Yu Ying - Transferring to Yu Ying from another state

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The DCI "innovation" is mostly to get around the charter board's insistence that there be no testing in options. The majority of students will be from their feeders whose main entry yr will be as 3/4 yr olds. It'll be interesting how many students DCI actually takes for 6, 7, 8, and 9th grades through their open lottery. Probably very few if any. They don't want to have a lot of students who need remediation in English nevermind know another language.

That's not a true statement. The desire was to provide a middle and high school through 12th grade without the worry of enduring another lottery. LAMB, DC Bilingual and Stokes did not have middle school options prior to DCI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi, 15:21.

I read the follow-up from OP that pissed you off as "here is how things should work in a perfect world."

The rants that followed made me wonder how much some parents hate the lower SES families that won the charter school lottery.

A lot of them. They are the same roaches that now infest NW and look at anyone with dark skin like "WTF are you doing HERE."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The DCI "innovation" is mostly to get around the charter board's insistence that there be no testing in options. The majority of students will be from their feeders whose main entry yr will be as 3/4 yr olds. It'll be interesting how many students DCI actually takes for 6, 7, 8, and 9th grades through their open lottery. Probably very few if any. They don't want to have a lot of students who need remediation in English nevermind know another language.

That's not a true statement. The desire was to provide a middle and high school through 12th grade without the worry of enduring another lottery. LAMB, DC Bilingual and Stokes did not have middle school options prior to DCI.

Me again. In addition, although YY was chartered to 8th grade, the administrators correctly determined that the school would not have enough students to sustain a middle school alone. DCI will allow, through the lottery, children who are not fluent in any languages.

[Anonymous]

OP,

I think the easiest way to understand the charter school system in DC is to recognize that each charter school is it's own educational authority, equal to DCPS, and reporting to the state. Every other state in the country, except Hawaii, has multiple education authorities, usually, but not always connected to geographic regions. You might have very big districts like NYC or DC, and tiny ones in rural areas or small towns that serve less than 1,000 students. Yu Ying, and most charter schools in DC, are like the latter.

Imagine a district in rural Montana that serves a few hundred kids, scattered over a large geographic area. That district doesn't get to pick and choose. If a Deaf child is born in their district, maybe the first in a long time, they need to scramble and figure out a solution. Pay an exorbitant salary to lure interpreters to the district? Find a distance education program so one of their current teachers can be certified in teaching Deaf children? Fund boarding school for the child? Similarly, if a family with 6 kids, none of whom spoke a word of English, moved into their district tomorrow, then they'd have a responsibility to figure out how to serve them. In neither circumstance would saying "we can't serve you" be an option.

Yu Ying has already gotten a huge concession in terms of being able to cut off their admissions at a certain point. Most educational authorities in this country can't do that. If they decide that, instead, they want to accept 3rd graders, then there are options for them. They could look at the model used by Washington International School, where kids who enter after first grade without speaking a target language get intensive small group language classes until they catch up. They could look at the model used by DCPS and most DC charter schools when they accept kids who can't read or speak their language of instruction (English), which is to include kids in the regular classes with push in or pull out support by specialists. They could look at other options too. But they can't use a test to pick and choose, any more than that district in Montana can decide that they aren't serving someone.

DCPS can pick and choose who goes to a certain school, like Oyster's language proficiency requirements or Ellington's auditions, because they aren't excluding kids from a district, they're just excluding them from a school. Similarly E. L. Haynes (and probably others, Haynes just happens to be where I have kids so I know) can exclude kids from it's Arabic 2 class if they didn't have Arabic 1, because that's a class not a district.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I often think there are two DCs. The dynamic, innovative, progressive and cosmopolitan DC which has the best and brightest coming from all over the country and all over the world to try and make a change - versus a stagnant, old-school, retrograde core that's resistant to change.

That's why thread after thread boils over here. Movers and shakers bringing something better or pushing for something better and then those who did nothing either feeling threatened and lashing out at everyone or asking where their piece of the pie is.

You obviously forgot the 3rd DC: the one full of people who think that the only way to be "dynamic, innovative, progressive and cosmopolitan" is to have policies, plans and structures that serve your middle and upper classes and push lower classes out. Because that is pretty much what you're saying about the fact that the public charter school board does not allow charters to test in at any grade because it doesn't want to cut out access to families who can't afford a private Mandarin tutor, or Spanish summer camp, or private Montessori schools until they can nab a spot at a public one.

You do a disservice to visionary people everywhere who who are dynamic, innovative and progressive who actually want a present and a future where EVERYONE is served well, not just a DC where only those who can afford to live here and go to school here (even in public school). When you trash the policy of not testing in for charter schools, you trash one of the fundamental values that DC charter schools were developed for: offering other quality options to DC residents who had the worst of options. Guess who those DC residents were when charters were first established here? Not you, not me, not OP, because we weren't sending our kids ot public school then (unless we lived IB for the only decent middle or high school). To turn around and say you can test in absolutely undermines the commitment to providing access to ALL DC residents (just like neighborhood preference would as well). No, that is NOT "stagnant, old-school and retrograde being resistent to change.

