Why don’t more parents send their kids to Basis McLean?

[Anonymous]

What I don't understand is why BASIS parents keep starting new threads trying to convince other people that their school is so good. Why not just be happy with your decision and leave everyone else alone? Be an adult and realize that not everyone will have the same opinion as you, and there's no need to be offended when they do.

[Anonymous]

I know two teacher who left BASIS for FCPS this year after receiving their master's degrees in teaching. They would not have been able to teach in FCPS without the degree (or at least they thought, I wouldn't be surprised if more left once they discovered the new FCPS resident teacher program).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of the many turnovers since 2020 was the social media director at BIM. The replacement comes from China and worked in Japan too.

Makes me wonder about the Asian syntax in so many of the posts here lately. Sure, it could easily be one of the many Chinese parents at the school. But it could also be someone with even more of a vested interest in the rah-rah.

The posts show clearly that some parents like the BIM and some don’t. But why? Here is an attempt of providing a tangible explanation.
The BASIS Independent Schools were purchased by a Chinese investment group in 2019. Since then the Basis McLean moved toward a communist totalitarian style of management of the employees. A new Head of School was sent to the BIM at the beginning of 21-22 school year. His experience was shaped by the multiyear work as a head of school in communist China. Immediately, he started treating faculty and staff as a CCP style manager. Some PPs mentioned increased accountability. Note, a disrespectful force-handling of the employees is different from the concept of employee accountability. On the other hand, the BASIS schools are a for-profit business. Then, the enrollment growth strategy compatible with the CCP style management had to be adopted. As a part of this strategy, the selectivity of admission was abandoned and the students with behavior problems and low academic performance were accepted and retained. The faculty were forced to deal with seemingly impossible task of teaching artificially overcomplicated and memorization focused curriculum to the student body consisted of well-behaved children with high abilities and the children with subpar academic abilities and disruptive behavior. As a result, the number of faculty left. In spite of that, the BIM enrollment continued increasing to the current historic record of ~600 students. Why? Perhaps, there is a sizable segment of the local population who grew up and were educated in the totalitarian systems. Such parents prefer the Chinese approach to education rather than Western style of education. Recently, the epic failures of the latter liberal style education became widely publicized. Possibly, this is one of the major driving forces for the increased enrollment. Nevertheless, a larger number of parents reject the CCP style education and totalitarian management. These parents are passionately posting against BIM. Note, that consistent with the above said is the lack of diversity at the BIM. The student body is represented mainly by the children of immigrants from the politically totalitarian or culturally and socially divisive countries. Children of the US born parents constitute a small and decreasing fraction of the student body at the BIM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the many turnovers since 2020 was the social media director at BIM. The replacement comes from China and worked in Japan too.

Makes me wonder about the Asian syntax in so many of the posts here lately. Sure, it could easily be one of the many Chinese parents at the school. But it could also be someone with even more of a vested interest in the rah-rah.

The posts show clearly that some parents like the BIM and some don’t. But why? Here is an attempt of providing a tangible explanation.
The BASIS Independent Schools were purchased by a Chinese investment group in 2019. Since then the Basis McLean moved toward a communist totalitarian style of management of the employees. A new Head of School was sent to the BIM at the beginning of 21-22 school year. His experience was shaped by the multiyear work as a head of school in communist China. Immediately, he started treating faculty and staff as a CCP style manager. Some PPs mentioned increased accountability. Note, a disrespectful force-handling of the employees is different from the concept of employee accountability. On the other hand, the BASIS schools are a for-profit business. Then, the enrollment growth strategy compatible with the CCP style management had to be adopted. As a part of this strategy, the selectivity of admission was abandoned and the students with behavior problems and low academic performance were accepted and retained. The faculty were forced to deal with seemingly impossible task of teaching artificially overcomplicated and memorization focused curriculum to the student body consisted of well-behaved children with high abilities and the children with subpar academic abilities and disruptive behavior. As a result, the number of faculty left. In spite of that, the BIM enrollment continued increasing to the current historic record of ~600 students. Why? Perhaps, there is a sizable segment of the local population who grew up and were educated in the totalitarian systems. Such parents prefer the Chinese approach to education rather than Western style of education. Recently, the epic failures of the latter liberal style education became widely publicized. Possibly, this is one of the major driving forces for the increased enrollment. Nevertheless, a larger number of parents reject the CCP style education and totalitarian management. These parents are passionately posting against BIM. Note, that consistent with the above said is the lack of diversity at the BIM. The student body is represented mainly by the children of immigrants from the politically totalitarian or culturally and socially divisive countries. Children of the US born parents constitute a small and decreasing fraction of the student body at the BIM.

