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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Have there been any updates? Happy to hear the principal reinstated. We were interested in Key prior to this incident, and had generally heard good things. After the incident we are nervous. We know it's a lottery, so who even knows if we would get a spot.

Are there any current parents out there who can share pros and cons of the school?  We want our child  to learn a second language, we value a close knit community and socioeconomic and racial diversity. BUT, most important to us is a safe environment and high standards / good teaching / emphasis on academics. Are those available at this school as well? Obviously no school is perfect, so I am curious what current parents like and wish were different. [/quote]
I would only send your kid to this school if they fit into one of the categories below:
1. Spanish/Hispanic background and the language is regularly spoken in the home. 
2. The child is from a State Dept/foreign service family and has lived in a Spanish speaking country and was exposed to the language during their language formative years. 
3. Rich kid with Spanish speaking nanny who has spoken Spanish to them since they were a baby.

With the exception of kids who are born with exceptional linguistic abilities, kids who have not had previous exposure to the language are at a HUGE disadvantage. They start slow, but by second grade, it seemed as if they were expecting students to be nearly fluent. Those of us who have had to learn Spanish or any other language in an academic setting know that this is nearly impossible. And if students fall behind in Spanish, they will fall behind in all of the subjects that are taught in Spanish, especially math. That being said, I understood Spanish well enough to see that the math instruction at Key was simply  bad and not very rigorous. It took two years of tutoring and moving to another school to undo all of the damage. More generally, we tried to seek extra help for our kids in learning the Spanish language and no one cared. They only care about English learners. It is not all bad. There are some wonderful, caring teachers and a very friendly parent community. But, in my opinion, the education and curriculum is deficient in comparison to other schools and it is simply not worth it for kids who are not native speakers. [/quote]

I’m sorry if your kid had trouble/you didn’t feel it was rigorous enough. But your implication that 5 is too old to learn a language by immersion  is just not true and is not supported by the research. My kids had no prior Spanish & picked it up fine… and I know tons of kids in the same position. They don’t all have “extraordinary linguistic abilities.”  Learning via immersion is not like taking a Spanish class in high school. [/quote]
Nice passive aggressive dig at my kids, thanks.  :roll: But anyway, of course people can learn languages after age 5. I personally did. But almist no one gains fluency in a language after only two years of school instruction without some other type of background in the language.  Key really ramped up the expectation that kids were near fluent by second grade, and if they were not, there was no help available. They just kind of assume that every kid has some outside source for learning the language. They were kind of passive in that respect. They did once have a summer language program for kids at Key and Claremont, but that got nixed. We were just over it and the kids just lost all interest in Spanish. They are actually taking another language at their new school and they are loving it. [/quote]

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