Why Oakland Parents Are Flocking to a Chinese-Immersion School

The success of Yu Ming Charter School shows how our usual ways of thinking about diversity and equity in American schools are becoming outmoded.

The New Yorker

By Jay Caspian Kang

October 18, 2022

It’s a long and fascinating article that will resonate with many Mandarin immersion parents. Kang touches on something that I wrote about in my book, A Parent’s Guide to Mandarin Immersion, which I glossed as “No one puts their child in Mandarin immersion by mistake.” Read his piece and see if you agree.

Yu Ming, then, presents a different form of élite academic education. Unlike test-in magnet schools like Stuyvesant or Bronx Science in New York City, Yu Ming does not screen its students, except to insure that a certain percentage of them come from low-income backgrounds. The school is free and open to everyone in the state of California, with preference given to local students. All you have to do for your kid to receive the best education in the Bay Area is put them in a classroom where their teachers will not speak English for most of the school day. But the people who are willing to do that and push for their child to go to a charter school will always be a self-selecting group, regardless of their class or ethnic background.

Please read more here.