As a US born parent of a child there, I don’t doubt there’s some level of accuracy to this but there’s also a lot of opinion and speculation injected. I don’t see how hyper focus of revenue targets automatically means “CCP style management”. But of course, I agree on the more important point that quality of enrollment should be prioritized over taking in any and all sources of revenue. These two concepts are interdependent if BIM wants a long-term successful future.

I have no insight on the teacher and staff disagreements and won’t try to speculate. On diversity, I see much more diverse student bodies in the lower grades so I doubt the statement of US born parents decreasing is true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the many turnovers since 2020 was the social media director at BIM. The replacement comes from China and worked in Japan too.

Makes me wonder about the Asian syntax in so many of the posts here lately. Sure, it could easily be one of the many Chinese parents at the school. But it could also be someone with even more of a vested interest in the rah-rah.

The posts show clearly that some parents like the BIM and some don’t. But why? Here is an attempt of providing a tangible explanation.
The BASIS Independent Schools were purchased by a Chinese investment group in 2019. Since then the Basis McLean moved toward a communist totalitarian style of management of the employees. A new Head of School was sent to the BIM at the beginning of 21-22 school year. His experience was shaped by the multiyear work as a head of school in communist China. Immediately, he started treating faculty and staff as a CCP style manager. Some PPs mentioned increased accountability. Note, a disrespectful force-handling of the employees is different from the concept of employee accountability. On the other hand, the BASIS schools are a for-profit business. Then, the enrollment growth strategy compatible with the CCP style management had to be adopted. As a part of this strategy, the selectivity of admission was abandoned and the students with behavior problems and low academic performance were accepted and retained. The faculty were forced to deal with seemingly impossible task of teaching artificially overcomplicated and memorization focused curriculum to the student body consisted of well-behaved children with high abilities and the children with subpar academic abilities and disruptive behavior. As a result, the number of faculty left. In spite of that, the BIM enrollment continued increasing to the current historic record of ~600 students. Why? Perhaps, there is a sizable segment of the local population who grew up and were educated in the totalitarian systems. Such parents prefer the Chinese approach to education rather than Western style of education. Recently, the epic failures of the latter liberal style education became widely publicized. Possibly, this is one of the major driving forces for the increased enrollment. Nevertheless, a larger number of parents reject the CCP style education and totalitarian management. These parents are passionately posting against BIM. Note, that consistent with the above said is the lack of diversity at the BIM. The student body is represented mainly by the children of immigrants from the politically totalitarian or culturally and socially divisive countries. Children of the US born parents constitute a small and decreasing fraction of the student body at the BIM.

As a US born parent of a child there, I don’t doubt there’s some level of accuracy to this but there’s also a lot of opinion and speculation injected. I don’t see how hyper focus of revenue targets automatically means “CCP style management”. But of course, I agree on the more important point that quality of enrollment should be prioritized over taking in any and all sources of revenue. These two concepts are interdependent if BIM wants a long-term successful future.

I have no insight on the teacher and staff disagreements and won’t try to speculate. On diversity, I see much more diverse student bodies in the lower grades so I doubt the statement of US born parents decreasing is true.

As a parent whose children enjoy going to BASIS, I think that the CCP is completely irrelevant and has absolutely no connection with either the curriculum or management style of the administration. That post was a ridiculous attempt to attack BASIS in any possible way, regardless of whether or not it had any logic behind it. For years, people here have tried to criticize BASIS in different aspects: teacher turnover rate, test-oriented academics, etc. When all else failed, they decided to bring the CCP into the conversation to try to defame BASIS.

Although this forum is anonymous, it appears as if many posts attacking BASIS were written by the same person, who is likely a current BASIS staff member. This is because some of the information included in the posts would only be accessible for staff members. However, the accusations and assumptions that were made were all opinionated claims with a clear purpose to disparage BASIS.

As long as BASIS is not out of business, they won't stop.

If you really want to know what type of school BASIS is, talk to the parents and teachers, not anonymous posts here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the many turnovers since 2020 was the social media director at BIM. The replacement comes from China and worked in Japan too.

Makes me wonder about the Asian syntax in so many of the posts here lately. Sure, it could easily be one of the many Chinese parents at the school. But it could also be someone with even more of a vested interest in the rah-rah.

