Reply to Entering Oyster as Spanish-dominant -- Spanish proficiency test?

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Reply to "Entering Oyster as Spanish-dominant -- Spanish proficiency test?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]But displacement is becoming an issue for native Spanish speaking kids who are also low income at Oyster. They are being displaced by people who can afford bilingual preschools; but they cannot afford To live IB for Oyster (in other words, the regular middle class). These people are taking a native speaker's seat, and the academic experience is worse as a result. I have personally seen the clear benefit of having children who come from Spanish speaking homes in my child's class. They raise the level and pace of the Spanish curriculum for all children. They bring their culture and experiences to the class. It is just a much better experience than having a classroom full of bilingual kids from English speaking homes. [/quote]

I share your goals but disagree with your analysis of the situation. The number of OOB bilingual kids from non-Spanish speaking homes will always be few because the lottery is random and the number of OOB applicants who come from Spanish speaking homes is much larger (say, at least 10 x more).   So the likelihood of cases like the one that generated the earlier fight is very small and not worth the trouble worrying about to prevent.

What we have to do is support the expansion of bilingual programs throughout the city and demand that DCPS seriously devote more resources to bilingual education so that it is truly excellent.  DCPS has no clear curriculum standards and guidelines for bilingual education. At DCPS, the same office in charge of ESL (dealing with the issues of DC's large immigrant population)  is also in charge of bilingual education. Furthermore, it is staffed by a handful (or fewer) of people.  There are 7 or more DCPS bilingual schools and now they are proposing Roosevelt HS with dual immersion.  We should require proper oversight of the language component of all these programs and also make it part of the evaluation process of students and schools. What is the incentive for a school to teach the second language well if they are only measured by their English reading and math scores?  This is the conversation we should have among us and with DCPS. The link below has some info

http://www.american.edu/cas/seth/bilingual/upload/AU-CONFERENCE-SEPTEMBER-27-2014_Brito.pdf

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