Reply to DME Kicks Off DCPS Boundary Review; Changes Expected for 2015-16 School Year

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Reply to "DME Kicks Off DCPS Boundary Review; Changes Expected for 2015-16 School Year"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The press release implies that they are going to look at options for charters, such as creating a neighborhood preference. Would they be able to do this given that the charter law is a federal law? Wouldn't that require action by congress?

I think it would be great if language immersion charters could reserve a certain portion of the seats to true native household speakers (as opposed to, say, a child who goes to a bilingual daycare but speaks English at home), verified by a written and/or oral test. (My child would not benefit from this directly, as we are an English-speaking family, but I think it would make the language immersion schools much better for everyone.)[/quote]

I agree that language preference would be better for the school, but seems unfair from the point of view of students applying.  Under your scenario, a child from a Spanish speaking household would have preference at Mundo Verde, Oyster-Adams, LAMB, Tyler SI, (others I'm likely missing), and still have the option of their in-boundary school, along with the same lottery access to all the other DCPS and charter schools, while a mono-lingual child would have the latter but not the former.  That sort of unequal access seems against the spirit of public education and school choice.  Of course at the secondary level, SWW, Banneker, Ellington all have selective admissions.  Clearly, I have mixed feelings about the subject.[/quote]

Come off it, such BS and myopia. Other US cities and our near neighbors in Fairfax and MoCo have given preference to bilingual kids (at least to replace drop outs) for a long time because well-run dual immersion programs do a much better job imparting target language skills than comparable one-way immersion programs.

Of course bilingual kids should get preference, mainly to be fair to the non-native speakers who enroll.  They're the ones who suffer when there are very few native-speaking kids, and bilingual families who know the cultural well, involved at a school.  If you doubt this, visit first-rate immersion language schools in the burbs and compare standards at their DC counterparts.  No comparison.  Many clueless DC parents at the immersion charters hear the kids speak the target language and assume that they speak beautifully.  Often not the case.

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