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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We're raising our children bilingual in a language not taught in a DC immersion program.

One of us speaks no English to the kids, and we send them to a heritage language school on weekends during the school year as well as summer camp abroad (not a camp for expats, one for ordinary local children who speak little English).  We don't allow them to watch TV in English (they watch DVDs in the target language).  My in-laws, whose English isn't the best are very involved, and we host au pairs who speak the target language year after year.  Our kids don't need English to get through the day.  They attend a high-performing DCPS elementary school, where they score high in English.

Few of the parents we know who choose language immersion in DC seem very serious about the exercise to us.  The schools don't seem terribly serious about it either - some lack target-language speaking admins and fully bilingual children, policies and practices many parents in the school communities defend to the hilt.

I mention all this because I've become skeptical about how language immersion programs work in this city.  I'd be surprised if most of these kids speak the target language well as adults.  Things are different in the burbs and other US cities.

If I couldn't support target language learning at home consistently, I'd pass on having my kids learn a second (or 3rd) language until the upper elementary grades, at the earliest.  Little kids learn languages easily, and all but forget them just as easily if they aren't reinforced into the teen years.

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There are two really critical things about your whole scenario that are different for the majority of DC parents sending their kids to public bilingual school and therefore make your situation not widely transferrable:

1. You (and possibly your spouse) and family members have been raising your kids with daily exposure to your target language (Cantonese I assume?) since the beginning.  If there was a school that offered bilingual ed in your language (and you deemed it worthy of sending your kids to), your kids would be starting with a huge jump because they'd been hearing and speaking the language since they could hear and speak.

2. You obviously are in a position to bring a lot of other resources to the table in your family's pursuit of bilingualism.  It is great (no sarcasm there, it really is great) that you can afford weekly heritage school, au pairs every year, and summer camp abroad every year in a local setting.  But let's be real, there are a lot of well-resourced parents in DC, but if you put all the parents who are sending their kids to DC bilingual public schools together (charter and DCPS), the majority of parents aren't financially able to provide all those resources.

That's great that you are able to do all that, but unless OP is similarly financially situated, I don't see how anything in this post helps OP to evaluate whether it's suitable for her family, when most schools don't require or expect parents to pull off all that high-intensity language support the way your family is.  You can't seriously hold  DC public schools to the same expectations or outcomes as you have for your kids given how unrealistic it would be to expect most DC public school parents to pony up the cash for those supports the way you do.[/quote]

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