Reply to the DC International Public Charter School (DCI)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My guess is that many parents who don't speak the immersion language, or necessarily know much about the culture behind it, are threatened by those who do and, hence, don't want to see bilingual kids being given preferential treatment in the admissions process.  Really too bad when you consider that academics who study bilingual immersion programs (e.g. Canadian educators looking at French programs) have found that the "two-way" immersion model, where kids learn language from one another as much as from instructors, is more effective than the "one-way" model, where kids only learn the immersion language from teachers (e.g. Yu Ying).   
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Bad guess. I'm a non-Chinese YY parent and I'd love to see a separate application process for native speakers. The more native speakers we can get in the classrooms, the stronger our kids' Chinese will be. I do not, however, believe the law allows is.[/quote]

Another YY parent who feels the same, though I would point out that YY is a Mandarin school.  I see no reason to offer preferential admission to Cantonese speakers, even if it were legal.  Most of the vitriol I see on these boards from bilingual families seems to favor preferential treatment for speakers of any Chinese dialect, which I do not agree with.[/quote]

Ditto.  I'm also not a native Chinese speaker (I'm not a Chinese speaker at all - Mandarin or Cantonese!), but I also would think theoretically it would be great to have native speaking Mandarin children in YY.  But I also understand that part of being a charter means not having entrance criteria beyond entering the lottery, and if you can't test for language skill level, how do you have an immersion/bilingual program where kids are entering in the older grades with little or no language experience?  What is the point, beyond just being a school that offers some kids an aggressive language program in later years but you can't learn with the ones who are native speakers or been learning since Pre-K?

I'm not threatened at all, but I don't see the point in pushing a policy that the current charter rules don't allow.  Here's an idea - when you get the policy changed, get back to us and we'll work together to get in native speakers at any grade to fill vacant spots!

Here's a question though - if middle school or later admissions were allowed to an immersion or even bilingual school, would native speakers (of any language) have to also test at a certain level in English?  Because if the assumption is that high school is too late to teach an English speaker a new language that they can also be instructed in other languages in, why would we assume you can teach a non-English speaking student other high school topics in English?[/quote]

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