The ethnic Chinese community in DC, if you want to call it that, isn't largely Taiwanese, and the entire pre 1968 community hasn't decamped to the burbs. Like other DC "gentrifiers," most of us moved to DC in our 20s and stayed. We're scattered around the city, and hail from all over the place, Singapore, Hong Kong, NYC, San Fran, LA, Toronto etc. Our ranks are growing year on year. We don't connect easily with YY families on the language learning front, because most of those we meet are either Chinese who are so assimilated that they really don't consider themselves immigrants or ABCs, or parents without much of a connection to Chinese (language, culture, populations).

As for the PP who opines that YY is the country's top public Chinese immersion school. What's the criteria? Size? Length of waiting list? There are half a dozen strong public programs in the Bay Area, several teaching Cantonese to all the littlest kids as a sharp marketing strategy. These programs do what they can to draw in dialect speakers to raise standards for Mandarin learning. They don't just do it by offering an admissions preference; they do it by offering structure and programming native speakers are looking for.

We get it: DCPC, DC and Congress don't see value in offering native speakers preference in charters admissions in any language. But something's gotta give eventually because, all things being equal, dual immersion constitutes best educational practices in language instruction for poor kids (and others), and by a long shot. Maybe DCPS and DCPC will merge in a generation, with the standards boosting preference coming in as a by-product.

Anonymous wrote:Oh yeah, and Yu Ying voted best elementary school by City Paper yet again!

Because the school pushes YY parents to vote for the school in this meaningless poll. Most other schools don't care, so they don't inundate parents with requests to vote.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Which Cantonese speakers? They don't seem to have been on these boards for ages.

I'm a native Mandarin speaker who's lived in DC since long before Yu Ying opened. I've volunteered for this and that at the school over the years (but no longer do). I know a couple dozen YY and DCI families pretty well, including those who started in the original PreK4 group. I say with confidence that most of the families aren't very serious about the Chinese, and even if they are, not having a cohort of native-speaking kids in the school clobbers the language learning, unless a Chinese-speaking adult is in the home year after year.

The school doesn't try to expose the YY students to native Chinese-speaking young people in the Metro area (e.g. from the strongest Mandarin heritage programs in MoCo) when they could have started doing this long ago, even if they can't/don't want to recruit native speakers directly. YY doesn't encourage the kids to hang out with native speakers their own age and it shows. Parents love the program anyway, but from the perspective of those of us who speak only Chinese to our children, the arrangement is pretty silly. You hear the parents say, oh no problem, our kids will go live in China later to perfect their Chinese. Maybe, but I doubt it, other than a few. I doubt that my own kids will do this, and they have no trouble speaking Chinese all day, with the odd English word or phrase tossed in.

Why do you care so much. Seriously, give it up. So they will never learn Chinese to your standards. Big deal. Don't you have your own garden to tend?

Sure, but I supported the creation of YY, and have volunteered there many times, making me a stakeholder. I've grown disenchanted, mainly due to a persistent truth-in-advertising issue. Parents of 3 and 4 years olds are assured at open houses that their kids will become "fluent" in Chinese by MS by dint of hard work (no native speaking peers or their families needed). At a recent open house, a friend noted that this was said a dozen times. But the truth is that many kids who've been at YY all the way from PreK to 5th grade struggle to speak or understand basic everyday Chinese. The arrangement makes me think of the Soviet "we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us" approach. The immersion school I backed has not emerged as an immersion school. This city can do better.

Why don't you care? Because your kid is behind the curve in two languages and you don't want to deal with that?

Sorry, being a former volunteer does not make you a stakeholder.

Not, it doesn't. I was asked to help circulate petitions among civil society groups in Chinatown to get YY's charter approved. I had my doubts, but helped. I regret the decision - a Chinese "immersion" school without close ties to an ethnic community doesn't feel right ten years on. The Chinatown community wouldn't have supported the initiative if we'd been told that the YY board planned to hire non Chinese-speaking admins. We believed that YY was serious about building ties with the local dialect-speaking immigrant community. Maybe under the next head. In the meantime, we head to MoCo for Higher Level IBD Chinese, 6s and 7s, hard work for the kids but within their grasp with a critical mass of native speakers in the classes.

