BASIS: How was THAT first day?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because all this shuffle isn't doing much to make education, overall, in DC better.

BASIS is the flavor of the month. It was Latin a couple of years ago, and Two Rivers before than, and Cap City before that.

The only attractive middle schools are the one's where the FARM populations are below 30% and all of this has done precious little to improve schools for our friends in Ward 7 and Ward 8.

DCPS is an abysmal failure and a bottomless money pit, PP. It is broken beyond repair.

Charters are not flavors of the month. They provide meaningful alternatives to DCPS.

Charters now educate over 40% of publicly educated children in DC, at less than half the cost per student.

If we are lucky, we will eventually have a sufficiently large and sufficiently varied smorgasbord of charter schools to offer every child in DC a public education that meets his/her needs and DCPS will simply wither away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Uh oh. Don't start talking abut Capital City please. The thread will get shut down.

Why would it get shut down for talking about Cap City?

Because there are Cap City boosters on this site and on others who will slam anyone who says anything less than stellar about the school.

And by the way, Cap City lost their good upper school math teacher to Basis.

I also know for a fact that several current Cap City teachers have been applying for positions elsewhere at no avail. So they are staying, reluctantly.

Seems to me the reverse is the case - whenever someone says anything good about a school, there's bound to be someone who will then make it their life's work to question and slam the school that someone else thought was good. Rather than trying to focus on the positive and drag ALL of the schools up, instead they want to drag all of them down with negativity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because all this shuffle isn't doing much to make education, overall, in DC better.

BASIS is the flavor of the month. It was Latin a couple of years ago, and Two Rivers before than, and Cap City before that.

The only attractive middle schools are the one's where the FARM populations are below 30% and all of this has done precious little to improve schools for our friends in Ward 7 and Ward 8.

Not flavor of the month but a middle school with high expectations for everyone and a place where high achieving kids can be truly challenged. This was sadly not the case for our DC in our previous charter. We tried to make it work but it wasn't fair to him. He's actually excited about school for the first time. (he always did great but wasn't thrilled by school.)

It's a sad reality that the schools with low numbers of FARMS kids are the most attractive. Our previous school was diverse, particularly after 4th when most of the higher performing, higher SES kids left for Latin. The teachers spent most of their time on under performing kids, the ones who could do more were not challenged at all. I know that's a familiar story. On the Hill for sure.
I have to say that it seems the school population at BASIS is pretty self selected. Where in the past we would hear so many stories about how little other kids knew, how badly they behaved, how much time was lost for the whole class because a couple of kids couldn't hold it together. Yes we used it as an opportunity to encourage compassion, recognize their relative good fortune. But it was wearing us all down.
BASIS kind of freaks me out but it also is pretty intriguing. I am glad to have had a choice.
But it's only been a week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was it a Montessori school?

No it was an expeditionary school.

Capital City or EL Haynes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was it a Montessori school?

No it was an expeditionary school.

Capital City or EL Haynes?

Two Rivers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's like a lot full of cars. There are Chevys, Jeeps, VWs, Toyotas, Fords and so on - stations wagons, SUVs, sedans, and all different colors. That represents the state of DCPS and DC PCS schools.

Not all the same, and each with its pros and cons, and they are all free and one has a choice on which to pick. If you want a red VW beetle, there's likely already a red VW beetle to pick from, no need to insist on going to a green Jeep with the intent of hammering the corners round and spraypainting it red.

Not every kid is the same, they don't all have the same needs, but at least the variety in the charters helps to start providing provide options to meet some of the otherwise unmet needs.

I dream of the day when chances of getting into a desirable school are good enough that families are able to pass by the schools that they know aren't right for them. Right now, though, at the elementary level we're often offered a choice between the green Jeep that someone else wants, and a 10-mpg clunker. So kids wind up at the green Jeep school, and their parents work like crazy to make it just a tiny bit more like the red Beetle that they wanted. Everybody suffers in this scenario.

Agree. What a dysfunctional system. So the parents get the green jeep and then complain and whine about it on DCUM that it's not the red beetle they really wanted. The standout school for this is a certain language immersion school that gets a sizable number of students and parents who have no interest in the (very difficult to learn and support) language or culture. It's ridiculous.

Happy that Basis is here. Would be worth considering for us simply b/c it's walking distance whereas Latin is not on the radar simply due to location.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was it a Montessori school?

No it was an expeditionary school.

Capital City or EL Haynes?

Capital City.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, what school did you come from that did not have textbooks or a curriculum?

Not the PP, but our former school, a highly regarded-highly coveted charter, did not use text books nor did I ever see a standard curriculuum with expectations of what the children were going to learn from year to year. I assume that the teachers used something, but I never saw it.

The one exception to the no textbooks thing was that the school used a vocabulary program that came with a work book.

10:47-- you later go on to name your school as Capital City. I, too, am a CCPCS parent, and I most certainly have seen a standard curriculum with expectations. Your child did have a portfolio that the teacher kept (not the one your child created) that laid out each standard with your child's performance on common assessments. I know because I looked at my child's portfolio at every conference. The curriculum was given out at Back to School Night.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, what school did you come from that did not have textbooks or a curriculum?

Not the PP, but our former school, a highly regarded-highly coveted charter, did not use text books nor did I ever see a standard curriculuum with expectations of what the children were going to learn from year to year. I assume that the teachers used something, but I never saw it.

The one exception to the no textbooks thing was that the school used a vocabulary program that came with a work book.

10:47-- you later go on to name your school as Capital City. I, too, am a CCPCS parent, and I most certainly have seen a standard curriculum with expectations. Your child did have a portfolio that the teacher kept (not the one your child created) that laid out each standard with your child's performance on common assessments. I know because I looked at my child's portfolio at every conference. The curriculum was given out at Back to School Night.

In that case, it seems different teachers do things differently.
We definitely did not see any curriculum, and we got very vague answers to our questions during back to school night and during conferences. And in our case, all emails were ignored until we talked to administration in February. Even then, my child's IEP was not implemented, except for allowing extra time during the ANET and DC CAS tests.