What is your first choice bilingual program?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious if anyone has actually checked with the school for a confirmation of this change of policy and, if so, what their explanation was?

YY parent here.

The idea was presented to us by the administration, but it's not well understood and it doesn't seem completely developed. Frankly, I can't imagine how either the charter board or the IB organization will allow it.

[Anonymous]

I am very in favor of bilingual education, and I don't have any stake in Yu Ying. But, I think that if you child is falling behind in English while at a school like Yu Ying, you should find a new school. It is crazy to risk your child's development like that.

[Anonymous]

This doesn't sound good at YY. It's making me reconsider the school for PK. Sounds like they are worried about the students who will bring down their first test score results. What is the teacher quality and turnover at the school?

[Anonymous]

I think a previous poster hit it head on--if my child was struggling in a school where they are only getting half the English instruction in reading they would in any other setting, my first response would be to increase their English instruction. This isn't specific to Yu Ying, this is specific to all bilingual schools in DC. I think someone previous posted that all children deserve a bilingual education--Why? I believe all children deserve an excellent education, but for them to function in the United States they need to write in English, speak in English, and do Math.

For all the other bilingual schools in DC--what is the strategy for a Native English speaker if they consistently show no improvement in English/Math?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This doesn't sound good at YY. It's making me reconsider the school for PK. Sounds like they are worried about the students who will bring down their first test score results. What is the teacher quality and turnover at the school?

No, it sounds like somebody thinks it's unethical to waste precious time (HALF of the school week) with Chinese on children who have about a year (more or less) to be proficient English readers. If you can't read in English by 4th grade (in the U.S., of course) you are in trouble for life. You will very likely never catch up. You're at great risk to be functionally illiterate. Your odds of dropping out of school altogether absolutely skyrocket. This is no joke, if you are not a proficient reader in 4th grade then you are on a road that almost certainly leads to poverty.

I think it's criminal to spend time teaching Chinese to a student like that, instead of pulling out all the stops to get him reading on par in English. At that point, any and every sacrifice has to be made. Not learning Chinese is a no-brainer. That's not giving up on a child, it's saving him from a marginalized existence.

What the hell is wrong with some parents that they can't see what they're doing to their children??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a previous poster hit it head on--if my child was struggling in a school where they are only getting half the English instruction in reading they would in any other setting, my first response would be to increase their English instruction. This isn't specific to Yu Ying, this is specific to all bilingual schools in DC. I think someone previous posted that all children deserve a bilingual education--Why? I believe all children deserve an excellent education, but for them to function in the United States they need to write in English, speak in English, and do Math.

For all the other bilingual schools in DC--what is the strategy for a Native English speaker if they consistently show no improvement in English/Math?

Chinese is a luxury. English is a necessity. Just ask the after-hours minimum-wage custodial staff in your office building (if you know enough Spanish to finesse the question).

Do you think they're doing those dead-end jobs for low pay, no prestige, and far from their native land, so that their children can learn anything other than how to succeed as an English-literate American?

[Anonymous]

These troubles surely didn't just start this year for these students. What was Yu Ying doing for them for the last 3 years?

[Anonymous]

And there lies the problem. Testing for English reading begins in 3rd grade in DC, while the benefits of a bilingual education really flower about 5th grade. I knew this would be a problem for YY. And their way to solve it is to pull all the struggling kids out of chinese. Barf.

Bilingual education (trilingual in some cases) is absolutely the norm for the entire population of Canada and Europe-- and they don't pull kids out in 2nd grade, give up on them and give them English or French only.

YY should just accept the lower test scores and keep giving the kids the same curriculum. 2nd grade is too early to give up. My child struggled in a bilingual program-- a lot of kids do-- but we stuck with it. We believed in the program and we believed in her. As I said in a previous post, she is absolutely a top scorer in both languages... now. If she was at YY she would have been pulled out, tracked, drilled and never gotten the chance to keep going and become biliterate and bilingual (which she now is).

The school should offer after school tutoring for struggling students-- the idea that some kids would fall somewhat behind with such an ambitious program should not be a surprise at all.

It's DC CAS that's driving this idea, I'm sure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These troubles surely didn't just start this year for these students. What was Yu Ying doing for them for the last 3 years?

booster groups with small group attention, extra after school classes, etc. etc. In short: a lot of additional one on one instruction in both English and Chinese.

[Anonymous]

Yu Ying appears to be passionate home-schooling for, primarily, parents with Chinese descent, or adopted Chinese descent kids, or parents who couldn't get into Oyster who feel this is a step parallel to any language immersion...at the end of the day more about a small contingent of adults who want to connect their kids to Chinese culture and gain the dual-language edge at the same time. Therefore it's going to wobble as it matures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These troubles surely didn't just start this year for these students. What was Yu Ying doing for them for the last 3 years?

Good question. As the parent of a K student, I've learned there's a big difference between the leading edge class and just about everybody else. You have to understand that the current 3rd graders are a very small group, and they seem to fall into two distinct camps: the families who chose Yu Ying because they liked Chinese so much they were willing to "start over" in 1st grade (maybe had an adopted Chinese daughter), and those who were having so much trouble in their previous K school that they were willing to take a chance on a school that didn't even have a building. One set of families is dedicated to the concept and has options. The other set is desperate for a school and may not actually care about academics, much less Chinese.

You don't see this strange dichotomy in the other grades, and by the time you hit the group that started at Pre-K it seems to be a very sophisticated group of families.

It's hard not to think that what's driving the uproar is the fact that this all sounds very disruptive to parents with very specific expectations, despite the fact that it only affects a small number of students, just in the leading class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yu Ying appears to be passionate home-schooling for, primarily, parents with Chinese descent, or adopted Chinese descent kids, or parents who couldn't get into Oyster who feel this is a step parallel to any language immersion...at the end of the day more about a small contingent of adults who want to connect their kids to Chinese culture and gain the dual-language edge at the same time. Therefore it's going to wobble as it matures.

