BASIS charter expansion is up for public comment

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Basis parent, I will tell you as a matter of fact that curriculums are not that important. The Basis DC high school has a reasonably good curriculum but the school falls down to mediocre in other areas:

1) Quality of teachers - typically inexperienced and prone to leave (underpaid, high cost city, often using teaching as a stopgap)
2) Quality of Students -- the high school has bright kids but there is quite a brain drain in 7th and 8th grades as kids and parents go to alternatives....good thing is few kids are troublemakers
3) Quality of Extracurriculars --- no funding
4) Quality of Facilities --- terrible
5) Quality of Administration --- few true educators on staff, lazy and arrogant admins

We stuck with it knowing some of these things but would do otherwise if had the choice again

What would you have done? Asking bc we are enrolled at BASIS for 5th next year, but will likely get a spot at Ross (to SWWFS) and Hyde Addison (to Hardy and MacArthur) and will have to make a decision.

The problem is that my son is really excited about it. He loves his shadow day, and the 5th grade dean, and what he has heard of the curriculum.

NP. 5th grade was a good year for our kid. The 5th grade dean is kind and tries her best to make it a good environment. The problem is that BASIS stops trying after 5th. The 6th/7th grade dean and the administration in general are awful. Teacher quality is very hit or miss and the administration seems incapable of providing adequate support for teachers who are in over their head. This leads to a fairly chaotic learning environment.

The problem for our family is that BASIS has a solid reputation for not making any effort to change for the better, as is reflected by the “take it or leave it” attitude you see from some parents in this thread. We don’t have a lot of hope that these core problems (inexperienced and floundering teachers and inability to deal with behavior problems) is going to get any better.

We are giving BASIS one more year, to see if things improve under the new HOS. If not, we will pull our kids and move.

These 2 things will not improve, because these are fundamental flaws of the BASIS system. You should pull your kids out now.

[Anonymous]

Yes, but I worked at BASIS when the school was new, before I had kids. I kept the program in mind for my own children as they grew but ultimately rejected a spot for my eldest, just last year. I faced the reality that BASIS hadn't improved nearly as much as I'd hoped since its early days in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Basis parent, I will tell you as a matter of fact that curriculums are not that important. The Basis DC high school has a reasonably good curriculum but the school falls down to mediocre in other areas:

1) Quality of teachers - typically inexperienced and prone to leave (underpaid, high cost city, often using teaching as a stopgap)
2) Quality of Students -- the high school has bright kids but there is quite a brain drain in 7th and 8th grades as kids and parents go to alternatives....good thing is few kids are troublemakers
3) Quality of Extracurriculars --- no funding
4) Quality of Facilities --- terrible
5) Quality of Administration --- few true educators on staff, lazy and arrogant admins

We stuck with it knowing some of these things but would do otherwise if had the choice again

What would you have done? Asking bc we are enrolled at BASIS for 5th next year, but will likely get a spot at Ross (to SWWFS) and Hyde Addison (to Hardy and MacArthur) and will have to make a decision.

The problem is that my son is really excited about it. He loves his shadow day, and the 5th grade dean, and what he has heard of the curriculum.

I'm not the PP you're responding to, I'm the one above who worked at BASIS when the school was new and elected not to send my kid after researching the current state of the program. The post above assessing BASIS DC quality is worth considering because the poster really hits the nail on the head. What BASIS DC has got these days are deadweight, supercilious admins more interested in pushing families around than helping students embrace joy of learning as a springboard for elite college admissions. As far as I know, none of these admins is themselves a grad of a college admitting in the single digits. Get their names and look up their bios. I suggest that you educate yourself on how the franchise works while asking yourself what your own philosophy of education might be before making your enrollment decision. Fact is, the Blocks of Arizona, Olga and Michael, the BASIS founders, aren't educators either. Even so, they've spent 30 years developing a corporate formula for building successful applicants to blue chip colleges, which may or may not jive with your world view. I saw far too much at BASIS that ran contrary to best practices in liberal learning and management to want to stay on, although I admired some of what the franchise does, particularly inculcating strong executive function skills and a work ethic in middle school students. Same for DCPS options. After many years in a DCPS ES, we'd lost faith and couldn't take another year in the system, regardless of the school or program. I wouldn't let the 10 or 11-year-old call the shots here when they're too young to understand what your family would be getting into.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Basis parent, I will tell you as a matter of fact that curriculums are not that important. The Basis DC high school has a reasonably good curriculum but the school falls down to mediocre in other areas:

