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[quote=Anonymous]MCPS can be doing a lot to reach out to communities with young minority children.  Buying a NAEYC list for the county and mailing every daycare program with fliers about MCPS K registration and programs.  Informing all Head Start parents about opportunities.  Working thru community organizations like churches or food pantries or whatever to inform the community.  Putting fliers up at county pools or playgrounds or whatever.  Or working with doctors networks to hand out school fliers along with 4-year immunizations.

But, the idea that the county has no way to do any outreach before you voluntarily show up at the door in K is a little bit ridiculous and lazy.  I expect more from my government.

The truth is that these immersion programs, like many other special programs in MCPS, were set up initially as "pull" forms of integration.  That is to say, they were programs that would appeal to white parents (immersion, gifted centers, special math and science instruction) who would be interested enough in them to apply and send their kids to schools that were high minority and high poverty schools.  At the time, MCPS knew that de-segregating schools was a legal obligation, but they also knew that county-wide forced busing (i.e. "push" integration) was unlikely to be successful (see Boston and Prince William, VA).

There are many reasons why this kind of integration isn't actually that desirable today.  The magnet programs may draw a more diverse group of parents, but that doesn't necessarily benefit the home school students as it was initially thought they would.  And, of course, today we realize that parents of poor and minority children should have access to these programs as well.

Particularly when it comes to immersion, IMO, the county should be leveraging it's high ESOL and native Spanish-speaking population to create a different kind of immersion -- dual immersion (instead of full or partial) programs.  Dual immersion is the format at schools like Washington International School.  Dual immersion means classes of equal parts native English and Spanish speakers, each of whom are expected to become fully fluent in the other language.  So, native Spanish speakers (of which MoCo has plenty) are paired with native English speakers, in an alternating Spanish/English instructional pattern, with explicit instruction in both English and Spanish reading and writing.  Dual immersion has been shown to be successful for ESOL and native English speakers alike.

But, in MCPS, we never developed our immersion this way, because it was explicitly set up to appeal to white, native English speakers.

Maybe it's time to fix that.  [/quote]

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