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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If immersion --> bilingualism elevates a child's cognitive skills so measurably and reliably,  why is it that none of the bilingual kids I know personally (and know well ) are scholastically superior?  That's the piece I can't reconcile.

I know what "the studies" like the one upthread conclude. I don't need a bunch of new URLs offered -- I've skimmed the data.  Then I consider the bilingual kids I know (Spanish Russian, Japanese and mandarin/Cantonese) and I'm not seeing it.  Not in their grades, achievements or class standing.

This is middle school by the way -- maybe those slam dunk cognitive payouts happen later, on the SAT and college sweepstakes?[/quote]

How bilingual are these kids?  I often hear DC parents telling me that their kids are bilingual for having attended X or Y DC immersion language elementary school for however many years, without much target language support at home, if any.  In immigrant families, children are often raised to understand everyday conversation in the native tongue, while the parents don't insist that their offspring speak it.  This approach limits the kids' cognitive boost.  Most of the truly bilingual and bilterate children with well-educated parents I run into impress me.

Back to the subject at hand - much of what's in the Washington Global proposal sounds too good to be true.   They're all over the map in what they're hoping to achieve in an already crowded field.  The city would be much better off putting resources into beefing up Oyster's middle school, and creating a charter-DCPS hybrid at DCI with a test-in option for bilingual kids speaking Spanish, French or Chinese (including dialect transition support, as in several MoCo middle schools).  
[/quote]

Washington Global isn't a bilingual school.  Not sure why you think they are all over the map...they are using a unit model to teach languages, math and science.

Did you even read their application?  [/quote]

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