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

[Anonymous]

Im trying to picture an old office building in tysons with a huge playground area/field space...

[Anonymous]

Omg i just looked up the satellite view---the kids are literally breathing in highway fumes at recess every day! People pay for that? Free asthma with purchase!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Im trying to picture an old office building in tysons with a huge playground area/field space...

Lol
Does not look like a old office building.
Several stories high hall with skylight.
Each classroom has natural sunlight pass through windows.
Tour it by yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Omg i just looked up the satellite view---the kids are literally breathing in highway fumes at recess every day! People pay for that? Free asthma with purchase!

Doesn’t highway have insulation wall and trees in America?
Lots of parents here are doctors. They sure know better than me.

[Anonymous]

My friend used to worry about her son at Beverly Farms Elementary School in Potomac which close to the high voltage power line.
I told her not to worry because the electromagnetic radiation attenuation very fast when distance increases.

[Anonymous]

I believe for a school to be approved to open, there must be safety measurements in every aspect. Sound, dust, electromagnetic radiation, and other environmental hazard.
If you still don’t trust the standards by the government, bring your own measurement tools.
To ensure my friend worrying about her son at Beverly farm elementary school. I even gave her a meter to measure the radiation. Lol
I remember what I read from paper that after 200 feet from high voltage power line, it’s safe for human.
I remember what I learned in school, the radiation strength attenuates in proportion with square of distance. That means even with a little distance increase, the strength decay a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait, people pay to send their kids to school in an office building---a school that is free in other states?

Where do they have recess? Where do they have outdoor activities? A high school with no sports?

It has outdoor field and indoor gym for recess.
It has sports clubs although it’s small. Kids can join outside sports clubs too.
It’s a office building with high ceiling, windows, skylight and tons of sunlight.
Each classroom is spacious and bright with windows to pass natural light. Not like in some other school they covered the windows to make it dark.
Basis charter schools in other states are free. But Basis independent schools are private schools with tuitions, like Basis independent school in Silicon Valley and NYC.

It looks very much like a repurposed office building. The outdoor areas are repurposed parking lots. The gym is so small that you can’t fit observers for events. Sometimes the middle schoolers share gym time with the younger students.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I’m from NYC where Basis is well regarded. I attended the open house before Basis opened and there seemed to be a lot of interest back then. We are interested again due to pandemic. What turned me off was that the graduating class was tiny, like 30 kids. It made me think that more people didn’t want to send their kids there.

How is the culture? College admissions?
Do they even have enough kids for sport teams?

Basis McLean's enrollment increases every year. Last year was around 478 students. Now I just checked, is 640 students.
Their lower to middle school is great. the number of student increased a lot. My kid's grade use to have only one class. Now have two class (almost 40 students total). We have sports clubs including soccer, basketball, tennis and chess. Maybe there are other I don't know.
regarding culture, I don't know how to compare to other private schools because I don't have experiences in other private schools. But I heard other schools has drug problem, small circle bullies. Here we don't have those.
Maybe students here have to focus on academic so they don't have time for other things. Maybe most of the parents are busy upper middle working class professionals who are not rich enough to spoil their kids. I don't know the reason. But for me, Basis's environment is warm and simple.
Don't know much about the high school. 2020 was literally the first high school graduate since they opened in the fall 2016. I think you can find their college admission from their website. It's phenomenal. Each class only has around 30 students, but all of them got admitted by good colleges including Stanford, MIT, U Chicago, Columbia, Brown, Cornel, Duke, UCB, UCLA, UVA,CMU, JHU, Emory, Rice etc..
DC area have many good well known private schools. The public surrounding Basis Mclean also top schools: TJ, McLean high, Langley High. Basis Mclean was always facing high competitions since it opened. It's not easy to survive as a new school but it is so far so good. The enrollment is good. The college enrollment is phenomenal.

An education consultant we used 2 years ago steered us away from BASIS McLean in no uncertain terms. Yes, BASIS has a good reputation nationally, but the kids are not going to school nationally. They are in that place. The curriculum is solid, but it takes more than that to have a good school experience. The one in DC is pretty good I hear. BASIS McLean is in a class B office tower (think of a mid-rise with an interior atrium). Classrooms are in what would otherwise be offices or conference rooms. It has had 6 or 7 Heads of School in the last 5 or 6 years. I don’t know if BASIS McLean has “phenomenal” college placement or not. If it does, that would not surprise me. As PP said, they sit in the middle of 3 really strong public high schools (McLean, Langley, Madison) and from what I understand the HS is drawn from a lot of kids who were gunning for TJ but didn’t get in. Those kids would have done well at practically any rigorous HS you put them in.

