Anonymous wrote:In thinking about the future of the school, and particularly in discussing the "two way immersion model", I think it's important to recognize what teachers acknowledge privately --- the school does not do a very good job of teaching Spanish to English dominant kids or of teaching Spanish grammar and orthography (i.e. Spanish as language) to any kids. There are two reasons for this:

- Everyone seems to assume that English dominant kids will "just pick up" Spanish, so they don't teach Spanish as a second language, they just speak it at the kids.

- English is the language of the playground, lunchroom and and in fact ANY student-student conversation at the school. All day every day. Bringing in more kids who have a Spanish speaking grandparent or parent but who speak and prefer English (like many current "Spanish dominant" kids) will not change this dynamic . Instruction in Spanish is not Spanish immersion. All of the true English learners I know who've gone through the school have developed fabulous English in a short time... and lost ground in Spanish.

Unless the school could somehow get 50% true English learners, the TWI model is not a valid basis for uprooting the school and going against the wishes of the community.

Furthermore, the LSAT's acknowledged failure to connect with the Spanish dominant community suggests that the chances of getting a large number of true Spanish dominant kids to apply to and attend a citywide application-only school are remote at best.

Finally, given the ongoing chaos and leadership issues at the school, the prospect of the current team taking on that kind of a project is terrifying.

+1

In thinking about the future of the school, and particularly in discussing the "two way immersion model", I think it's important to recognize what teachers acknowledge privately --- the school does not do a very good job of teaching Spanish to English dominant kids or of teaching Spanish grammar and orthography (i.e. Spanish as language) to any kids. There are two reasons for this:

- Everyone seems to assume that English dominant kids will "just pick up" Spanish, so they don't teach Spanish as a second language, they just speak it at the kids.

- English is the language of the playground, lunchroom and and in fact ANY student-student conversation at the school. All day every day. Bringing in more kids who have a Spanish speaking grandparent or parent but who speak and prefer English (like many current "Spanish dominant" kids) will not change this dynamic . Instruction in Spanish is not Spanish immersion. All of the true English learners I know who've gone through the school have developed fabulous English in a short time... and lost ground in Spanish.

Unless the school could somehow get 50% true English learners, the TWI model is not a valid basis for uprooting the school and going against the wishes of the community.

Furthermore, the LSAT's acknowledged failure to connect with the Spanish dominant community suggests that the chances of getting a large number of true Spanish dominant kids to apply to and attend a citywide application-only school are remote at best.

Finally, given the ongoing chaos and leadership issues at the school, the prospect of the current team taking on that kind of a project is terrifying.

Anonymous wrote:I live in a poorer part of DC where our local bilingual public school has plenty of native Spanish speakers. From my vantage point the problem seems pretty simple--the Oyster Adams neighborhood has become too rich and Anglo to support a bilingual school. How do you locals propose keeping up the 50/50 balance? Or does it not matter? In that case why bother to be bilingual? You can't have your cake and eat it too.

So, adjust the boundaries. Don't move the entire school to a new location & open it up for a lottery. For the principal's and teachers' convenience.

Anonymous wrote:So what/who should decide the future of the school? Should research about what makes a two-way immersion model most successful? Should the realities of maintaining the needed student body? Should the principal? Should the parents? What should decide this. I believe the school should be structured around what is necessary to keep the TWI model most vibrant and functional. Looking at it from all angles, they seem to all point to changing the status of the school as a neighborhood school. Can someone "pro-neighborhood" explain how I'm wrong or show a model where the integrity of the twi model can be maintained within the confines of the current system? I think we all want what's best here.

The District should decide.

Many of the proposals developed by the OA community group met the goals keeping the school and neighborhood school, dealing with the over crowing issues and maintaining the current model and mix of English/Spanish speaking student.

OA is a neighborhood school. It is THE school the serves the children who live within its boundaries. It has been in the community as a bilingual school for over 40 years. If folks want to start another city-wide bi-lingual magnet school - that's great and I fully support it. But that school would not be Oyster-Adams. If some staff and faculty want to work in another school that’s fine too. But, suggesting that the community process or the survey data collected from a representative sample of the entire community support that approach is simply wrong and deceiving.