1) Quality of teachers - typically inexperienced and prone to leave (underpaid, high cost city, often using teaching as a stopgap)
2) Quality of Students -- the high school has bright kids but there is quite a brain drain in 7th and 8th grades as kids and parents go to alternatives....good thing is few kids are troublemakers
3) Quality of Extracurriculars --- no funding
4) Quality of Facilities --- terrible
5) Quality of Administration --- few true educators on staff, lazy and arrogant admins

We stuck with it knowing some of these things but would do otherwise if had the choice again

What would you have done? Asking bc we are enrolled at BASIS for 5th next year, but will likely get a spot at Ross (to SWWFS) and Hyde Addison (to Hardy and MacArthur) and will have to make a decision.

The problem is that my son is really excited about it. He loves his shadow day, and the 5th grade dean, and what he has heard of the curriculum.

I'm not the PP you're responding to, I'm the one above who worked at BASIS when the school was new and elected not to send my kid after researching the current state of the program. The post above assessing BASIS DC quality is worth considering because the poster really hits the nail on the head. What BASIS DC has got these days are deadweight, supercilious admins more interested in pushing families around than helping students embrace joy of learning as a springboard for elite college admissions. As far as I know, none of these admins is themselves a grad of a college admitting in the single digits. Get their names and look up their bios. I suggest that you educate yourself on how the franchise works while asking yourself what your own philosophy of education might be before making your enrollment decision. Fact is, the Blocks of Arizona, Olga and Michael, the BASIS founders, aren't educators either. Even so, they've spent 30 years developing a corporate formula for building successful applicants to blue chip colleges, which may or may not jive with your world view. I saw far too much at BASIS that ran contrary to best practices in liberal learning and management to want to stay on, although I admired some of what the franchise does, particularly inculcating strong executive function skills and a work ethic in middle school students. Same for DCPS options. After many years in a DCPS ES, we'd lost faith and couldn't take another year in the system, regardless of the school or program. I wouldn't let the 10 or 11-year-old call the shots here when they're too young to understand what your family would be getting into.

These sort of posts are so dumb.

You worked at Basis more than a decade ago. The school is very different today than it was. Why did you leave? Who knows? Maybe you were a bad teacher/admin and were pushed out. You obviously have a chip on your shoulder about the school.

You “researched” the current state of the program and concluded that “deadweight, supercilious admins more interested in pushing families around than helping students embrace joy of learning as a springboard for elite college admissions.” Really? Exactly what research did you do? You interviewed all the admins and concluded that they were deadweight and supercilious and just wanted to push families around rather than send them to elite colleges? Please enlighten us on your “research” and provide specific evidence for your conclusions.

You whine that the Basis admins themselves did not go to elite colleges. What school did you choose for your kids so we can examine the bios of the admins there? You really think that HYPSM grads are running public schools in DC? And since when does the alma mater of an admin of a school determine where kids end up? Basis sends plenty of kids to top colleges every year.

You complain about the Blocks but the fact is that the Basis charter network is the most successful in the whole country. They have 11 public high schools in the top 100 USN&WR rankings--way above any other charter network--including the #1 public high school in the whole country. Basis DC is the #1 public ranked middle school in DC, #1 charter school, and #1 non-selective high school--and the school is only a dozen years old. That is a sold record of success and achievement.

You sound like you left for the suburbs. Feel free to let us know where you sent your kids so we can understand why you think it is so much better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wrong. I’m the PP and I’ve lived on the Hill since the 90s. We’ve only stayed because grandparents offered to pay for a private. Otherwise, we’d have moved to VA by now. We turned down a BASIS spot after much deliberation.

So you're in the BASIS thread but your kid never went to BASIS?

lol. This is true for most of the negative comments on this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Basis parent, I will tell you as a matter of fact that curriculums are not that important. The Basis DC high school has a reasonably good curriculum but the school falls down to mediocre in other areas:

1) Quality of teachers - typically inexperienced and prone to leave (underpaid, high cost city, often using teaching as a stopgap)
2) Quality of Students -- the high school has bright kids but there is quite a brain drain in 7th and 8th grades as kids and parents go to alternatives....good thing is few kids are troublemakers
3) Quality of Extracurriculars --- no funding
4) Quality of Facilities --- terrible
5) Quality of Administration --- few true educators on staff, lazy and arrogant admins

We stuck with it knowing some of these things but would do otherwise if had the choice again

What would you have done? Asking bc we are enrolled at BASIS for 5th next year, but will likely get a spot at Ross (to SWWFS) and Hyde Addison (to Hardy and MacArthur) and will have to make a decision.

