Inner City Immersion Language Education vs. an Affluent School Without Language

My dilemma

Although I live in an affluent school district and have two kids who attend local schools I have a child who attends Post Oak Elementary in Lansing, MI. It is an inner city Title I school, with inadequate funding and a disadvantaged student population. I've been very happy with my choice to send him there because they offer an immersion Chinese program, allowing him to spend half of the day learning in Mandarin and half of the day learning in English. However, I definitely give up a lot by sending him there and now I am struggling with whether I should send him to fourth grade in Lansing or move him back to Okemos. I will outline the pros and cons of leaving him in the immersion program, in part because putting it on screen will help me think the issues through and in part because I hope others will give me insights into what I should do.

A bit of history

My wife and I both learned languages as children and have become increasingly convinced that having children learn a foreign language when they are young is the most opportune time. All three of my children are learning a foreign language. My fifteen year old is reasonably fluent in Japanese. My twelve year old takes Greek lessons twice a week. Often I get asked why I bother doing something as difficult as teaching them languages. While I don't expect that they will necessarily use the language they learn as adults, they learn many skills that I don't expect them to use in their professional lives, from playing sports to learning to read music and play an instrument. Like these other activities, learning a language helps them develop into smarter, more well-rounded individuals. There is research showing that serious language study helps children improve their ability to discriminate between sounds,

increase their vocabulary and do better in math, and even enhances cognitive flexibility.

Zachary started learning Chinese in an immersion preschool and moved to Post Oak in kindergarten. He can read and write hundreds of Chinese characters. While it is difficult for me to independently assess his ability to speak and understand Mandarin, the Chinese people he speaks to while he is with me almost always compliment his pronunciation. He seems to understand a lot of Chinese and on a few topics can speak so that he is clearly understood. When we recently went to a Chinese New Year's celebration that consisted of skits by MSU Chinese students he loved it, laughing in all the right places and clearly understanding (at least at some level) the dialogue.

The Quality of the Teaching

 In the four years he's been at Post Oak he's had six 3 English and 3 Chinese teachers (the kindergarten teachers moved up to first grade with him. Since I have volunteered extensively over the last decade in both Okemos and Lansing Schools I have had a great opportunity to observe many teachers at work and think I can evaluate how they teach reasonably well. My assessment is that Zachary has had 3 excellent teachers, two that are average, and one below average (a similar distribution to what I've seen in the wealthy district with my other children though neither dataset is statistically significant).

The Results (Other than Chinese)

Zachary, though certainly not a prodigy, has consistently been ahead of where his brothers were at the same point in their education in math, though he is not as far ahead of grade level as he once was. Though he was not ahead of his oldest brother in reading that is only because my oldest was linguistically precocious (beginning to read at 18 months and correctly spelling puerile in a first grade assignment).  He seems basically happy and well adjusted, though at times has minor social issues.

The Problems

I began rethinking leaving him in Lansing Schools last summer when the district fired all of its elementary school art, music, and physical education teachers due to lack of funds. In theory the regular teachers picked up teaching those subjects, but from what we see coming home, hanging on the school walls, and hear from our child, there has been a real drop in how much they are getting. However, we supplement with Tae Kwon Do and twice weekly piano lessons. After school resumed last fall I learned that they also gutted the gifted and talented program, cutting the number of students drastically and changing it from a year round program to one that is three months long.

In contrast, this year the Okemos School district has an award winning music program and great art at all grade levels. My middle son has been learning viola in school for two years. My oldest son is taking photography in high school, using a nice dSLR and high-end computers with Photoshop. Next year he'll take AP art. This year Okemos passed a bond proposal that will fund a personal learning device (iPad) for every student.

I'm not a big believer in standardized test scores as a good measure of school performance. Often, they only reflect the socioeconomic status of the test takers. However, at my local elementary school, Bennett Woods, scores are at the 93rd percentile and at Post Oak they are at the 14th.

There is clearly a real difference in how much a typical student has learned by the third grade. The children in Post Oak are not less smart. Part of the difference in achievement is because the children in the school don't have the same enrichment opportunities that my children (and other economically privileged children) have over the summer, so they experience a bigger summer slide. As the children that he goes to school with fall behind, it affects their attitudes toward academics and their interests. The influence of a child's peer group may be as important as the influence of parents and teachers and I fear that the effects of poverty on my son's peer group will lead to a less enriching set of peers. My older sons often play with friends who share their interests in foreign languages, chess, computer programming, and rocks and minerals, incorporating those interests into their social lives. I don't see that type of interaction with Zachary and his schoolmates. Furthermore, falling behind because of the summer slide and less stable home lives forces teachers to focus attention on remediation.

