Anonymous wrote:I'm the rare YY parent, with professional experience in China, who takes issue with those who reject preferential admissions treatment for Chinese dialect speakers, if just off the wait list. Sorry, but you guys have a myopic streak, a blind spot.

Bilingual students raise target language acquisition standards in immerson schools. I learned this when I studied Mandarin in college. In my classes, dialect speakers kept standards high because they picked up Mandarin at two or three times the speed of the rest of us, with better pronunciation. I had to work my tail off to keep up, a very good thing. YY's adminstrators don't seem to know much about the relationship between Mandarin and other dialects (since they speak none), so they've done nothing to educate parents about the merits of including more dialect-speaking kids. You hear clueless parents saying "Well, Cantonese is a different language, so who needs speakers of that here?" Parents worry about English instruction, DCI and little else these days. We should have more of collective vision for our children's education. I didn't hear the OP complain about not being admitted to YY, I heard him or her ask if other DC language immersion schools attract bilingual kids in significant numbers. Sounds like they do, against the odds, mainly via leadership spearheading effective outreach to native-speaking communities. Good for those schools.

I agree. I know a number of families who have experience in China (and kids who speak Chinese with some fluency) who move into the DC area. It would be great if their kids could go to Yu Ying. There has got to be a way to figure out how to do this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: In my classes, dialect speakers kept standards high because they picked up Mandarin at two or three times the speed of the rest of us, with better pronunciation. I had to work my tail off to keep up, a very good thing. YY's adminstrators don't seem to know much about the relationship between Mandarin and other dialects (since they speak none), so they've done nothing to educate parents about the merits of including more dialect-speaking kids.

I hear you, PP, had the same experience in grad school Mandarin classes at a W. Coast program loaded with Cantonese speakers. And I hear you SELA parent, I also wish that speakers of the target languages were at least allowed to test into higher grades. YY could offer summer Mandarin crash courses to dialect speakers and fill every empty slot. Maybe the DCI founders will see value in pushing that policy through DC Charter & the City Council. It all boils down to leadership. With YY at the helm of DCI, I'm not optimistic that the school will be all that great. Of course you need to draw on native-speaking community resources to build a first-rate es immersion program. If you can't even win over local native speakers, you're like a presidential candidate losing his own state.

Grad school and college Mandarin. Learning Mandarin as a grown up... YY main entry yr is 4 yrs old, preK. You are talking apples and oranges.

YY parent here. The way it has been described to us is that DCI is spearheaded by YY but the school will be led by a new group of people that reports to the consortium of schools. I love YY (warts and all), but I could not deal with the same type of leadership beyond the elementary level.

Anonymous wrote:Until the Charter School Board changes its policy to allow for native speakers to test-in, the reality is that language immersion schools cannot give preference to native speakers, and given that these are PUBLIC schools -

Haven't we established that these schools are in fact giving preference to to native speakers off WAIT LISTS? At our school, wait list kids fill maybe one-quarter of slots by audit time in Oct. Potentially, that's a big group of native speakers. You want to end wait list shenanigans? Public language immersion schools often give preference to native speakers to advance their missions, includiong here in DC. Ever hear of Oyster Adams?

Anonymous wrote: In my classes, dialect speakers kept standards high because they picked up Mandarin at two or three times the speed of the rest of us, with better pronunciation. I had to work my tail off to keep up, a very good thing. YY's adminstrators don't seem to know much about the relationship between Mandarin and other dialects (since they speak none), so they've done nothing to educate parents about the merits of including more dialect-speaking kids.

I hear you, PP, had the same experience in grad school Mandarin classes at a W. Coast program loaded with Cantonese speakers. And I hear you SELA parent, I also wish that speakers of the target languages were at least allowed to test into higher grades. YY could offer summer Mandarin crash courses to dialect speakers and fill every empty slot. Maybe the DCI founders will see value in pushing that policy through DC Charter & the City Council. It all boils down to leadership. With YY at the helm of DCI, I'm not optimistic that the school will be all that great. Of course you need to draw on native-speaking community resources to build a first-rate es immersion program. If you can't even win over local native speakers, you're like a presidential candidate losing his own state.

Well, we are a Jewish family who has applied to Sela and hope we get in. We have limited exposure to Modern Hebrew, but are not worried about the lack of Jewish content since Sela is a public school. We will supplement with religious education at our temple. We expect that the majority of children at Sela will be non-Jews and non-Hebrew speakers and couldn't care less. It is important to us, however, that the teachers be native Hebrew speakers. I think the charter school board could strike a balance and let native speakers test in at the later grades to fill any vacancies left my attrition. As we understand it, even top charters start to lose kids in the older grades.