The posts show clearly that some parents like the BIM and some don’t. But why? Here is an attempt of providing a tangible explanation.
The BASIS Independent Schools were purchased by a Chinese investment group in 2019. Since then the Basis McLean moved toward a communist totalitarian style of management of the employees. A new Head of School was sent to the BIM at the beginning of 21-22 school year. His experience was shaped by the multiyear work as a head of school in communist China. Immediately, he started treating faculty and staff as a CCP style manager. Some PPs mentioned increased accountability. Note, a disrespectful force-handling of the employees is different from the concept of employee accountability. On the other hand, the BASIS schools are a for-profit business. Then, the enrollment growth strategy compatible with the CCP style management had to be adopted. As a part of this strategy, the selectivity of admission was abandoned and the students with behavior problems and low academic performance were accepted and retained. The faculty were forced to deal with seemingly impossible task of teaching artificially overcomplicated and memorization focused curriculum to the student body consisted of well-behaved children with high abilities and the children with subpar academic abilities and disruptive behavior. As a result, the number of faculty left. In spite of that, the BIM enrollment continued increasing to the current historic record of ~600 students. Why? Perhaps, there is a sizable segment of the local population who grew up and were educated in the totalitarian systems. Such parents prefer the Chinese approach to education rather than Western style of education. Recently, the epic failures of the latter liberal style education became widely publicized. Possibly, this is one of the major driving forces for the increased enrollment. Nevertheless, a larger number of parents reject the CCP style education and totalitarian management. These parents are passionately posting against BIM. Note, that consistent with the above said is the lack of diversity at the BIM. The student body is represented mainly by the children of immigrants from the politically totalitarian or culturally and socially divisive countries. Children of the US born parents constitute a small and decreasing fraction of the student body at the BIM.

As a US born parent of a child there, I don’t doubt there’s some level of accuracy to this but there’s also a lot of opinion and speculation injected. I don’t see how hyper focus of revenue targets automatically means “CCP style management”. But of course, I agree on the more important point that quality of enrollment should be prioritized over taking in any and all sources of revenue. These two concepts are interdependent if BIM wants a long-term successful future.

I have no insight on the teacher and staff disagreements and won’t try to speculate. On diversity, I see much more diverse student bodies in the lower grades so I doubt the statement of US born parents decreasing is true.

As a parent whose children enjoy going to BASIS, I think that the CCP is completely irrelevant and has absolutely no connection with either the curriculum or management style of the administration. That post was a ridiculous attempt to attack BASIS in any possible way, regardless of whether or not it had any logic behind it. For years, people here have tried to criticize BASIS in different aspects: teacher turnover rate, test-oriented academics, etc. When all else failed, they decided to bring the CCP into the conversation to try to defame BASIS.

Although this forum is anonymous, it appears as if many posts attacking BASIS were written by the same person, who is likely a current BASIS staff member. This is because some of the information included in the posts would only be accessible for staff members. However, the accusations and assumptions that were made were all opinionated claims with a clear purpose to disparage BASIS.

As long as BASIS is not out of business, they won't stop.

If you really want to know what type of school BASIS is, talk to the parents and teachers, not anonymous posts here.

The parents and teachers who stayed or those who left? They each have important points to make. As for all the CCP nonsense, I don't think that poster has been here for a long while since that's the only theme they ever pound away at.

Everything else about turnover and retention came from people not trying to inject that bias in their posts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the many turnovers since 2020 was the social media director at BIM. The replacement comes from China and worked in Japan too.

Makes me wonder about the Asian syntax in so many of the posts here lately. Sure, it could easily be one of the many Chinese parents at the school. But it could also be someone with even more of a vested interest in the rah-rah.