Yes – the district and the OA administration should look at research. However, there is no research that I’m aware of that suggests that a city-wide magnet school would improve outcomes for children (and aside from research there are other proposals that meet the many goals of both the community and the district better than a city-wide magnet program). There is however, research that suggests neighborhood schools improve child outcomes and parent and community involvement.

This proposal makes clear to me that the LSAT and administration simply want to serve a different population and have more control over the student (and parent) population. Instead of looking at how to better meet the needs of and retain current student through middle school, they blame the families for leaving and label them as not committed (despite the fact that the data clearly show that the overwhelming majority of families are committee to the model). When an organization stops asking how it can do better and instead blames the people it is trying to serve for problems, learning and potential are stilted.

Anonymous wrote:So what/who should decide the future of the school? Should research about what makes a two-way immersion model most successful? Should the realities of maintaining the needed student body? Should the principal? Should the parents? What should decide this. I believe the school should be structured around what is necessary to keep the TWI model most vibrant and functional. Looking at it from all angles, they seem to all point to changing the status of the school as a neighborhood school. Can someone "pro-neighborhood" explain how I'm wrong or show a model where the integrity of the twi model can be maintained within the confines of the current system? I think we all want what's best here.

Part of the challenge is that the boundary has two very different neighborhoods depending on which building you live near. We moved to boundary east of Connecticut not knowing there was the "Adams clause" and some kind of lingering neighborhood drama. It seemed a little weird at the time, but we had plenty of friends on both sides of Connecticut and proximity to boundary.

If you look at Adams side of boundary, then TWI makes sense as a neighborhood school. Even more so if Marie Reed were middle school feeder to Adams.

Oyster could be TWI as well. But it would probably have to use full immersion Spanish-only at PK level and maybe add PS3 Spanish only. Lots of places outside DC that don't have major target language populations use PS-PK as full immersion.

I live in a poorer part of DC where our local bilingual public school has plenty of native Spanish speakers. From my vantage point the problem seems pretty simple--the Oyster Adams neighborhood has become too rich and Anglo to support a bilingual school. How do you locals propose keeping up the 50/50 balance? Or does it not matter? In that case why bother to be bilingual? You can't have your cake and eat it too.

The problem for some people seems to be misunderstanding the process and roles of LSAT.

See footnote 6 on page 13 and the many emails, bulletins, and public meetings over the last 6 months.

"While the parents and teachers serving on the LSAT have been elected by the Oyster-Adams community, the views we offer here should not be construed as representative of the community’s views. In fact, we do not believe there is a “majority community view” on these issues. Rather, as laid out in this memo, there is a wide diversity of opinion. That said, by facilitating and participating in all aspects of this community engagement process we believe we have a particularly strong vantage point from which to offer insights and suggest options. But these insights and suggestions are wholly our own."

The survey did not ask "pick 1 of these 4 versions". It wasn't conjoint analysis of tradeoffs or a rank order of importance, for example bilingual vs boundary. It was an opinion survey, not an exit poll.

While I don't agree with all aspects of the recommendations, I do appreciate that so many parents and staff were willing to do an incredible amount of prep work and even blueprints to help inform whatever the future will be.

The bigger, messier problem will be Deal/MS feeder patterns. Yikes!

So what/who should decide the future of the school? Should research about what makes a two-way immersion model most successful? Should the realities of maintaining the needed student body? Should the principal? Should the parents? What should decide this. I believe the school should be structured around what is necessary to keep the TWI model most vibrant and functional. Looking at it from all angles, they seem to all point to changing the status of the school as a neighborhood school. Can someone "pro-neighborhood" explain how I'm wrong or show a model where the integrity of the twi model can be maintained within the confines of the current system? I think we all want what's best here.

Very disturbing for in-bounds members of the community. This should not be permitted.

Anonymous wrote:Could someone break down the problem here?

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/289603.page

http://www.currentnewspapers.com/admin/uploadfiles/NW%2002-06-2013%201.pdf

New memo from the LSAT (scroll down) http://oysteradamsbilingual.org/lsat/

Anonymous wrote:The issue for me is that the faculty, administration and LSAT are making crystal clear that they believe that their vision for the school is more important than what the community wants.