This is just silly. Do you even think before you type or is it just mental vomit all over your keyboard?!

Nobody who chooses a language immersion school is passionate about home-schooling. And nobody who is dedicated to Chinese gives a damn about Oyster (if they were interested in Spanish, they'd have chosen Stokes). Spanish is most likely going to be the 3rd language in middle school, though personally I think they should spend more time on Chinese. Anybody can learn Spanish, even as an adult.

Only a small percentage of the school is ethnically Asian btw, and that information is publicly available had you bothered to research it. Obviously anything as thoughtful as looking up actual numbers is too difficult for someone who would rather pull conjecture out of her nether-regions. Next time, try pulling your head out instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These troubles surely didn't just start this year for these students. What was Yu Ying doing for them for the last 3 years?

Good question. As the parent of a K student, I've learned there's a big difference between the leading edge class and just about everybody else. You have to understand that the current 3rd graders are a very small group, and they seem to fall into two distinct camps: the families who chose Yu Ying because they liked Chinese so much they were willing to "start over" in 1st grade (maybe had an adopted Chinese daughter), and those who were having so much trouble in their previous K school that they were willing to take a chance on a school that didn't even have a building. One set of families is dedicated to the concept and has options. The other set is desperate for a school and may not actually care about academics, much less Chinese.

You don't see this strange dichotomy in the other grades, and by the time you hit the group that started at Pre-K it seems to be a very sophisticated group of families.

It's hard not to think that what's driving the uproar is the fact that this all sounds very disruptive to parents with very specific expectations, despite the fact that it only affects a small number of students, just in the leading class.

YY parent with multiple children at the school. I think the problem is worst in the rising edge class, still significant in the 2nd grade, and will likely start to emerge somewhat in the younger grades as kids begin to be assessed. One of the differences that I see in th younger grades is that families are willing to move chidren who are not being served by the school. In the top two classes, many familes picked the school due to geography (in the neighborhood where they live, and better then in aoundary).

[Anonymous]

The problem at YY is not unique a lot of immersion programs struggle with this. I have a friend at College Gardens in Montgomery County. The school has an immersion program that serves the county through a lottery. A lot of children leave the program because they are struggling or their parents get extra assistance for their child. My friend's child attends a 3 hour Chinese Sunday camp and has tutoring twice a week and she is in 2nd grade. I have heard similar issues for students at Washington International. I also know that other countries that do this like French-speaking Canada and English speaking parts of Asia and Africa also face a challenge for kids to bridge both languages and often need extra help. It takes a long time to pay off but these kids tend to do better long time. The challenge we have is that NCLB does not provide that time for evaluation. Further a poorly run program or parents that cannot provide the extra supports may result in the that minority that just don't do so well. I sometimes wish I was like my parents, blissfully ignorant, just send them to the local school type, but a little knowledge has made me feel like education is nothing but a gamble on my child's future.

[Anonymous]

The real problem is that some parents picked the school because they were having trouble where they were and needed a fresh start. They just wanted a new school - any new school - where their child wasn't already emerging as a problem, right? This is to be expected with a brand new school (which it was then), but still a shame for everyone. There are some kids in the 3rd grade with scholastic - and disciplinary/behavioral - challenges that are significant enough, that their parents had to move them after Kindergarten. Think about that. (You just don't see that combination in the other grades, where parents conscientiously chose the school and had to seek it out and get lucky to even get in!)

Yu Ying is a very academically rigorous school. Students with lots of innate ability will thrive there, probably more so than they would in any environment other than an exclusive private (which can sort by ability in their admissions process). Students who would struggle in most environments will probably struggle even more at Yu Ying.

Apparently it's politically incorrect or even offensive to point out the obvious in examples such as this. We're all supposed to pretend that despite wide variations in our inherent abilities and access to resources, everyone can achieve the same level of success at any given endeavor. Bell curves, shmell curves. Is there any real world evidence for this? Do we honestly expect everyone to play music at the same level, even if they've had music education? Could you have been Mozart, if only your father had started you on the violin at age 3? Do we expect everyone to be a gifted athlete just because they've had a good coach? Would you have been Wayne Gretzky if only you'd grown up in Canada with an ice rink your backyard? Is there no such thing as natural ability or aptitude? Or limits? If you only had the right photographer and wardrobe, would you look like Gisele Bundchen? Are intellectual gifts fundamentally different from musical or athletic or physically beautiful ones?

Parents should really know their children and make more thoughtful decisions about their futures, and getting a good educational fit is an enormous part of that. Just because this conforms to your educational skills and goals, doesn't mean it does so for your child. Just because it's a convenient school for you doesn't make it a good school for your child. Doesn't it make sense that if you can't be bothered to make an effort to learn some Chinese, and seek out opportunities to support your child's acquisition of a second language, then this educational model may not ultimately be successful for your child?

It sounds like a few parents enrolled their kids at Yu Ying (in the first grade, in the school's first year) because they were already having trouble in their existing Kindergarten school. (Were they asked to leave? Were they already struggling?) And they went into the "front line" experimental class with a deficit of skills. They're having trouble reading English and their parents don't care enough get them extra help? What kind of parent relies strictly on the school for success? What kind of parent allows their child to struggle without getting assistance or finding a more appropriate school? If these kids can't read in English, why would anyone expect them to read Chinese?

Mandarin is an incredibly difficult language to read, which is why millions of Chinese have been illiterate peasants for a few thousand years (even in the absence of the testing constraints of NCLB).

(And as long as I'm going to hell, aren't these probably the same boys who had a bullying problem at the beginning of last year, and caused a couple of girls to leave?)