Yu Yang--is the student body predominately African American, does Yu Yang have a non-Chinese track..

[Anonymous]

LOL yourself. If only it were funny that Yu Ying's student population includes but a handful of Chinese-speaking kids. Our son has been there since K and we're pulling out after 2nd grade, next summer, for our neighborhood school in Ward 5. You've attacked this mom with gusto although she made logical points privately echoed by more than a few Yu Ying parents. Our kid seems to speak only English to his peers at the school, unlike the children of friends who attend Oyster. There, droves of Spanish-speaking kids coach and gently correct the English speakers and vice versa. Moreover, as a general rule, the kids in his class tend to have a hard time understanding their Chinese teachers, making for a chaotic classroom environment too much of the time. We're concerned that neither his English nor his Chinese skills are what they should be, and that, yes, aspects of the cultural experience the school provides seemed more than a little canned. I've attended school events and wondered where the Chinese parents were myself. I, and some of the other Yu Ying parents I talk to, would love if it the school ran two lotteries, as the mom suggests, to draw in far more bilingual kids, and their parents. We wouldn't necessarily care how the kids learned Chinese (from a Chinese nanny? from living in Beijing as expatriates?), but would be thrilled if as many as half the kids in his class were bilingual. She's right that it's PC goofiness for families with no connection to China to have the same chance of enrolling their kids as families with strong ties. If some of you would be threatened by the presence of more Chinese speakers on the parents association and in the classroom, please deal with it rather than taking pot shots at a mom who provides a coherent description of bona fide problems at Yu Ying. She may only have secondhand knowledge of the issues, and gets details wrong, but she's on the money. If I didn't think that the school could do a lot better for what it's spending per pupil, I'd stay.

[Anonymous]

Okay, let me get this straight. It is "bad" for kids to learn formal Chinese? It is "bad" for kids to work towards having understanding in multiple languages?

About 25% of the Asian/pacific islander population of the US is Chinese, so let's extrapolate this to the DC population. Of the 114,000 kids in DC, 3,467 are API. If 25% Chinese = 877 Chinese kids in the city (give or take distribution curves). The PP is getting her panties in a knot and making blanket statements about the ABCs who are going to "all band together". Unfortunately for her position, there will be more kids in Yu Ying in three years than the total DC population of ABCs.
I can understand the desire to tear down something that may change the flavor of your (or your children's) immediate cultural identity. It is a sacred space, but in our world it is a fluid one. Please understand that is most unlikely that anything of quality will come from creating a tiny, isolated cultural enclave for your kids.
Will the Yu Ying kids have a weird accent? Yes. The tones are twangy (but they tend to be less flat than the ABCs I teach in high school). Is Yu Ying a threat to Chinese culture and a reason to rally your collective wagons and peak out from the curtains? That seems pretty nihilistic to me.

[Anonymous]

The playground issue is pretty critical from what I understand about language acquisition. If school does not enforce it the language will never really feel natural. I had a friend in Montreal that had a child in French immersion and it made it hard at first but her child really learned because she did have that playground language experience.

[helencon]

You might be missing the point of what this mom is arguing. She's saying that Yu Ying's mission would be far better served, and parents like me more likely to stay, if the Chinese learning component was more effective, and had a more authentic feel. The basis for arguing this not chauvenism, it's pragmatism. My college roommate's boy attends a PS in NYC's Chinatown with a Chinese immersion track, so we like to compare the programs. In her kid's case, most of his classmates are being raised bilingual. He's a year behind my kid in school, but his Mandarin is far ahead (and my boy's teachers tell me that he's one of the best Mandarin speakers in his class). I'm convinced that my friend's child is making more rapid strides in learning Mandarin than my kid mainly because he's surrounded by Chinese speakers outside the classroom, on the playground, in gym class, and in his afterschool clubs and sports. I attended a school event with her at which dozens of Chinese parents were buzzing around teaching kids to cook dishes and make traditional handicrafts - nothing like a Yu Ying event. The school screens kids whose parents wish to enter them in the Chinese lottery for admission by interviewing them in their native dialect before entering their names. What the mom you're blasting is asserting is that the cultural and language learning process suffers from PC approaches like Yu Ying's, and DC tax payers shouldn't be afraid to challenge, even if they're flamed as a result (case in point). Parents like her are not trying to tear the program down; they're trying to to improve it in practical ways. I, a non-Chinese Yu Ying parent, don't like the fact that school is turning down bilingual applicants in favor of taking kids with no connection to the Chinese-speaking world any more than she does. You get into PC modes of speaking in DC charter schools circles because you tend to get clobbered for stating the obvious. You don't need to be an ABC, or married to one, to have woken up to this reality.

[Anonymous]

The playground issue is endemic. I spend lots of time with bilingual kids, Korean and English. It is nearly impossible to get young children to speak English when they are in Korea and Korean when they are in the U.S. and these children already speak both languages. They will naturally prefer to speak the language of the prevailing culture. So unless you want them to learn a language like Spanish where there are large numbers of speakers everywhere or want to congregate in an ethnic enclave like Chinatown, it really isn't fair to judge a school like Yu Ying by what the kids choose to speak in the playground.