Other Issues

It is not just the academics that I worry about, I also worry about my son's social development. It is much harder to get him together with friends since we are about half an hour away by car. As he ages, the peer group becomes less diverse economically and geographically as parents like us who send our kids through the school of choice programs drop out to send our kids to more economically privileged districts. They are not replaced by new school of choice parents since few students begin an immersion language program in later grades.

The School District

While the school has an amazing and highly dedicated principal, the district itself is dysfunctional and underfunded. The immersion language is supported by FLAP grants from the department of education with assistance from MSU's Confucius Institute and the Chinese government. The school district is less than committed to the program and as the grants expire, may reduce or eliminate Chinese instruction.

Extracurricular Activities

Because of the lack of funds, the range of extracurriculars available is smaller than in Okemos. For years, Zachary was jealous of his brothers' after school chess club. Okemos parents who want their children to participate pay a couple hundred dollars each to hire two of the top chess players in Michigan. They go to tournaments, for which the parents gladly pay USCF and MCA membership fees, the registration, and a markup that pays for the coaches' time and a room rental.

Being a Good Citizen

Trying to be a good parent, I give to the PTA, donate school supplies, donate money to the Okemos Education Foundation and the Lansing Education Advancement Foundation, and I have volunteered to help in the schools every year since my oldest son (who is now in tenth grade) was a first grader. This year, in addition to doing math pullouts for the gifted kids I decided to start a chess club for Zachary. I'm a mediocre chess player at best and I'm not really qualified to perform classroom management on lots of kids at one time. Nevertheless, I enrolled 26 kids in an after school chess club. Unlike in Okemos, where there is a mandatory fee for the club and another for each tournament I emphasize on every flier that no child will be turned away for lack of resources. I've tried applying for grants, holding fundraisers, and have asked for donations. I won't break even.  There is no way, even doing much of the work myself that I can give Zachary and his peers the same caliber of after school opportunities that Okemos students have.

Differences in Curriculum

In an attempt to decide whether to move Zachary to Bennett Woods next year, I visited Bennett Woods where the principal showed me anonymized schoolwork of typical third and fourth graders. While there were differences from what Zachary is bringing home, they were subtle. In math there was a little less rote problem solving and a bit more synthesis and application (in story problems, for example). In English, there was more emphasis on proofreading, revision, correction, and polishing. Nonetheless, I am concerned that the gap will widen and that eeven if I move him to a better district later those small differences will become larger as those with a slight edge are encouraged and given more opportunities (I read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell).

Change to Pattengill

If I move Zachary into our home district I may want to do so next fall. In a move designed to save money Lansing changed from k-5 schools to k-3 and consolidated grades 4-6 at Pattengill Academy. The immersion program is supposed to be a school within a school, but I have questions about how separate the school within a school is. I hear complaints from Post Oak kids who share busses with Pattengill students about the behavior of the students on the bus. I have had parents tell me that their kids learn things (and language) from those students that they would rather not have their kids exposed to.

Does it Apply to my Kid?

I am trying to balance the ability to learn a language well, at an early age against the things that we'd give up in a poor school district. I know that to some extent the enriching environment I can give my kids ameliorates some of the problems with an inner city school, so perhaps those drawbacks are less important. On the other hand, I have been able to successfully provide language education to my other children through in-home tutors, online courses, college courses, immersion language camps, computer software and trips to Japan and Greece, so I should be able to do so with Zachary. Moreover, my attempts to go above and beyond the Post Oak curriculum at home in math and English have been extremely difficult and largely ineffective.

What would you consider? What questions would you ask?

Take Some Responsibility

Having a child is not easy. CTFD, you say. You were ignored for hours every day and you turned out just fine.

Think about that a little harder. When I was a child we lived in a different world. We lived in walkable neighborhoods and spent hours playing impromptu active games outdoors, now my kids need to be driven to soccer or the pool if I want them to get exercise. The schools were adequately funded, now my youngest son’s school district just fired all of the elementary school art, music, and gym teachers. There was a lot less scientific knowledge to master, less computer skills to learn, and fewer standardized tests that put the emphasis on the easy to measure instead of the important.

