Basis McLean building sold for $103m

[Anonymous]

Well, many parents include happy and well-rounded in their top 100 criteria for schools, and no amount of money to Niche could land BIM on that list.

I’m not surprised with the stats, I’m surprised that people want to send their kids to a test factory in an office building owned by PE firm that is a de facto extension of the Chinese government.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, many parents include happy and well-rounded in their top 100 criteria for schools, and no amount of money to Niche could land BIM on that list.

I’m not surprised with the stats, I’m surprised that people want to send their kids to a test factory in an office building owned by PE firm that is a de facto extension of the Chinese government.

Many schools are test factories, so I don’t entirely see that as problematic.
“Extension of the Chinese government” is also a long tail issue that realistically doesn’t make its way into the classroom. It’s weird that people always argue this about Basis.
More concerning to me as a parent would be my kid going to school in an actual boring office building in an actual office park. How depressing. It’s not a campus, it’s literally an office. So odd.
I also have great pause about any school owned by a PE firm. PE firms exist to squeeze $, not to invest in innovation. That’s not exactly the kind of business model that screams “I’m investing in my kid’s future.”

[Anonymous]

Precisely. I’m all for profit, but a high school is a weird place to seek that out. As for Chinese PE, you think the kids spend a lot of time studying Tianamen Square or philosophies critical of communist ideology? They don’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, many parents include happy and well-rounded in their top 100 criteria for schools, and no amount of money to Niche could land BIM on that list.

I’m not surprised with the stats, I’m surprised that people want to send their kids to a test factory in an office building owned by PE firm that is a de facto extension of the Chinese government.

When you keep getting surprised for that many years as the school keeps doing better every year including all the aforementioned metrics (objective ones like NMSF, college placement, SAT/AP, not “happy” as if you actually know the kids there are less happy than anywhere else), that usually means your presumptions are wrong. You’re going to really lose it once you find out the student body is only getting bigger next year with the same high-achieving senior class.

[Anonymous]

I’m not going to “lose” anything as my kids were educated in a not-for-profit school, like 99% of the schools in this country, and had a very well-rounded, enjoyable experience.

Setting up a for-profit school specifically for kids who didn’t get into TJ but whose parents are test-obsessed was genius. If there was any doubt what was actually motivating the owners, cashing in on the soulless office building that the school calls home should answer questions. Sprinkle in the ability to give the Chinese government influence on the academic curriculum of a Washington DC area school and I have take my hat off to Spring Education and its Chinese government adjacent board.

[Anonymous]

There was never any doubt about any owners because nobody cared about the owners. Same with your tinfoil hat theory of communists affecting the school curriculum (better toss that Chinese made iPhone into the trash). The Basis network of schools and the curriculum existed long before the current ownership structure. Yes, it’s quirky for schools to be profit-driven but none of that including your points ever translated into the classroom or even how the school operates on a day to day basis.

[Anonymous]

There is virtually no connection between the high-performing charter version of BASIS and the for-profit private equity version. And you know that.

It's not "quirky" for schools to be profit driven, it's anathema to how most view the motivation of what an educational system should be.

And it's not tinfoil hat stuff, look at the lineage of the ownership. Look at the board members, their other investments and their affiliations. Look at the parent company of the investment vehicle. Do you own research. Accept the risk if you choose but don't dismiss it because you're too intellectually lazy to analyze it.

[Anonymous]

Take a pressure cooker public school, remove all the fun or interesting stuff, and start charging expensive tuition. There, you have BIM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Take a pressure cooker public school, remove all the fun or interesting stuff, and start charging expensive tuition. There, you have BIM.

It’s basically a very expensive TJ without sports or nice facilities.

[Anonymous]

And for people who, you know, didn't get into TJ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And for people who, you know, didn't get into TJ.

The TJ admissions policy changed saved BIM's bacon. Their enrollment crashed after the "let's sublease the other half of the building" debacle in spring 2020. Only when a lot of folks who couldn't get into TJ showed up did their enrollment rebound, because that was the market for a STEM pressure cooker.

The school has a certain narrow lane that appeals to some and is largely ignored by the rest of the DCUM world's selective school families.

Spring Education never owned the building, they always leased from the commercial RE firm that owned then just sold it.

Just some basic facts. Like yes, there is a big overlap in the curriculum that BASIS charters and BASIS privates use. It's all the same "secret sauce" that just amounts to piles of AP courses piled on as early as possible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And for people who, you know, didn't get into TJ.

The TJ admissions policy changed saved BIM's bacon. Their enrollment crashed after the "let's sublease the other half of the building" debacle in spring 2020. Only when a lot of folks who couldn't get into TJ showed up did their enrollment rebound, because that was the market for a STEM pressure cooker.

The school has a certain narrow lane that appeals to some and is largely ignored by the rest of the DCUM world's selective school families.

Spring Education never owned the building, they always leased from the commercial RE firm that owned then just sold it.

Just some basic facts. Like yes, there is a big overlap in the curriculum that BASIS charters and BASIS privates use. It's all the same "secret sauce" that just amounts to piles of AP courses piled on as early as possible.

So what about the past 6 years since 2020? The school didn’t do anything right but and an increasing number of parents just keep sending their kids to the school year after year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is virtually no connection between the high-performing charter version of BASIS and the for-profit private equity version. And you know that.

It's not "quirky" for schools to be profit driven, it's anathema to how most view the motivation of what an educational system should be.

And it's not tinfoil hat stuff, look at the lineage of the ownership. Look at the board members, their other investments and their affiliations. Look at the parent company of the investment vehicle. Do you own research. Accept the risk if you choose but don't dismiss it because you're too intellectually lazy to analyze it.

You are nuts and unhinged. Nobody said anything about Basis charter schools. The Basis independent schools and the curriculum existed before Spring Education came in and acquired the network of schools. The first few years of Basis McLean wasn’t even under Spring’s ownership. Highly doubt any of the students there even realize or care what happened above the school level, there are 0 effects on the classroom.

[Anonymous]

Zero effects on the classroom that’s in an office building that was sold for a profit (because that is the stated mission of the parent company)?

Rationalize it any way you want, but most people wouldn’t send their kid to a school like that just to boost their APs and SATs to become a human bot engineer that will be replaced by AI. The Chinese owners are laughing at this all the way to the bank.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m not going to “lose” anything as my kids were educated in a not-for-profit school, like 99% of the schools in this country, and had a very well-rounded, enjoyable experience.

Setting up a for-profit school specifically for kids who didn’t get into TJ but whose parents are test-obsessed was genius. If there was any doubt what was actually motivating the owners, cashing in on the soulless office building that the school calls home should answer questions. Sprinkle in the ability to give the Chinese government influence on the academic curriculum of a Washington DC area school and I have take my hat off to Spring Education and its Chinese government adjacent board.

DP

I know a kid there and he doesn't seem to be worse off for it.