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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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]

Are you new here? The lack of test-in programs is federal charter law. Not set by parents, schools, or even DC.

And DC parents are resounding not voting with their feet. Public school enrollment is up, way up, as is the tax base. I agree that DCPS is lagging behind in offering high-quality programming, especially in middle grades, but the work being done by some charters is remarkable. Whether or not DCI is a success remains to be seen, but their goal of graduating students with IB diplomas and fluent in three languages certainly qualifies as shooting for the stars.[/quote]

I'm the other PP that the above PP was calling old-fashioned.  I think s/he is saying that DCPS should shoot for the stars, not that DCI isn't, although everything else you say I agree with.

That said, to the PP calling me old-fashioned, it's all about setting priorities.  I don't disagree that most of what you say above is useful and important.  You and I just disagree about what's most important and how you get there.  I totally agree with PP that attracting and keeping middle and upper income families is really not the problem right now for DCPS.  Not saying that those families are guaranteed to stay for the next 10-15 years, but the enrollment stats and demographics speak for themselves: middle and upper income families are moving in and spreading out across DCPS.  Keeping them through middle and high is another issue, but that is an issue for ALL DC residents (good quality middle and high schools).  I think most of what you say are worthwhile programs to explore, I just think they are far from the most important ones if DCPS and DC leadership have limited attention spans and budgets, which of course they do.

And I'm totally missing your point on talking to the upper grade FARMS students at Rockville and Fairfax schools and then comparing them to YY or the many Spanish bilingual charters.  What is the point you're making?  That there are any FARMS kids in those programs?  Or something about their language proficiency?  If it's about proficiency, please be more specific with the challenges you see at YY and the DC Spanish charters.  Because from what I have heard from most native speakers, YY kids do very well with language and tones, and LAMB and Stokes (the only 2 schools I know a lot about older grades) do well with Spanish.  Please be specific about what comparison you're making and what you see on each side.[/quote]

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