Positive Momentum in Alexandria?

[Anonymous]

This is general research conducted years ago. It is not specific research based on outcomes of the Alexandria dual immersion programs.

Basically, the schools that house the programs have large parent population who simply don't care if their kid is in a special program and don't really see the advantages. You are talking about a large segment of the population who see going and staying in school as well as graduating from high school as a major life achievement not a necessary stepping stone to higher education, better career, higher income. Also, if the school serves a large immigrant population that is not Spanish speaking, then the kids are entering school as ELL learners to begin with. They need to get a grasp on English so I can see why a dual immersion program is not attractive to a family who has immigrated from Ethiopia for example.

I don't think we're talking about the same program. It's the parents that DO care that enter the lottery to get into the program. These kids aren't just snatched from the general school population. Their parents have to actively sign them up. Also, only kids who speak the immersion language at home (Spanish in this case) or speak English at home are allowed into the progam. Kids who would be learning Spanish/English as a third language are not considered for the program.

The research you dismiss out of hand is not outdated. It is relevant and I have yet to see anything subsequent come out disputing or contradicting the earlier findings. You also state "I've spotted many errors in work brought home and I often hear that they just lapse into English or "Spanglish" to explain difficult concepts" but you find no mistakes in the English language materials that come home? I certainly have. My DH sometimes think that there are errors in the Spanish materials that come home but it's not erroneous to Spanish speakers from South America. Finally, you "hear that they lapse into English or Spanglish"? You've never actually heard this yourself? Even if you had, I say 'so what'?

Immersion isn't for everyone but decisions should be made on facts not prejudices and unsubstantiated opinion. You certainly shouldn't be disparaging programs you know so little about.

[Anonymous]

Not sure who is reading this thread all the way to the end -- but I am a parent with kids in the Spanish immersion program at an ACPS school, and have served as a parent representative on the dual langauge curriculum committee. The link that an earlier post included (to the Center for Applied Linguistics) is totally on point when evalulaing the program at Mt Vernon, as ACPS has used a consultant from CAL this year to review and re-work the immersion curriculum and make the Spanish literacy component more rigorous. This process also included extensive parent involvement (meetings and a school wide survey of parents). My kids (native english speakers growing up in an english-only home) are well on their way to becoming bilingual. My 4th grader is currently reading chapter books from Beverly Cleary to the Secret Garden in Spanish -- on her own time. If potential parents are interested in the dual language program, they should attend the school's open house, talk to current parents and read some of the research from CAL for a full picture.
I hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

I live near the Mount Vernon school and many of our neighbors and friends in this area either have kids in the school (some in immersion, some not) or expect to within the next few years (this latter group includes us). The PP makes an important point that I see borne out in my conversations with these families. Many of them opted for (or are seriously considering) the immersion program not so much because they are super-keen on their kids becoming fluent Spanish speakers, but rather because they perceive the program as having a higher level of parental involvement and support, and because (as the PP point out) the parents who pro-actively choose to enter the lottery tend to be a segment of the ACPS population that cares more about education generally, selecting out those with lower educational aspirations, apathetic families, or who don't already speak one of the immersion languages at home. These people see the immersion program as providing a better educational milieu and a community of like-minded families. Whatever language gains the kids make are sort of an incidental bonus. (Some of these families are bi- or tri-lingual anyway.) FWIW, most of these are families for whom private school or moving to another district ARE options, and some (though not all) plan to exercise those options when they get to middle school.

I'll also add that I have a nephew in one of the much-vaunted immersion programs in FCPS, and I see all the same issues there that prior PPs have mentioned in this thread with regard to the ACPS immersion programs (mistakes in both languages, inconsistent use of the target language, questionable how much actual usable knowledge of the language the child has after several years in the program, etc.) I'm not trashing on that program, my nephew has benefited from it, just saying that I personally haven't seen anything that convinces me that it's so much better or more serious than the one here in my neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Since there seem to be some people with expertise about the Mt. Vernon Spanish immersion program on here -- do you know whether I can apply for my child to attend even though we don't live in the Mt. Vernon school district? We live just over the boundary into the Cora Kelly district, but would really like our child to be in an immersion program (my husband's mother is a native speaker and he's fluent, but I'm not and this seems like the best way for our child to learn). I can't tell from the ACPS site whether the program is open to out-of-boundary students.

[Anonymous]

We were at Burgundy, but not for long. Academically it was not at all strong. We know ex-Burgundy parents whose children did well at Burgundy, but then had real academic problems at both public and private schools. From what we saw, "demonstrated mastery" on the Burgundy scale barely translated to a B minus on the public school scale. One teacher would regularly lose control and chuck pencils at the children. The first-name-basis barely masked a really hostile tone that we thought permeated the entire school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really don't understand the incessant criticism of the Alexandria City public system.

We enrolled our child at two very well-known, and I think highly-regarded, private schools. We experienced invasive parents, truly weak academics, and Lord Of The Flies behavior even among the younger kids. We found private school heads to be behaviorally similar to legal recruiters.