The problem is that my son is really excited about it. He loves his shadow day, and the 5th grade dean, and what he has heard of the curriculum.

I'm not the PP you're responding to, I'm the one above who worked at BASIS when the school was new and elected not to send my kid after researching the current state of the program. The post above assessing BASIS DC quality is worth considering because the poster really hits the nail on the head. What BASIS DC has got these days are deadweight, supercilious admins more interested in pushing families around than helping students embrace joy of learning as a springboard for elite college admissions. As far as I know, none of these admins is themselves a grad of a college admitting in the single digits. Get their names and look up their bios. I suggest that you educate yourself on how the franchise works while asking yourself what your own philosophy of education might be before making your enrollment decision. Fact is, the Blocks of Arizona, Olga and Michael, the BASIS founders, aren't educators either. Even so, they've spent 30 years developing a corporate formula for building successful applicants to blue chip colleges, which may or may not jive with your world view. I saw far too much at BASIS that ran contrary to best practices in liberal learning and management to want to stay on, although I admired some of what the franchise does, particularly inculcating strong executive function skills and a work ethic in middle school students. Same for DCPS options. After many years in a DCPS ES, we'd lost faith and couldn't take another year in the system, regardless of the school or program. I wouldn't let the 10 or 11-year-old call the shots here when they're too young to understand what your family would be getting into.

Ok. It's not just that my 10 year old is "calling the shots," but that we are all looking forward to his 5th grade at BASIS and how much he will learn (both in content and in how to study and organize his time and to use a planner). The PP who I asked gave me good advice, which is to have a high school plan -- that's what we are doing. He's a very studious kid who enjoys a challenge and the middle school really does seem like a good fit. My husband and I would have loved it, as middle schoolers. High school is a much different situation, simply due to how small/limited the experience feels.

I'm not sure what "liberal education" goals are, but I understand that the Blocks created this school because they thought American schools were not challenging enough, and that the students were falling behind their peers in other countries. We are both the children of immigrants, and know that school is much harder in other countries, especially Asia and Eastern Europe. So the rigor makes sense to us.




I know there is a lot of poison in this board, but in the real world I've met enough happy BASIS students to know that it's worth it to some kids. And the families all seem pretty similar to us.

[Anonymous]

5th grade at BASIS is fine. I'd go in with my eyes open for the rest. Fact is, PP above isn't wrong. Admins are awful (and IMHO, getting worse) and the school never really improves. Yes, some of the families are happy. I wouldn't say most.

[Anonymous]

OK, so as children of immigrants, you know that school is much harder in other countries, especially Asia and Eastern Europe, so BASIS rigor makes sense to you.

I'm an immigrant from East Asia who didn't find half as much rigor in the BASIS middle school experience as I thought I would. Rigor relative to other DC public middle schools, OK, at least for math and social studies. But the writing instruction wasn't good and language instruction didn't exist for no reason that made sense to me. Kids who came in with strong background in French, Spanish, Chinese weren't allowed to study any language at school before 8th grade because BASIS said so (never mind liberal learning, no learning of languages was de rigueur). In 8th grade, all the kids could only study a language at the most elementary level, no matter how advanced they might have been in a language or multiple languages. In my elementary school in a small town, we studied a foreign language seriously from 4th grade and many of us learned two foreign languages from 7th grade. The much-lauded science curriculum was so repetitive that extreme boredom by high school seemed to be the desired result. We had two science teachers quit mid-year. We also had teachers right out of grad school who'd cry in front of classes (with kids going nuts). If my observations count as "poison," fine, but I believed in BASIS in 5th and 6th grade. By 7th grade, I wanted off BS Team Block.

[Anonymous]

One of the reasons I chose BASIS is because they don't start foreign languages until 8th grade. My kid is already learning 2 languages that BASIS won't teach anyway, and it would have been confusing for him to learn yet another one at the same time. By the time he starts learning at BASIS, he'll already be close to fluent in the other languages we wanted him to learn.

Point being, people choose BASIS for a variety of reasons, and some perceived negatives are actually positives for certain families.

