Rank your top Spanish immersion programs

[Anonymous]

not either one of those schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:not either one of those schools.

Marie Reed then lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No one from my DCPS would even consider CHEC. We have talked (the active parents) about junior high/high and when CHEC was mentioned no one considered it as an option. Even when the bilingual office tried to talk it up at one of our meeting.

So..you can make it the feeder school, but that does not mean that parents would stay in that track and send their kids to CHEC.

Why not? They're consistently ranked highly by the Post's Challenge Index, offer AP courses, have committed school leaders.

[Anonymous]

CHEC started dual-immersion in HS this year. CHEC only started doing MS dual-immersion a couple of years ago when founder and principal Tukeva got private funding to go this route. This probably accounts for why DCPS hasn't been shouting it from the rooftops that we "already" have a 6-12 dual-language school. Approval for DCI probably forced DCPS's hand. They have to act like CHEC is the answer to DCI.

But just because a school gets a bunch of grants and changes its PR to say it's dual-immersion or "college prep" or whatever, doesn't make it so. It's not like being International Baccalaureate or Montessori. There are no defined criteria that CHEC has to follow. Tukeva can pretty much keep doing what she feels like doing.

But what happens after or without Tukeva? What if the private funding that funds the model dries up? What if the new charters from established operators like Rocketship siphon off a large number of EotP families?

CHEC sounds like it's trying to be all things to all people.

-boundary school with feeders from bilingual and non-bilingual schools
-citywide "application" high school, but also boundary?
-dual language 6-12 for science and social studies, but no language screening
-"career" program including cosmetology, construction, and now hospitality
-"early college" program, but low AP pass rates and who knows what 4-year college graduation rates
-on-site daycare for teen parents and Early Childhood Education career program

What are they not offering at this school?

Oyster-Adams suffers a bit from the all-things-to-all-people syndrome as well. Serious special needs preschool and advanced math in middle school, in-boundary and out of boundary, really high income and really low income, dual immersion but not always two teachers per classroom, etc.

DCPS really needs to get it's stuff together on Spanish immersion. Is there a dual language focus groups involved with the boundary change process? I've asked OBE, but haven't heard anything back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one from my DCPS would even consider CHEC. We have talked (the active parents) about junior high/high and when CHEC was mentioned no one considered it as an option. Even when the bilingual office tried to talk it up at one of our meeting.

So..you can make it the feeder school, but that does not mean that parents would stay in that track and send their kids to CHEC.

Why not? They're consistently ranked highly by the Post's Challenge Index, offer AP courses, have committed school leaders.

Proficiency in English and Math hover in the low 50s to high 40s. Does it matter how many AP classes are offered? Clearly some of the fundamentals still needs to be addressed.

The Challenge Index is flawed and pretty much useless. Many argue that the entire AP process is losing credibility while losing actual college credit at top schools. It's horribly unfair to students to lead them to believe that because they took one AP class (CHEC only requires English) that they are actually prepared for a selective 4 year college. This can be especially damaging for students who are the first generation in their families to attend college. CHEC's website flaunts the amount of college scholarships it's students receive. But it doesn't seem to say anything about it's college graduation rates.

This is one of the many critiques of the Index. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/why-high-school-rankings-are-meaningless-and-harmful/276122/

Excerpt -But many students who end up in AP courses are there because they are unwitting pawns of their principals, local school boards, or education bureaucrats, who are pushing more students to take AP classes to improve their schools' ranking on the Challenge Index and other such lists. Remember that the Mathews index doesn't take into account how students perform on the AP exams, just that they take them. The incentive to vacuum kids into these classes ends up packing AP courses with too many students who don't belong there.

In short, by being partly responsible for the explosive growth in AP enrollment over the past decade, the Mathews ranking -- and, to a lesser extent, the others -- amplifies the absurdity that pervades contemporary public education in the United States, where cramming students' heads with information and then subjecting those students to standardized tests seems to have supplanted helping students to learn as the preferred modus operandi of many education officials, and where the behavior of school officials is shaped more by perverse incentives than by educational common sense.

That's the reason to care about this.

If it weren't for the fact that these sorts of rankings actually shape school behavior, everyone would be perfectly justified in ignoring Mathews and the Washington Post as they spend time and other resources assembling his list. The ranking itself is meaningless. But the harm it and other lists of its kind do to public education and the role they play in driving the College Board's revenues can't be overlooked. These lists may sell papers and draw readers to websites, but for those of us outside of that business, we've a duty to push back against this kind of reductionism wherever we see it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:CHEC started dual-immersion in HS this year. CHEC only started doing MS dual-immersion a couple of years ago when founder and principal Tukeva got private funding to go this route. This probably accounts for why DCPS hasn't been shouting it from the rooftops that we "already" have a 6-12 dual-language school. Approval for DCI probably forced DCPS's hand. They have to act like CHEC is the answer to DCI.

