Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"And you'd get a host of ethnic parents happy to teach Tai Chi, Chinese chess, cooking, brush painting, folk/Lion dance and music, Chinese knotting etc. With considerable community input, a school can have a lot of fun with the culture. "

uh, Yu Ying offers all this and more from native Chinese folks..

Yea, sort of hired help. Rarely parents, uncles, grandparents. We've established that there isn't a Chinese community behind the school.

Well I don't want just anybody's uncle around my little boy. Has dear uncle been vetted or is he a pervert. Also, Who pays for the dear uncle and grandma's liability insurance.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"And you'd get a host of ethnic parents happy to teach Tai Chi, Chinese chess, cooking, brush painting, folk/Lion dance and music, Chinese knotting etc. With considerable community input, a school can have a lot of fun with the culture. "

uh, Yu Ying offers all this and more from native Chinese folks..

Yea, sort of hired help. Rarely parents, uncles, grandparents. We've established that there isn't a Chinese community behind the school.

Anonymous wrote:I concur. And I'm optimistic that eventually, maybe in 2 or 3 years, this discussion will take off. China will keep rising, more bilingual families will come into the District, and stay, as neighborhoods and schools continue to improve, and more immigrant families accept government service as a solid career choice.

Since Mandarin isn't a niche language, like, say, Aramaic or Farsi or even Hebrew, founders do need to be careful not to attract droves of families who are OK with the Mandarin but not Chinese attitudes, and are out of touch with the Sino immigrant experience. You can have a minority of such families, but when they become the majority, as at YY, the less assimilated want no part of it and even high-SES bilinguals can feel token. There isn't a market for Cantonese immersion anywhere outside several California population centers. And there's enough tension over assimilation, challenge and cultural authenticity issues at YY: no point in exporting them to a sister charter.

Competition wouldn't hurt YY. Maybe it would help effect a change in administration that would benefit the school. I don't see why a handful of immersion schools should be the only ones feeding into DCI either.

Because they are the ones doing the work. People keep forgetting that YY is not a corporate founded, funded and operated charter like Kipp, Basis, IT, etc. It is a school started up by parents. And frankly in many ways it is still operated by parents. Perhaps the school will evolve and become more corporate like. Many posters have said, that you to can do the legwork and open your school to compete against YY. It appears that the charter board will approve almost anything if the proposal is half way decent. Now go out there and do your lobbying and fund raising.

Anonymous wrote:What pending school?

Anonymous wrote:

(Mandarin, wince that's the target language)

Actually, in a way that's the heart of this debate. PPs say that kids who speak non-Mandarin Chinese dialects should be counted as native speakers. Personally, I remain unconvinced. However, I hold no grudge against the pending school that will offer Mandarin immersion to Cantonese speakers. I think it and YY will fill two very different niches, and YY will wind up improved as a result.

(Mandarin, wince that's the target language)

Anonymous wrote:no one! so why don't you guys who know it all get busy? there's room for all!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: It won't be able to "establish" much about the actual experience of Chinese-American parents who choose to stay at the school, since those voices are routinely ignored around here.

What gets established at YY anyway? Where are the survey results documenting the experiences of bilingual Chinese parents, Mandarin-speaking non-Chinese parents, non-bilingual Chinese-American parents, and others, separately and together? And who's surveying bilingual parents who stay away, asking why?

This sort of info is routinely collected at dual-immersion schools. Go to their web sites and view data that would be unthinkable for a DC charter to gather, let alone publish. Posters go round and round without even being in a position to know many parents and kids speak this and that - Wu, Cantonese and Taishanese, Fujian and Hokkien, Teochew and Hakka. Bilingual issues remain shrouded in mystery because all the children are supposed share some sort of blank slate linguistic status when they come in, and it's not supposed to matter that cultural influences generally need to be imported.

Who could argue that it would be bad for DC if a strong competitor school to YY were to offer a very different immersion experience?

YY parent and statistician who shares your frustration. More scientific rigor certainly wouldn't kill YY and other charters. Neither would the involvement of Chinese-speaking family volunteers. Stick to your guns, these are fair points. I'd love a two-way immersion option as would some other YY parents.