Reply to If not Basis or Latin, where?

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "If not Basis or Latin, where? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Absolutely BASIS AZ schools have a 100% college acceptance rate, which is to be celebrated, but of course only for all students left in the program by senior year. Attrition is typically about 5-15% per grade per year. Attrition is another important statistic IMO not because it suggests BASIS is not right for every student - I support creating charter schools to serve different population segments - attrition these days in Tucson worries me because many students who leave (and many who stay despite serious misgivings and issues) are being negatively impacted psychologically and intellectually by the BASIS program. This may or may not be the case in DC as it gets up and running. I don't think any amount of accolades can outweigh hurting a single child. Again, I have seen this first hand in Tucson and believe it is a direct result of the BASIS model as applied here. This may or may not be the case (yet or ever) in DC.

But, coming back to my original point, this isn't about ferraris or moving goal posts, its about intelligently and fairly evaluating the pros and cons of a charter school model. On both sides of this debate there are useful facts and statistics, but listing the most prestigious college acceptances in any given year (which I see a lot on this forum in support of BASIS) is not as powerful as it might at first seem to be, because the acceptances to elite schools are usually due to the successes of a very few of the graduating students.

Boy do I wish we had an AZurbanmoms site. I do enjoy hanging out with you all! Still can't believe this is all anonymous though. Makes for very confusing discussion to refer to people by the time of posting!
[/quote]

I agree, PP.  The annual attrition rate is an important statistic, and it does seem like some BASIS AZ schools have annual attrition rates in the low teens.  However, that rate should be compared to the attrition rates of comparable schools.

For example, Latin has an attrition rate almost 10% in the middle school and almost 8% in the upper school, according to the following report: [url]http://dcpubliccharter.com/data/files/2013_Applications/2011-2012_Annual_Report_GW4WashinLatin.pdf[/url]

So, let's take 9% as the "background attrition rate" for a certain type of DC MS-HS charter .  That is, let's take this as the rate of attrition that results from factors such as moving, not fitting in, preferring the IB HS but not the IB MS, etc.

We don't yet know what the attrition rate at BASIS DC is going to be, but let's assume it ends up being 15%, which is probably on the high side.  Then, we might infer that rigorous curriculum and comprehensive exams only increase the attrition rate by about 6%.  So, every year about 6% of the BASIS DC kids might leave for no reason other than the fact that they can't keep up with the curriculum.

Is 6% such a terrible statistic?  How low would the bar have to be set so that not a single child in the 6% is hurt?  Given that many of the 6% will be in a position switch to less accelerated but still decent programs at Latin, SWW, etc., how much hurt is there really?

Would you prefer a test-in model for BASIS that eliminates the 6% from the outset?  Would that hurt them less?

Consider the best local test-in STEM public school, TJ.  Of the 3,423 students that applied to the class of 2016, only 480 were accepted ([url]http://www.fcps.edu/cco/pr/tj/tjadmissions0412.pdf [/url]).  So, 86% of the applicants were eliminated at the outset.  Isn't it better to be given the chance to succeed and fail than not to be given the chance at all?

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics