Rejected by Oyster for Pre-K4 Spanish dominant - what are our options?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree that people do try to fudge it. But if your kid is borderline, how can you tell whether they will pass or not? Little kids are squirrely and it is hard to predict how they will respond to a testing environment.

Precisely. How can you test a small kid? There is no way to predict how they react: mine can be quite silly or completely quiet: depends on the moment. The school knows this (or should know it if they were to read something on testing little kids) and for that reason they pick who enters and who does not. Do not worry about the test at all (but do a lot of inside networking). If you did not get in, ask for a second chance. Some parents get a second chance, others get help from teachers or from other parents with connections.

Either a child is native Spanish speaking at home or not. What is the primary language that the child communicates in since infancy? It’s not weather the child understands some Spanish or can speak a little Spanish when asked to.

If OP’s child speaks Russian at home, then that is the native language.

We are in a language immersion program and no one considers a child native Spanish speaking just because they understand some Spanish but thinks and speaks in English.

Yes, and the folks who have a nanny speak Spanish to a kid and think that makes their kid Spanish dominant don't seem to realize that 3 year olds don't know many words or much grammar. The question is, will the kid be Spanish dominant at 11? In my experience, Oyster kids almost always speak English on the playground, but kids who speak Spanish to their parents and hear and participate in conversations constantly in Spanish will be much closer to "Spanish dominant" than kids who had a Spanish speaking nanny when they were 3. Also, English dominant kids benefit from the presence of those families because when they have playdates and sleepovers (which is a lot by middle school) they will be in that environment as well and will be speaking Spanish to the parents. Just like ELL kids will speak English at their English dominant friends' homes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree that people do try to fudge it. But if your kid is borderline, how can you tell whether they will pass or not? Little kids are squirrely and it is hard to predict how they will respond to a testing environment.

Precisely. How can you test a small kid? There is no way to predict how they react: mine can be quite silly or completely quiet: depends on the moment. The school knows this (or should know it if they were to read something on testing little kids) and for that reason they pick who enters and who does not. Do not worry about the test at all (but do a lot of inside networking). If you did not get in, ask for a second chance. Some parents get a second chance, others get help from teachers or from other parents with connections.

Either a child is native Spanish speaking at home or not. What is the primary language that the child communicates in since infancy? It’s not weather the child understands some Spanish or can speak a little Spanish when asked to.

If OP’s child speaks Russian at home, then that is the native language.

We are in a language immersion program and no one considers a child native Spanish speaking just because they understand some Spanish but thinks and speaks in English.

Yes, and the folks who have a nanny speak Spanish to a kid and think that makes their kid Spanish dominant don't seem to realize that 3 year olds don't know many words or much grammar. The question is, will the kid be Spanish dominant at 11? In my experience, Oyster kids almost always speak English on the playground, but kids who speak Spanish to their parents and hear and participate in conversations constantly in Spanish will be much closer to "Spanish dominant" than kids who had a Spanish speaking nanny when they were 3. Also, English dominant kids benefit from the presence of those families because when they have playdates and sleepovers (which is a lot by middle school) they will be in that environment as well and will be speaking Spanish to the parents. Just like ELL kids will speak English at their English dominant friends' homes.

Agree with above. If OA has many of these kids in the program and others that just understand it but don’t speak it naturally in the home, then it’s not a true 2 way dual language program. It’s a foreign language immersion or 1 way immersion. And it’s not as robust or good as a 2 way program with native Spanish speaking kids.


https://www.dlenm.org/what-is-dual-language-education.aspx

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree that people do try to fudge it. But if your kid is borderline, how can you tell whether they will pass or not? Little kids are squirrely and it is hard to predict how they will respond to a testing environment.

Precisely. How can you test a small kid? There is no way to predict how they react: mine can be quite silly or completely quiet: depends on the moment. The school knows this (or should know it if they were to read something on testing little kids) and for that reason they pick who enters and who does not. Do not worry about the test at all (but do a lot of inside networking). If you did not get in, ask for a second chance. Some parents get a second chance, others get help from teachers or from other parents with connections.

Either a child is native Spanish speaking at home or not. What is the primary language that the child communicates in since infancy? It’s not weather the child understands some Spanish or can speak a little Spanish when asked to.

If OP’s child speaks Russian at home, then that is the native language.

We are in a language immersion program and no one considers a child native Spanish speaking just because they understand some Spanish but thinks and speaks in English.

For actual bilingual families, it's not always that simple. One-parent-one-language is a common approach for raising bilingual kids. Child understands both languages and responds to each parent in that parent's language. The wild card is how they respond to a stranger (e.g. a school official) on a given day, in a given environment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree that people do try to fudge it. But if your kid is borderline, how can you tell whether they will pass or not? Little kids are squirrely and it is hard to predict how they will respond to a testing environment.

