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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]PP, I don't see how they've strayed from that ideal.  They have raised academic standards, they do foster a culture of learning, they do utilize objective benchmarks, and they do hire passionate and talented teachers.  How do you see it as having changed - and particularly, how is it that you are presuming to diagnose BASIS DC from afar, never having seen it for yourself?

Regarding what's "unhealthy" - what may be an "unhealthily high" bar for one student may be perfectly fine for the next.  Certainly there are kids who won't be able to meet the demands.  Consider that there are kids in DC for whom even the watered-down DCPS curriculum is an unattainable bar to meet which already causes them stress and backlash in life.  And then you've got the BASIS honor roll and 90s club.  There's no one-size fits all solution, and BASIS isn't trying to serve the many thousands of students in the entire DC system.

But again, as someone asked, what's your proposal?  What is your better solution?  I was also raised to question authority, but even with that background, I learned that it's easy to question and poke fingers at things, but proposing solutions is the far harder thing to do.[/quote]

I am not diagnosing BASIS DC at all and have said as much several times. I am voicing my thoughts about the BASIS model pros and cons, offering the perspective of a veteran BASIS Tucson teacher, for whatever that is worth. I am also reacting to what I see to be a common series of pro-BASIS talking points (about the system, not the DC experience) that I feel are problematic at best.

As for the core ideal I mentioned, yes it is still there, but it is being strained (metastasized?) day by day. We began offering our first AP in 9th grade two years ago. Now there are 3. AP Calculus is now moved down into 9th grade. Class sizes are increasing at the same time, rendering assistance to students more difficult. The focus on APs has increased steadily, to where some juniors are now taking 8 or 9, and AP World History is now an 8th grade requirement.

I am a strong support of charter schools precisely because it does address the one-size-does-not-fit-all problem of public school system. What is "healthy" or "optimal" for one student may not be for another. My concern (here as a parent even more than a teacher) is that the BASIS model is becoming unhealthy (or at least suboptimal) not just for those who don't make it but for all but a handful of the students that make it through the program. On this point I echo the less than tactful comments made earlier by the Ivy interviewer and its why it irritates me to hear of all the schools BASIS students get into each year when I know it is due to the superhuman efforts of the very top students in the program.

My purpose here is to primarily to poke fingers, largely to dispel the notion that there is anything magical about the "#1 ranked BASIS European-style system" that leads to offers flooding in from MIT and Stanford. MIT doesn't particularly want kids who have done upteeen APs or even that can do diff eq. MIT wants dynamic and multi-faceted additions to the MIT community, and I feel that BASIS as it evolves and grows is losing sight of that essential truth. IMO we need to analyze the experience of the middle of the pack at BASIS to really judge the wisdom of the program.

As for solutions, part of my frustration is that BASIS is so close to what I would want a school to be. I would take the students and teachers at BASIS, cut ties from the corporate HQ, ease up slightly on the academic pressure, listening to the advice of veteran teachers, reduce the importance placed on AP standardized tests (some APs are great, but we have some juniors taking up for 8 or 9 this year!) and redirect some of this energy on "enrichment" activities such as field trips, non-lecture based seminars, debates, etc. Maybe DC has a charter like this. I am trying to learn more about the other "hot" charters in DC like Latin. Tucson unfortunately does not have this luxury of choice.[/quote]

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