How's basis going so far?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To 7:17

Ultimately, I agree with your core contentions and I wish you guys all the best of luck. BASIS represents a dynamic choice and alternative to a really unappealing public school system (in DC and Tucson).

Drill and Kill, Chinese System, Lacking a Soul, Bitter Teachers of course are extremely negative labels and overstate my position since I remain connected to the school and recognize many strenghts. I think I am using extremes to try (not very well) to communicate what I and my fellow parents see as a basic underlying truth about the nature of the institution. By most objective metrics it is a continuing success story. But I am simply trying to relate the psychological reality of what I would guess to be the majority of the parents and students in the 5th grade. And beyond the hyperbole, it really is only about the wisdom of placing a such cumulative test & content load (which is really what I mean by drill and kill) on an 11 year old and maintaining that pressure through 12th grade. That is all. The community has many many strengths, again primarily because of the self-selecting nature of the parents, kids & teachers - it is a community of people who want to learn and certainly is not for everyone. I don't mean to set off the cream-skimmers by that remark. It is a charter school. Anyone can go.

I guess on my experience I don't see any connection to any version of what might be called the European model, which I think is about as unhelpful ultimately as the Chinese model.

But I do think based on this exchange that each BASIS is its own entity, it will have its own destiny based on the society, the personnel, etc.

Again my only suggestion, and my intention at BASIS Tucson, is to form an organized community of parents to communicate effectively to each other and the administration our concerns (and to be fair they have responded in limited ways even this year by, for example, expressing the intent to reduce the homework load in non-core classes). But I still feel at our campus the only two options right now are like it or lump it, which is basically what we get from the public schools, and I still feel as an private school and ivy-league educated person, that our BASIS is making an unfortunate mistake in taking a good idea (rigor and high expectations) to a suboptimal extreme.

And exactly what would that "European" model be?
LOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"And at its core is simply lacks a soul. The teachers are bitter. The students are fried. There is a heaviness saturating the campus... "

Thanks for posting. It's tempting to go with BASIS, because it's "free." But when I stepped onto our number one pick for private school with my son, I had the exact opposite feeling of what you describe at BASIS.

Tuition will be a heavy cost for us, but in our family, education is #1. That said, good luck BASIS DC. It sounds like you'll need it.

Wow. In our family, education is down in the 20s, below cable TV, but above weekly Chinese take-out. That's why we chose BASIS DC.

DW has been speculating for weeks that many of the negative posts on these BASIS threads are from private school parents who feel the need to justify their decisions. I having been arguing that private school parents have better things to do with their time. I guess she's right.

Nice try, not private yet. Still deciding. But the nastiness of the BASIS parents again reinforces what the Tucson parent shared and the general vibe we are getting.

So, PP, did you post the "in our family, education is #1" post or not? It was a nasty post and warranted my sarcastic response.

If you can swing it, I encourage you to go with the private school. Your DC deserves better than the mediocre "drill and kill" education my DC will be receiving.

[Anonymous]

All we keep hearing from the detractors is that's not the way, that's not the model, "soulless", "bitter" "Chinese", whine whine, complain, complain.

Where is there anything CONSTRUCTIVE in all this? If you have a better way, then why not propose it? If you have the answers, if you know what's so much better, if you are such an expert in pedagogy then why aren't you opening your own charter? Complaints are not useful if there are no answers or alternatives to come with them, and I am not seeing any viable answers or alternatives here. In short, it's not really ADDING anything to the conversation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All we keep hearing from the detractors is that's not the way, that's not the model, "soulless", "bitter" "Chinese", whine whine, complain, complain.

Where is there anything CONSTRUCTIVE in all this? If you have a better way, then why not propose it? If you have the answers, if you know what's so much better, if you are such an expert in pedagogy then why aren't you opening your own charter? Complaints are not useful if there are no answers or alternatives to come with them, and I am not seeing any viable answers or alternatives here. In short, it's not really ADDING anything to the conversation.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All we keep hearing from the detractors is that's not the way, that's not the model, "soulless", "bitter" "Chinese", whine whine, complain, complain.

Where is there anything CONSTRUCTIVE in all this? If you have a better way, then why not propose it? If you have the answers, if you know what's so much better, if you are such an expert in pedagogy then why aren't you opening your own charter? Complaints are not useful if there are no answers or alternatives to come with them, and I am not seeing any viable answers or alternatives here. In short, it's not really ADDING anything to the conversation.

Just an observer who is beginning to weigh middle school options for my daughter so I don't really have a dog in this fight. However, I personally though the Tuscon poster was very constructive. To me, it sounded like she was pleased with the BASIS model but felt there were some areas that could be improved. She was being honest.

