Reply to Spanish Immersion Community Table Session

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The numbers simply don't show that immersion is failing English speaking kids. I mean we can throw out anecdotes all you wan. I have two kids in Immersion and both of them were identified as gifted and score near 600 on every SOL they take.  Heck my youngest is 4 grade levels ahead in math.  And we don't do anything special to supplement and are an English speaking household. My kids are also now at least conversationally fluent in Spanish. But anecdotes don't matter. You can get plenty of stories in here how neighborhood schools or other choice school kids are struggling and switching schools fixed it. Some schools just aren't a fix for kids.

But the test scores at Clarmeont for white kids (only way i can theoretically look at data for English speaking kids easily) are higher than Abingdon, Alice fleet, Oakridge  and Drew (I stopped looking at this pt) and the scores are on par with schools like Nottingham. English speaking kids as a whole aren't being failed at Claremont, the data simply does not support that. But I firmly believe immersion isn't for everyone.  [/quote] As a Claremont family (english speaking), I underscore this. The data simply does not track with the claims on this board when it comes to achievement. The data overall for immersion programs shows that cohorts can lag but by middle/high school, they score better than comparable peers on standardized tests (to the extent that matters to people - which appraently, is a lot). People love to point to "well my kid..." or "i know a family..." The same can be said for non-immersion programs. Some kids need different things and thrive in different environments. But it's simply not the case that this is an indictment on the program itself.[/quote]

you have to acknowledge that the 'cohort' has shrunk considerably by middle/high school.  The kids who were not making it in immersion drop out throughout elementary school and definitely before middle school.  So you are left with the kids who are making it.  This really helps those statistics that show that kids do comparable to non-immersion peers in middle school/ high school.   I don't mean this as an overall indictment of the program, obviously it serves many families well.  But I see absolutely no reason to expand it.  It fails more people than it serves.  We are another immersion dropout- who tried really hard to make it work, but my kids had significant learning differences, and immersion was a terrible fit.[/quote]

"not making it" is not the main reason families don't continue into ms or then into hs.
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+1 to the poster who noted the variety of options come middle school as a significant (the most significant?) driver of the shrinking cohort [/quote]

So that is great, they aren’t leaving for proximity but because of so many competing options, so location doesn’t matter. [/quote]

Disagree.
I think many leave due to location. They also leave because they want to attend their neighborhood middle school with their neighborhood friends. They also don't want to go to Wakefield, so no point in going to middle school immersion if they aren't going to finish the program anyway and can keep studying Spanish as a world language if they really want - or better yet, start a third language. And then there are those who have just had enough and don't feel the need to continue and want to do something else.[/quote]

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