Anonymous wrote:lliance Francais, the Beauvoir language institute, etc... I had my DS in a program for two years until I got into an immersion charter. He's doing excellent and is on par with the kids who have two more years in the school then he did. Sometimes you have to take things into your own hands, especially if you want great things to happen.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, there are several "free" public IB high schools in the US. Doesn't Eastern HS in DC offer IB too?

Please name a public free language academy offering IB besides DCI.

http://easternhighschooldc.org/intro/academic-offerings/ib-international-baccalaureate/

You can do a search here: Most are public high schools.

http://www.ibo.org/school/search/index.cfm?programmes=DIPLOMA&country=US®ion=&find_schools=Find

Anonymous wrote:What about students at the DCPS dual-language schools? Can they lottery in at 9th grade?

What about those with home-language or test-verifiable proficiency in one of the DCI target language programs? Can they get in?

I'm thinking of this because DC is at a DCPS bilingual program and we speak Spanish at home; I have no doubt DC would take to a school like this with ease, and Walter Reed is close to home. Is there anything wrong with trying to go that route?

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Anonymous wrote:See, here is what I'm missing about DCI, and maybe someone can point it out to me (I'm not at a feeder school but another popular charter). It seems that in this area, the push to immersion and language pendulum has swung so far to the detriment of all other things (the above poster as an example). Maybe as the child of non-Americans, I see it more clearly, speaking other language is great and important, however DCI has not pushed any plans for instruction on other aspects of the school.

My child will learn language, it's a given, MORE important to me, is learning basic math, science technology, reading to be on par with the rest of world (not the US, but the world).

It's because no matter how boring, crappy, whatever, a class is on a particular day, if that class is held in, say, French, your child is learning. The language immersion helps ensure a synapse-growing experience for your kid even as other aspects of the school wax and wane.

Anonymous wrote:See, here is what I'm missing about DCI, and maybe someone can point it out to me (I'm not at a feeder school but another popular charter). It seems that in this area, the push to immersion and language pendulum has swung so far to the detriment of all other things (the above poster as an example). Maybe as the child of non-Americans, I see it more clearly, speaking other language is great and important, however DCI has not pushed any plans for instruction on other aspects of the school.

My child will learn language, it's a given, MORE important to me, is learning basic math, science technology, reading to be on par with the rest of world (not the US, but the world).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Also, if you look at the feeders especially YY, their current class sizes in 3, 4, 5th grades are much much smaller than their lower grades. MV does not yet have a third grade or higher. So when DCI first opens, there will be many more spaces open to new students if DCI chooses to make those spaces available which they may or may not do. DCI probably won't achieve full capacity from it's feeders until 4-5 yrs from now.

Why would you think they would open with excess capacity? It makes more sense to grow the class sizes as the size of the feeder pool grows. You're not going to open with capacity for 600 students if you expect your incoming class to have 90. There might be some of what you describe, but I wouldn't count on a lot of it.