BASIS charter expansion is up for public comment

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I have yet to meet a single BASIS parent or kid who thinks the admins are doing a bad job.

Three options:

(1) Your kids don’t go to BASIS.
(2) Your kids go to BASIS and you speak to literally no one.
(3) You’re lying.

I’m a pp that could be seen as a booster. Totally agree with this. The school works well despite having a terrible principal. But, it doesn’t matter that much as all real policies come from headquarters.

I get exhausted on the other hand by people who want to change the policies and throw continual fits that they are not changing them. They wont. Know that before you get there and stop with all the loud banging of your head against the wall. It helps nobody.

I can see this. We are a newly enrolled family. So far, the families seem absolutely wonderful, enough of the teachers seem very good, and the admin is confusingly bad.

Trust me, little will seem wonderful a few years hence. But you might stick around anyway because most of it is OK and you may not be able to do better in DC public if you're determined to stay EotP in the District.

I’m the pp who the newly enrolled family was responding to. I’m not sure what the immediate pp is referring to, but I am speaking about the high school upperclassmen. We aren’t new. There is some frustrating, but overall, it is a wonderful experience in many ways.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I think the reason BASIS parents get so defensive when posters present data showing that BASIS isn’t “advanced” when compared to other schools, e.g. Walls and MD and VA suburban schools, is that BASIS’s reputation for being oh-so-advanced is literally the only thing it has going for it. The building sucks, the extracurricular are a joke and the administration is awful. People put up with all of that because they think their kid is getting an amazingly advanced education.

Are you getting a better education than say, Elliot Hine? Of course you are. But don’t try to pretend that BASIS DC is better than Walls or top suburban high schools. It’s clearly and measurably not.

No one is pretending that the high school is better than Walls or a suburban (?) high school. But the middle school is such an excellent option for those who aren't zoned for Deal and Hardy. And the high school is a very very decent backup to Walls.

Well, plenty of kids turn down Walls to stay at BASIS so I guess they don't think that Walls is better.

Plus, the test scores are about the same, even given the fact that Walls selects their student body and BASIS is stuck with 100% lottery. And parents that left BASIS for Walls freely concede that Walls doesn't have the same rigor as BASIS and is weaker academically.

Yes - I am one of those parents! Walls has other positive attributes, but so far strong academics is not one of them.

There are also Basis kids who have struggled academically at Walls. It goes both ways!

Are you kidding? We aren’t aware of any.

I'm a different poster and also know of BASIS kids who have struggled at Walls.

BASIS kids are not all at the very top of their respective years. Let's not try to pretend that Walls is a cakewalk.

Both BASIS and Walls can be good enough options for high school.

But (leaving aside whether some former BASIS kids struggle) Walls IS a cakewalk - at least in 9th and 10th grades. I have yet to see one post asserting otherwise (that in their view, Walls has challenging academics in 9th and 10th grade . . . . someone above noted Walls is challenging in 11th . . . . because you can take dual enrollment classes at GW. Hmmm).

Few kids do dual enrollment and the kids who do one-off classes often do obscure ones (e.g., 17th century Mongolian literature) that regular GW students avoid.

My understanding is that the true early college dual enrollment program only take 15 kids a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I think the reason BASIS parents get so defensive when posters present data showing that BASIS isn’t “advanced” when compared to other schools, e.g. Walls and MD and VA suburban schools, is that BASIS’s reputation for being oh-so-advanced is literally the only thing it has going for it. The building sucks, the extracurricular are a joke and the administration is awful. People put up with all of that because they think their kid is getting an amazingly advanced education.

Are you getting a better education than say, Elliot Hine? Of course you are. But don’t try to pretend that BASIS DC is better than Walls or top suburban high schools. It’s clearly and measurably not.

No one is pretending that the high school is better than Walls or a suburban (?) high school. But the middle school is such an excellent option for those who aren't zoned for Deal and Hardy. And the high school is a very very decent backup to Walls.

Well, plenty of kids turn down Walls to stay at BASIS so I guess they don't think that Walls is better.