Yet, despite the more complex world that we live in, “the average child in the United States watches 3 to 4 hours a day of television” with predictable results. The problem, as I see it, is not the small minority of hypercompetitive parents, pushing their kids to get to Harvard, it is the vast majority of parents that don’t take seriously developing their kids potential. The benefits of time spent reading, learning music, foreign languages, and getting regular, vigorous exercise are well documented. but most parents allow television and video games to be the one eyed babysitter, crowding out real development, instead of engaging their kids. So, don’t CTFD -- step up to the plate and parent like it matters. Parenting is no joke.

School Choice

I live in one of the best public school districts in Michigan, rated 9 out of 10 stars by greatschools.org. Yet every day I drive my youngest child to an school in a district where the median income is about half that of where I live and the district rating is three stars. The school that my youngest son attends faces some problems: so many students are from poor homes that they just provide every child with a free breakfast and lunch, they were so short on funds for books in kindergarten that they sent home photocopied pages some weeks, students with less than stable home lives come to school unprepared and with behavioral issues.

My middle son also attends a school of choice, but it is in our district. In fact it is in the building that was my oldest son's neighborhood elementary school.

Recently I've seen several articles that decry school choice because it destroys neighborhood schools and many charters are unregulated and no more successful than the public schools which they replace. So, why do I choose to send two of my three kids to schools of choice?

School choice allows my youngest to learn in an immersion Chinese program. Research shows that learning a foreign language before the age of twelve is more effective than learning it later in life and has a host of benefits in general cognitive development. My middle son learns in a Montessori program that suits his learning style far better than a traditional classroom does.

School choice allows my middle son a learning environment better suited to his needs. It also allows students from other districts to be in his classes, making his school more diverse while affording them an opportunity they might not otherwise have.

What about the downsides of school choice mentioned above? I actually believe that they don't exist. My kids schools are regulated just like all other public schools.  Neighborhood schools that are failing should be revamped instead of closed. The fact that they are closed is a consequence of a choice (a poor one in my opinion) that our society has made.  In fact, instead of detracting from an inner city school system Post Oak Elementary pulled my youngest son from a relatively affluent district. My son brought with him two motivated, educated parents who can donate money for books and time for tutoring. He will ace the standardized tests.

My youngest son is learning Chinese. Additionally, I am pleased to report he ahead of where his brothers were at the same age in math and (on average) in reading.  He enriches an impoverished district in many ways and it enriches him.  Deregulation and closure of failing schools are awful problems but please don't conflate them with school choice.  Taking away my choice won't solve those problems.

Talking to Tea Partiers?

I would describe myself as a moderate liberal. As part of my education, which included a thorough grounding in economic theory, I received an MBA from a top 10 school. My capitalist bona fides include not just my education -- I have owned a business, worked for companies large and small, and have been very successful financially. Nevertheless, I believe in big government and nothing drives me battier than Tea Partiers railing against health care reform by screaming that the government should keep their hands off Medicare, against the deficit while supporting tax cuts for the wealthy that we can ill afford, and against the very spending (whether on Social Security, highways, or medical research) that has allowed them to achieve a lifestyle that their grandparents would never have dreamed possible.

For a long time I did not think that it was possible to talk to Tea Partiers in a rational way, let alone to find common ground with them. Lately, however, I think I have begun to better understand the thinking of a subset of Tea Partiers and believed that there may be room for some points of agreement.

What Motivates Me to Love Big Government?

I was born in the most prosperous country in the history of the world at a time when it was at the height of its prosperity. That prosperity was built on many planks. One was a shared culture and a sense of patriotism that allowed the country to move forward together. Certainly there was friction between races, between labor and capital, and between government and the private sector, and between the sexes, but all players would somehow inch forward together on the swinging pendulum of compromise.

Government served as a referee, balancing (albeit imperfectly) the need for a clean environment and decent labor standards against the needs of industry, and so on. While government may have been corrupt sometimes, it still did things that it thought advanced the cause of creating a better society and a stronger country. Sometimes those things worked (for example giving away 40 acre homesteads or mandating high school education) and sometimes they failed (think of public housing projects).

I grew up in a the most prosperous economy in the world in large part because the government mandated high school education earlier than other countries did, subsidized college education on a massive scale with the GI bill, and funded research. This created the intellectual infrastructure for our economy, a highly educated workforce. The government also created the physical infrastructure, interstate highways, universal telephone and electrical service, roads and bridges.