We yanked our daughter out, in disgust, and sent her to an ACPS school (Charles Barrett) starting in third grade. It has been more wonderful than I imagined any school could be, especially once her very patient third grade teacher got her up to speed in math after very weak prior instruction. We know several private-school refugees in the ACPS system. We've toured GW, we know many GW parents and kids, and we've been to TC repeatedly. We know many recent grads, all of who have done genuinely well. The ACPS that has been described in these messages is completely unknown to us.

We've heard only a few real ACPS horror stories, and they were molehills compared to what we've directly observed at private schools. And the vast majority of the area private schools basically do not accommodate more academically advanced students.

This says more about the poor quality of the privates in Alexandria than it does about ACPS, although I have def. heard good things about Barrett (which is the overflow school for Tucker and other schools that are getting too crowded now).

The issue in ACPS really isn't the elementaries anyway. It's the middle schools.

The most popular privates (SSSA, Alexandria Country Day, Burgundy Farms, Browne, Ireton, Blessed Sac, Grace Episcopal, etc.) generally are a notch or three below the quality of comparable privates in the DC area.

what evidence do you have to support this statement?

Purely anecdotal and based on perceptions. SSSA and Country Day aren't particularly selective. Burgundy Farms has a great experiential philosophy but is perceived to be academically week. The Catholics aren't particularly stellar. They're just fine, but nothing to write home about the way the more elite schools in this area are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since there seem to be some people with expertise about the Mt. Vernon Spanish immersion program on here -- do you know whether I can apply for my child to attend even though we don't live in the Mt. Vernon school district? We live just over the boundary into the Cora Kelly district, but would really like our child to be in an immersion program (my husband's mother is a native speaker and he's fluent, but I'm not and this seems like the best way for our child to learn). I can't tell from the ACPS site whether the program is open to out-of-boundary students.

I have lived in the City for 7 years and was hoping to send my kids to Mt. V even though we are out of bounds. We wanted to take advantage of the year round option and the lang immersion. Well, this school used to participate intel city wide lottery, but that ended a couple of years ago when, from my understanding, school opted out of the lottery. So, I don't think it's an option any longer. There may be only one option for lang immersion by option- John Adams.

GL

[Anonymous]

A general note regarding the schools and lotteries. Contact individual schools you are interested in to find our exactly what type of enrollment policy they will have in place next year. ACPS is having large increases in pupil population (hah-I think point that goes alllll the way back to the OP). It means that in some schools, even if you are in the attendance zone, your incoming kindergarten student might not get in, and be sent to another school. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. One of the "overflow" schools is Charles Barrett, which is a great school, but you need to be aware of it, whether you are deciding where to live/buy and also if you are preparing to enroll you incoming kindergarten student. (Registration begins April 9.)

[Anonymous]

We had our child in a well regarded private school here is Alexandria for several years. She had a good experience generally although the school had no idea how to deal with bullying issues. Anyway, for various reasons and with a lot of trepidation, we moved our child to public school in Alexandria. Imagine our surprise when, ever before gaining admittance to the TAG program, she was consistently more academically challenged and much happier in public school. I realize that our experience is limited to one elementary school and we do worry about middle school but so far our experience with ACPS has been consistently positive and better than at private school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had our child in a well regarded private school here is Alexandria for several years. She had a good experience generally although the school had no idea how to deal with bullying issues. Anyway, for various reasons and with a lot of trepidation, we moved our child to public school in Alexandria. Imagine our surprise when, ever before gaining admittance to the TAG program, she was consistently more academically challenged and much happier in public school. I realize that our experience is limited to one elementary school and we do worry about middle school but so far our experience with ACPS has been consistently positive and better than at private school.

+1. Same exact experience here. We have also found the environment in our ACPS school generally more welcoming and not dominated by social competition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had our child in a well regarded private school here is Alexandria for several years. She had a good experience generally although the school had no idea how to deal with bullying issues. Anyway, for various reasons and with a lot of trepidation, we moved our child to public school in Alexandria. Imagine our surprise when, ever before gaining admittance to the TAG program, she was consistently more academically challenged and much happier in public school. I realize that our experience is limited to one elementary school and we do worry about middle school but so far our experience with ACPS has been consistently positive and better than at private school.

ACPS basher here: I never said privates were better. Alexandria's privates are sub-optimal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had our child in a well regarded private school here is Alexandria for several years. She had a good experience generally although the school had no idea how to deal with bullying issues. Anyway, for various reasons and with a lot of trepidation, we moved our child to public school in Alexandria. Imagine our surprise when, ever before gaining admittance to the TAG program, she was consistently more academically challenged and much happier in public school. I realize that our experience is limited to one elementary school and we do worry about middle school but so far our experience with ACPS has been consistently positive and better than at private school.

Which elementary school are you referring to?