Precisely. How can you test a small kid? There is no way to predict how they react: mine can be quite silly or completely quiet: depends on the moment. The school knows this (or should know it if they were to read something on testing little kids) and for that reason they pick who enters and who does not. Do not worry about the test at all (but do a lot of inside networking). If you did not get in, ask for a second chance. Some parents get a second chance, others get help from teachers or from other parents with connections.

Either a child is native Spanish speaking at home or not. What is the primary language that the child communicates in since infancy? It’s not weather the child understands some Spanish or can speak a little Spanish when asked to.

If OP’s child speaks Russian at home, then that is the native language.

We are in a language immersion program and no one considers a child native Spanish speaking just because they understand some Spanish but thinks and speaks in English.

For actual bilingual families, it's not always that simple. One-parent-one-language is a common approach for raising bilingual kids. Child understands both languages and responds to each parent in that parent's language. The wild card is how they respond to a stranger (e.g. a school official) on a given day, in a given environment.

Maybe so but if Spanish is being spoken to the child and the child responds in another language, then that language is really the child’s dominant language or native language. What language does the parent speak to each other at home since parents each speak a different language? I would bet it’s English.

We have plenty of families at our immersion school that fits above. For instance, a family we know, dad speaks English. Mom is from Venezuela and speaks Spanish to the child but also is fluent in English. Child born here and did not just move to the country. Parents speak English in the home to each other.

Mom wants child to respond in Spanish but child flatly refuses and doesn’t. He is 5 years old. English is the language he uses. He understands both but uses English. He uses English in public and with friends. The child may be bilingual but technically is not native Spanish speaking.

I would say it’s rare for a child not to prefer 1 language over another if the child understands more than 1 language. There may be exceptions of course but much lower than what is the typical scenario above.

Lastly, I highly doubt OA has a significant number of children in the exception category. The majority of students are native English speaking not Spanish. And families that try to gain the system in ECE doesn’t help the school overall with trying to recruit actual native Spanish speaking students. That’s probably why administration treated OP the way they did. It happens way too often.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree that people do try to fudge it. But if your kid is borderline, how can you tell whether they will pass or not? Little kids are squirrely and it is hard to predict how they will respond to a testing environment.

Precisely. How can you test a small kid? There is no way to predict how they react: mine can be quite silly or completely quiet: depends on the moment. The school knows this (or should know it if they were to read something on testing little kids) and for that reason they pick who enters and who does not. Do not worry about the test at all (but do a lot of inside networking). If you did not get in, ask for a second chance. Some parents get a second chance, others get help from teachers or from other parents with connections.

Either a child is native Spanish speaking at home or not. What is the primary language that the child communicates in since infancy? It’s not weather the child understands some Spanish or can speak a little Spanish when asked to.

If OP’s child speaks Russian at home, then that is the native language.

We are in a language immersion program and no one considers a child native Spanish speaking just because they understand some Spanish but thinks and speaks in English.

For actual bilingual families, it's not always that simple. One-parent-one-language is a common approach for raising bilingual kids. Child understands both languages and responds to each parent in that parent's language. The wild card is how they respond to a stranger (e.g. a school official) on a given day, in a given environment.

Maybe so but if Spanish is being spoken to the child and the child responds in another language, then that language is really the child’s dominant language or native language. What language does the parent speak to each other at home since parents each speak a different language? I would bet it’s English.

We have plenty of families at our immersion school that fits above. For instance, a family we know, dad speaks English. Mom is from Venezuela and speaks Spanish to the child but also is fluent in English. Child born here and did not just move to the country. Parents speak English in the home to each other.

Mom wants child to respond in Spanish but child flatly refuses and doesn’t. He is 5 years old. English is the language he uses. He understands both but uses English. He uses English in public and with friends. The child may be bilingual but technically is not native Spanish speaking.

I would say it’s rare for a child not to prefer 1 language over another if the child understands more than 1 language. There may be exceptions of course but much lower than what is the typical scenario above.

Lastly, I highly doubt OA has a significant number of children in the exception category. The majority of students are native English speaking not Spanish. And families that try to gain the system in ECE doesn’t help the school overall with trying to recruit actual native Spanish speaking students. That’s probably why administration treated OP the way they did. It happens way too often.

Also if anyone can be in the program K on up, this further dilutes the program of native Spanish speaking kids. It’s really a neighborhood school that offers language immersion, not a 2 way dual language school since there is no goal of at least trying to keep the 50/50 ratio or somewhere close to it.

[Anonymous]

Glad some of you are so nitpicky about OA native Spanish skills, when no one seems to give a s**t that NONE of the immersion charter schools have any such avenue for language balance. If more people did care, it could change. Instead, all of those schools are slowly weakening in their language component.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Glad some of you are so nitpicky about OA native Spanish skills, when no one seems to give a s**t that NONE of the immersion charter schools have any such avenue for language balance. If more people did care, it could change. Instead, all of those schools are slowly weakening in their language component.

