Reply to Does anyone know the status of the Proposed BASIS Expansion

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Their student retention also stinks. No other DC charter routinely loses half their families before the terminal grade. [/quote]

Few other charters hold their students to real standards [/quote]

Other charters operate multiple tracks to accommodate students who are working to different standards. It’s understandable that the PCSB prefers schools that take responsibility for educating all the students they enroll. Basis is as much a sorting mechanism as a school. [/quote]

If DC would let them use a merit-based admissions process, I would expect to see better student retention.  Until DC offers those option to the families of high-achieving students, I see BASIS upholding standards in its grade promotion as a feature, not a bug.[/quote]

You've had kids at BASIS? We have and aren't buying that most families leave because the kids are held to high academic standards.

From what we could tell, most families actually leave because it's a dreary program with high teacher turnover, tin-eared leadership, a repetitive, one-size-fits all middle school curriculum (especially for sciences), weak HS ECs and a spectacularly crappy building.

We hope that the franchise fails to get permission to open a K-4 school, which would clobber the Cap Hill elementary schools after 15 years of steady, hard-won gains. [/quote]

I am completely with you on being opposed to the elementary.  Whatever BASIS's merits as a MS/HS, I agree allowing an elementary would be a disaster for the steadily improving Capitol Hill schools (and to the prospects of SH and EH).

I was responding mostly to the thesis of PP who had suggested the retention problems relate to student achievement ("Other charters operate multiple tracks to accommodate students who are working to different standards.").  I totally agree there are other reasons families leave BASIS and am not hugely excited myself at the prospect of sending my kid there (if we even get in), but worry about the dearth of high level academics at our IB school.[/quote]

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