Good luck to the rest of you at YY and DCI.

It may well be that the Cantonese speakers haven't been on this board in ages but you sound exactly like the "ABC" posters from a few years ago. Everything you say drips of entitlement and frankly racism.

Seriously, you wouldn't have helped it "the YY board planned to hire non Chinese-speaking admins"? They hired the best and most qualified people who applied. They did not exclude anyone who was not in the "local dialect-speaking immigrant community."

I have visited Chinese immersion programs across the country, exploring places where we had the opportunity to move. There are lots of places that call themselves Chinese immersion but I have not seen a single one that is on Yu Ying's level. Pray, do tell us which immersion school is "real"? I've probably visited it. You appear to think that a school is only real Chines immersion if it is Chinese preference, but Yu Ying is a public charter school, and for the billionth time, IT IS NOT ALLOWED TO PREFERENCE NATIVE SPEAKERS. This is and was always going to be true.

Ten years later you can't get it through your head.

Your solution, I suppose, would have been to not open Yu Ying. Better nothing, no community interested in Chinese language & culture, no new families attending Chinese cultural events throughout the area, no parents learning Chinese themselves, no influx of Chinese au pairs and teachers, no families sharing Chinese culture and language with their own networks. Better nothing than something that doesn't give someone exactly like you a preference over anyone who is different from you.

Get a life.

Move on.

Why would you even open this thread?

I'm a NP and you're an arrogant ass. Something is clearly wrong with the ethnic community in a city rejects the one school celebrating its own culture and language. They must have had their reasons and the YY board and PA should have tried to sort this problem out long ago.You sound like the head case here.

Also NP here. I think the problem is that every time someone complains that ethnic Chinese students don't get preference they are willfully ignoring charter law. There is not allowed to be a preference for language, period. If there were, it would place the poorest students in the city at an even greater disadvantage. It's a public school for students in DC first, and a Chinese immersion school second.

Another factor to be aware of, is that the Chinese community in DC (such as it is) is largely Taiwanese. YY is pursuing relationships in mainland China. The characters taught are modern, not traditional. There's enough tension between the Taiwanese in DC and the Chinese Embassy that when they've made gifts to the school, they arrange to come at different times so that they don't interact. YY students have been welcome at the Chinese Cultural Center downtown, but DC Chinatown is about a block long and mostly historical. The ethnic community has long since moved to the suburbs.

This has been informative. How are Yu Ying students performing on the YCT tests?

+1.

Yes, OP, YY is warm and welcoming! The PYP curriculum focuses on creating active, inquisitive learners with an emphasis on personal responsibility and connection to the community and to Earth. It sounds like you are happy where you are, but YY is another wonderful option. Good luck to you and to all who are making tough decisions!

If you have an axe to grind because you can't stand ABCs, or immersion school principals who hardly speak the language of immersion, or DC charter law, or whatever else, please start your own thread. It would be nice if people gave OP the advice she's asking for.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Which Cantonese speakers? They don't seem to have been on these boards for ages.

I'm a native Mandarin speaker who's lived in DC since long before Yu Ying opened. I've volunteered for this and that at the school over the years (but no longer do). I know a couple dozen YY and DCI families pretty well, including those who started in the original PreK4 group. I say with confidence that most of the families aren't very serious about the Chinese, and even if they are, not having a cohort of native-speaking kids in the school clobbers the language learning, unless a Chinese-speaking adult is in the home year after year.

The school doesn't try to expose the YY students to native Chinese-speaking young people in the Metro area (e.g. from the strongest Mandarin heritage programs in MoCo) when they could have started doing this long ago, even if they can't/don't want to recruit native speakers directly. YY doesn't encourage the kids to hang out with native speakers their own age and it shows. Parents love the program anyway, but from the perspective of those of us who speak only Chinese to our children, the arrangement is pretty silly. You hear the parents say, oh no problem, our kids will go live in China later to perfect their Chinese. Maybe, but I doubt it, other than a few. I doubt that my own kids will do this, and they have no trouble speaking Chinese all day, with the odd English word or phrase tossed in.

