Reply to Immersion school parents

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Immersion school parents "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]They're doing it because it's the best school they got into overall.[/b] Or, one parent handles the language stuff but that parent was not at the party.

Some people have more important things going on in their lives, like actual serious problems that are more important.

If you need all parents at your school to be motivated, you're going to be very unhappy in this school system.[/quote]

This is it, plain and simple. The DC school lottery funnels kids into immersion schools because of push factors, meaning, DCI provides a more solid high school pathway than their IB school or other available DCPS options (that don't require a top 5% lottery draw in one particular year). Some parents don't care about the language at all, but just want that pathway. Others think any language exposure is beneficial, even if their kids never become fluent. Others believe they'll achieve fluency without having to put in any extra effort at home.

Compare with suburban schools that have solid IB options and attract immersion kids through pull factors. Meaning, they want IMMERSION with a longer bus ride more than they want their acceptable neighborhood school. Apples and oranges to DC.[/quote]

This is sort of true. Some immersion schools absolutely draw in parents who are just looking for a solid school with a good base of invested, involved families and decent test scores.

But in recent years we've seen a proliferation of immersion programs where the school itself is fundamentally flawed, the academics are aggressively bad, and this quickly leads to shedding the families who are education-focused and involved. Take a look at Stokes EE (both languages) and Mundo Verde (especially Calle Ocho, but problems at both campuses). Parents wind up "pushed" to these schools because they assume the quality of education will be higher than it is a their IB or even at non-immersion charters. But these schools have massive problems and many kids aren't learning the language and also aren't learning, period. One factor hitting many immersion (and Montessori) schools is that the teacher shortage is more acute for them because they need teachers with language skills. Well there are less of those. And charters don't always pay teachers well and there's less job security and stability, so you may see a lot of midyear departures, something that is rare in DCPS.

So, sure, if you are getting into YY, LAMB, DCB, Oyster, Marie Reed immersion track -- you are likely getting what you hope. But immersion does not actually equal better academics. In DC, it can actually equal significantly worse academics, because schools can coast with clueless PK families who lottery in thinking they "won" because they got an immersion spot, and only start to wise up in 1st and 2nd when not only do almost none of the kids in class actually speak the language, but also the school's PARCC scores are eye-poppingly bad. And people commute across town for some of these schools!

Immersion has been viewed as a proxy for quality in DC for a while now and the truth is much more complicated than that. Same with charters in general, to some degree (see, i.e. Two Rivers). There are some parents in DC who think they are escaping some horrible travesty by opting into these programs, but it's a house of cards. I'd send my kid to an IB Title 1 in DCPS any day of the week before sending them to MV8th or Stokes EE. But I have an older child and know the difference, and know to look beyond the kids in the PK classroom clapping along to a French counting song. People need to wise up.[/quote]

Yes that may be true, particularly post-pandemic. My kids are mid-elementary now and people were still thinking they won the lottery when they got an initial seat when MV8 opened. But I do think there are plenty of parents who still put up with lesser academics at some of the schools you listed as "getting what you hoped" because they want the security of a DCI feed. Which is now about to become a preference, so TBD on how they weigh the risk of losing the sixth grade lottery. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics