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[quote=Anonymous]Common sense says that it isn't fair, but the DC charter school board, and the parent organizations at most of the immersion charters, says otherwise.  Dip into the long November thread about Yu Ying only having a handful of bilingual students, although there are probably hundreds in DC (if you include Chinese dialect speakers who don't speak Mandarin), for an education on the subject.

My guess is that many parents who don't speak the immersion language, or necessarily know much about the culture behind it, are threatened by those who do and, hence, don't want to see bilingual kids being given preferential treatment in the admissions process.  Really too bad when you consider that academics who study bilingual immersion programs (e.g. Canadian educators looking at French programs) have found that the "two-way" immersion model, where kids learn language from one another as much as from instructors, is more effective than the "one-way" model, where kids only learn the immersion language from teachers (e.g. Yu Ying).

If you're looking for immersion language models for DC to emulate, look around the country at Chicago, NYC and LA, where language immersion charters are permitted to strive to admit 50% Native English speakers and 50% Native speakers of the immersion language.  Going out of your way to admit bi and tri-lingual kids to language immersion programs is a no-brainer elsehwere, but, it seems, taboo in this city thus far, where concerns about any policy that might keep some low-income kids out of a particular charter trump all others.   In a decade, things will surely be different here, with these schools hosting two lotteries, one for English speakers, one for the bi and tri-lingual kids.  
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