BASIS charter expansion is up for public comment
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Anonymous
Found the WTA rep. Maybe move to North Korea--you would be happier there. USNW&R ranks 11 BASIS schools in the top 100 in the United States out of nearly 25,000 schools, and a BASIS school is ranked #1 in the whole country (with TJ in Fairfax ranked #14). So, yeah, I think that the people running BASIS know a lot more than you than running a school network. But you certainly know how to run your mouth off. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/national-rankings |
Anonymous
What’s bad about basis? Signed, Just enrolled off lottery. |
Anonymous
Hopefully you already know if you lotteried for the school? |
Anonymous
And there are many who just want a similar level of rigor in a DC school and aren’t zoned to Deal. I don’t know why you think you are making some magical sort of revelation. |
Anonymous
NP. Here are the pros and cons. Pro: Your kid will learn things. You will not be worried that the school they attend is too easy. Cons: The administration is truly awful. The facilities are truly awful. Some of the teachers are shockingly bad. Sometimes they get fired mid-year because they are so bad that the school can’t justify keeping them on and then they are replaced by a different bad teacher. The teachers who are great usually end up leaving to teach in DCPS, where they get more money and less administrative chaos. Discipline is punitive and your child will be disciplined for other children’s bad behavior. The stress level is high. If your child is doing poorly, everyone will know, because BASIS announces who is doing well three times a year. Parent and student concerns are dismissed. |
Anonymous
| Yowsa. That was a helpful response. |
Anonymous
Because Mandarin attracts pretentious people and BASIS is all about its own status. |
Anonymous
Yes, it so super important to be at a school that makes great effort to contort its data score good rankings. Totally worth trading off teacher quality, facilities, administration competence, activities, and anything else a person might want |
Anonymous
DP. Couple things about BASIS in the rankings. All other BASIS schools are test-in, so that already makes their situation much different than all other schools except other test ins. But more importantly, BASIS structures their policies to affect their ranking. For example, US News gives a lot of weight to how many seniors have taken and passed at least one AP. BASIS does not allow their students to advance to senior year if they have not met this metric, so they always have 100/100, because they don’t allow kids to get to senior year if they don’t meet this. Also, from my perspective, the people running *BASIS DC* are the problem. BASIS DC has actually dropped in the rankings year over year. They plummeted another 200 down this year and their PARCC scores have gotten worse. BASIS’s reaction to this was to cancel all electives for two weeks so they could do extensive test prep. This is the kind of thing that people are talking about when they say BASIS cares more about BASIS looking good than they do about student happiness/mental health/well-being. |
Anonymous
| I still haven't figured out if BASIS success is more about the education provided or the self-selection of parents who are willing to force their kids to put their noses to the grindstone academically. If it's the latter, you just have to throw your hands up at the entire show, because most of those kids will always succeed. |
Anonymous
They cancelled electives for two weeks to do test prep? That’s insanity. My kids are in Upper NW schools and parents would be up in arms about that. Why is that allowed? |
Anonymous
Great post. No denying any of it. |
Anonymous
Thanks for hitting on these key points. What I've observed over the years is that more high-performing students leave after middle school as time goes by. The luster has slowly but surely come off the shiny BASIS academic success orb. The phenomenon is linked to changes in college admissions in the last five years or so, particularly how most colleges went test-optional during the pandemic and have stayed that way. The result is that the BASIS formula for impressive test scores doesn't carry the day in admissions the way it did before Covid. I don't think that this HoS was the right choice to steady the ship. Difficult decisions should be made, particularly how to keep sophomores and juniors from burning out on AP prep and to make better use of senior year. They aren't being made. Instead, the franchise seeks to distract us from long-running problems with the creation of a snazzy new elementary school. |
Anonymous
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I have no idea if I want to send my kid to Basis or not (they're still in early elementary).
But I'm genuinely asking...does anyone know why they're asking to start an elementary instead of a second middle/high school? I get that Basis wants to prepare students for its academic approach earlier than grade 5, but DC has a lot of strong elementary schools. There aren't nearly as many strong middle/high schools. Aren't there more than enough interested families to fill a second Basis middle/high? |
Anonymous
It is part of the Basis model. Every other Basis school in the country has a K-4 program. So they are trying to remedy what they see as an anomaly within the Basis system, not respond to a demand inherent to DC. |