Show me any child under 7 who are native speakers in Chinese and I will guarantee you within a year of living in the U.S. they will want to and prefer speaking English. That's what Yu Ying is fighting and I will also guarantee that these ABC kids with native born/speaking Chinese parents will also be speaking English and prefer to speak English.

Unless you want to recruit young children from China or kids who live in Chinatown (does DC Chinese population even live there and speak Mandarin?) and keep them in a bubble here, stop being so arrogant. Learning Chinese is hard. If you want the cultural support and such, let your child learn Spanish.

[Anonymous]

Yu Ying doesn't want the Chinese kids that live in Chinatown. They are not of the "right" SES for Yu Ying. Sad, but true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yu Ying doesn't want the Chinese kids that live in Chinatown. They are not of the "right" SES for Yu Ying. Sad, but true.

Utter BS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Our son has been there since K and we're pulling out after 2nd grade, next summer, for our neighborhood school in Ward 5.

I live in Ward 5 and would love to know what school you are going to go to and why. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Yu Ying could certainly have "the cultural support" if it reached out to the small local Chinese community (yes, there are some Mandarin-speaking kids living in Chinatown, but more Cantonese speakers) by admitting as many Chinese-speaking children who reside in the District as it could attract. A leader of the little Chinese cultural center in Chinatown tells me that, by his estimates, no more than several hundred "non-diplomat or international organization Chinese anything" (American Born Chinese, Chinese immigrant, Chinese-European etc.) kids being raised bilingual in DC, yet most whose names go in the Yu Ying lottery are not being selected in the absence of special lottery for Chinese-speakers. Kids don't just miss out on a measure of language acquisition when the ethnic group whose tongue is being celebrated is largely absent from a school community; they miss out on insight into a culture. Only one child in my son's class is a Chinese speaker at home. So, in all likelihood, only one grew up with a family tradition of celebrating the Moon Festival, Spring Festival etc. Why so many Yu Ying parent association members are adamant that no special allowance be made for Chinese speakers in admission to Yu Ying in the future is beyond me. The many girls adopted from China, through no fault of their own, generally aren't in a great position to help classmates learn about the culture. At first, I was impressed with how many "Chinese" kids there were in the school, until I realized that all but a handful were being raised in non-Chinese families. Call it arrogance, on my part, but I'm sticking to my guns in asserting that there's an uncessarily fake feel to too much of what the school is doing on the taxpayer's dime.

[Anonymous]

So you think 4, 5, 6, 7 yr olds should serve as cultural ambassadors to teach Chinese culture to their classmates solely based on the fact that they speak mandarin at home. Really... If they are anything like the kids i know, their parents speak chinese to them and they answer back in English. They are basically American kids and you are assuming a lot about how much of their heritage they actually celebrate at home.
As for all those Chinese girls who are adopted by non-Chinese parents, bet their parents are more interested in teaching their children about their heritage than most native born Chinese parents. Adoptive parents feel it as an obligation whereas non-adoptive parents don't.

[Anonymous]

Many of the Chinese parents in DC find the English component of Yu Ying to be unacceptably weak.

They don't bother to apply and there is little to no outreach to hit anyone other than the "embassy" Chinese. (And the "embassy" Chinese typically reside in MD/VA because the schools are superior.)

Yu Ying administration has tossed up their hands on this issue, but definitely hurts the overal education experience.

It would take both a weighted lotter and effort (READ: a free bus from Chinatown to the school) to make this happen.

I see impetus for neither.

[Anonymous]

The PA isn't anti Chinese recruitment by any measure. The problem is that the current law prevents special admission criteria. Efforts have been made to address this with the PCSB, but they are moving very cautiously. It is very murky water to create admission criteria for public schools. In the case of language skills it is pretty clear, but the change in rules would need to apply to any school that had a special nitch (say, arts or technology for example). If kids need to meet certain criteria for admission there is nothing to say that the whole system wouldn't turn into a place where only bright, talented kids can be part of the charter schools.
With the history of insanity that is the DC public school system I understand the position to take it very cautiously. I wish it would change for the sake of Yu Ying, but I do understand why it hasn't yet.

[Anonymous]

John Burroughs ES.

[Anonymous]

I understand why YY doesn't have two lotteries, because its charter won't allow it. But what about LAMB? It has never been adequately explained to me why LAMB is allowed to have two lotteries and YY is not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I understand why YY doesn't have two lotteries, because its charter won't allow it. But what about LAMB? It has never been adequately explained to me why LAMB is allowed to have two lotteries and YY is not.

My understanding is that in 2011-12 entrance, LAMB had one lottery. Admitted the random group. And then, when they went to the wait list, essentially sorted the list into "spanish" and "english" dominan families, and accepted the language needed to get to 50/50. So number 200 a spanish dominant student was admitted, while number 20 an english dominant was not. I have gathered this from hearsay. I don't think it is legal. I think the only way to correct is if an english dominant family passed over takes it to the charter board.