Deal with it entitled people: the very people preventing a test in option are the "stagnant, old-school, retrograde" people who were part of creating the charter schools that you so desperately want entry to now. Trying to keep the door even faintly open for lower SES families and families who don't have geographic advantages of being IB for great DCPS schools is NOT stagnant, and while I do hope there will some day be a way to figure out increasing applications and interest from families who already speak Mandarin or French or whatever, so that the pool of applicants includes more native speakers, I defend to the end the randomness of admission and the fact that kids who herwise wouldn't have a shot in a million years at speaking Mandarin and all the doors that may open to that child, that that child has a shot - a loooooong shot (like everyone else's long shot), but a shot nonetheless, at going to a school like Yu Ying.

You really have that messed up. The policies that what innovators want is what is considered "normal" in the rest of America. That being, good schools, with good teachers, that teach a robust curriculum and prepare kids for the challenges of the future, which model and enforce good behavior, rather than just coddling kids, looking the other way when kids beat each other up "oh, that's just boys being boys" and serving as nothing more than a glorified daycare. Nobody is trying to "push people out" but by the same token, more and more people are getting fed up with the Marion Barry old school style politics of KEEPING underskilled, undereducated, undisciplined, unmotivated people in that state even though there's no jobs or affordable living for them.

Now THAT is doing people a disservice - keeping them trapped in ghettoes, dependent on handouts.

People like me CREATE the environment that we want. Sorry, but that's not "entitlement".

We don't sit around whining about the environment that we've been handed like YOU do, we work our asses off and change it. YOU are the "entitled" one who just sits back, thinking the sweet, juicy apples just fall from the heavens and land in everyone's laps and how unfair it is that some people end up with more than others, totally not understanding that most of us ended up where we are only through A HELL OF A LOT OF HARD WORK. You want something better, START DOING YOUR PART, same as the rest of us do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The person that tries to prove a point by asking obnoxious questions is my favorite DCUM archetype. I can picture her typing in a rage so perfectly.

NP, right, because the last thing anyone making a blanket statement wants is for someone to ask them to support it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The DCI "innovation" is mostly to get around the charter board's insistence that there be no testing in options. The majority of students will be from their feeders whose main entry yr will be as 3/4 yr olds. It'll be interesting how many students DCI actually takes for 6, 7, 8, and 9th grades through their open lottery. Probably very few if any. They don't want to have a lot of students who need remediation in English nevermind know another language.

That's not a true statement. The desire was to provide a middle and high school through 12th grade without the worry of enduring another lottery. LAMB, DC Bilingual and Stokes did not have middle school options prior to DCI.

That, and the desire to continue the languages. But any/all of the feeder schools could have asked to expand their charters, but attrition is exactly the reason each school can't do it on their own. Hence DCI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The DCI "innovation" is mostly to get around the charter board's insistence that there be no testing in options. The majority of students will be from their feeders whose main entry yr will be as 3/4 yr olds. It'll be interesting how many students DCI actually takes for 6, 7, 8, and 9th grades through their open lottery. Probably very few if any. They don't want to have a lot of students who need remediation in English nevermind know another language.

Word is they plan to fill all open seats, and will have beginner language options in all 3 languages for new non-bilingual students. They have different expectations for new middle and 9th grade students. It warps my brain trying to imagine the teacher staffing and curriculum planning nightmare that must create, but glad they're giving it a go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The DCI "innovation" is mostly to get around the charter board's insistence that there be no testing in options. The majority of students will be from their feeders whose main entry yr will be as 3/4 yr olds. It'll be interesting how many students DCI actually takes for 6, 7, 8, and 9th grades through their open lottery. Probably very few if any. They don't want to have a lot of students who need remediation in English nevermind know another language.

Word is they plan to fill all open seats, and will have beginner language options in all 3 languages for new non-bilingual students. They have different expectations for new middle and 9th grade students. It warps my brain trying to imagine the teacher staffing and curriculum planning nightmare that must create, but glad they're giving it a go.

Last yr, I read on this board that there would be ~18 seats a yr for new students prior to DC bilingual joining DCI. After DC Bilingual joining, it was said that there would be much fewer to none. Either way, it doesn't sound like DCI being a solution for those who are not at a feeder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP,

I think the easiest way to understand the charter school system in DC is to recognize that each charter school is it's own educational authority, equal to DCPS, and reporting to the state. Every other state in the country, except Hawaii, has multiple education authorities, usually, but not always connected to geographic regions. You might have very big districts like NYC or DC, and tiny ones in rural areas or small towns that serve less than 1,000 students. Yu Ying, and most charter schools in DC, are like the latter.

