BASIS DC will seek to expand to include K to 4th grade

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got the critical flexibility and support we needed to pursue post AP language, performance music and STEM competition success (involving some travel on school days) from SJC. At BASIS, when we would ask admins for a little flexibility in middle school and 9th grade the answer was invariably, no. Too many barriers for our kid to stand out in college admissions down the road.

Sounds like private school was the right choice for you. It’s harder for a public school to violate policies like you were asking. TBH, except for post AP language, for the others I would have just done it and waited for someone to tell me no. As long as your kid keeps up in class and you don’t push absences past 10 days or whatever, there’s a lot you can get away with.

Um, not in Fairfax, MoCo or Arlington, not in well-run suburban systems aiming high in college admissions. The open-minded former BASIS HoS would have worked with you. This guy wears his insecurities on his sleeve by controlling whatever he can. Glad you could afford to leave to stay on track for an Ivy.

The current HOH is a big reason we are leaving for Private for HS. He makes no changes, blows off parent concerns, does nothing to try and control classroom behavior. My child has gotten excellent grades - and honestly if Basis followed through on the curriculum as it was designed (as opposed to being months behind the AZ campuses), she would really thrive more and maybe we would stay. But the teaching quality has been hit or miss, admin is clueless and prides themselves on dragging along kids who are in over their heads and probably shouldn't be at Basis rather than being an environment where advanced children can thrive.

We could have written this post. We're fed up with rowdy middle school classes. My sibling has teens at the original Arizona campus and their school is simply much better. The campus has good facilities and a serious performing arts program. Teens can play in a first-rate school orchestra. They can take languages past the AP level and advanced humanities classes from 7th grade. A different world.

Are you considering moving to Arizona? If not, what's the relevance of what an AZ school offers? How does that make any more sense than saying, "Boston Latin is better to I'm leaving Walls".

[Anonymous]

Got it, if we consider the HoS a poor leader, after getting to know him over a four-year period, we're unkindly bashing him. The weakness of your argument is that the shoe fits.

The DC LEA arrangement and real estate values aren't at the root of BASIS DC's relative shortcomings.

Hint #1: the building wasn't renovated intelligently. According to my HVAC guy, a basketball court could easily have been created on the roof but BASIS rejected the idea; he was on the crew that redid the building.

Hint #2: previous HoS was a strong leader. The school was happier and more functional during her tenure. I know this because my kids are quite spread out in age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We hired our own counselor from 10th grade. Totally worth it.

What did the counselor do that the Basis counselors did not? The fact that they have 2 college counselors for fewer than 100 students already seems like a lot to me. In comparison, when I was in HS at a school in a rich suburb where most kids applied to competitive schools, I still talked to my guidance counselor for only 10 minutes in 4 years. I know that things have changed in 30 years, but I am curious as to how additional counseling would help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got the critical flexibility and support we needed to pursue post AP language, performance music and STEM competition success (involving some travel on school days) from SJC. At BASIS, when we would ask admins for a little flexibility in middle school and 9th grade the answer was invariably, no. Too many barriers for our kid to stand out in college admissions down the road.

Sounds like private school was the right choice for you. It’s harder for a public school to violate policies like you were asking. TBH, except for post AP language, for the others I would have just done it and waited for someone to tell me no. As long as your kid keeps up in class and you don’t push absences past 10 days or whatever, there’s a lot you can get away with.

Um, not in Fairfax, MoCo or Arlington, not in well-run suburban systems aiming high in college admissions. The open-minded former BASIS HoS would have worked with you. This guy wears his insecurities on his sleeve by controlling whatever he can. Glad you could afford to leave to stay on track for an Ivy.

The current HOH is a big reason we are leaving for Private for HS. He makes no changes, blows off parent concerns, does nothing to try and control classroom behavior. My child has gotten excellent grades - and honestly if Basis followed through on the curriculum as it was designed (as opposed to being months behind the AZ campuses), she would really thrive more and maybe we would stay. But the teaching quality has been hit or miss, admin is clueless and prides themselves on dragging along kids who are in over their heads and probably shouldn't be at Basis rather than being an environment where advanced children can thrive.