But just because a school gets a bunch of grants and changes its PR to say it's dual-immersion or "college prep" or whatever, doesn't make it so. It's not like being International Baccalaureate or Montessori. There are no defined criteria that CHEC has to follow. Tukeva can pretty much keep doing what she feels like doing.

But what happens after or without Tukeva? What if the private funding that funds the model dries up? What if the new charters from established operators like Rocketship siphon off a large number of EotP families?

CHEC sounds like it's trying to be all things to all people.

-boundary school with feeders from bilingual and non-bilingual schools
-citywide "application" high school, but also boundary?
-dual language 6-12 for science and social studies, but no language screening
-"career" program including cosmetology, construction, and now hospitality
-"early college" program, but low AP pass rates and who knows what 4-year college graduation rates
-on-site daycare for teen parents and Early Childhood Education career program

What are they not offering at this school?

Oyster-Adams suffers a bit from the all-things-to-all-people syndrome as well. Serious special needs preschool and advanced math in middle school, in-boundary and out of boundary, really high income and really low income, dual immersion but not always two teachers per classroom, etc.

DCPS really needs to get it's stuff together on Spanish immersion. Is there a dual language focus groups involved with the boundary change process? I've asked OBE, but haven't heard anything back.

Oyster had a community input process addressing possibly change to city wide school, but not sure what they outcome/recommendation was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:not either one of those schools.

Marie Reed then lol

There are more than 4 dual-language DCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:not either one of those schools.

Marie Reed then lol

There are more than 4 dual-language DCPS.

Ok....Powell, Bancroft, Cleveland, Tyler and Bruce Monroe.and your point? I don't think anyone was disputing the number.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:not either one of those schools.

Marie Reed then lol

There are more than 4 dual-language DCPS.

I do know this. We are in one of them. The sentiment about CHEC is the same across the board....at least among the parents that put some thought into choosing a good school.

[Anonymous]

No one liked the idea if an in-school magnet lie Richard Montgomery in MoCo?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No one liked the idea if an in-school magnet lie Richard Montgomery in MoCo?

What is it?

[Anonymous]

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/rmhs/ib/

This kind of thing is what I want the reconstituted McFarland to be. Language, IB, and support for those who need to grow the most as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/rmhs/ib/

This kind of thing is what I want the reconstituted McFarland to be. Language, IB, and support for those who need to grow the most as well.

The IB program is one of the best high schools in MC, and the rest of the high school serves students of all abilities also quite well. I think this is the type of model that would work in DC. (this is really turning into a completely different thread...oh well!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:CHEC started dual-immersion in HS this year. CHEC only started doing MS dual-immersion a couple of years ago when founder and principal Tukeva got private funding to go this route. This probably accounts for why DCPS hasn't been shouting it from the rooftops that we "already" have a 6-12 dual-language school. Approval for DCI probably forced DCPS's hand. They have to act like CHEC is the answer to DCI.

But just because a school gets a bunch of grants and changes its PR to say it's dual-immersion or "college prep" or whatever, doesn't make it so. It's not like being International Baccalaureate or Montessori. There are no defined criteria that CHEC has to follow. Tukeva can pretty much keep doing what she feels like doing.

But what happens after or without Tukeva? What if the private funding that funds the model dries up? What if the new charters from established operators like Rocketship siphon off a large number of EotP families?

CHEC sounds like it's trying to be all things to all people.

-boundary school with feeders from bilingual and non-bilingual schools
-citywide "application" high school, but also boundary?
-dual language 6-12 for science and social studies, but no language screening
-"career" program including cosmetology, construction, and now hospitality
-"early college" program, but low AP pass rates and who knows what 4-year college graduation rates
-on-site daycare for teen parents and Early Childhood Education career program

What are they not offering at this school?

Oyster-Adams suffers a bit from the all-things-to-all-people syndrome as well. Serious special needs preschool and advanced math in middle school, in-boundary and out of boundary, really high income and really low income, dual immersion but not always two teachers per classroom, etc.

DCPS really needs to get it's stuff together on Spanish immersion. Is there a dual language focus groups involved with the boundary change process? I've asked OBE, but haven't heard anything back.

I thought Adams did not have great math and science which is why people leave for Deal?

[Anonymous]

PP here, correct. Meant to say that O-A is claiming that it will offer advanced math. Saying vs doing are very different. Depending on who you talk to, the school is trying to be all things to all people.