We were a founding family at a charter school in DC and I know that the temptation is to defend your position, but to some of the BASIS posters on this thread, I would encourage you to re-read those posts from your Arizona counterpart. To dismiss his/her commentary--I think--would be a mistake. You're only a month and a half in. I've been down this road. You guys are probably running off of adrenaline and there are a lot of good things happening, I'm sure. Many you are seeing vast improvements over your child's previous educational experience. But...as things settle, you'll begin to see the cracks. The Arizona poster is giving you a valuable heads up. Use what she has shared to address potential problems preemptively.

We're going to sit tight for 5th grade, but BASIS remains on my list. Don't worry about the haters. They come after all the new schools. Good luck BASIS!

[Anonymous]

Basis Arizona mom or dad, you're a jem to offer us insight when you don't have a dog in this fight. Please stick to your guns and don't let the grease the manic boosters are tossing your way sink in. I'm not the only newly-minted DC Basis parent with questions for the likes of you.

I already feel like I'm on the like it or lump it road, keeping in mind that Basis is paradise compared to our IB school. Fortunately, having immigrated from Asia, graduated from an Ivy, and socked away enough to cover a private, for high school anyway, I feel like I'm in a better position to challenge than some of the other parents.

If you're still there (generous of you if yes), I'd like to ask about attrition. What does it look like at your kid's campus? Roughly what percentage of kids are dropping out during or after 5th...6th...7th...8th...9th...10th..11th....? Do most of the dropouts fail comps? Only after 6th grade or during subsequent years? Do those failing actually repeat grades? Are dropouts being replaced? Replaced for which grades and under what circumstances? How does all the dropping out impact student morale? I think of the misery of my PhD program, where faculty "eased out" at least 10% of the students every year before the All But Dissertation stage, leaving about half of those who started. We were all running scared for several years, hardly the optimal environment for learning. Is that how Basis feels, like a campus of the unhelpfully worried? Or do most of the kids roll with the punches where comps are concerned, drawing healthy motivation from the threat of failing comps? Is is mostly low-SES kids who go by the wayside as a result of failure? To your knowledge, have parents challenged when comps have been failed, individually or as a group?

Insight on attrition issues would be much appreciated from my end, if not necessarily from the DC community at large. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Basis Tucson parent, please consider inviting like-minded fellow parents onto this board to answer our questions and guide our quest for balance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

If you're still there (generous of you if yes), I'd like to ask about attrition. What does it look like at your kid's campus? Roughly what percentage of kids are dropping out during or after 5th...6th...7th...8th...9th...10th..11th....? Do most of the dropouts fail comps? Only after 6th grade or during subsequent years? Do those failing actually repeat grades? Are dropouts being replaced? Replaced for which grades and under what circumstances? How does all the dropping out impact student morale? I think of the misery of my PhD program, where faculty "eased out" at least 10% of the students every year before the All But Dissertation stage, leaving about half of those who started. We were all running scared for several years, hardly the optimal environment for learning. Is that how Basis feels, like a campus of the unhelpfully worried? Or do most of the kids roll with the punches where comps are concerned, drawing healthy motivation from the threat of failing comps? Is is mostly low-SES kids who go by the wayside as a result of failure? To your knowledge, have parents challenged when comps have been failed, individually or as a group?

Insight on attrition issues would be much appreciated from my end, if not necessarily from the DC community at large. Thanks.

This is a huge concern for me. Having weathered this sort of pressure as a PhD student, I can't imagine someone choosing it for their 11 year old. It's not appropriate for children.

[Anonymous]

Of course there's going to be attrition. Of course some kids won't be able to hack it.

So then, what's the alternative? Water down the Basis curriculum? If that happens, then we are back at square one with a scarcity of viable free public options for the kids and families who ARE high-achieving, hard-working and motivated.

[Anonymous]

Would you like to hear from a graduate?

An Arizona transplant my parents know in DC sent me the link to this board. Good that you folks are facing the music early on.

I was a member of one of the first graduating classes of Basis Tucson. I graduated from Stanford, majoring in economics, and now work in finance in NYC.

Am I grateful for the middle and high school education I received? Yes, absolutely. Do I think that I could have received a better public school education? No question. How do I know this? Mainly because I had college classmates who graduated from superior public schools for the math-oriented, particularly Thomas Jefferson, Bronx Science and Bronx Tech.

My experiences at Basis lead me to favor selective admissions for most public middle and high school programs. Basis' approach to admissions is inefficient and unkind: slowly weed out those who aren't cut out for the education on offer, but, for the most part, lack better options so they turn up as long as they last anyway. The "self-selecting" mantra simply doesn't work well as it promotes waste of scarce public resources and an undercurrent of meaness. It's parents who select in most cases, not kids, and parents often aren't the best judges of what their kids are capable of.