[Anonymous]

P.s. And what ate you planning to do for middle school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had our child in a well regarded private school here is Alexandria for several years. She had a good experience generally although the school had no idea how to deal with bullying issues. Anyway, for various reasons and with a lot of trepidation, we moved our child to public school in Alexandria. Imagine our surprise when, ever before gaining admittance to the TAG program, she was consistently more academically challenged and much happier in public school. I realize that our experience is limited to one elementary school and we do worry about middle school but so far our experience with ACPS has been consistently positive and better than at private school.

I hate to ask but which school was this in Alexandria? I have to considering that our DC experienced horrible bullying last year at one of the privates in Alexandria, the school did next to nothing at first but finally did stop the bullying. Awful experience. This year has been no spring breeze and just this evening I went to the Alexandria Public School site for the first time in years to look up registration dates, etc.

While I was doing that, I got an email with this bit of info about kindergartners getting tossed around next year. Unreal! Anyone have any insight about this?

If you are considering Alexandria City Public Schools for your rising
Kindergarteners next year, I want to alert you to a new policy that could
affect you.

In a recent letter, ACPS states that registration will begin on April 9th,
but if your home school "exceeds capacity for Kindergarten prior to June
15; then all Kindergarten applications will enter a lottery for random
selection. Every student will be assigned a rank through the lottery.
Students will be placed in the home school until all slots are filled
according to rank. The remainder will be re-assigned to another nearby or
contiguous school."

While we can all appreciate the budget challenges facing ACPS, I am
concerned that this policy, which differs from years past, undermines
parents' ability to choose their child's school in two ways:

1. If the number of registrants at your home school exceeds the number of
spots, slots will be determined at random by ACPS, no matter when you
registered your child. It is no longer first-come, first served.

2. If your child is bumped from your home school, parents are no longer
able to select an alternate school. Rather, ACPS will place your child in a
school of its choosing.

My local school Maury, will definitely be affected because it is actually
reducing the kindergarten class from 4 to 3 for next school year, hence it
will most definitely reach over-enrollment. Once it receives too many
enrollments, ALL applicants enter the lottery (not the ones that were
registered before it reached enrollment cap) as I understand the new
policy. So you won't even know whether you get your home school until late
June. So if you try to hedge your bets, and apply to some privates as your
back-ups, most privates require a signed contract before June, and those
contracts are financially binding. And thinking of Maury as an example, I
can't imagine that if you got humped from Maury, that near by George Mason
or McArthur or Barrett would have room when Maury does not. Same for
Lyles-Crouch. So where is your child going to go? Jefferson Houston
continues to have problems, so what other school? Your child could end up
being assigned to a school quite a far distance from your home, away from
your child's friends and causing a commuting nightmare for you. And many
people buy a home specifically for the school in that district. With the
new policy, that will be a mute point.

I know this topic may generate some hot topic debate, but I felt it was too
important not to post. If you have any questions or concerns about the
policy, you can email the entire school board at the link below, or attend
the next School Board Meeting on Thursday, March 22 at 7:00pm in 2000 North
Beauregard Street to share your opinions in person.

Here is the link: http://www.acps.k12.va.us/board/contactsb.php

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We were at Burgundy, but not for long. Academically it was not at all strong. We know ex-Burgundy parents whose children did well at Burgundy, but then had real academic problems at both public and private schools. From what we saw, "demonstrated mastery" on the Burgundy scale barely translated to a B minus on the public school scale. One teacher would regularly lose control and chuck pencils at the children. The first-name-basis barely masked a really hostile tone that we thought permeated the entire school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

We moved our kids from Maury to Burgundy, and couldn't disagree more with the previous poster. At Maury, it was all worksheets, all the time. At Burgundy, the kids are happy and challenged. They learn about ancient Egypt (and math, and science, etc), by building pyramids, mummifying mice and giving them Pharaonic burials in sarcophagi made by the students. They "travel" the Underground Railway on paths in the woods at night, ducking away from "bounty hunters" and trying to get to Canada. They transform their classrooms into Silk Road trading posts. They build medieval machines to study basic physics.

Are they "behind" their public school peers on some particular skills? I don't know and I don't care. School shouldn't be a race to master little chunks of information. It should be a place where children learn how to learn, and learn that learning is rewarding for its own sake. Our kids get that at Burgundy, and they sure weren't getting that at Maury. In the long run, I have a feeling all those Burgundy kids are going to just fine in life.

[Anonymous]

We moved our kids from Maury to Burgundy, and couldn't disagree more with the previous poster. At Maury, it was all worksheets, all the time. At Burgundy, the kids are happy and challenged. They learn about ancient Egypt (and math, and science, etc), by building pyramids, mummifying mice and giving them Pharaonic burials in sarcophagi made by the students. They "travel" the Underground Railway on paths in the woods at night, ducking away from "bounty hunters" and trying to get to Canada. They transform their classrooms into Silk Road trading posts. They build medieval machines to study basic physics.

Are they "behind" their public school peers on some particular skills? I don't know and I don't care. School shouldn't be a race to master little chunks of information. It should be a place where children learn how to learn, and learn that learning is rewarding for its own sake. Our kids get that at Burgundy, and they sure weren't getting that at Maury. In the long run, I have a feeling all those Burgundy kids are going to just fine in life.