Law Suit

[Anonymous]

The population that is not being reached may not have cell phones or email.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ there is one major sign up window in the spring. That is relatively well promoted. Immersion could happen after/as part of that window.

As for reaching parents and people being away - people should provide cell and email and be given 3 business days to reply. You miss it then you miss it and they go on to the next family. You could also cap the number of lotteries a family applied to in order to cut the dance down some.

The reality is the current system is not designed well to be widely accessible to families seeking immersion for their oldest. MCPS needs to think how to fix that info gap problem.

This is actually the current practice more or less (I'm not sure of the exact # of business days but its around that number). So lets play things out... If you notify the first set of parents at the beginning of May and a family declines a spot and subsequent families decline a spot or don't respond after 3 business days. You have gone through roughly 7 families by the end of the month with a waitlist into the hundreds. That number could be less depending on how fast the office turn around is once a spot is declined and they are prompted to contact another family. Now, this goes on all through the summer... May, June, July and August. Now you are at family 28 roughly. Of course, families could respond faster so it may not be that extreme but you get the point. Now think about trying this at say the beginning of July or August!

[Anonymous]

So there are few options but to move the start to first grade. Maybe if you don't want immersion enough to move your child after K, you should just stay where you are.

[Anonymous]

I looked up our old invitation form and currently you have 5 calendar days to respond. Also while you can accept via email or phone initially you have to mail in or fax the form for final confirmation which I'm sure you can imagine holds up the process even more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So there are few options but to move the start to first grade. Maybe if you don't want immersion enough to move your child after K, you should just stay where you are.

While I appreciate your efforts in this direction to make the process fairer I think that losing a year of instruction in Spanish weakens the program too much especially for the partial immersion programs that only have the first year in K as full immersion. I also think you are going to see far more kids dropping out who can't handle the transition from preschool to K in English, to 1st in Spanish, to 2-6 in partial Spanish. Anyone who never had immersion before will certainly not be able to test in after 1st grade even for those willing to try for those opening of slots.

[Anonymous]

This was never about immersion programs, or access, or even MCPS in general. It IS about Will Jawando, professional agitator trying to stay relevant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So there are few options but to move the start to first grade. Maybe if you don't want immersion enough to move your child after K, you should just stay where you are.

While I appreciate your efforts in this direction to make the process fairer I think that losing a year of instruction in Spanish weakens the program too much especially for the partial immersion programs that only have the first year in K as full immersion. I also think you are going to see far more kids dropping out who can't handle the transition from preschool to K in English, to 1st in Spanish, to 2-6 in partial Spanish. Anyone who never had immersion before will certainly not be able to test in after 1st grade even for those willing to try for those opening of slots.

Doesn't Fairfax start immersion in first grade? And MCPS currently lets kids start in 1st without testing so it can't be that terrible. In fact, at my school K is not full immersion. It is partial like all the other years. I know change is bad..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So there are few options but to move the start to first grade. Maybe if you don't want immersion enough to move your child after K, you should just stay where you are.

While I appreciate your efforts in this direction to make the process fairer I think that losing a year of instruction in Spanish weakens the program too much especially for the partial immersion programs that only have the first year in K as full immersion. I also think you are going to see far more kids dropping out who can't handle the transition from preschool to K in English, to 1st in Spanish, to 2-6 in partial Spanish. Anyone who never had immersion before will certainly not be able to test in after 1st grade even for those willing to try for those opening of slots.

+1. K is such a valuable year for learning language. Although kids can and do become fluent as they grow older, there is a lot of research that shows the earlier the better.

I would prefer to see much increased pre-K outreach, and make K registration earlier in the year (say January), with allowances for late registration. It is better for the county too if they have K numbers earlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So there are few options but to move the start to first grade. Maybe if you don't want immersion enough to move your child after K, you should just stay where you are.

While I appreciate your efforts in this direction to make the process fairer I think that losing a year of instruction in Spanish weakens the program too much especially for the partial immersion programs that only have the first year in K as full immersion. I also think you are going to see far more kids dropping out who can't handle the transition from preschool to K in English, to 1st in Spanish, to 2-6 in partial Spanish. Anyone who never had immersion before will certainly not be able to test in after 1st grade even for those willing to try for those opening of slots.

Doesn't Fairfax start immersion in first grade? And MCPS currently lets kids start in 1st without testing so it can't be that terrible. In fact, at my school K is not full immersion. It is partial like all the other years. I know change is bad..

Some do and some don't. The dual immersion seems to start in K with ability to enter during 1st. The partial immersion for select languages starts at 1st. The set up is a bit different in this scenario for Fairfax as if you have English in K, then do Math and Science in Spanish but continue to have Language instruction in English for 1st its not that difficult of a transition. This might be why they don't have full immersion like MOCO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So there are few options but to move the start to first grade. Maybe if you don't want immersion enough to move your child after K, you should just stay where you are.

While I appreciate your efforts in this direction to make the process fairer I think that losing a year of instruction in Spanish weakens the program too much especially for the partial immersion programs that only have the first year in K as full immersion. I also think you are going to see far more kids dropping out who can't handle the transition from preschool to K in English, to 1st in Spanish, to 2-6 in partial Spanish. Anyone who never had immersion before will certainly not be able to test in after 1st grade even for those willing to try for those opening of slots.

+1. K is such a valuable year for learning language. Although kids can and do become fluent as they grow older, there is a lot of research that shows the earlier the better.

I would prefer to see much increased pre-K outreach, and make K registration earlier in the year (say January), with allowances for late registration. It is better for the county too if they have K numbers earlier.

Yeah there's actually a mini battle going on inside the partial immersion programs over how little Spanish instruction is actually given. In K everything is completely in Spanish, 1-3 is Reading/Writing/Social Studies in English + Science/Math in Spanish, in fourth and fifth the Spanish instruction gets reduced often due to a number of factors such as pull out for extracurriculars like band or placement in compacted math which can't be given in Spanish or a subset of immersion parents requesting to give math instruction in English so kids aren't confused on standardized tests.

Even in full immersion English language instruction begins to be introduced in fourth. So in my view that first year of language instruction in K is critical.

[Anonymous]

Like on many other topics..is MCPSs goal Spanish speakers or is it closing the gap..in the this case closing the gap in participants rather than achievement.

[Anonymous]

It is clear that this man simply wanted out of his shitty school cluster and into RTES/BCC-so he was pissed off when he got another "bad" school cluster. So he will play the minority/race card in his attempt to have his minority kid go to a non minority school-because he can. Sickening!

[Anonymous]

PP-meant RCFES/BCC

[Anonymous]

Even with increased outreach, I would bet that enrollment numbers would not surge.

Some parents aren't going to see the value in this, some parents will just want their kids to master English, and yet other kids will have learning difficulties that parents may feel hinder their ability to learn another language.

Just advertising the program and telling parents about it isn't going to be enough. They would have to actually explain why the parents should be interested and want their kids to participate.

For higher SES families and white families who have higher education levels, there is an unspoken understanding of the value of a second language but this is not going to be true for the families they are most likely try to reach out too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So there are few options but to move the start to first grade. Maybe if you don't want immersion enough to move your child after K, you should just stay where you are.

Many and maybe even the majority of the parents are drawn to the immersion program to get their kids out the the general populations of their home schools. While I am sure they want the best education for their kids too, just not enough to move to better areas.