We could have written this post. We're fed up with rowdy middle school classes. My sibling has teens at the original Arizona campus and their school is simply much better. The campus has good facilities and a serious performing arts program. Teens can play in a first-rate school orchestra. They can take languages past the AP level and advanced humanities classes from 7th grade. A different world.

Are you considering moving to Arizona? If not, what's the relevance of what an AZ school offers? How does that make any more sense than saying, "Boston Latin is better to I'm leaving Walls".

The statement above shouts false equivalency because BASIS isn't a stand-alone school, like BL or Walls. The relevance of what an AZ school offers is that BASIS DC admins, and longtime parents for that matter, constantly claim that BASIS HQ/AZ policy doesn't permit dramatic upgrades when this is clearly BS. What's true is that the current BASIS DC administration isn't interested in serious performing arts, or languages past the AP level (strongly preferring that kids learn two or three languages at the beginning level), or advanced MS humanities classes. It's also true that toxic DC politics won't support backfilling at BASIS DC while the AZ campuses freely backfill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got the critical flexibility and support we needed to pursue post AP language, performance music and STEM competition success (involving some travel on school days) from SJC. At BASIS, when we would ask admins for a little flexibility in middle school and 9th grade the answer was invariably, no. Too many barriers for our kid to stand out in college admissions down the road.

Sounds like private school was the right choice for you. It’s harder for a public school to violate policies like you were asking. TBH, except for post AP language, for the others I would have just done it and waited for someone to tell me no. As long as your kid keeps up in class and you don’t push absences past 10 days or whatever, there’s a lot you can get away with.

Um, not in Fairfax, MoCo or Arlington, not in well-run suburban systems aiming high in college admissions. The open-minded former BASIS HoS would have worked with you. This guy wears his insecurities on his sleeve by controlling whatever he can. Glad you could afford to leave to stay on track for an Ivy.

The current HOH is a big reason we are leaving for Private for HS. He makes no changes, blows off parent concerns, does nothing to try and control classroom behavior. My child has gotten excellent grades - and honestly if Basis followed through on the curriculum as it was designed (as opposed to being months behind the AZ campuses), she would really thrive more and maybe we would stay. But the teaching quality has been hit or miss, admin is clueless and prides themselves on dragging along kids who are in over their heads and probably shouldn't be at Basis rather than being an environment where advanced children can thrive.

We could have written this post. We're fed up with rowdy middle school classes. My sibling has teens at the original Arizona campus and their school is simply much better. The campus has good facilities and a serious performing arts program. Teens can play in a first-rate school orchestra. They can take languages past the AP level and advanced humanities classes from 7th grade. A different world.

Are you considering moving to Arizona? If not, what's the relevance of what an AZ school offers? How does that make any more sense than saying, "Boston Latin is better to I'm leaving Walls".

The statement above shouts false equivalency because BASIS isn't a stand-alone school, like BL or Walls. The relevance of what an AZ school offers is that BASIS DC admins, and longtime parents for that matter, constantly claim that BASIS HQ/AZ policy doesn't permit dramatic upgrades when this is clearly BS. What's true is that the current BASIS DC administration isn't interested in serious performing arts, or languages past the AP level (strongly preferring that kids learn two or three languages at the beginning level), or advanced MS humanities classes. It's also true that toxic DC politics won't support backfilling at BASIS DC while the AZ campuses freely backfill.

You should learn what a "false equivalence" is before trying to use the term. Moving beyond your fundamental misunderstanding of argumentation and English, the point I was making is that it makes no sense to complain that you are going leaving a school in DC (where you live) because a school 2000 miles away (affiliated or not) has a better offering. My analog (not a false equivalence) was it would be equally as dumb to leave Walls because Boston Latin has a better offering. The point is that DC parents have to choose among available options. Schools not here to which a DC parent cannot enroll have no bearing on the decision matrix.

The rest of your post is vomiting a lot of criticisms, many of which I think are valid. None of those requires or is made more meaningful by virtue of whether a school 2000 miles away has better offerings.

Your anger is blinding your ability to engage in logic and reasoning. I feel bad for you.

[Anonymous]

Don't feel bad for us. We can afford private HS. If you can't, good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Got it, if we consider the HoS a poor leader, after getting to know him over a four-year period, we're unkindly bashing him. The weakness of your argument is that the shoe fits.