Why do you care so much. Seriously, give it up. So they will never learn Chinese to your standards. Big deal. Don't you have your own garden to tend?

Sure, but I supported the creation of YY, and have volunteered there many times, making me a stakeholder. I've grown disenchanted, mainly due to a persistent truth-in-advertising issue. Parents of 3 and 4 years olds are assured at open houses that their kids will become "fluent" in Chinese by MS by dint of hard work (no native speaking peers or their families needed). At a recent open house, a friend noted that this was said a dozen times. But the truth is that many kids who've been at YY all the way from PreK to 5th grade struggle to speak or understand basic everyday Chinese. The arrangement makes me think of the Soviet "we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us" approach. The immersion school I backed has not emerged as an immersion school. This city can do better.

Why don't you care? Because your kid is behind the curve in two languages and you don't want to deal with that?

Sorry, being a former volunteer does not make you a stakeholder.

Not, it doesn't. I was asked to help circulate petitions among civil society groups in Chinatown to get YY's charter approved. I had my doubts, but helped. I regret the decision - a Chinese "immersion" school without close ties to an ethnic community doesn't feel right ten years on. The Chinatown community wouldn't have supported the initiative if we'd been told that the YY board planned to hire non Chinese-speaking admins. We believed that YY was serious about building ties with the local dialect-speaking immigrant community. Maybe under the next head. In the meantime, we head to MoCo for Higher Level IBD Chinese, 6s and 7s, hard work for the kids but within their grasp with a critical mass of native speakers in the classes.

Good luck to the rest of you at YY and DCI.

It may well be that the Cantonese speakers haven't been on this board in ages but you sound exactly like the "ABC" posters from a few years ago. Everything you say drips of entitlement and frankly racism.

Seriously, you wouldn't have helped it "the YY board planned to hire non Chinese-speaking admins"? They hired the best and most qualified people who applied. They did not exclude anyone who was not in the "local dialect-speaking immigrant community."

I have visited Chinese immersion programs across the country, exploring places where we had the opportunity to move. There are lots of places that call themselves Chinese immersion but I have not seen a single one that is on Yu Ying's level. Pray, do tell us which immersion school is "real"? I've probably visited it. You appear to think that a school is only real Chines immersion if it is Chinese preference, but Yu Ying is a public charter school, and for the billionth time, IT IS NOT ALLOWED TO PREFERENCE NATIVE SPEAKERS. This is and was always going to be true.

Ten years later you can't get it through your head.

Your solution, I suppose, would have been to not open Yu Ying. Better nothing, no community interested in Chinese language & culture, no new families attending Chinese cultural events throughout the area, no parents learning Chinese themselves, no influx of Chinese au pairs and teachers, no families sharing Chinese culture and language with their own networks. Better nothing than something that doesn't give someone exactly like you a preference over anyone who is different from you.

Get a life.

Move on.

Why would you even open this thread?

I'm a NP and you're an arrogant ass. Something is clearly wrong with the ethnic community in a city rejects the one school celebrating its own culture and language. They must have had their reasons and the YY board and PA should have tried to sort this problem out long ago.You sound like the head case here.

Oh yeah, and Yu Ying voted best elementary school by City Paper yet again!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Which Cantonese speakers? They don't seem to have been on these boards for ages.

I'm a native Mandarin speaker who's lived in DC since long before Yu Ying opened. I've volunteered for this and that at the school over the years (but no longer do). I know a couple dozen YY and DCI families pretty well, including those who started in the original PreK4 group. I say with confidence that most of the families aren't very serious about the Chinese, and even if they are, not having a cohort of native-speaking kids in the school clobbers the language learning, unless a Chinese-speaking adult is in the home year after year.

The school doesn't try to expose the YY students to native Chinese-speaking young people in the Metro area (e.g. from the strongest Mandarin heritage programs in MoCo) when they could have started doing this long ago, even if they can't/don't want to recruit native speakers directly. YY doesn't encourage the kids to hang out with native speakers their own age and it shows. Parents love the program anyway, but from the perspective of those of us who speak only Chinese to our children, the arrangement is pretty silly. You hear the parents say, oh no problem, our kids will go live in China later to perfect their Chinese. Maybe, but I doubt it, other than a few. I doubt that my own kids will do this, and they have no trouble speaking Chinese all day, with the odd English word or phrase tossed in.

