Reply to Asking for Advice - Rejection from Oyster-Adams Preschool

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The DC school handbook used to say "if a student resides in a home in which Spanish is spoken regularly, it is likely the student will pass assessment."  Now the handbook is conspicuously silent on what "Spanish dominant" actually means.  There is a complete lack of consistent standards across schools and drastically different interpretations and enforcement policies.  This, coupled with the timing of the test (post-lottery), means parents like the OP who have every reason to believe their child is Spanish dominant, will find themselves not only denied entry to their matched school, but at the end of the waitlist of every other school they might otherwise have chosen.  This is a a lawsuit waiting to happen.  Of course, [b]it's really only a problem at Oyster where the principal seems determined to use the test to push a political agenda[/b] rather than a reasonable or commonsense understanding of the child's Spanish proficiency.

[quote=Anonymous]
This part is crazy, but also confirms the feeling I got after I heard Ms. Cruz's presentation at an open house earlier this year. She said that the parent(s) have to be in the interview (which differs from Diego's experience, but that's what I heard), that kids who learned their Spanish from nannies are not who they want, and that these Spanish-dominant spots are meant for English language learners (so, I suppose, disqualifying bilingual kids). Not going to debate the merits of what she said, as these points have been debated ad nauseam and with much vitriol on other threads, but the overall vibe I got from her is that ethnic/national origin, and not language ability, is the test, even though she can't say so. I found it very off-putting, especially as the parent of non-Hispanic kids who wake up screaming in Spanish from their nightmares and have meltdowns in Spanish, and as such have a good faith belief that they are, in the commonsensical sense of the term, Spanish dominant.

Anyhow, I agree with whoever said in another thread that DCPS should define the term more clearly, and legally. I have a feeling that this would only affect Oyster, though, since every other DCPS immersion starts at PK3, and it may be hard to test at PK3 because many kids still don't talk all that much when they're 3 in any language.

Good luck, Diego. At least you're IB, so you have that option at K if that's still what you want.[/quote][/quote]

What do you mean she is pushing a political agenda?  Of what sort?  I am not disagreeing with you, I am just trying to understand more of what you mean.[/quote]

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