I'm the rare YY parent, with professional experience in China, who takes issue with those who reject preferential admissions treatment for Chinese dialect speakers, if just off the wait list. Sorry, but you guys have a myopic streak, a blind spot.

Bilingual students raise target language acquisition standards in immerson schools. I learned this when I studied Mandarin in college. In my classes, dialect speakers kept standards high because they picked up Mandarin at two or three times the speed of the rest of us, with better pronunciation. I had to work my tail off to keep up, a very good thing. YY's adminstrators don't seem to know much about the relationship between Mandarin and other dialects (since they speak none), so they've done nothing to educate parents about the merits of including more dialect-speaking kids. You hear clueless parents saying "Well, Cantonese is a different language, so who needs speakers of that here?" Parents worry about English instruction, DCI and little else these days. We should have more of collective vision for our children's education. I didn't hear the OP complain about not being admitted to YY, I heard him or her ask if other DC language immersion schools attract bilingual kids in significant numbers. Sounds like they do, against the odds, mainly via leadership spearheading effective outreach to native-speaking communities. Good for those schools.

Anonymous wrote:Wonder if Sela will have the same complaints as YY with Jewish parents complaining that they don't feel welcome b/c it's not Jewish enough and Sela does not recruit for native Hebrew speakers, etc. Kind of doubt it.

FYI. We are a Yu Ying family and all the Chinese teachers are native speakers.

You're mixing Jewish (religion) and Hebrew (language). There's also Israeli (nationality).
Do you mean to say Israelis living in DC will feel they aren't welcome because Sela does not recruit for native Hebrew speakers? Ha!

Jewish families (Israeli or American) understand that Sela is not a Jewish school. It will remain to be seen how many Jewish families are attracted to it. Most Jewish families in DC who want a Jewish (religious) education go private (Jewish Primary). It's unlikely that many of them will go to Sela just for the Hebrew language and then complain that it's not religious enough. Sela has laid it all out ahead of time and in their charter: they are promoting bilingual education, nothing religious.

Wonder if Sela will have the same complaints as YY with Jewish parents complaining that they don't feel welcome b/c it's not Jewish enough and Sela does not recruit for native Hebrew speakers, etc. Kind of doubt it.

FYI. We are a Yu Ying family and all the Chinese teachers are native speakers.

Until the Charter School Board changes its policy to allow for native speakers to test-in, the reality is that language immersion schools cannot give preference to native speakers, and given that these are PUBLIC schools - that is how it should be and I am happy that the Charter Board stepped in and stopped LAMB from cheating the system. I asked the Sela people at the MOTH event what their position was - and they said they expected very few students to have any exposure to Hebrew, let alone be native speakers of the language, but that that didn't trouble them, because they were focused on having a diverse school and giving kids from all over the city an opportunity for bilingual education. They did say that all of their Hebrew teachers would be native speakers. To me, that seems like the real issue for bilingual schools. If Cantonese parents want a Cantonese-speaking public school, they should put together a plan and get a charter from the City. If people want language test-in, we need to change the law at the Charter Board level - not expect schools to cheat to let in your kid. I don't really care if their are native speakers at LAMB, only that the teachers are native speakers.

At least Portugese is the official language for countries like Brazil. Cantonese is just a dialect. What a sense of entitlement...

I grow so tired of Cantonese and other dialects coming on here with complaints about how they do not receive special treatment. Please tell me how MV, Stokes, LAMB and Oyster support, embrace and bow to Portugese speakers. Oh, that's right- why would they? Limited resources should be going to the target language and not splintered up amongst other dialects.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of areas in which I would love to see improvement at YY, but catering to Cantonese tiger parents is not one of them. It would be a real step in the wrong direction to include support of non-Mandarin dialects.

^ Thanks. The only people who truly care are those "native" speakers who don't get a spot b/c there's no preference for their kids.

Ha, - too much frankness, sorry

Frankly, I don't really care. I would love to get an immersion seat this year for my PK4 kid, but I'm not going to wring my hands too much about the percentage of native speakers in any language. It's impossible to get it just right; if it's "too" Latino, then some people consider the school to be too ghetto, or too rough. Not enough, and people feel like it's not authentic.

Frankly, I'm not counting on an elementary immersion program to make my kid fluent. We will embrace whatever school we end up at, and will supplement with camps, tutoring, and travel if possible. If we can get some decent native speakers to expose my young child to correct pronunciation and the mechanics of other language(s) at a young age, I will consider it to be a huge success.