The posts show clearly that some parents like the BIM and some don’t. But why? Here is an attempt of providing a tangible explanation.
The BASIS Independent Schools were purchased by a Chinese investment group in 2019. Since then the Basis McLean moved toward a communist totalitarian style of management of the employees. A new Head of School was sent to the BIM at the beginning of 21-22 school year. His experience was shaped by the multiyear work as a head of school in communist China. Immediately, he started treating faculty and staff as a CCP style manager. Some PPs mentioned increased accountability. Note, a disrespectful force-handling of the employees is different from the concept of employee accountability. On the other hand, the BASIS schools are a for-profit business. Then, the enrollment growth strategy compatible with the CCP style management had to be adopted. As a part of this strategy, the selectivity of admission was abandoned and the students with behavior problems and low academic performance were accepted and retained. The faculty were forced to deal with seemingly impossible task of teaching artificially overcomplicated and memorization focused curriculum to the student body consisted of well-behaved children with high abilities and the children with subpar academic abilities and disruptive behavior. As a result, the number of faculty left. In spite of that, the BIM enrollment continued increasing to the current historic record of ~600 students. Why? Perhaps, there is a sizable segment of the local population who grew up and were educated in the totalitarian systems. Such parents prefer the Chinese approach to education rather than Western style of education. Recently, the epic failures of the latter liberal style education became widely publicized. Possibly, this is one of the major driving forces for the increased enrollment. Nevertheless, a larger number of parents reject the CCP style education and totalitarian management. These parents are passionately posting against BIM. Note, that consistent with the above said is the lack of diversity at the BIM. The student body is represented mainly by the children of immigrants from the politically totalitarian or culturally and socially divisive countries. Children of the US born parents constitute a small and decreasing fraction of the student body at the BIM.

As a US born parent of a child there, I don’t doubt there’s some level of accuracy to this but there’s also a lot of opinion and speculation injected. I don’t see how hyper focus of revenue targets automatically means “CCP style management”. But of course, I agree on the more important point that quality of enrollment should be prioritized over taking in any and all sources of revenue. These two concepts are interdependent if BIM wants a long-term successful future.

I have no insight on the teacher and staff disagreements and won’t try to speculate. On diversity, I see much more diverse student bodies in the lower grades so I doubt the statement of US born parents decreasing is true.

As a parent whose children enjoy going to BASIS, I think that the CCP is completely irrelevant and has absolutely no connection with either the curriculum or management style of the administration. That post was a ridiculous attempt to attack BASIS in any possible way, regardless of whether or not it had any logic behind it. For years, people here have tried to criticize BASIS in different aspects: teacher turnover rate, test-oriented academics, etc. When all else failed, they decided to bring the CCP into the conversation to try to defame BASIS.

Although this forum is anonymous, it appears as if many posts attacking BASIS were written by the same person, who is likely a current BASIS staff member. This is because some of the information included in the posts would only be accessible for staff members. However, the accusations and assumptions that were made were all opinionated claims with a clear purpose to disparage BASIS.

As long as BASIS is not out of business, they won't stop.

If you really want to know what type of school BASIS is, talk to the parents and teachers, not anonymous posts here.

Not only people here are hostile, but also this forum is so biased. A parent started a new thread called “why are more parents sending their kids to Basis McLean “ trying to set the facts straight. It was deleted by this website owner/admin for no reason. Very fishy. Why do so many people here want others to fail? Scary.
On the other hand, I am glad my kids are in this good school instead of other schools full of hostile, discriminatory racists.
When our kids are learning good things at school, their kids may be dealing with drugs, small circle bullies, and bad influences.
Enjoy our journeys as Basis families. Don’t waste time in this forum.

[Anonymous]

My children attend Basis because the academics are extremely competitive and geared towards very intelligent kids. There is not the rif raf one deals with in other lesser schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My children attend Basis because the academics are extremely competitive and geared towards very intelligent kids. There is not the rif raf one deals with in other lesser schools.

That kind of obsessive arrogance is actually quite amusing, assuming one would never actually have to sit next to you at a BIM assembly to hear it spewed out.

You make the point very clearly what kind of atmosphere BIM fosters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:New BIM family here. I found it really weird that there are so many non-BIM family members posting on this thread demanding "truth" on the school website. Why are you so invested or threaten by this small school? Do you check out other school websites and demand the same "truth" too? If you pulled your kids out from BIM, where are your kids now? Do you demand the same "truth" with your current school?

Same here. I really don’t understand why a small, relatively new private schools scares them this much.
Like I said in the other post. To those who posted here constantly, If you already left, good luck with your new adventure and please let go with Basis.

I am the OP. I keep going back and interested and then decide I don’t want to send my kids.

We live in McLean. Basis seems to have a reputation of being very academic and very Asian, almost like a private TJ. This is not what we want for our kids.

We know a few families who switched to Basis and they seem happy there. They are almost all smart Asian kids who weren’t challenged enough in public AAP. They are all kids that would probably have gone to TJ.