Exactly. And they are prioritizing their own convenience (one building, lottery admission) over the community's desire to have O-A remain a neighborhood school.

It is also worth pointing out that, as I understand it, the LSAT did not even allow for community input. Therefore, only current (and not prospective) parents had a voice. And primarily English-speaking parents at that.

Could someone break down the problem here?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very sad to see that the LSAT recommendation directly contradicts what three out of four of the working groups came up with, and that their work was relegated to an appendix. Also interesting to see how much effort the writers of this memo seemed to put into downplaying the validity of the survey (it was bad sample, not enough Spanish speakers). The parents have spoken pretty clearly --- they mostly want an in boundary school in its current location. I'm not sure why the LSAT believes they can circumvent the parents' wishes. Also, if the faculty want to work in a different kind of school, they should by all means apply to one and not let the door hit them on the way out.

For [bleep]'s sake, it's not like some closed-door conspiracy. Nobody has "spoken" definitively. The LSAT doesn't have the authority to do anything about the school status anyway.

The survey wasn't a vote on a binding option, so there's nothing to circumvent. The whole exercise was an attempt, in a very short time window, to go beyond gossip by giving people a chance to express opinions to their elected representatives who then presented recommendations.

And why so dismissive of the faculty statement? Besides having elected representatives on the LSAT, don't they know a teeny bit more about dual immersion education than anonymous parents? Many faculty also have or had children in the school. When they "let the door hit them on the way out", those teachers could be taking Spanish-speaking children of educated parents with them. How does that help anyone?

FWIW, the "working groups" were made up of interested individuals, not just elected LSAT members. If you disagree with the LSAT findings, then fine. But to infer the whole thing was somehow disingenuous is ill-informed and kind of mean-spirited.

Tranquilizate un poquito

The issue is that those elected representatives made a recommendation directly contrary to what the community came up with and directly contrary to what the survey told us was important.

Faculty with kids at the school are welcome to speak as parents through the working group process. The "Faculty Statement" is not made in that context. The issue for me is that the faculty, administration and LSAT are making crystal clear that they believe that their vision for the school is more important than what the community wants.

Without addressing the merits or not of the proposal I have to mention that at the Woodley and Kalorama park community meeting with the school the principal was asked directly if she or the school held an opinion on what the recommendation for the school's future should be. Her answer was that although it is known that she would like to be in a single building, as there is not such a building in close proximity to the current location, this was not an option on the table. This did leave me a little surprised to read her proposing exactly that with apparently overwhelming support from her staff, while dismissing every other possible scenario. Lets just say it wasn't the greatest of trust building exercises.

Anonymous wrote:Very sad to see that the LSAT recommendation directly contradicts what three out of four of the working groups came up with, and that their work was relegated to an appendix. Also interesting to see how much effort the writers of this memo seemed to put into downplaying the validity of the survey (it was bad sample, not enough Spanish speakers). The parents have spoken pretty clearly --- they mostly want an in boundary school in its current location. I'm not sure why the LSAT believes they can circumvent the parents' wishes. Also, if the faculty want to work in a different kind of school, they should by all means apply to one and not let the door hit them on the way out.

For [bleep]'s sake, it's not like some closed-door conspiracy. Nobody has "spoken" definitively. The LSAT doesn't have the authority to do anything about the school status anyway.

The survey wasn't a vote on a binding option, so there's nothing to circumvent. The whole exercise was an attempt, in a very short time window, to go beyond gossip by giving people a chance to express opinions to their elected representatives who then presented recommendations.

And why so dismissive of the faculty statement? Besides having elected representatives on the LSAT, don't they know a teeny bit more about dual immersion education than anonymous parents? Many faculty also have or had children in the school. When they "let the door hit them on the way out", those teachers could be taking Spanish-speaking children of educated parents with them. How does that help anyone?

FWIW, the "working groups" were made up of interested individuals, not just elected LSAT members. If you disagree with the LSAT findings, then fine. But to infer the whole thing was somehow disingenuous is ill-informed and kind of mean-spirited.

Tranquilizate un poquito