The DC LEA arrangement and real estate values aren't at the root of BASIS DC's relative shortcomings.

Hint #1: the building wasn't renovated intelligently. According to my HVAC guy, a basketball court could easily have been created on the roof but BASIS rejected the idea; he was on the crew that redid the building.

Hint #2: previous HoS was a strong leader. The school was happier and more functional during her tenure. I know this because my kids are quite spread out in age.

BASIS shoehorned the students into as small a building with as little reno as necessary. No one disputes that. How can you argue with a straight face that isn't rooted in real estate limitations?

You are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts (apologies to Daniel Patrick Moynihan). The roof as constructed cannot support a bball court or weight bearing functions. That is not to say that it could not have been reinforced, but it was not (costs $$$$). Perhaps your HVAC guy should stick to HVAC and leave the structural engineering to engineers. Retention under the current HoS is far and away better than under the HoS to which you make reference. You may have been happier and she may have been great, but the retention data does not support your conclusion.

Your post, like many others on DCUM, has completely lost the plot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got the critical flexibility and support we needed to pursue post AP language, performance music and STEM competition success (involving some travel on school days) from SJC. At BASIS, when we would ask admins for a little flexibility in middle school and 9th grade the answer was invariably, no. Too many barriers for our kid to stand out in college admissions down the road.

Sounds like private school was the right choice for you. It’s harder for a public school to violate policies like you were asking. TBH, except for post AP language, for the others I would have just done it and waited for someone to tell me no. As long as your kid keeps up in class and you don’t push absences past 10 days or whatever, there’s a lot you can get away with.

Um, not in Fairfax, MoCo or Arlington, not in well-run suburban systems aiming high in college admissions. The open-minded former BASIS HoS would have worked with you. This guy wears his insecurities on his sleeve by controlling whatever he can. Glad you could afford to leave to stay on track for an Ivy.

The current HOH is a big reason we are leaving for Private for HS. He makes no changes, blows off parent concerns, does nothing to try and control classroom behavior. My child has gotten excellent grades - and honestly if Basis followed through on the curriculum as it was designed (as opposed to being months behind the AZ campuses), she would really thrive more and maybe we would stay. But the teaching quality has been hit or miss, admin is clueless and prides themselves on dragging along kids who are in over their heads and probably shouldn't be at Basis rather than being an environment where advanced children can thrive.

We could have written this post. We're fed up with rowdy middle school classes. My sibling has teens at the original Arizona campus and their school is simply much better. The campus has good facilities and a serious performing arts program. Teens can play in a first-rate school orchestra. They can take languages past the AP level and advanced humanities classes from 7th grade. A different world.

Are you considering moving to Arizona? If not, what's the relevance of what an AZ school offers? How does that make any more sense than saying, "Boston Latin is better to I'm leaving Walls".

The statement above shouts false equivalency because BASIS isn't a stand-alone school, like BL or Walls. The relevance of what an AZ school offers is that BASIS DC admins, and longtime parents for that matter, constantly claim that BASIS HQ/AZ policy doesn't permit dramatic upgrades when this is clearly BS. What's true is that the current BASIS DC administration isn't interested in serious performing arts, or languages past the AP level (strongly preferring that kids learn two or three languages at the beginning level), or advanced MS humanities classes. It's also true that toxic DC politics won't support backfilling at BASIS DC while the AZ campuses freely backfill.

For the gazillionth time, the AZ campuses are allowed to “freely backfill” because they’re allowed to administer placement exams to kids entering any grade. They are allowed to & do make kids repeat multiple grades. So, they’ll let a kid who just finished 9th grade at another school take a placement exam for 10th grade BASIS, but if the kid doesn’t perform up to par, they’ll have to repeat a couple grades at BASIS. Obviously, that would never fly in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't feel bad for us. We can afford private HS. If you can't, good luck.

Your emotional investment and residual anger tell us perhaps the tuition is stretching and angering you. Certainly you seem lovely; sad you and your attitude left the community.

[Anonymous]

I'm not convinced that a backfilling regime involving holding students back a grade or two wouldn't fly in DC here in 2023. These days, the ed powers that be don't seem to give a hoot what BASIS does or doesn't do.