Basis would have been far better off subjecting us all to a battery of tests to determine if we had the right stuff at 11, and aggressively recruiting low-income students who could cut it, than to cull around half of our classmates as the years went by. Also, we really should have been put on one of two tracks, a math/science track or a humanities track, not lumped together as potential quantitative stars. I lost close friends to the culling machine and grew to resent the way the school worked. A charter school open to everyone. Only in theory. If you didn't have a great memory, a good head for quantitative work, and a mentor or two who took a shine to you (or a family member who could mentor) you didn't thrive, or necessarily even last, no matter how hard you tried. And we weren't steered toward creative projects like the NYC magnet school kids are. It was a solid education but not a terribly dynamic one.

I've read that humanities AP tests are being modified to make scoring high less contingent on rote learning - amen for that because it means that Basis will have to adapt, and improve, like it or not, to continue to meet with success.

Good luck all of you. Don't be afraid to question and pressure the imported-from-AZ machine. The model needs tweaking in a big way.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your insights, 18:02. I likewise agree that selective admissions, or tracking, would be the way to go. Unfortunately, however, the politics are not in it, and that is not an option for charters in DC.

As for being able to have gone to a better public school like Thomas Jefferson, Bronx Science / Bronx Tech, I'm sure there are examples of top-notch public schools here and there, but again, it comes down to the question of what was available to YOU.

You went to a school which placed you in with other best-of-breed students at Stanford. Apart from BASIS did you have any other, better public school option available to you in Tucson than BASIS?

[Anonymous]

As a Basis parent I really appreciate your insights from experience, PP! I have a kid who will either thrive or crash-and-burn here because he does have a strong quantitative/science bent but without the intense work ethic. After the first six weeks we would still choose Basis hands down but it will be 'interesting'.

HOWEVER from what I can glean, many of his classmates only selected Basis as a shiny new object. Self-selecting admissions could work, but only when there is real choice. If there were differentiated really good middle schools, these kids could go to the drama or tech or public service magnet and they'd be far better off. For the kids already familiar with in in-school suspension, those kids are seeking something this small very specific school just can't offer; DCPS (or somebody?) needs to create those other school choices, not all of which need to lead to college.

[Anonymous]

Could people come up with something to replace "...a dog in this fight". It's hard to envision and just so...boring.

[Anonymous]

Yes, need real alternatives in middle school choices. There's MS2 at Howard U, Latin, EL Haynes, Two Rivers, Paul PCS, Chavez Prep, all of them for college-bound kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Yes, need real alternatives in middle school choices. There's MS2 at Howard U, Latin, EL Haynes, Two Rivers, Paul PCS, Chavez Prep, all of them for college-bound kids.

Poster 18:02 again. I don't know about your public middle school choices but you must not have many good ones, or Basis DC wouldn't be attracting so many kids who probably aren't right for the set curriculum, and such defensive sounding parents.

If I were a DC parent starting out on this journey, or considering taking it, I might consider organizing fellow parents to educate politicians on the merits of selective admissions in the inner city environment. If the concept that "the politics here will never support what is fairest, kindest and works best" is allowed to rule the day from the outset, you're helping give empire building Basis a carte blanche to play cynical income-generating games in your city and others.

Tuscon isn't a big city. And yet kids who didn't come in with strong prep or aptitude tended to suffer cruelly at Basis. Those of us who were a good fit for the curriculum would place bets in the spring, with money riding on accurately predicting who would fail comps once, who would fail them twice, and who wouldn't be back in the fall. One August, I found that I'd won around 75 bucks from classmates for having predicted who would bite the dust over the summer with some accuracy. Were we kids to blame for such meaness when the culling encouraged survivors to look down our noses at those who learned differently? My local middle school wasn't great on math instruction, but it was a nurturing place and, looking back, I might have been fine there.

In perusing earlier posts, I noticed that many here appear to have come to the conclusion that all it takes to succeed at a Basis branch is discipline and hard work. If you leave, it's your own fault. Only half true. Basis is essentially offering a math gifted curriculum without screening for math giftedness, or strong foundational preparation for a lot of the kids. If Basis were starting in the early or mid elementary grades with screening, OK. What you're going to see if you start in 5th grade is that many of the casualties in 7th to 9th grades will be hardworking kids. Why is this outcome better than finding kids with a good chance of doing well and keeping almost all of them? This is why I suggest that you talk to your pols. It might get you nowhere, but at least you could say you tried.