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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]These DCI threads are so tiring.

If DCI IB is so great explain why DCI is so bad at teaching the fundamentals.  Here are the 8th grade PARCC scores that someone posted earlier:

DCI:

ELA 48.73% 
Math 33.05%

BASIS

ELA 85.22% 
Math 73.3%[/quote]

They’re probably not awful. They just get lazy MC kids that were in feeders to “escape” DCPS and have only ever put minimal work into school and their language. Unlike BASIS which self-selects kids that are able and willing to work hard. By the time they hit DCI it’s too late (unless you want a much different atmosphere) and the test scores reflect that.[/quote]

Again we seem to wind up at the same conclusion someone early on started with: if we're going to compare BASIS, Latin and DCI, they are very different schools, with different strengths and different challenges. And kids who don't do well in one might do very well in another.

I worked for years as an admin in a different urban school district and my wife is a middle school teacher in a DCPS school right now. Our DS goes to DCI, is doing fine, and we do have him do extra Math & English in a few ways but we looked at BASIS when he was in 4th grade and we felt DCI was a better fit. And we're happy with that decision because overall we feel like he's had good teachers at DCI.

And we'd feel that way even apart from language, but today his Chinese teacher took 75 upper level Chinese language learners out for Hotpot to celebrate the Lunar New Year and it was a big chunk of the school day (they notified parents and we had the option to keep our kids in school in regular classes instead of the field trip) but to spend the day speaking Chinese and going to a very traditional Chinese restaurant to eat in and learn the various things they learned... Language IS a big reason we also chose DCI and days like today cement it further as the right choice for our family.

That said, I totally understand and agree with those in lower level Chinese courses, I can see how there might be less rigor and less differentiation (or almost none) and that would be a big issue if we were in that situation.  Also middle-school-aged kids are so dramatic and there's so much developing socially, Chinese is probably SUCH a hard language to teach to 11-14 yr olds as a new language. It needs to be figured out at DCI, but the Yu Ying kids who are 8th graders now started Chinese at 4 yrs old, it is WAY easier to get 4 yr olds to be quiet and just go with the fact that suddenly they're being spoken to in Mandarin all day at school. And also, it was all day.  Kids new to Mandarin at DCI are only having a few classes a day and that makes it very hard to learn too but not many alternatives.[/quote]

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