Imagine a district in rural Montana that serves a few hundred kids, scattered over a large geographic area. That district doesn't get to pick and choose. If a Deaf child is born in their district, maybe the first in a long time, they need to scramble and figure out a solution. Pay an exorbitant salary to lure interpreters to the district? Find a distance education program so one of their current teachers can be certified in teaching Deaf children? Fund boarding school for the child? Similarly, if a family with 6 kids, none of whom spoke a word of English, moved into their district tomorrow, then they'd have a responsibility to figure out how to serve them. In neither circumstance would saying "we can't serve you" be an option.

Yu Ying has already gotten a huge concession in terms of being able to cut off their admissions at a certain point. Most educational authorities in this country can't do that. If they decide that, instead, they want to accept 3rd graders, then there are options for them. They could look at the model used by Washington International School, where kids who enter after first grade without speaking a target language get intensive small group language classes until they catch up. They could look at the model used by DCPS and most DC charter schools when they accept kids who can't read or speak their language of instruction (English), which is to include kids in the regular classes with push in or pull out support by specialists. They could look at other options too. But they can't use a test to pick and choose, any more than that district in Montana can decide that they aren't serving someone.

DCPS can pick and choose who goes to a certain school, like Oyster's language proficiency requirements or Ellington's auditions, because they aren't excluding kids from a district, they're just excluding them from a school. Similarly E. L. Haynes (and probably others, Haynes just happens to be where I have kids so I know) can exclude kids from it's Arabic 2 class if they didn't have Arabic 1, because that's a class not a district.

Thanks--this is one of the most thoughtful posts I've read in a while.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The DCI "innovation" is mostly to get around the charter board's insistence that there be no testing in options. The majority of students will be from their feeders whose main entry yr will be as 3/4 yr olds. It'll be interesting how many students DCI actually takes for 6, 7, 8, and 9th grades through their open lottery. Probably very few if any. They don't want to have a lot of students who need remediation in English nevermind know another language.

That's not a true statement. The desire was to provide a middle and high school through 12th grade without the worry of enduring another lottery. LAMB, DC Bilingual and Stokes did not have middle school options prior to DCI.

That, and the desire to continue the languages. But any/all of the feeder schools could have asked to expand their charters, but attrition is exactly the reason each school can't do it on their own. Hence DCI.

But the children from the feeder schools are not required to continue with their respective languages. It will be a choice on the students' parts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The DCI "innovation" is mostly to get around the charter board's insistence that there be no testing in options. The majority of students will be from their feeders whose main entry yr will be as 3/4 yr olds. It'll be interesting how many students DCI actually takes for 6, 7, 8, and 9th grades through their open lottery. Probably very few if any. They don't want to have a lot of students who need remediation in English nevermind know another language.

Word is they plan to fill all open seats, and will have beginner language options in all 3 languages for new non-bilingual students. They have different expectations for new middle and 9th grade students. It warps my brain trying to imagine the teacher staffing and curriculum planning nightmare that must create, but glad they're giving it a go.

Last yr, I read on this board that there would be ~18 seats a yr for new students prior to DC bilingual joining DCI. After DC Bilingual joining, it was said that there would be much fewer to none. Either way, it doesn't sound like DCI being a solution for those who are not at a feeder.

I think there will be plenty of seats in the first three to four years. I personally know a dozen families between stokes and YY who have mentioned that their child(ren) will not go beyond seventh grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The DCI "innovation" is mostly to get around the charter board's insistence that there be no testing in options. The majority of students will be from their feeders whose main entry yr will be as 3/4 yr olds. It'll be interesting how many students DCI actually takes for 6, 7, 8, and 9th grades through their open lottery. Probably very few if any. They don't want to have a lot of students who need remediation in English nevermind know another language.

That's not a true statement. The desire was to provide a middle and high school through 12th grade without the worry of enduring another lottery. LAMB, DC Bilingual and Stokes did not have middle school options prior to DCI.

That, and the desire to continue the languages. But any/all of the feeder schools could have asked to expand their charters, but attrition is exactly the reason each school can't do it on their own. Hence DCI.

But the children from the feeder schools are not required to continue with their respective languages. It will be a choice on the students' parts.

It said in the proposal for DCI that was presented to the charter board that the kids are required to continue with the language from their feeder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I often think there are two DCs. The dynamic, innovative, progressive and cosmopolitan DC which has the best and brightest coming from all over the country and all over the world to try and make a change - versus a stagnant, old-school, retrograde core that's resistant to change.

That's why thread after thread boils over here. Movers and shakers bringing something better or pushing for something better and then those who did nothing either feeling threatened and lashing out at everyone or asking where their piece of the pie is.