[Anonymous]

You make this observation because you're not dealing with a sophisticated school system. The better systems in this country now permit students to test out of required language study by demonstrating proficiency in various languages, even if they aren't taught in schools. Many systems allow students to test out in any of the 7 AP languages: Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin and Spanish. Some also allow testing-out for the 3 NEWL Languages: Korean, Russian and Arabic. Some systems will even let students test out for less common major immigrant languages, e.g. Vietnamese, Tagalog, Farsi, Hindi and Yoruba. Come on, it's never a positive, perceived or otherwise, to fail to reward teenage students for advanced language skills. I would have thought that BASIS, founded by a multi-lingual European immigrant, Olga Block, would have been ahead of the times on the issue. But BASIS doesn't allow any kind of testing-out for language proficients.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OK, so as children of immigrants, you know that school is much harder in other countries, especially Asia and Eastern Europe, so BASIS rigor makes sense to you.

I'm an immigrant from East Asia who didn't find half as much rigor in the BASIS middle school experience as I thought I would. Rigor relative to other DC public middle schools, OK, at least for math and social studies. But the writing instruction wasn't good and language instruction didn't exist for no reason that made sense to me. Kids who came in with strong background in French, Spanish, Chinese weren't allowed to study any language at school before 8th grade because BASIS said so (never mind liberal learning, no learning of languages was de rigueur). In 8th grade, all the kids could only study a language at the most elementary level, no matter how advanced they might have been in a language or multiple languages. In my elementary school in a small town, we studied a foreign language seriously from 4th grade and many of us learned two foreign languages from 7th grade. The much-lauded science curriculum was so repetitive that extreme boredom by high school seemed to be the desired result. We had two science teachers quit mid-year. We also had teachers right out of grad school who'd cry in front of classes (with kids going nuts). If my observations count as "poison," fine, but I believed in BASIS in 5th and 6th grade. By 7th grade, I wanted off BS Team Block.

Ok this is all deeply alarming. I actually have to make the decision this week (to keep him enrolled at BASIS or accept another offer for a path to a medium-good DCPS middle). Truly not sure.

[Anonymous]

PP above, you might want to read through the whole thread, if you haven't already, and a couple of other recent BASIS threads. If you do enroll, you'll rub shoulders with families who are all over the map in their thinking about the program, giving you more insight. You could always try to lottery into DCI, Hardy etc. for 6th grade if you're not happy at BASIS. Some families just stay for 5th.

Hint: the criticism doesn't change much on BASIS threads from one year to the next, and neither does the laudatory palaver.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You make this observation because you're not dealing with a sophisticated school system. The better systems in this country now permit students to test out of required language study by demonstrating proficiency in various languages, even if they aren't taught in schools. Many systems allow students to test out in any of the 7 AP languages: Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin and Spanish. Some also allow testing-out for the 3 NEWL Languages: Korean, Russian and Arabic. Some systems will even let students test out for less common major immigrant languages, e.g. Vietnamese, Tagalog, Farsi, Hindi and Yoruba. Come on, it's never a positive, perceived or otherwise, to fail to reward teenage students for advanced language skills. I would have thought that BASIS, founded by a multi-lingual European immigrant, Olga Block, would have been ahead of the times on the issue. But BASIS doesn't allow any kind of testing-out for language proficients.

Or anything else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP above, you might want to read through the whole thread, if you haven't already, and a couple of other recent BASIS threads. If you do enroll, you'll rub shoulders with families who are all over the map in their thinking about the program, giving you more insight. You could always try to lottery into DCI, Hardy etc. for 6th grade if you're not happy at BASIS. Some families just stay for 5th.

Hint: the criticism doesn't change much on BASIS threads from one year to the next, and neither does the laudatory palaver.

Yes, I've been reading all the BASIS threads this year, and they just made me ever more ambivalent. I love some things, I hate some things. I'm also a former high school teacher, and when I hear that teachers quit mid year, that is a glaring red flag.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but I worked at BASIS when the school was new, before I had kids. I kept the program in mind for my own children as they grew but ultimately rejected a spot for my eldest, just last year. I faced the reality that BASIS hadn't improved nearly as much as I'd hoped since its early days in DC.

Would you be willing to say what school you chose instead? Those of us who stay at Basis generally recognize its shortcomings but think 1) it's good enough, and 2) it's better than the alternatives, especially our local HS, and there's no guarantee of getting in to Walls/Banneker or similar.