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[quote=Anonymous]Your thinking strikes this former Pell Grant recipient, married to a NYC magnet school graduate from a low-income family, as old fashioned.

As long as the best DC public schools don't even aspire to offer suburban-quality programs to upper middle-income families with friends and colleagues enrolling their chilren in some of the best schools in VA and MD, "peer pressure" will continue to drive many to vote with their feet for the burbs.  Who wins?  Neighborhoods will continue to suffer, and the tax base won't grow robustly as it could, which in term won't help the poor in the District.

Embracing best practices, such as providing a path for a critical mass of native speakers to enter each DC language immersion program, won't hurt poor kids.  Keeping the strongest students out of the best programs is no way to grow your system.  There are far better ways to improve schools serving poor kids than to support language immersion programs with nary a native speaker involved (incuding in administration).  And there are better approaches to helping low SES children than throwing all students into the same middle school classes, regardless of ability, motivation or level of preparation, as at Deal and BASIS (other than for math), Latin, and almost every other public midle school in town.

Don't believe me?   Visit one of the two Rockville Chinese immersion programs and talk to upper grades FARMs kids in Chinese, or have a Mandarin-speaking friend or colleague accompany you.  Do the same at YY.  Repeat using Spanish at any DC Spanish immersion program and one in Fairfax.  Enough said.   [/quote]

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