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[quote=Anonymous][/quote] That assumes that parents will choose to stay in a school with a shrinking enrollment and shrinking opportunities at the higher grades.  So far, charter schools haven't been able to clear that hurdle.  The DCI might, but only because its a consortium of 4 schools.  Success remains to be seen, but BASIS is lacking in a lot of expectations parents have of an HS experience.  Middle school maybe, but HS?  The only successful small schools are also exclusive (i.e., Maret) and Basis isn't offering the Maret experience.[/quote]

I wouldn't get my hopes up about DCI - the feeder school populations aren't large, and the founders are talking about having more than half the students lottery in.  Couple open lottery admissions with traditional resistance to much middle school tracking and the results will almost certainly be predictable: high-SES attrition between 8th and 9th grades, as at Latin.

It sounds like charter board must become more flexible on the admissions front in the coming years for sake of political survival.

Shrinking enrollment at Basis would only be a by-product of the middle-school-lottery-only admission system.   Basis could be compelled to admit high school students who tested in to counter shrinking enrollment in the higher grades.  PPs argue, oh no, that wouldn't fly, not when Basis is teaching fantastically advanced math and sciences in middle school!  Nonsense, very advanced math and sciences in middle school can be come by outside of Basis, e.g. at Johns Hopkins CTY camps, independent schools, suburban middle school magnet programs, and on-line programs like Saxon Math.

The crux of the admissions problem is political, not academic: high-SES/white kids would, by and large, be the ones testing in, not low-SES AA kids.  But the political calculus may be changing enough for the admissions tide to turn within 5-10 years.

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