I have been immensely successful and I owe much of that success to big government. I was educated in universities that were created and nurtured by government. My company wrote software which was deployed on the Internet (which evolved from DARPAnet Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Government gave my business a well educated workforce, a (more or less) stable economy, and a robust infrastructure, which allowed me to contribute to society by employing dozens of people and creating new products.

What Motivates Tea Partiers to Hate Big Government?

Given the immense success that our country has had, despite being made up largely of the descendants of various waves of immigrants and the indisputable conclusion that government played a role in that success, it is hard to understand the animosity that tea-partiers feel toward the government. I'm going to ignore the more outrageous Big Government wants to take away our liberties (usually meaning not allow us all to carry our second amendment guaranteed RPG and missile launcher into our kids' school) and concentrate on the economic arguments.

Tea-partiers are afraid that government wants to tax hard workers (meaning people like them) to allow free loaders (meaning those that work for the government and the urban poor) to make irresponsible decisions and be lazy. One tea-partier I know, though she would deny the label, lived in a communist country where in the name of progress and fairness they took from those who were successful and gave to those who were in political favor. When Obama says we need to "share the wealth" she goes ballistic because she's seen what the extreme of "sharing the wealth" does - steals from anyone who is successful to allow free loaders to enjoy the fruits of someone else's labor. Of course, this almost completely eliminates the incentives to work hard and society and the economy stagnate.

Tea partiers also believe that government is inherently less efficient than business because business has an incentive to make a profit. However, employees of big businesses, especially those that are publicly traded, have plenty of incentive to enrich themselves at the expense of the company. Furthermore, what is good for the company's bottom line may not be good for the world (dumping toxic waste or creating toxic assets, for example). Whenever, someone repeats to me the dogmatic idea that government is less efficient than the private sector I say that given examples like Worldcom, Enron, AIG, and General Motors that is an outrageous claim to make in the absence of any data to back it up. Of course, nobody has any such data. I've been in business for decades and the waste, fraud, and abuse I've seen in the private sector makes my head spin.

Spreading the Wealth

When I point out to my conservative friends the fact that over the last several decades all of the gains in our nation's wealth and productivity have gone to the richest, that does not sway them. From their perspective, you get what you work for. Wealth redistribution for the sake of equity just saps the motivation for the poor to try.

However, a society in which being born poor means an almost certain life sentence of poverty also saps motivation for the poor to better themselves. Unfortunately, our society has moved very far in that direction over the last several decades. To me spreading the wealth doesn't mean wholesale confiscation of my wealth, but it does mean that I should be expected to contribute enough so that my children and grandchildren can have opportunities similar to my own.

Even in my own relatively affluent community I see the effects of the anti-government, anti-tax policies that have overtaken the debate. Every year the state of Michigan cuts per-pupil funding for our public schools. When my oldest was in kindergarten I thought that it was bad because the school had to cut the reading specialist that pulled the talented readers out of class for advanced reading. In the 7 years between my oldest and youngest, not only have we not gotten back a reading specialist, class size for kindergarten has grown from 18 to 27.

Our roads are pot-holed. Our library can not construct it's own building. Students need to pay to participate in athletics or the school play. Higher education budgets get cut, making even a public college more expensive. Meanwhile, Michigan cut income tax rates for both individuals and businesses again and again.

Where Tea Partiers Should Be Able to Agree with Me

With my new understanding of the tea-party I think that I should be able to find areas where I, a liberal, agree with them. Although I am not sure that I have a good solution, none of us want to encourage generations of unwed teenage mothers. So, I think that we should all be able to support decent schools that would give the children of teenage mothers a chance at a decent education and a decent career. However, there is a real cost to education, public safety, childhood nutrition, and pre-natal care. In other words, there is a real cost to giving the poor a chance.

Inevitably, some of the money we spend will be wasted, but I can support wasting money to build the well-educated, productive work force of tomorrow. We all agree that while you may sometimes find a bargain, usually you get what you pay for. That is ostensibly why businesses pay so much for CEOs. Sure, sometimes you waste money on an Anthony Mozzilo, but if you want results you attract the best with high wages and great benefits.

A Challenge to Conservatives

So, here is my challenge to the tea party. Can you show me a country whose citizens prosper without a robust government? If not, since I don't want my kids to have to live in a society where they live in gated communities, with private roads, private security, and private schools, surrounded by growing slums how do you propose moving society forward? Decades of tax cuts for the wealthiest and deregulation have given us a collapsed economy with stagnant wages for all but the richest. Where is your path forward that keeps us from becoming a third world country with crumbling infrastructure and a tiny middle class?