Reply to How was the meeting with the admin meeting last week at BASIS?

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[quote=Anonymous]So as an educator with first hand knowledge I feel that it is my duty to chime in against the PR BASIS puts out (the solution for what ails American public education, #1 ranked, etc). To me what makes BASIS a good school is that it has a reputation for excellence and for that reason attracts excellent teachers and highly motivated and above-average students. But BASIS admin thinks it is excellent because of its "world-renown" program that it devised from on high. [b]They take away initiative and discretion from teachers (and make sure we know that we a replaceable) and adopt a take it or leave it mentality with parents.[/b]

I am fascinated by your observations for a number of reasons.

First off, in our experience in terms of English, and foreign language instruction, it seems to me [b]they give way too much discretion[/b] to inexperienced teachers.  Last year in English 7, our children read three small books (Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Night (if you add all the pages together you MIGHT get the Odyssey or the Iliad or a book by Charlotte Bronte, and wrote 2/3 LONG and sometimes incoherent essays.  The only thing the teacher HAD to teach was grammar for the Basis wide portion of the Comprehensive Exam, and she failed to do that until the 11th hour for the Precomps and thus many grades were a shock to students, and I believe as a result she was fired.

Some of these English teachers do not know how to teach, and the fact that they are given permission to decide how many and what types of books the our children read, how many and what types of essays our children write, and have them engage in extensive but pointless annotations of these texts because their comments never translate into a written product, is shocking to me.  Last year, despite NUMEROUS complaints from parents, the only thing they did with this woman who was having our class read "To Kill a Mockingbird" OUT LOUD (can you imagine?) was fire her at the end of the year.  By the end of the year, she had basically quit and thankfully assigned NO essay on the final book, but our students had lost another year of decent English instruction.

In all fairness, it does appear that they are now trying to be a bit more proactive at least with the new 8 English teacher, helping her re curriculum etc because her plan initially was AGAIN to have the children read 3 short books and write 3 long essays when some of them tragically can no longer write the 5 paragraph essays they were taught (or not, in some cases) at their previous schools in 4th and 5th grade, or even single paragraphs properly constructed with appropriate topic sentences.

To the poster who said they were a STEM school, they completely are, and I think to advertise that they are not is deceptive, which they do - "a rigorous liberal arts education" - hardly ! What is worse, and I do not believe happens at TJ (and now even children at STA can ultimately study Differential Equations if I am not mistaken), in our experience they NEGLECT the English teachers and do not seem to care that not only are our children not refining their writing techniques, but the skill set they entered with has been eroded, through lack of reinforcement and practice, to an appalling extent.  Some of them can no longer correctly quote from texts, nor even select the proper passage in the first place.  To do this to such bright and willing students is criminal.  Written English is essential even for scientists (who must publish peer reviewed papers), and no college that I know of allows even engineers to escape English 101.

The foreign language instruction as well until this year (and I am now only cognizant of what is happening in 2 out of 4 languages) has also been abysmal (in Chinese the class just went too slowly for some).  Our teacher (not teaching Chinese) was fired at the end of the year, as was her predecessor, but this "teacher" would say things like "I was going to teach you today, but you are too disruptive, so I teach you nothing."  When a student timidly asked if the teacher could send the disruptive students to the Dean (NOT the one we have now) and get on with her lesson plan, her response was that since she would have to send almost the entire class it was pointless. The Blocks promised to have a track for native speakers in at least some languages, and of course given the situation THAT has not happened either.  We are seriously considering supplementing with Rosetta Stone, but have to investigate further how they handle literacy in languages as opposed to fluency.

I do wish they had been more up front and honest not only about their math and science focus but about their failure to focus on English and Foreign languages.  Forget Theatre or the Arts.  And to me this blindspot is incomprehensible given that the World History Advanced Placement Exam requires 3 different types of essays.  Perhaps that is why they have changed the History curriculum for the future at all Basis schools, inserting US History in grade 7, and stating that students will henceforth only be allowed to take the World History Advanced Placement test if they are granted permission by their teachers.

There is no LEAP English being offered this year due to alleged "lack of interest."- but the academically advanced students were not allowed, for reasons that elude me, to take both LEAP English and LEAP Chemistry, so they all got together and opted for Chem.  I would posit that this 8th grade section is probably the most well behaved and least disruptive in the entire school, and certainly would never steal candy from their chemistry teacher.  But I also am sure that the Dean could frighten them as well, and in the same way, threaten all of the children's academic standing because they failed to identify the miscreant, and at least initially, these children, whom have seen much happen over the last three years that made little sense, would believe him and would be devastated.

What lack of discretion are you referring to? 
(having experienced the negative consequences of teachers being given utterly no guidance whatsoever.........

I can see how Saxon math does not allow a teacher much discretion in what to teach - they either teach it well or badly, but curiously (and I am not a maths expert at all), many of the kids who left Basis "well ahead of their peers in science" found themselves having to repeat the math class they had just taken AT Basis, both in public (but selective) high schools, and at least for one student, in a private school, and it all seems to have to do with the gaps in Algebra instruction that have to do with Geometry (which is only a part of the BASIS curriculum to the extent it is interwoven with Algebra, and clearly it is not enough.)

They do no tracking here except in math until LEAP Chemistry, because that apparently is not their philosophy, but when we have children who come in SO behind in math that they have created a category below Saxon 7/8, whom they deem to far behind to even TAKE physics in grade 6 (was that true at your former school?), and then put those children into the same section in grade 7 as the children who are in the two highest math classes, it really does not seem fair to either group.  And the mathematically advanced children felt like in many ways grade 7 was a complete waste of their time.  They are also, I believe, allowing pre Calculus to become a two year course, which I have no objection to.  And Maths is the only Comprehensive Exam a child can fail and still be moved up a grade at the end of the year BASIS wide, and that was indeed a great boon to Basis DC.

Do you think under these circumstances some form of tracking might be appropriate?

Where the gaps are so wide, and the 60% bar really does not compensate for them in grade 7?

I have also suggested that the 5th graders might really benefit from being separated into groups that require basic fundamental instruction in not only subject matter but study skills so that their chances of success at this school are higher.

What do you think about that?

In terms of the take it or leave it mentality with parents, for reasons I do not have time to explain at the moment, but are both financial and academic, I think that attitude will have to change rapidly to avoid Basis DC becoming truly embarrassing to the Blocks....and potentially destroying their credibility on the issue of whether they can, in fact, educate anyone, and whether the product they are offering is so superior (especially here, where even the high school options leave a lot to be desired) that they can attract and retain the "top students" in Washington DC.............[/quote]

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