The previous HoS was much sharper and more clued-in than this guy, and far more supportive of the most advanced students. As 15:47 points out, retention only does so much for a program when many of the students it serves aren't cut out for the curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We hired our own counselor from 10th grade. Totally worth it.

What did the counselor do that the Basis counselors did not? The fact that they have 2 college counselors for fewer than 100 students already seems like a lot to me. In comparison, when I was in HS at a school in a rich suburb where most kids applied to competitive schools, I still talked to my guidance counselor for only 10 minutes in 4 years. I know that things have changed in 30 years, but I am curious as to how additional counseling would help.

The independent counselor advised us on building a competitive EC CV for our kid over a 2-year period, mainly by steering us to various regional and national competitions in which our student could shine that we hadn't known about. The counselor convinced us to sign up for a Cambridge Intl Spanish A-Level exam given in Nov of sr year, after a month-long immersion summer camp, rather than having the kid take AP Spanish along with several other APs in spring of jr year as BASIS had advised. Kid scored high on the A-Level, which emphasized speaking and listening (much more comprehensive and tougher exam than AP Spanish). The counselor convinced us to have the kid retake two APs at a different school (kid scored 5s the second time round). Finally, the counselor edited and advised on essay writing more thoroughly than the BASIS counselors and helped us finalize a better college list, aiming higher overall. Worth the dough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We hired our own counselor from 10th grade. Totally worth it.

What did the counselor do that the Basis counselors did not? The fact that they have 2 college counselors for fewer than 100 students already seems like a lot to me. In comparison, when I was in HS at a school in a rich suburb where most kids applied to competitive schools, I still talked to my guidance counselor for only 10 minutes in 4 years. I know that things have changed in 30 years, but I am curious as to how additional counseling would help.

The independent counselor advised us on building a competitive EC CV for our kid over a 2-year period, mainly by steering us to various regional and national competitions in which our student could shine that we hadn't known about. The counselor convinced us to sign up for a Cambridge Intl Spanish A-Level exam given in Nov of sr year, after a month-long immersion summer camp, rather than having the kid take AP Spanish along with several other APs in spring of jr year as BASIS had advised. Kid scored high on the A-Level, which emphasized speaking and listening (much more comprehensive and tougher exam than AP Spanish). The counselor convinced us to have the kid retake two APs at a different school (kid scored 5s the second time round). Finally, the counselor edited and advised on essay writing more thoroughly than the BASIS counselors and helped us finalize a better college list, aiming higher overall. Worth the dough.

Counselor sounds amazing. There is no school in the US (not even elite Northeastern prep schools) with college counselors that add as much value as a $5K+ private counselor. There are legitimate things to complain about at BASIS (and other schools). The college counselors not being as good as 1-2-1 private ones is not one of them.

[Anonymous]

Fair point but not sure where that gets us. We haven't been nearly as happy with the BASIS counselors as we expected to be. They get rave reviews from other parents for reasons that aren't clear to us. They seem v. hung up on GPA and the number of AP exams a kid has passed vs. more important factors in admissions. We're leaning toward hiring a counselor in the fall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fair point but not sure where that gets us. We haven't been nearly as happy with the BASIS counselors as we expected to be. They get rave reviews from other parents for reasons that aren't clear to us. They seem v. hung up on GPA and the number of AP exams a kid has passed vs. more important factors in admissions. We're leaning toward hiring a counselor in the fall.

I am certain we will as well (a couple of years away still). My view on this is that I'm happy to spend money on that since I haven't had to pay tuition since pre-school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Got it, if we consider the HoS a poor leader, after getting to know him over a four-year period, we're unkindly bashing him. The weakness of your argument is that the shoe fits.

The DC LEA arrangement and real estate values aren't at the root of BASIS DC's relative shortcomings.

Hint #1: the building wasn't renovated intelligently. According to my HVAC guy, a basketball court could easily have been created on the roof but BASIS rejected the idea; he was on the crew that redid the building.

Hint #2: previous HoS was a strong leader. The school was happier and more functional during her tenure. I know this because my kids are quite spread out in age.

Is English your native language? This is incoherent.

BTW, does your "HVAC guy" have any other important thoughts about BASIS? We are all waiting with bated breath.