Reply to CMI vs YY for PK3?

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "CMI vs YY for PK3?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's called being Chinese = exceedingly polite.

We get it, hardly anybody at YY cares that most of the kids speak strange, crappy Mandarin. Parents don't even care that the admins don't speak it. Parents think their kids are fluent if they hire a tutor and don't care how they will perform on international baccalaureate tests. Draw your own conclusions.
[/quote]
You don't seem to get it, since you keep coming back to make your point over and over. My conclusion is that we are not tiger moms, which is not news. Your obsession with "doing it right" and worrying about high school testing for elementary students does not resonate with many American parents, who have other priorities for their kids.

You seem personally insulted by the Chinese at YY, which also seems odd. I would be thrilled if I was living in another country and met elementary students who were studying a difficult language and would never dream of calling their efforts "strange and crappy." It seems we have different concepts of "exceedingly polite."[/quote]

It sounds like immersion charter leaders nationwide should be joining forces to lobby Congress to amend federal charter law to help their programs. No possible fix, just endless angry back and forth?

I've read that research has shown that dual-immersion works a lot better than one-way immersion in teaching children to speak languages (YY case in point). So why is Congress against the creation of dual-immersion charter schools?

I'm not being snarky. If somebody who knows about the charter movement can explain this is, please tell us.[/quote]

The charter law that prohibits any barriers to entry is specific to DC - it has to do with each charter being able to decide to be its own LEA, which means it has to be open to all who with to enroll and can't have entrance exams and so forth. In other communities charters are part of local districts, and so they can act more like a magnet or partner with the broader district on things like vocational education or self-contained classrooms for students with more severe disabilities.

In other jurisdictions charter schools and their governance (LEAs or part of another LEA) is determined by the states (of course we are not a state in DC).

[/quote]
Thanks for this explanation. LEA - law enforcement agency? OK, so single lotteries for admission to charters are not in force nationwide - some states support them statewide, others not. This arrangement must explain why the Mandarin immersion charter in Amherst MA, where I attend college, openly recruits dialect-speaking kids from around Western MA (you see ads on public buses). When I visited the school during a reunion weekend, I was impressed by how many native speakers there appeared to be at a charter in an area where Chinese immigrants are even thinner on the ground than in DC. I was also impressed by well the non-heritage upper grades kids could speak Chinese.

Does the charter law prohibiting any barriers to entry that is specific to DC mean that the city council, mayor, DCPC and OSSE lack tools at their disposal to enable DC language immersion charters to legally set up the sort of language dominant lotteries DCPS supports? It sounds like Congress would have to amend the law to take away the right for each DC charter to be able to decide its own LEA for this to happen. Is that right?

I remember reading that YY's admins had asked DCPC to accord them flexibility to recruit more native speakers at one point, maybe five years ago, but were denied. I can't remember if they were asking for a Chinese dominant lottery, or the right to replace drop-outs with native speakers (as in MoCo), but there was some sort of request that went nowhere. There must already be a modicum of flexibility in DC charter admissions though, since charters can elect to aside seats for the children of teachers and staff (seats not open to all who wish to enroll). Washington Latin has started doing this, somewhat controversially.

The YY situation is somewhat unfortunate, because the language acquisition resources of the small native speaking community in town are largely squandered in serving the kids. The Amherst approach would work better, with the school growing to serve both more true heritage speakers and others (like Mundo Verde has in the last couple of years). I hope that parents and admins aren't done pulling political levers to try to change the admissions arrangement, even if this would alienate parents eager to keep Tiger parents out.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics