. YY focuses strictly on "embassy" Chinese and pretends these children don't exist. The parents of these children find the academics (both English and Mandarin) at Yu Ying to be weak, not to mention the attitude of the administration.

So the academics is "weak" and that's why they don't apply (which they are free to do like everyone else in DC). Funny that the academics is ok for the "embassy" Chinese and all the doctors, lawyers, etc. who YY focuses on.