Reply to Will basis move their waitlist this week or are they done?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What's funny about these performative equity folks is that they purport to speak for black and low-SES students but give zero consideration to the black and low-SES students who are provided a first class education at BASIS. These people don't care about equity or black kids or low SES families, they care about a dumb talk track and scoring SJW points.  [/quote]

I don't think it's inconsistent to say that 1) Basis provides a generally better education than any DC charters or DCPS schools (which I agree with, which is why I send my kids there), and 2) the share of lower SES students, Black students, and Hispanic students at the school is way lower than in the DC public school pool, suggesting that the school could improve its outreach and retention of those groups, so that more of those kids could access that "first class education". I don't expect the Basis population to exactly represent the overall DC population, given the inequitable K-4 preparation, but it certainly could be closer.[/quote]

Enrollment at BASIS for 5th grade does not track DC school age demographics long before kids start peeling off. Your argument (and that of the insane person who, I agree, has ES age kids) is that somehow that is BASIS's fault. Why can't we at least consider that parents are making informed choices? Low SES tracks and correlates with AA in DC. That's a demographic fact. AA kids have across the board lower test scores across every grade. Schools in predominantly AA neighborhoods have poorer educational outcomes. Through no fault of BASIS, by the time those kids get to 5th they are well behind grade level and will require significant remediation and family/student intervention in order to do more than just survive.[b] Those families are CHOOSING not to put BASIS on their lottery list. It is an informed choice.[/b] Can we please press pause on the white guilt that tells black folks they are making the wrong choices?

The ire directed at BASIS would be better spent on ES that are failing kids long before 5th grade. But that's harder than picking the easy fight with BASIS on a free forum I guess.  [/quote]

In some cases it's an informed choice, but I (white, grad school educated) had several conversations with Black families who were intrigued when I told them about Basis but whose kids were in 5th grade already. True, it's just an anecdotal, but I'm sure that part of the reason for the enrollment disparity is that virtually all highly-educated families know about Basis, but fewer less-educated families do. I don't know if Basis could do more to get the word out, but clearly not all parents are making a fully-informed choice.[/quote]

DP. I understand what you're saying, but part of me feels like it's ridiculous to fault an organization/school/institution etc. if people don't do their own research to learn about it. It's not like some closely held secret. It's a public school. There is information about BASIS readily available on My School DC. Every year there is an education fair where parents can go to learn about the various public schools in DC.

There are people who take the time to learn about options available to them and others don't. Our society is increasingly becoming one in which no one does their own homework so to speak. It then becomes someone else's fault when they don't have information. People expect to be spoon fed everything these days, which makes it difficult to discern situations where there is legitimate room to improve outreach and communications to certain demographics. [/quote]

This. Can we also take a moment to appreciate the irony that this "no one is a for accountable for their own actions/inactions" is occurring on a thread about a school that is roundly criticized for [gasps] refusing to socially promote and holding kids accountable for their successes and failures? If you were too lazy to discover BASIS when you made your list and blaming other people for your failures then you are probably not a good fit for BASIS anyway.[/quote]

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