Plus, the test scores are about the same, even given the fact that Walls selects their student body and BASIS is stuck with 100% lottery. And parents that left BASIS for Walls freely concede that Walls doesn't have the same rigor as BASIS and is weaker academically.

Yes - I am one of those parents! Walls has other positive attributes, but so far strong academics is not one of them.

There are also Basis kids who have struggled academically at Walls. It goes both ways!

Are you kidding? We aren’t aware of any.

I'm a different poster and also know of BASIS kids who have struggled at Walls.

BASIS kids are not all at the very top of their respective years. Let's not try to pretend that Walls is a cakewalk.

Both BASIS and Walls can be good enough options for high school.

It's surprising because I thought the Walls GPA cut-off was 4.0.

[Anonymous]

No, it's much lower.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, it's much lower.

Yes - apparently a 3.7 this year . . . MUCH lower!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, it's much lower.

Yes - apparently a 3.7 this year . . . MUCH lower!

I mean, to be fair, 3.7 is MUCH lower than a 4.0. Very good students in DCPS can get a rogue A-. It is impossible for a good student not to get a 3.7.

Even in other contexts, 3.7 v 4.0 is the difference between no honors (not top 30%) and summa cum laude (top 5%) at my alma mater.

So lets not pretend they're remotely equivalent cut-offs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Walls does more to arrange for kids to pursue after-school internships around town.

Based on what I've seen, this is true. BASIS did pretty much nothing to help our kid pursue an internship. If you're at BASIS, keep that in mind and start trying to make arrangements yourself. Even if it's for a bulls**t "internship", it will be something for college apps (an aside - I've never seen so many teenagers that can't change a tire doing "research" at some random lab)

One thing I'll say about BASIS sports - with such a small school, your non-talented son or daughter is much more likely to be able to play a varsity sport if that's important to you.

Your child also has a chance to discover a talent that might have been missed because you didn't have a chance to sign them up for travel sports at age 6.

[Anonymous]

I'm still trying to get my head around the idea that anyone is okay with these people taking $2 million a year off the DC taxpayer in exchange for washing out 60 percent of the class. WTF

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, it's much lower.

Yes - apparently a 3.7 this year . . . MUCH lower!

There are miles between a 3.7 and a 4.0.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm still trying to get my head around the idea that anyone is okay with these people taking $2 million a year off the DC taxpayer in exchange for washing out 60 percent of the class. WTF

I'm a lot more concerned about the DCPS schools passing students through despite truancy and being years behind grade level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm still trying to get my head around the idea that anyone is okay with these people taking $2 million a year off the DC taxpayer in exchange for washing out 60 percent of the class. WTF

This is why I don’t give BASIS any money.

[Anonymous]

I have a stupid question: is this Basis the same one like “ basis independent McLean”? Or other BASIS nation wide. The other BASIS schools are all high quality private?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a stupid question: is this Basis the same one like “ basis independent McLean”? Or other BASIS nation wide. The other BASIS schools are all high quality private?

No. There are @30 BASIS charter schools. Not same thing as the Independent Private schools. All BASIS public charter schools across the country are free open enrollment schools.

[Anonymous]

Thanks! So there are two BASIS system: one is private and one is charter. Both systems have schools cross the country? Is my understanding right?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a stupid question: is this Basis the same one like “ basis independent McLean”? Or other BASIS nation wide. The other BASIS schools are all high quality private?

No. There are @30 BASIS charter schools. Not same thing as the Independent Private schools. All BASIS public charter schools across the country are free open enrollment schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks! So there are two BASIS system: one is private and one is charter. Both systems have schools cross the country? Is my understanding right?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a stupid question: is this Basis the same one like “ basis independent McLean”? Or other BASIS nation wide. The other BASIS schools are all high quality private?

No. There are @30 BASIS charter schools. Not same thing as the Independent Private schools. All BASIS public charter schools across the country are free open enrollment schools.

Do they have similar curriculum?