Reply to Bilingual Kids in Language Immersion ES Programs, Which Programs Have Many & Strive to Attract Them?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] 7:22, will you tell us which school you're talking about?  I hear what you're saying.

At our school, LAMB, parents believe that the Montessori method provides us with a better tool to integrate the target language-speaking kids (not all of whom are bilingual on arrival! apparantly this is the case at YY) and English-speaking kids than traditional programs have at their disposal.  I think we do a great job with the lower elementary Montessori program, but am not as sold on the "Piscataway" 50/50 immersion approach for all upper elementary kids.

Some parents privately wonder if YY didn't do the right think in creating a separate English-intensive track, mostly serving low-SES kids. There is no way in hell that a 2nd track would fly at LAMB, although I suspect that it would help kids who struggle with English more than the serial "Response to Intervention" (RtI) remedial inputs the program provides.  A 2nd track would also help retain high-SES families at the Piscataway stage.  Many LAMB parents know about the considerable flak YY has taken for moving to create the 2nd track, which nobody wants here in NW.

This spring we will graduate our 3rd group of 5th graders, too many of whom won't have scored proficient in English on the DC-CAS.  Some have talked about pushing for a DC-CAS for Spanish proficiency, where our performance would surely be stronger overall than in English, but we are not meeting with much interest from the testing powers-that-be.

When YY PPs fuss about non-Chinese speaking admins, we wonder what planet you're on!  No question that our admins wouldn't speak Spanish, or do a lot of direct outreach to the Spanish-speaking community.  If the board must look to cities around the country to find the right sorts (with Montessori experience), and have them schooled them in the ways of running DC Metro area elementary schools, that's what happens.
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There are definitely some critical differences between the two schools.  For one thing, Spanish is the easiest language for English speakers to master, whereas Chinese is among the hardest.

For another, there's no way our administration would push for testing the DC-CAS in a language other than English!  At the end of the day, a second language is a luxury, but English proficiency is a necessity.  Yu Ying hasn't yet graduated a class of 5th graders.  The one we have didn't come up through the school, they entered at 1st or even 2nd.  There's no way our community would stand for allowing those students to not be proficient in their native language.  We wonder what planet you'd have to from, to be okay with that.  We're all looking forward to seeing how our current 3rd-graders do - the first class which, like LAMB's, has students who entered in PreK (though not all of them, as our students can enter up to 2nd grade).

Finally, it's easy to sniff and get the vapors at the mere thought of administrators who don't speak the target language - when there's an enormous population of target-language-speakers in the city.  Easy to get on your high horse when you climbed up a ladder to get there - harder when you have to actually jump.  To use another metaphor, for staffing, you're fishing in a sea, we're fishing in a backyard water-feature, so I'm surprised you can't understand the difference between the orders of magnitude.  If that is still unclear, you should consider brushing up on your math.

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