Does anyone have language immersion regrets?

[Anonymous]

Because they turned up in my kids' cohorts at BASIS and Latin in 5th grade, with the parents complaining about weak instruction at Stokes.

[Anonymous]

Same for YuYing grads. They only have one class of 5th graders left every year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because they turned up in my kids' cohorts at BASIS and Latin in 5th grade, with the parents complaining about weak instruction at Stokes.

Here is your original comment - “At Stokes, most of the better students leave for other charters along the way.”

Your evidence of that is kids leaving an elementary school for middle school? Really?

[Anonymous]

I'm not the person you're responding to but don't care for your snarky post. Your flippancy glosses over a real problem that's plain to any parents who looks.

Plenty of feeder students still bail for BASIS and the Latins after 4th grade, yeah. Parents see stronger academics than those at DCI and leave. It's easy to have language immersion regrets when the immersion stops at age 10 with no partial immersion to follow.

Maybe that's changing as DCI improves. Hope so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the person you're responding to but don't care for your snarky post. Your flippancy glosses over a real problem that's plain to any parents who looks.

Plenty of feeder students still bail for BASIS and the Latins after 4th grade, yeah. Parents see stronger academics than those at DCI and leave. It's easy to have language immersion regrets when the immersion stops at age 10 with no partial immersion to follow.

Maybe that's changing as DCI improves. Hope so.

NP. Latin scores are similar to DCI and I would argue DCI is stronger at the high school level because of the tracking and IB diploma. DCI offers more advance math in addition to language.

We are at a feeder in 5th and I know multiple families who got into Latin and Basis who passed it up. True multiple. Also a family who got into Walls for high school from DCI who passed it up. Anecdotal but in my circle it’s a high percentage.

Lastly, also not many families leaving DCI overall once in. Their retention rate is very high mid 90%. Compare to Basis who loses 1/2 their kids after middle school. You can’t dispute data

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the person you're responding to but don't care for your snarky post. Your flippancy glosses over a real problem that's plain to any parents who looks.

Plenty of feeder students still bail for BASIS and the Latins after 4th grade, yeah. Parents see stronger academics than those at DCI and leave. It's easy to have language immersion regrets when the immersion stops at age 10 with no partial immersion to follow.

Maybe that's changing as DCI improves. Hope so.

NP. Latin scores are similar to DCI and I would argue DCI is stronger at the high school level because of the tracking and IB diploma. DCI offers more advance math in addition to language.

We are at a feeder in 5th and I know multiple families who got into Latin and Basis who passed it up. True multiple. Also a family who got into Walls for high school from DCI who passed it up. Anecdotal but in my circle it’s a high percentage.

Lastly, also not many families leaving DCI overall once in. Their retention rate is very high mid 90%. Compare to Basis who loses 1/2 their kids after middle school. You can’t dispute data

Forgot to add, we did not play the lottery at all, looked and toured both Latin and Basis and chose DCI. Kid going to DCI next year.

[Anonymous]

A good family friend placed their K student in an FCPS Spanish immersion program. She continued onto some middle school version of the program and entered high school this year. In contrast, my daughter took regular Spanish instruction from K-8 at a private school that does not provide immersion or instruction in the target language. Both girls ended up in Spanish III in 9th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the person you're responding to but don't care for your snarky post. Your flippancy glosses over a real problem that's plain to any parents who looks.

Plenty of feeder students still bail for BASIS and the Latins after 4th grade, yeah. Parents see stronger academics than those at DCI and leave. It's easy to have language immersion regrets when the immersion stops at age 10 with no partial immersion to follow.

Maybe that's changing as DCI improves. Hope so.

And I'm not the PP you're responding to (the one you found "snarky", although I think they matched the constant tone of the person they were responding to). Their main point is not changed at all by what you posted, meaning that the other poster saying there was only 1 5th grade class at YY some years (it's NOT every year) somehow is an indication of so many people not being happy with YY, and that is ridiculous. I know parents who toured and applied for BASIS and another school that started middle school in 5th grade, and they were some of the most YY-positive parents we knew. There are many legit reasons some parents who know DCI don't find it right for their kids, and then there are other parents who don't know much at all about DCI and just say random stuff. Many here know most of what that other poster is saying about YY is wrong and sour grapes they've had for years (but not truth), and included in that is saying many families leave YY as if it's happening throughout PK-3-5th, when in fact YY has some of the lowest turnover in families of any DC charters and families do not leave regularly, it happens here and there but there is no flee-ing trends at YY. The questions going into MS are normal and understandable, about DCI and about many DC middle schools. Your point is not really being argued here although I do wonder: Why regret language immersion from PK-3 - 5th even if you do move to BASIS or somewhere else? I'm thinking of the YY families I know who did that and they still sing all the praises of YY and tell others to go, that they won't regret it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A good family friend placed their K student in an FCPS Spanish immersion program. She continued onto some middle school version of the program and entered high school this year. In contrast, my daughter took regular Spanish instruction from K-8 at a private school that does not provide immersion or instruction in the target language. Both girls ended up in Spanish III in 9th grade.