I heard some middle schoolers went to TJ, or boarding schools when they chose high schools. A few went back to home schools which are good public schools. But most of them stay in Basis for high school. With increasing enrollment in lower and middle school, I anticipate the high school enrollment rate will also increase.

The majority of the class has left after middle school. Every year. There is clearly a reason.

I was told the opposite. But I don't have official number. I did not care much about high school because my kids are not there yet. Let me ask the school about the exact rate and I will post here.

Then you were told inaccurate information.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait, people pay to send their kids to school in an office building---a school that is free in other states?

Where do they have recess? Where do they have outdoor activities? A high school with no sports?

It has outdoor field and indoor gym for recess.
It has sports clubs although it’s small. Kids can join outside sports clubs too.
It’s a office building with high ceiling, windows, skylight and tons of sunlight.
Each classroom is spacious and bright with windows to pass natural light. Not like in some other school they covered the windows to make it dark.
Basis charter schools in other states are free. But Basis independent schools are private schools with tuitions, like Basis independent school in Silicon Valley and NYC.

It looks very much like a repurposed office building. The outdoor areas are repurposed parking lots. The gym is so small that you can’t fit observers for events. Sometimes the middle schoolers share gym time with the younger students.

I have toured basis pre pandemic and the classrooms and building are beautiful and state of the art. Our fcps elementary has a permanent modular building that my child spent 3 years in. My other child’s school has a parking lot full of trailers. I would take the repurposed office building.

[Anonymous]

I hate to be discriminatory but I also feel that what I'm saying right now is true. My wife is Chinese and we have lots of friends in the the Chinese community. I don't mean people born here, I mean people who came as adults. The person boosting basis over and over again makes very distinct grammar errors characteristic of nonnative Chinese speakers. Given that Basis is Chinese-owned, I would not be surprised if this someone in China (or here, I guess) hired to hype the school

[Anonymous]

Keep in mind that it is *half* an office building. They built out half of it initially and planned to do the rest by now but did not reach enrollment goals. So it sits empty, a waste of space and money.

As for the college admissions, the ones who are getting into top colleges would have done so had they attended any public or private school. They have resources and advantages that most kids do not have. Plenty of Basis McLean kids go to regular colleges that are not top ranked. They go through the grind and it affects their wellbeing without much to show for it. This school cannot make you something you are not. Don’t gamble with your child’s education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Keep in mind that it is *half* an office building. They built out half of it initially and planned to do the rest by now but did not reach enrollment goals. So it sits empty, a waste of space and money.

As for the college admissions, the ones who are getting into top colleges would have done so had they attended any public or private school. They have resources and advantages that most kids do not have. Plenty of Basis McLean kids go to regular colleges that are not top ranked. They go through the grind and it affects their wellbeing without much to show for it. This school cannot make you something you are not. Don’t gamble with your child’s education.

It depends very much how you define your child's education. If you want to beat them into shape like a long distance runner by taking tests endlessly, BASIS works. If you want them to have the time and guidance to explore the rest of education like projects, ideas, themes, etc. that are NOT on a test, it doesn't. If you want HS students to have real arts and sports programs, it doesn't. If you want your kid's grade to be more than a few dozen, it doesn't.

BASIS is what it is, no more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hate to be discriminatory but I also feel that what I'm saying right now is true. My wife is Chinese and we have lots of friends in the the Chinese community. I don't mean people born here, I mean people who came as adults. The person boosting basis over and over again makes very distinct grammar errors characteristic of nonnative Chinese speakers. Given that Basis is Chinese-owned, I would not be surprised if this someone in China (or here, I guess) hired to hype the school

So you narrow-minded won’t believe people just say what they think and share what they know.
To you, people will lie for money. Then who gave you money to post here?

[Anonymous]

I can't get over how they put a school right on top of the toll road. That's so bad for air quality on the playground. Gross.

[Anonymous]

When the school opened, they aimed for 500 students. I think they came close but missed. We were told to get investment to expand to open the other half of the building they would need to reach 1,000. It seems that even with increased enrollment they are still not close to that number. With COVID ramping down and the lawsuit to revert the TJ admissions policy the school has to really deliver now or faces a real risk of exodus in the next year or two.