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]For better and worse, the MoCo immersion programs are harder-core than YY, with non-native speaking families knowing that they're going to have to take the Chinese really seriously to keep up.  A few grumble on DCUM, many others adapt. Whenever many East Asian immigrant families are involved in a school program, other are going to have to work hard to keep up.  This reality can be a shock to the system for the uninitiated.

Chinese-American families know that elite colleges throw up barriers to admission for Asian applicants, like they did to Jews in an earlier generation. This helps explain why they want stellar test scores in HS: 5s on AP Chinese, 700-800s on the Chinese SAT II, and 6s and 7s on International Baccalaureate HL Chinese. MoCo's immersion system provides a path for these scores. The attitude is not "hey, I'd just like my ES kid to learn enough to be proficient, have fun, and think globally."  Cultural norms and economic uncertainty motivate immigrant families to embrace the challenge of ensuring that their kids ace standardized tests for college admissions, which China invented centuries ago.

Every native-speaking MoCo family we know who's wanted immersion got it eventually, usually after one or two years of waiting to replace a drop-out. Native-speaking parents have every reason to expect to get in if they persevere, because most neighborhood schools are good and demand for immersion spots isn't sky high.  The strong native-speaking presence means that practices to help kids learn that aren't seen much at YY yet--parents mainly speaking Chinese at home, heritage language school classes on weekends, kids attending China-themed and GT summer camps (e.g. Camp China in Rockville, and Dr. Li's MS entrance Raven Test Prep)--are common enough in MoCo.

Hardly anybody at YY seems to desire tougher Mandarin, more pressure for kids, or replacing the current admins with native speakers, so sounds like you've already got what you want.

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