Reply to Who do I write to to advocate that Yu Ying join the common lottery?

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Reply to "Who do I write to to advocate that Yu Ying join the common lottery?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, I agree and suspect strongly that YY will join the common lottery for these reasons. Too much risk of server crash, brawls among people camping on the sidewalk outside YY etc.

Think they considered this year but they didn't know if they would have Pk3 until too late in the process. And they also wanted to see how it went.[/quote]

This. I'm a Yu Ying parent and when I asked the admin about the common lottery last year they did say they were actively considering it but needed to figure out if they were doing a PS3 class first which wasn't confirmed until after the common lottery happened. They also wanted to make sure the lottery went well- meaning no major glitches or snafus- but it was primarily about juggling the PS3 decision. I suspect they will join this year and the decision not to so far is hardly nefarious.

As far as improving your chances, if you are willing to stand in line you probably have a better shot with Yu Ying's time stamped wait list than with the common lottery, though I agree both approaches help address the concern of having [b]truly committed families attend[/b]. [/quote]
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What do mean by truly committed?  Parents willing to speak Chinese at home if they can?  Willing and able to host Chinese au pairs through the J-1 visa program?  Take regular family trips to Chinese-speaking swathes of the earth, and send kids to immerson summer camps?  Invest in instructional software and DVD collections?  Hire tutors and schlep kids to heritage schools in the burbs on weekends for extra instruction?  These enrichment options are expensive and DC Charter mainly wants kids whose parents can't begin to afford them.  You guys are losing the forest for the trees on what makes language immersion work into the teen years.  A well-designed lottery process is the tip of the iceberg.
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Wow, not the PP you're talking to, but you just took a loooooong stretch of reasoning there by assuming that's what PP meant by "truly committed"!  Truth is, for SY13-14 there were 35 PK4 lottery slots and at least 12 people turned down the offer (no idea how far they went on the PK4 waitlist but I think I heard maybe as far as 16?).  To me "truly committed" simply means "understands YY is a Mandarin bilingual school and is consciously choosing Mandarin as a language for their child".  It doesn't have to be more than that.  It can take way more than that for an individual child to be successful in learning Mandarin, but what "truly committed" mainly means to me is that the family has considered the options and specifically is choosing Mandarin and a Mandarin-focused, Chinese culture-focused school for their child.

That is a choice that families of all backgrounds and income levels can make, and it requires no money to make and hopefully for families that can't do all the additional supports and culture immersion and expensive summer camps, just the fact that their child will exit 5th or 6th grade (or go all the way through to 12th grade) even just proficient in Mandarin will open a lot of doors.  It certainly cannot hurt, even if they won't win any "Best Tones Ever!!!!" awards or whatever.

Reposted to add: But who knows, that same child who did none of the extras or couldn't afford the expensive supports might [b]thrive and excel[/b] in Mandarin, so you really don't know.  We're still too many years out from seeing how Yu Ying does with all children as they get to 5th and 6th grades in Mandarin.  Isn't it just the founding classes that are reaching 5th and 6th grades now?[/quote]

Thanks PP for clarifying on my behalf. I am the OP and meant just what you said, "truly committed" parents that understand this is a Mandarin immersion school and know what they are getting themselves into (vs people who show up the first day and have no idea it is an immersion school). And for context, I was talking about the debate some on this board were having over which option, common lottery or time stamped wait list would result in more families who really, actively want a mandarin education for their child. If the school is concerned with this- which I find understanding- then I think the common lottery methodology is also a way to address this concern when admissions are otherwise random.  And again, I suspect the school will choose this route.

[b]FWIW, I think I am one of those "truly committed" parents yet don't do most of the things on the pp's long list of extras. [/b]Not sure what sparked that diatribe but it did make me laugh. Man, people on this board can get pretty cray-cray. [/quote]

Same.  Not one.  Kid " thrives and excels" just the same.  Exhausting just reading the list of things "truly committed" parents are suppose to do.[/quote]

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