Why do you care so much. Seriously, give it up. So they will never learn Chinese to your standards. Big deal. Don't you have your own garden to tend?

Sure, but I supported the creation of YY, and have volunteered there many times, making me a stakeholder. I've grown disenchanted, mainly due to a persistent truth-in-advertising issue. Parents of 3 and 4 years olds are assured at open houses that their kids will become "fluent" in Chinese by MS by dint of hard work (no native speaking peers or their families needed). At a recent open house, a friend noted that this was said a dozen times. But the truth is that many kids who've been at YY all the way from PreK to 5th grade struggle to speak or understand basic everyday Chinese. The arrangement makes me think of the Soviet "we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us" approach. The immersion school I backed has not emerged as an immersion school. This city can do better.

Why don't you care? Because your kid is behind the curve in two languages and you don't want to deal with that?

Sorry, being a former volunteer does not make you a stakeholder.

Not, it doesn't. I was asked to help circulate petitions among civil society groups in Chinatown to get YY's charter approved. I had my doubts, but helped. I regret the decision - a Chinese "immersion" school without close ties to an ethnic community doesn't feel right ten years on. The Chinatown community wouldn't have supported the initiative if we'd been told that the YY board planned to hire non Chinese-speaking admins. We believed that YY was serious about building ties with the local dialect-speaking immigrant community. Maybe under the next head. In the meantime, we head to MoCo for Higher Level IBD Chinese, 6s and 7s, hard work for the kids but within their grasp with a critical mass of native speakers in the classes.

Good luck to the rest of you at YY and DCI.

It may well be that the Cantonese speakers haven't been on this board in ages but you sound exactly like the "ABC" posters from a few years ago. Everything you say drips of entitlement and frankly racism.

Seriously, you wouldn't have helped it "the YY board planned to hire non Chinese-speaking admins"? They hired the best and most qualified people who applied. They did not exclude anyone who was not in the "local dialect-speaking immigrant community."

I have visited Chinese immersion programs across the country, exploring places where we had the opportunity to move. There are lots of places that call themselves Chinese immersion but I have not seen a single one that is on Yu Ying's level. Pray, do tell us which immersion school is "real"? I've probably visited it. You appear to think that a school is only real Chines immersion if it is Chinese preference, but Yu Ying is a public charter school, and for the billionth time, IT IS NOT ALLOWED TO PREFERENCE NATIVE SPEAKERS. This is and was always going to be true.

Ten years later you can't get it through your head.

Your solution, I suppose, would have been to not open Yu Ying. Better nothing, no community interested in Chinese language & culture, no new families attending Chinese cultural events throughout the area, no parents learning Chinese themselves, no influx of Chinese au pairs and teachers, no families sharing Chinese culture and language with their own networks. Better nothing than something that doesn't give someone exactly like you a preference over anyone who is different from you.

Get a life.

Move on.

Why would you even open this thread?

Anonymous wrote:I've been following this post as we are currently #4 on the WL for K. I'm not sure if we would even receive a call off the WL but in the event we do, I'm trying to determine if we would accept. We are currently at a HRCS that is close to our home and we absolutely love. We entered the lottery only for immersion schools for the DCI feeder. We matched with MV and are thrilled. We definitely feel that we could support Spanish at home based on our high school and college Spanish courses. Our child currently has Spanish a few times a week at the current school and is really starting to take interest in the language. We are not thrilled with MV's location however. It's still close to our home but it's in a highly congested area. YY has a more desirable location. It's consistently ranked as a top elementary school in DC which is why we ranked it as our top choice. We are still torn at the moment.

MV expanded too quickly, not even the 2nd WL sibling got off the list at YY last year. Grow where you are planted, the grass isn't always greener.

