3.5 stars We recently moved to Charlotte and wanted to enroll the kids in Mandarin Chinese as they had been taking Chinese classes previously. Based on the website, the Charlotte Chinese Academy (CCA) seemed to be a popular, well-organized program that took teaching Chinese seriously. CCA leases space from the Providence Day School so classes are held on the PDS campus Sunday mornings from 10-12. Classes are divided into two divisions - CSL (Chinese as a second language) for students who do not speak Mandarin at home and CHL (Chinese as a heritage language) for students who can get Mandarin practice at home with their parents and other family members. My children have been taking classes for years at their previous school but the emphasis at the other school was on speaking and not on reading and writing. Before they could be placed at CCA, they had to take placement tests. There is only one test regardless of what level your child may be at. None of my kids fared well. Even my oldest who's been taking Chinese for over 5 years struggled with the test. Consequently, all my kids are taking lower level CSL classes and it took them awhile to get placed. There was a lack of communication among the officers and teachers so there was a considerable amount of confusion as to where the kids should be. After 3 weeks the kids finally ended up where the fit was right. Prior to starting classes, parents are encouraged to attend an open house. There is an information session which I found useless because it was spoken mainly in Mandarin although the slides were all in English. This was the case with all parent meetings held throughout the year. This has been brought to the attention of the officers because going forward all meetings will be conducted in English so everyone can follow along. CCA is a bit disorganized. There seems to be a lack of communication among the officers. We couldn't get a straight answer of where we needed to be at the open house and what classes our children needed to be in based on their evaluations. The officers also seem to be addressing this issue because over the course of the year communications seemed to improve. CCA is held at PDS so there is subtle marketing for the school. PDS seems quite generous with CCA's use of the facilities and if it keeps school costs down so be it. CCA is a non-profit and asks that you make "donations" (actually, tuition) for the classes, which I find disingenuous. They also will outright ask for donations/gifts because they are operating at a loss. They should just raise "tuition" to cover their operating budget. Though it's not explicitly said anywhere, CCA is open to anyone, not just chinese kids. The school tends to forget its constituents are not only Chinese speaking families because they tend to want to speak just the mother tongue. Anyways, aside from the administrative issues, my kids did learn a lot of Chinese their first year at CCA. They get homework and have exams so the material is reinforced. Some teachers are way better than others, however. One of the teachers likes to use music and games to reinforce the materials which is fine but she often shows inappropriate Chinese and other Asian music videos to the kids (the other two teachers use more traditional teaching methods). Also, one of my kids went through 3 teachers in her class. I think the teachers are volunteers which could explain the turnover. Parents are encouraged to sit in the class with the kids to support their learning. If you think you can drop off your kids for Chinese school guess again. The school asserts again and again that the program is not cheap daycare but involves actual learning so beware. Parents are also required to do parent duty a few times during the year, which usually means getting the classroom ready how the teacher wants it and cleaning the room after class ends. All in all, more pros than cons. read more