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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm catching up on this thread and wanted to thank 15:12 (from 3/26) for posting the mission information for both schools.  I had no idea that they were so different.

I hear your concerns, BASIS teacher.  I currently teach at a selective private school in the area and have similar concerns about that school.  There comes a point when the image appears to be more important than the quality of the education.  Clearly, some parents are more concerned with the image, based on a number of the posts here.  My school no longer appears to be focused on quality education and meeting the student's needs so much as using the students to make the school look good.  I'm not even sure how much longer I want to teach there and my kids will not be attending.

Hopefully BASIS DC will avoid some of these pitfalls.  We'll be watching it develop with interest, along with the other options, both charter and traditional public.[/quote]

Do you mind sharing where you teach? Thanks[/quote]

What is so odd to me is that the BASIS Tucson teacher has several times made remarks about how confusing the anonymous posting system is here, and how much better it could be if we all used names, but if there really is a monolithic BASIS corporation out there surely they would terminate this teacher's contract immediately once they identified him/her.  Similarly I seriously doubt that the person who posted who teaches at the selective private school in this area will post either their name or the name of their school, just as the BASIS Ivy interviewer will not identify his hallowed institution while alleging that the BASIS Tucson kids he interviewed were "dull as paint", "too busy cramming for AP's," and weak in extra currics etc.

I sincerely hope that we have convinced THAT Ivy interviewer to lay off BASIS kids, as he should lay off kids from the private school "cocoon" in NW as he has "basically given up on St. Alban's boys" and the boys at Georgetown prep etc. S/he seems to actually now have stated he will not be interviewing kids from Arizona ever again.  Now we just need him to give up altogether given that if he gets the one STA kid who has his heart set on his Ivy his mind is so closed that the kid is doomed - and he admitted this without any apparent moral qualms or embarrassment on DCUM.  Imagine the reaction had he been referring to kids of a certain gender/religion/race instead of two private "privileged" boys schools - and effectively all the rest located in NW DC.

IMO, the only interviewer/teacher who has posted who has shown some moral courage is the one who said s/he was the person who interviewed the successful Washington Latin applicant at Brown, who said that no one should conclude that this AT ALL indicates that Latin will send many kids to Ivies now or in the future.  I agree that their record this year on acceptances and scholarships is impressive.  Actually more than impressive.  I was quite awed, especially by the scholarships.  But most of these schools for a variety of reasons are not where I want my kids to go, even if they got free rides.  I know someone who took a merit based free ride to UNC Chapel Hill in my peer group and generation that was based on merit, and more power to them.  The fact was obtaining THAT kind of scholarship was a gigantic uptic in anyone's resume.  Ok enough on that.

We are BASIS parents.  We did not want the big public high school experience of MoCo or to put all our eggs in one basket for a 16% acceptance rate at TJ when we have 3 kids.  Even though the houses are so so so tempting outside DC, especially right now, especially for me, for reasons that would destroy MY anonymity but are personally significant.....  Heck I fell in love 2 years ago with a perfect house that we could afford... and I watched it go for 15k below asking and it was my ultimate fantasy.

HOWEVER, while I sympathize with the "it ain't what it used to be" laments of the BASIS Tucson teacher, and the critique of the private school teacher, I feel the same way about the DC private school I went to (it has gotten more money, moved locations, become more a member of the "establishment" it was sort of claiming to undermine when I went there, and now has serious sports teams).  I would not send my kids there if I suddenly inherited 10 million dollars.  In fact, if I did, (and the lottery would be the only way), I THOUGHT I would give everything up for my children's education and move to Arizona.  Seriously if my Fed employed husband got RIF'd, that is what we were thinking we would do.  So in that sense the poster from Tucson has given me pause.  But not about the school here.  We looked it up today.  BASIS if a 501c3? corporation, meaning NOT FOR PROFIT.

Not that Olga and her husband may not be making out like bandits, but perhaps they deserve to, after what they have accomplished.  I kind of think so.  The only educators the system tends to reward monetarily are people who could easily vote with their feet or are already wealthy - established authors, incredibly famous liberal arts profs like Cornell West (who I had the luck to study under), and law profs who could just go make partner. Only teachers at the college/GS level.

I was with a bunch of people at my 20th reunion last year kvetching about our eating club and there are folks  saying the same thing about our church ("it ain't what it used to be"), while both institutions have tried to kick of hefty capital campaigns in the same year recently.  While I no ambivalence about my former beloved private school here, and need to find out more about my eating club, who just fired the new "miracle chefs" while changing student involvement in the kitchen and getting rid of the last of the people who were in there when we were, the church is doing right by my kids.  And my gut tells me BASIS will as well.

Olga and her husband (the original BASIS founders before it became a "corporation") rented an apartment here for this year.  They imported 1/3 of the teachers and the head of the school from Arizona (he was a teacher AND had also been a college guidance counselor (yippee!)) AND taught my child in STARS last year before s/he ever showed up in the fall.  As far as I know, they have no other schools outside of Arizona yet and are probably all realizing like poor Toto in the Wizard of Oz that they are not in Arizona any more.

They are in a city with a majority AA population, brimming with racial tensions, and a large number of inner city poorly educated (not their fault) kids with no home support system who come from terrible neighborhoods enrolled in their school this year.  And they chose to start with 7th and 8th graders as well as 5th and 6th, which I think was a mistake since their entire premise is along the lines of 'if we catch them in 5th grade, and they are willing to work and of moderate intelligence, we can get them places no one ever imagined,'  8th grade is another story.  And when their first fifth grader showed up this year saying "sorry my mom couldn't come into school today to hear that I need academic/and or psychological help because she got put in jail last night, don't ask who I am staying with, or we got removed by social services or evicted and again sorry" I think maybe it was a hard wake up call.  I don't know how many grades they usually open a school with, but as everyone knows, DC is "different."  And we have one of the WORST school systems in the country.  So odds were many if not most 8th graders were NEVER going to catch up.

While the one Latin parent just had the guts to admit that no one should be evaluating the kids on DC CAS scores because they get some new 9th graders every year who are reading at the 5th grade level, and by 10th they are reading at the 8th grade level, but somehow that does not slow MY kid down and is a socially important goal in and of itself (which I totally agree with), BASIS has NEVER held itself out as being the place for those kids.  In fact, if I understand their position correctly, they in practice do not admit new kids after 6th grade.  So I think including 7th and 8th was a BIG mistake.  And as a parent of a younger kid, I would have vastly preferred that the first class be closer in age to MY kid, so that there was no potential to crash and burn with the first two graduating classes on either the DC-CAS or college admissions/scholarships and I would have felt a lot more confident about MY kid being safe.

Olga called 8th grade "the year of decision" in Arizona.  But I think that presupposed 3 years of figuring out that BASIS is not the right school for you, EVEN if you can squeak by, and no matter how much your PARENTS protest.  I am not sure one year will be enough to weed out the potential athletes, rock stars, musical prodigies, future auto mechanics and people who should end up at ITT Tech (NB I am not talking about UDC).  There is no University of Arizona here.  There is a credit of $10k if you attend a state school ANYWHERE else which is an admission that there is no local acceptable public higher education.  There is virtually no acceptable public education for the grades that lead up to college, starting at least with kindergarten  I also would not be surprised if among the 8th graders there is at least one girl who in her future could audition for Teen Moms on MTV and at least one boy who will end up incarcerated at least until he is no longer a juvenile.  These are the facts of life.  I am delighted that BASIS here, delighted that my child is there, and praying that they succeed because for us, having tried Latin, there is no other option.[/quote]

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