I've been following this post as we are currently #4 on the WL for K. I'm not sure if we would even receive a call off the WL but in the event we do, I'm trying to determine if we would accept. We are currently at a HRCS that is close to our home and we absolutely love. We entered the lottery only for immersion schools for the DCI feeder. We matched with MV and are thrilled. We definitely feel that we could support Spanish at home based on our high school and college Spanish courses. Our child currently has Spanish a few times a week at the current school and is really starting to take interest in the language. We are not thrilled with MV's location however. It's still close to our home but it's in a highly congested area. YY has a more desirable location. It's consistently ranked as a top elementary school in DC which is why we ranked it as our top choice. We are still torn at the moment.

Anonymous wrote:Kids almost always do "fine" in Chinese at YY without any supplemental instruction or assistance from parents because the bar for Mandarin just isn't set very high, particularly for speaking. The instructional emphasis is on writing and grammar. When we sent our YY student to a summer immersion sleepover camp attended by a whole bunch of kids from Mandarin immersion schools in NY and NJ (both public and private weekend programs) after 3rd grade, we were surprised to learn that they had a lot of trouble keeping up on speaking and listening. They weren't just trailing campers who spoke dialects at home, they were behind the curve period.

If you are comparing to kids who go to weekend immersion, then of course yours will not be as fluent in speaking because weekend school means they use the language at home. I think the spoken skills my kids are picking up are what would be expected for a non-native speaker from a non-native speaking household to demonstrate.

I do agree that the benchmarks that they are supposed to achieve have been watered down, but that doesn't mean that they themselves cannot outperform those benchmarks. IF the goal is to meet benchmarks, ie get a C, yes, they are not going to be fluent. I would hope my kids are striving to get an A, or in YY's case an E. Don't want to get into how ridiculous I think the grading systems used today are, that's another thread.

Going back to the original question, in light of some other more recent posts, if you are OK with the idea of the dual language, your child will still get a good education with the addition of better Chinese skills than trying to pick it up later in life.

One thing I have observed is that English reading was also slowed a little in both kids. Compared to some of their peers who go to other schools, they picked up reading a little later, but once they got it, they picked it up pretty quickly and I feel like they're catching up, if not already caught up. According to school assessments, they are on track and at grade level, but like I said earlier, the goal is not to be a C student, and the standardized testing has a pretty low benchmark for what grade level should be.

If you want my advice on going with YY, get out there if you can, making of point of having your student speak Chinese with native-speakers (who aren't YY teachers) on a regular basis, don't get too comfortable inside the NE campus bubble. If you can't afford a Chinese au pair, or don't have space for one, consider a weekend heritage language school in MoCo (age 4+), although the commitment is a pain. Do this mainly to interact with Chinese families who aren't as assimilated as the small YY ethnic group. Brave camps with native speaking kids if you can afford them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids almost always do "fine" in Chinese at YY without any supplemental instruction or assistance from parents because the bar for Mandarin just isn't set very high, particularly for speaking. The instructional emphasis is on writing and grammar. When we sent our YY student to a summer immersion sleepover camp attended by a whole bunch of kids from Mandarin immersion schools in NY and NJ (both public and private weekend programs) after 3rd grade, we were surprised to learn that they had a lot of trouble keeping up on speaking and listening. They weren't just trailing campers who spoke dialects at home, they were behind the curve period.

Which camp did you go to, was it Concordia?

I always sort of roll my eyes when people critcize YY students' Chinese speaking skills bc the school emphasizes reading and writing over conversation. If the school did the opposite, and focused on speaking/understanding at the expense of reading and writing, then the criticism would be "yeah the kids speak ok but are illiterate."

Yes, two-week Concordia Village Chinese camp in MN, for ages 8+. Camp was packed with NY, NJ and Cal kids enrolled in dual immersion programs, lots of what I'll call "semi native speakers." Our YY bubble deflated after five years of being told that our child spoke very well, although we didn't supplement. Most of the other campers spoke and understood a lot better than ours, including slang/kid speak Chinese. Ours was more than competitive on writing. Child struggled in the camp, but we're proud that s/he wants to return another year. We're hosting a Chinese au pair for the first time this school year, although it's a stretch for us financially and we miss having a designated guest room in our not so big row house.