+1. I prefer a DCPS dual language school to a charter for this reason. My kid has been in Spanish immersion since infancy and we speak a good amount of Spanish at home, but I am not a native speaker and she's absolutely English dominant even though her Spanish skills are almost the same as her English. Over the 3 schools we've been at, my experience is that the kids speak English to each other if the kids have pretty much any English. They (my kid included) switch to Spanish when they're in a Spanish speaking home and the entire family is conversing in Spanish. You're just not going to get that additional opportunity for exposure if you're at a charter with most of their friends learning Spanish as a second language.

FWIW, we know a few kids that have gone to Oyster OOB as Spanish dominant. All kids are fluent in English (and speak English on the playground), but the parents are native Spanish speakers and I ONLY hear them speaking Spanish to their kids. No doubt those 4-5 year olds could pass the Spanish test since I don't see any of the parents tolerating the "I speak Spanish, but Larlo refuses to speak it back and answers me in English" stuff (and I'm sure some of them have tried).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Glad some of you are so nitpicky about OA native Spanish skills, when no one seems to give a s**t that NONE of the immersion charter schools have any such avenue for language balance. If more people did care, it could change. Instead, all of those schools are slowly weakening in their language component.

+1. I prefer a DCPS dual language school to a charter for this reason. My kid has been in Spanish immersion since infancy and we speak a good amount of Spanish at home, but I am not a native speaker and she's absolutely English dominant even though her Spanish skills are almost the same as her English. Over the 3 schools we've been at, my experience is that the kids speak English to each other if the kids have pretty much any English. They (my kid included) switch to Spanish when they're in a Spanish speaking home and the entire family is conversing in Spanish. You're just not going to get that additional opportunity for exposure if you're at a charter with most of their friends learning Spanish as a second language.

FWIW, we know a few kids that have gone to Oyster OOB as Spanish dominant. All kids are fluent in English (and speak English on the playground), but the parents are native Spanish speakers and I ONLY hear them speaking Spanish to their kids. No doubt those 4-5 year olds could pass the Spanish test since I don't see any of the parents tolerating the "I speak Spanish, but Larlo refuses to speak it back and answers me in English" stuff (and I'm sure some of them have tried).

Also agree with this! We left a Spanish charter and are at OA, now at the Adams campus. While not Hispanic, we do/can speak Spanish at home. Last week was discussing with friends from South America that there DC, while capable and able to speak Spanish bc that's what their parents speak tot hem, nevertheless revert to English as the lingua franca of the playground. The discussion was about how their child only spoke Spanish when they started K- but now that we are in the upper grades, the kid mostly speaks English. You might see them and think they cheated, but kids have their own preferences and ways of managing parent expectations!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Glad some of you are so nitpicky about OA native Spanish skills, when no one seems to give a s**t that NONE of the immersion charter schools have any such avenue for language balance. If more people did care, it could change. Instead, all of those schools are slowly weakening in their language component.

This is because legally charters cannot.

But I would still take a charter over dcps mostly because dcps can and does remove special Ed children and furthermore, I don’t like the prison like discipline and outdated curriculum taught at oyster. Glad some like it but not for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Glad some of you are so nitpicky about OA native Spanish skills, when no one seems to give a s**t that NONE of the immersion charter schools have any such avenue for language balance. If more people did care, it could change. Instead, all of those schools are slowly weakening in their language component.

This is because legally charters cannot.

But I would still take a charter over dcps mostly because dcps can and does remove special Ed children and furthermore, I don’t like the prison like discipline and outdated curriculum taught at oyster. Glad some like it but not for us.

Lol. “Prison like discipline and outdated curriculum.” I have two children at OA and we all love the school. You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about and you have zero connection to the school.

[Anonymous]

I have a kid at Adams who was at another dpcs dual language school before. Not just for the dual language but I preferred the previous school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a kid at Adams who was at another dpcs dual language school before. Not just for the dual language but I preferred the previous school.

Then your child should return to your old school. Problem solved.

[Anonymous]

We should mention in case it isn’t obvious but the parents at Oyster are often nasty and entitled. Nothing makes them happier than putting down others to justify their choices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We should mention in case it isn’t obvious but the parents at Oyster are often nasty and entitled. Nothing makes them happier than putting down others to justify their choices.

We should also point out that Oyster Adams has a nasty stalker (the Oyster Stalker) who has been posting slanderous lies about the school for at least a decade. This person has never had a child attend the school.

[Anonymous]

FWIW, we were at Oyster, now at Adams. The school practices Conscious Discipline in the elementary grades. (We have not hit middle school yet!)

People always like to complain. No school is perfect. Not even the right fit for all the kids in one family. But that’s ok- adapt, determine what is best for each individual child, and then be your best self. That’s all we can hope for.

And as a former charter school family, very happy to have been surprised by the warmth and support found within the OA family, from teachers to families to the other members of the community. We feel supported and happy.