You obviously forgot the 3rd DC: the one full of people who think that the only way to be "dynamic, innovative, progressive and cosmopolitan" is to have policies, plans and structures that serve your middle and upper classes and push lower classes out. Because that is pretty much what you're saying about the fact that the public charter school board does not allow charters to test in at any grade because it doesn't want to cut out access to families who can't afford a private Mandarin tutor, or Spanish summer camp, or private Montessori schools until they can nab a spot at a public one.

You do a disservice to visionary people everywhere who who are dynamic, innovative and progressive who actually want a present and a future where EVERYONE is served well, not just a DC where only those who can afford to live here and go to school here (even in public school). When you trash the policy of not testing in for charter schools, you trash one of the fundamental values that DC charter schools were developed for: offering other quality options to DC residents who had the worst of options. Guess who those DC residents were when charters were first established here? Not you, not me, not OP, because we weren't sending our kids ot public school then (unless we lived IB for the only decent middle or high school). To turn around and say you can test in absolutely undermines the commitment to providing access to ALL DC residents (just like neighborhood preference would as well). No, that is NOT "stagnant, old-school and retrograde being resistent to change.

Deal with it entitled people: the very people preventing a test in option are the "stagnant, old-school, retrograde" people who were part of creating the charter schools that you so desperately want entry to now. Trying to keep the door even faintly open for lower SES families and families who don't have geographic advantages of being IB for great DCPS schools is NOT stagnant, and while I do hope there will some day be a way to figure out increasing applications and interest from families who already speak Mandarin or French or whatever, so that the pool of applicants includes more native speakers, I defend to the end the randomness of admission and the fact that kids who herwise wouldn't have a shot in a million years at speaking Mandarin and all the doors that may open to that child, that that child has a shot - a loooooong shot (like everyone else's long shot), but a shot nonetheless, at going to a school like Yu Ying.

WTF? How is DC going out of their way to serve high SES families or high achieving v kids? Those are always after though. DCPSjses high SES families to raises hundreds of thousands of dollars that inevitably be used for shit to help the third graders who can't read. Ou don't like it? fuck you. THe ONLY reason the scores are going up is due to high SES families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I often think there are two DCs. The dynamic, innovative, progressive and cosmopolitan DC which has the best and brightest coming from all over the country and all over the world to try and make a change - versus a stagnant, old-school, retrograde core that's resistant to change.

That's why thread after thread boils over here. Movers and shakers bringing something better or pushing for something better and then those who did nothing either feeling threatened and lashing out at everyone or asking where their piece of the pie is.

You obviously forgot the 3rd DC: the one full of people who think that the only way to be "dynamic, innovative, progressive and cosmopolitan" is to have policies, plans and structures that serve your middle and upper classes and push lower classes out. Because that is pretty much what you're saying about the fact that the public charter school board does not allow charters to test in at any grade because it doesn't want to cut out access to families who can't afford a private Mandarin tutor, or Spanish summer camp, or private Montessori schools until they can nab a spot at a public one.

You do a disservice to visionary people everywhere who who are dynamic, innovative and progressive who actually want a present and a future where EVERYONE is served well, not just a DC where only those who can afford to live here and go to school here (even in public school). When you trash the policy of not testing in for charter schools, you trash one of the fundamental values that DC charter schools were developed for: offering other quality options to DC residents who had the worst of options. Guess who those DC residents were when charters were first established here? Not you, not me, not OP, because we weren't sending our kids ot public school then (unless we lived IB for the only decent middle or high school). To turn around and say you can test in absolutely undermines the commitment to providing access to ALL DC residents (just like neighborhood preference would as well). No, that is NOT "stagnant, old-school and retrograde being resistent to change.

Deal with it entitled people: the very people preventing a test in option are the "stagnant, old-school, retrograde" people who were part of creating the charter schools that you so desperately want entry to now. Trying to keep the door even faintly open for lower SES families and families who don't have geographic advantages of being IB for great DCPS schools is NOT stagnant, and while I do hope there will some day be a way to figure out increasing applications and interest from families who already speak Mandarin or French or whatever, so that the pool of applicants includes more native speakers, I defend to the end the randomness of admission and the fact that kids who herwise wouldn't have a shot in a million years at speaking Mandarin and all the doors that may open to that child, that that child has a shot - a loooooong shot (like everyone else's long shot), but a shot nonetheless, at going to a school like Yu Ying.

WTF? How is DC going out of their way to serve high SES families or high achieving v kids? Those are always after though. DCPSjses high SES families to raises hundreds of thousands of dollars that inevitably be used for shit to help the third graders who can't read. Ou don't like it? fuck you. THe ONLY reason the scores are going up is due to high SES families.

Reading comprehension is not your strength. Neither is writing. But that's cool. When you have the ability to get mad at something I actually said, please do write again. Cheers!