Reply to What DCPS ESs have foreign language as part of their core curriculum?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Having a foreign language as a special is nothing like immersion. If you want your kid to be fluent, you need immersion and that's only available at charters. [/quote]

Someone may have already debunked this but it’s not true that immersion is only available at charters. Chisholm (formerly Tyler) is DCPS Spanish immersion and I believe Oyster-Adams is, too. [/quote]

But PP said fluent.  Your kid is not going to be fluent with just elementary immersion.  They need to continue the language thru middle school and high school.  And it’s not just taking a foreign language like a traditional school but actually taking other subjects in the language too.

Oyster tracks to Adams but it’s such a small middle school with limited course offerings, EC, and clubs.  Then after that it is a dead end.

So PP is correct that the only real path in this town to fluency is charter with the immersion charters to DCI.  The only other path is WIS which is private and 50k plus a year [/quote]

NP, and I’ve taught plenty of Oyster kids over the years.  Most are pretty much fluent in Spanish.  [/quote]

This is true. I believe all 8th graders pass the AP exam. [/quote]

Passing an AP exam just shows you are proficient.  It doesn’t not mean you are fluent.  Neither is just understanding.

Fluency is understanding, speaking, reading, and writing. [/quote]

8th graders passing an AP exam is impressive and Adams measures language proficiency other ways. May students at Oyster Adams are native speakers. [/quote]

This is an odd jumble.

I would absolutely expect native Spanish speakers to do well on the AP Spanish exam in 8th grade after years if Spanish immersion.

However, that is not terribly helpful for non-native Spanish speakers and not really an indication one way or another for how non-native speakers fare in immersion programs.

So it's actually hard to say whether 8th graders are oyster passing the AP exam is impressive or not -- I'd say it's not particularly impressive for National ve Spanish speakers but us impressive for non-native speakers but now I'm wondering what percent of Oyster 8th graders pass, what their scores are, and how results differ for native versus non-native speakers.[/quote]

+1.  This.  As to the PP above, how exactly does Oyster measure proficiency?  How does Oyster measure fluency?  Where is the data to show this especially for non-native speaking kids?[/quote]

Bingo! XX administrators tend to highlight this as a major accomplishment by comparing apples to oranges. The true measure of success would be to compare XX non-Hispanic students from households where Spanish is not spoken and no private tutoring is used with other non-Hispanic Spanish learners from households where Spanish is also not spoken and no private tutoring is in place.

Even worse for Hispanic students (and even for some non-Hispanic students), I have the sense that once they move to high school, they are at a disadvantage in English. The lack of academic rigor, justified in the name of being “bilingual,” eventually becomes evident, and only those with strong support at home are able to catch up. The rest are left behind.
[/quote]

This is a little weird, and very ridiculous. If the kids in an immersion school don't speak the language fluently, then *nothing* works. They can't learn math. They can't learn science. They can't learn anything because the instruction at least half the time is in the foreign language. As you might guess, this leads to a huge, huge emphasis from the get-go on making sure everyone can speak. It's why schools like LAMB don't admit new students after preK. They don't want non-fluent kids messing up their system. [/quote]

DP but I guess you don't realize that most immersion schools in DC are no longer teaching math or science in the target language by upper elementary, specifically because if they did the kids would fall woefully behind in those subjects. Maybe some teach science but not math. Also LAMB is an outlier -- the vast majority of immersion programs in DC admit students in upper grades even with no language background. In fact for a time this was a recommended way to get a spot at DCI on DCUM -- just lottery into MV in 4th or 5th. Well wait, wouldn't that be horrible for your kid, people asked? No no, don't worry, it's really "immersion light" at that point and your kid won't have any problem.[/quote]

This sounds apocryphal. At LAMB, I've never even heard of a kid not being able to speak. Children pick up languages very quickly. [/quote]

And you think every school is LAMB? It's not. There are many kids at MV and Stokes (especially the EE campus which struggles to keep teachers and where many kids aren't getting much language support at home) who are not able to speak almost any Spanish at all by upper grades. And yes there are kids lotterying into these schools in 4th and 5th, specifically to get access to DCI, which means there are plenty of kids at DCI who aren't fluent in any language. My understanding is that DCB is more like LAMB but technically I do think they take kids in older grades (it's just they have better retention and thus have fewer lottery spots to give).

There is lots and lots of weak immersion in DC. Your experience at LAMB is the outlier. It is sad to me that you don't know this.[/quote]

So much hearsay. Let us know when you have any evidence that anything you said is true. [/quote]

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