Reply to Yu Ying - Transferring to Yu Ying from another state

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Forgot to say - the first group, the "no new students after 2nd grade until 6th grade" group, feel that way because[b] there is a priority on mantaining the lottery as the only way to enter the school (no testing in, becaue that would give families who can pay for Mandarin classes/tutoring/nannies a huge advantage). [/b] I don't know anyone in that group that doesn't get why it wouldn't be great to be able to have more already bilingual students fill those slots, but it's an equity issue.  But NONE of those people (or people in the "let students test in" group) want to see non-Mandarin speaking students thrown in with Mandarin speaking students in 3rd, 4th or 5th grades.[/quote]

Regarding the statement in bold: It's hardly a "huge advantage" to have the opportunity to enter a school that's PS-6 in 3rd grade, where: (1) seats will only be available if students leave the school; (2) your child must meet some sort of Mandarin proficiency test; and (3) you have to win a lottery among the people who meet #2 in order to get the very very few seats available because of #1. The idea that someone will give their kid 4 or 5 years of tutoring on the off chance they could get into YY for grades 3-6 is crazy.[/quote]

You're either clueless or purposefully being misleading.  Mandarin is the flavor of the month (and is likely to be for years to come), and parents are ALREADY investing in Mandarin language resources for their tiny ones, NOT just on the off-chance they'll get into YY, but because Mandarin is a priority for them and if they don't get into a Mandarin bilingual school, they'll find another way to supplement their kid learning it.  The interest in Mandarin hardly begins and ends with YY.  We were getting ready to send our DC to a Mandarin language school in our last city before getting to DC and arrived here already knowing about YY and hoping to get in.  But regardless of admissions (or not) to YY, Mandarin was and is very important to us.[/quote]

This is true for most parents who choose a Mandarin immersion school at other cities but not as much at Yu Ying simply b/c of the way the lottery is run here and the limited number of seats at desirable schools.  There are many families at Yu Ying who originally sent their kids there b/c it's the best school they got into through the lottery not b/c of their desire for mandarin specifically.  Then there are other families who chose it b/c it's the only Mandarin immersion school in DC.  It makes for a diverse community and those who did not originally chose YY for the Mandarin become more devoted with time or they leave.  Since there is very little attrition, looks like learning Mandarin eventually becomes a priority for those families too.[/quote]

[b]Your scope is too limited.[/b]  You are speaking as if YY is the starting point for many parents.  These days, it's not.  There are a lot of parents committed to Mandarin a language their kids will learn "by any means necessary", having nothing to do with the existence of YY.  There is a reason other DC schools are slowly starting to introduce Mandarin instruction, although not in an immersion way yet.  If a parent is committed to Mandarin and has resources to work with, they will get it for their kid one way or another.  If they get into YY, score, but if not, they are still moving forward.  It's those parents who will have a huge advantage over everyone else (except native speakers) if upper attrition slots get filled during non-lottery years by proficiency test in, and then there will be no slots when it opens up again for 6th.[/quote]

Actually, I don't think so.  People on this forum seems to think learning Mandarin is the equivalent of learning Spanish or any other language.  It isn't.  Weekend classes starting when the kid is young won't do it.  My BFF who is a native speaker in Mandarin has been sending her son to 1x a week classes since he was 4 as well as exclusively speaking to him in Mandarin since he was a baby.  Her words but her 12 yr old son's Mandarin "sucks" if she can get him to speak it at all which she can't.  He always answers back in English.  For Mandarin for young kids, you need an immersion school and the well kept secret is that even Yu Ying has trouble getting their kids to speak Chinese on Chinese days.

I hope someday the policy will change so that kids who are proficient in Mandarin can test-in to YY for 3, 4, 5th grades.  It'll be helpful to the kids who are already there.[/quote]

+1.  I am a sort of native speaker (parents speak it, I have been exposed to Chinese since I was a child, went to weekend classes, etc), and speaking Chinese is really, really hard (let's put aside the character). [b]I am extremely skeptical that kids whose parents do not speak it at home are actually going to learn Chinese. [/b] Spanish is so much easier.[/quote]

By this logic, my American-born Korean friend whose mother to this day can't speak English, shouldn't have learned English herself.  Yet she attended an Ivy and is now a heart surgeon.  It's amazing what daily language instruction and reinforcement in the public schools can accomplish.[/quote]

Different poster, I get your point, but the reverse is really not the same.  Your BFFs friend most likely never learned English because she was living in a Korean community in the US and had access to Korean media.  But when you attend school starting in at least K, and it's a regular school where everything is in English, and you are out and about all the time for years beyond an ethnic conclave, it's very hard *not* to learn English.  It is the dominant language and kids of immigrants going to public schools from a young age always learn it.[/quote]

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