Well the entire county is an entire mess due to their politicized school board making all these changes in an effort for ‘racial equity’. Unfortunately the only people that are left are usually URMs that come from less fortunate socioeconomic backgrounds, and continue to drag down the academic reputations of these schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:New BIM family here. I found it really weird that there are so many non-BIM family members posting on this thread demanding "truth" on the school website. Why are you so invested or threaten by this small school? Do you check out other school websites and demand the same "truth" too? If you pulled your kids out from BIM, where are your kids now? Do you demand the same "truth" with your current school?

Same here. I really don’t understand why a small, relatively new private schools scares them this much.
Like I said in the other post. To those who posted here constantly, If you already left, good luck with your new adventure and please let go with Basis.

I am the OP. I keep going back and interested and then decide I don’t want to send my kids.

We live in McLean. Basis seems to have a reputation of being very academic and very Asian, almost like a private TJ. This is not what we want for our kids.

We know a few families who switched to Basis and they seem happy there. They are almost all smart Asian kids who weren’t challenged enough in public AAP. They are all kids that would probably have gone to TJ.

Well the entire county is an entire mess due to their politicized school board making all these changes in an effort for ‘racial equity’. Unfortunately the only people that are left are usually URMs that come from less fortunate socioeconomic backgrounds, and continue to drag down the academic reputations of these schools.

No effort to hide the obvious underlying sentiments there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My children attend Basis because the academics are extremely competitive and geared towards very intelligent kids. There is not the rif raf one deals with in other lesser schools.

"Rif raf"?

You sound very intelligent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fact is, more and more parents are sending their kids to Basis McLean. Compare to last year, the total student count increases 22%, The number of 9th graders increases 34.5%.
Yes, there are some teachers left including middle school director. But only 4.25% teachers left.
I am the one who posted many posts in this thread in Spring with imperfect English. I am back.
lol

It’s great to hear from someone who knows the data with such great accuracy. Increase of the total enrollment by 22% is impressive. Now the school grew to ~610 students.

I'm joining the PPs here: the percentages might give a skewed picture. For example, if there were total 4 students in the 9th grade last year and this year 2 students added, the growth is 50%. Assuming the 34.5% is accurate number, what is the enrollment? 25 total in the 9th grade? 10 total in 11th? Another interesting metric is the retention percentage. What is the retention rate in transition from MS to HS, for example?
The percentage of teachers left is 4.25%. Let’s assume that’s 4 out of 98. Judging only by the numbers, this is not a big loss. However, what subjects did they teach? Are there resources to redistribute the load? Perhaps, the 4.25% number doesn’t include the mentioned above MS director. Rumors say that, in addition to the director duties, he was teaching physics courses, covering the load of a teacher who, seemingly, was driven out last October by the policies of the new HoS.
Maybe the reason why people hesitate to enroll their children is the administration policies that emerge from the combination of the CCP style management and solely pursuit of the profits.

The former MS director (still shown on the BIM website) is now teaching middle school science in a Fairfax public school, according to his LinkedIn profile, so that is very plausible. Imagine abandoning a higher-paid management job to go back to the public schools that he left in 2017 because he really didn't like it there.

That's the reality at BIM now.

I presume you have spoken with him directly about his return to FCPS... well I have and he has been interested in an AP position for a while and the only way FCPS hires for an AP position is from within. Which means, one has to be in the school in order to even be considered for that job.

Again, most of the info here is pure speculation. Teachers leave for various reasons, moving out of state *several*, others want get into admin, etc., people need to do what's best for them, spin it any way you like - but if you don't have facts...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of the many turnovers since 2020 was the social media director at BIM. The replacement comes from China and worked in Japan too.

Makes me wonder about the Asian syntax in so many of the posts here lately. Sure, it could easily be one of the many Chinese parents at the school. But it could also be someone with even more of a vested interest in the rah-rah.

Wow…shame on you for your comment and you don’t know your facts either. There was never a social media director position at BIM, she is Chinese, but why does that matter to you. Best that you aren’t involved at this school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the many turnovers since 2020 was the social media director at BIM. The replacement comes from China and worked in Japan too.

Makes me wonder about the Asian syntax in so many of the posts here lately. Sure, it could easily be one of the many Chinese parents at the school. But it could also be someone with even more of a vested interest in the rah-rah.

Wow…shame on you for your comment and you don’t know your facts either. There was never a social media director position at BIM, she is Chinese, but why does that matter to you. Best that you aren’t involved at this school.

There is a media director listed on their staff; the current woman replaced the woman who was there two years ago. That person handles all of their social media within that position.

Simple facts.