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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Oh, are we ranting about immersion in DC? Cool, here's mine:

It annoys me that immersion spots are awarded based on the lottery with no effort to show whether parents will be committed to the immersion aspect, which means that my tax dollars in DC go to provide immersion education to the kids of parents who DGAF about it and make no effort, while my kid was locked out of immersion programs due to bad lottery luck.[/quote]

OP here. I hear you!!! This is part of my rant!!! Why are people putting their kids in an immersion school and not even encouraging their child to speak the language? There are classmates in 2nd grade who literally never speak the language! The teachers don't "push" them to speak so they stumble through, and without parents encouraging them to learn and try, it just seems.... Such a wasted opportunity. I absolutely would be supportive of the immersion schools to provide some weight to families who actually want to  learn the language.[/quote]

Yup. And I have a rising 2nd grader in a non-immersion program and we pay for weekly language lessons and read books and watch movies in the target language to support language learning even though our kid is not in an immersion program. But many families in these programs can't even be bothered to download Duolingo and learn a few phrases. It's such a waste, frankly.

I also think ultimately it's a huge disservice to the kids because immersion does have a downside, in that kids sometimes acquire skills more slowly in math and ELA because of the focus on immersion language. That trade off is worth it if you are actually going to learn the language and the family will support in other areas to make sure the kids don't fall behind. But if you are just lazy and don't care, you wind up with a kid who doesn't speak the target language and is also grades behind in core subjects. These kids would be much better off in one of the many great DCPS elementary programs in DC (we are in one such program, our IB Title 1) where they get a lot of school-based support for core subjects plus extra tutoring support. But they are in an immersion program because they were told that DCPS schools are universally terrible and that immersion charters are universally great and never questioned it.[/quote]

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