Reply to An intrinsic problem to the DC charter system

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "An intrinsic problem to the DC charter system - admin becoming unresponsive?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The fluency/cultural issues give rise to classroom management issues in Chinese classes, which is to say almost half the time. The head doesn't have an intimate knowledge of Chinese culture or the education system in Mainland China. This means she doesn't really have head around how Chinese teachers have been trained, and what sort of teaching experience they bring to YY.  She knows a lot more than she did 7 or 8 years ago, but it's not enough.

The result is that the Chinese classes can be poorly managed, particularly from 2nd grade+. The craziest kids are those who struggle to understand what Chinese teachers are saying (no shortage of them). Kids get used to acting up in Chinese classes and import the dynamic to other classes, particularly ELA.

The DCI Chinese track suffers from a toned down version of imported rowdiness. Some YY and DCI parents leave because of the craziness of the Chinese classes.[/quote]

This is true in every grade, and the poor classroom management leads to other issues such as bullying. The teachers have extremely poor social emotional development skills, and just aren't equipped to manage these issues for kids of any socioeconomic background. It shows more in the upper grades when behavior issues typically become more noticeable. By first or second grade, there are serious problems.

The classroom management issues lead to poor standardized test scores for ELA and Math, along with just generally poor teaching skills across the board. Yu Ying has some teachers who seem to really care, but they're just not being developed appropriately. There's just no excuse for the low scores given the relatively high SES of the student body. By second grade, the gap for English is supposed to close for language immersion, but it hasn't. Of course your kid will be at the school for 4-5 years by the time you realize the teaching is just weak, as opposed to a temporary gap due to the nature of language immersion.

The Head of School surrounded herself with sycophants as opposed to looking for the best leaders to improve the school. As a result, the administration's approach seems to be more about sticking to rules and getting kids and parents in line, as opposed to trying to figure out how to work with parents and students to resolve serious issues. There's also a culture of booster parents attacking parents who try to identify areas for improvement, and see their role as defending the administration. I'm sure you've seen some of them here.

That said, there are lots of great students and parents too, and it's the only Chinese immersion game in town.

It's a shame because YY has the opportunity to be an excellent school, but it won't get there with the current leadership. [/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