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Comment by dmckeon | Hacker News Reader

For a USA-ian, it is interesting to see similar issues for language immersion (in Canada) and US voucher-based charter schools, each relative to the local traditional schools, with a tendency for students from higher-income families to attend immersion (in Canada) or voucher-based charter schools (in the US), and for traditional schools to retain students from lower-income families, allophone/ESL students, and a higher proportion of students with special needs.

While I'm in favor of exploring innovation in education, it seems like there are intrinsic challenges to equity here, and a situation that cries out for methods to equitably balance access to effective education.

[edited to clarify which schools in which country]

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The United States of America declared independence in 1776, becoming the first independent, foreign-recognized nation in the Americas. This is why we are called "Americans", despite the many subsequent independent countries also residing in the Americas. Every country has a unique name for their nationality, that is ours.

See, whats funny to me about this, is that you've gone and given yourself the title of "Americans", whereas the people who were there before you, and had established civilizations, are given the title "Native Americans". That doesn't make any sense. How about instead, Native Americans can drop the Native qualifier and Americans can start calling themselves "Foreign Americans". That's much more logical, and historically consistent.

(Also, "independent, foreign-recognized nation in the Americas"? What about the Six Nations? They were certainly recognized as nations by the British)

> The United States of America declared independence in 1776, becoming the first independent, foreign-recognized nation in the Americas

Quite a number of native nations were recognized by each other and even European powers. The US was the first post-colonial, recognized independent state, but the post-colonial part is significant.

FWIW, not all immersion programs in the US are charter based. Our kids went to a public non-charter Spanish immersion school K-8 here in San Jose, and entry into the school was split equally between native English and native Spanish speakers. That meant there was good diversity in socio-economic backgrounds without any direct "racial profiling". (Note there were also some upper-income native Spanish speakers in the program, mostly kids of immigrants from Spain and South America.)

Sorry, I did not intend to conflate immersion with charter (and voucher) in the US, and have edited to reflect that.

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