Np here. Just because they both ended up in Spanish 3 in 9th, doesn’t mean that both have same comfort with language. The immersion person should be more comfortable with a wider range of subjects than someone exclusively learning language as part of “language class”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the person you're responding to but don't care for your snarky post. Your flippancy glosses over a real problem that's plain to any parents who looks.

Plenty of feeder students still bail for BASIS and the Latins after 4th grade, yeah. Parents see stronger academics than those at DCI and leave. It's easy to have language immersion regrets when the immersion stops at age 10 with no partial immersion to follow.

Maybe that's changing as DCI improves. Hope so.

And I'm not the PP you're responding to (the one you found "snarky", although I think they matched the constant tone of the person they were responding to). Their main point is not changed at all by what you posted, meaning that the other poster saying there was only 1 5th grade class at YY some years (it's NOT every year) somehow is an indication of so many people not being happy with YY, and that is ridiculous. I know parents who toured and applied for BASIS and another school that started middle school in 5th grade, and they were some of the most YY-positive parents we knew. There are many legit reasons some parents who know DCI don't find it right for their kids, and then there are other parents who don't know much at all about DCI and just say random stuff. Many here know most of what that other poster is saying about YY is wrong and sour grapes they've had for years (but not truth), and included in that is saying many families leave YY as if it's happening throughout PK-3-5th, when in fact YY has some of the lowest turnover in families of any DC charters and families do not leave regularly, it happens here and there but there is no flee-ing trends at YY. The questions going into MS are normal and understandable, about DCI and about many DC middle schools. Your point is not really being argued here although I do wonder: Why regret language immersion from PK-3 - 5th even if you do move to BASIS or somewhere else? I'm thinking of the YY families I know who did that and they still sing all the praises of YY and tell others to go, that they won't regret it.

I'm correcting myself, I read too quicklly and so it's on me for responding to a post about Stokes that I thought was about YY. Glad the Stokes families are weighing in and correcting wrong information too. My points about any comment made about people leaving a school in 5th grade to insure a middle school spot at Stokes or Latin still stands as not evidence at all of an overall defecting from either school, but everything else I said is specific to YY, so not applicable to the Stokes-specific statements, even if the corrections are true of Stokes as well as YY.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the person you're responding to but don't care for your snarky post. Your flippancy glosses over a real problem that's plain to any parents who looks.

Plenty of feeder students still bail for BASIS and the Latins after 4th grade, yeah. Parents see stronger academics than those at DCI and leave. It's easy to have language immersion regrets when the immersion stops at age 10 with no partial immersion to follow.

Maybe that's changing as DCI improves. Hope so.

Plenty of kids leave Basis and Latin for Walls. So Basis and Latin must loose their top students just like you suggest Stokes loses kids to Basis and Latin. By your logic they must find the academics at Basis and Latin lacking. I don’t think that is the last, but I also don’t see why a kid switching from an elementary to a middle school is an indictment on the elementary school. Families pick middle schools for different reasons and it is a normal time to transition.

[Anonymous]

We have neighbors who moved their kids from DCI to private for HS. They were huge proponents of immersion in the early years so I have wondered why they would leave DCI after MS. They have alluded to the social piece being the issue, not the immersion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the person you're responding to but don't care for your snarky post. Your flippancy glosses over a real problem that's plain to any parents who looks.

Plenty of feeder students still bail for BASIS and the Latins after 4th grade, yeah. Parents see stronger academics than those at DCI and leave. It's easy to have language immersion regrets when the immersion stops at age 10 with no partial immersion to follow.

Maybe that's changing as DCI improves. Hope so.

Gonna be real- only the dumb kids at my immersion bailed for Latin. Sorry!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have neighbors who moved their kids from DCI to private for HS. They were huge proponents of immersion in the early years so I have wondered why they would leave DCI after MS. They have alluded to the social piece being the issue, not the immersion.

DCI is a pretty tiered school- if you’re great at math you can have a ton of opportunities for accelerated math and extracurriculars.

If you’re great at language you can take multiple classes in that language, go on trips, etc. there are tons of opportunities for you.

If you’re a poor student or bad at math or language it won’t be the same experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the person you're responding to but don't care for your snarky post. Your flippancy glosses over a real problem that's plain to any parents who looks.

Plenty of feeder students still bail for BASIS and the Latins after 4th grade, yeah. Parents see stronger academics than those at DCI and leave. It's easy to have language immersion regrets when the immersion stops at age 10 with no partial immersion to follow.

Maybe that's changing as DCI improves. Hope so.

Gonna be real- only the dumb kids at my immersion bailed for Latin. Sorry!

+1. This is what we see at our immersion school too. Maybe we are at the same school PP.

The expectations in spanish ramp up a lot in the upper grades and if you are not doing well in spanish then you likely won’t do well in other subjects either that are also taught in spanish.