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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To 7:17

Ultimately, I agree with your core contentions and I wish you guys all the best of luck. BASIS represents a dynamic choice and alternative to a really unappealing public school system (in DC and Tucson).

Drill and Kill, Chinese System, Lacking a Soul, Bitter Teachers of course are extremely negative labels and overstate my position since I remain connected to the school and recognize many strenghts. I think I am using extremes to try (not very well) to communicate what I and my fellow parents see as a basic underlying truth about the nature of the institution. By most objective metrics it is a continuing success story. But I am simply trying to relate the psychological reality of what I would guess to be the majority of the parents and students in the 5th grade. And beyond the hyperbole, it really is only about the wisdom of placing a such cumulative test & content load (which is really what I mean by drill and kill) on an 11 year old and maintaining that pressure through 12th grade. That is all. The community has many many strengths, again primarily because of the self-selecting nature of the parents, kids & teachers - it is a community of people who want to learn and certainly is not for everyone. I don't mean to set off the cream-skimmers by that remark. It is a charter school. Anyone can go.

I guess on my experience I don't see any connection to any version of what might be called [b]the European model, which I think is about as unhelpful ultimately as the Chinese model[/b].

But I do think based on this exchange that each BASIS is its own entity, it will have its own destiny based on the society, the personnel, etc.

Again my only suggestion, and my intention at BASIS Tucson, is to form an organized community of parents to communicate effectively to each other and the administration our concerns (and to be fair they have responded in limited ways even this year by, for example, expressing the intent to reduce the homework load in non-core classes). But I still feel at our campus the only two options right now are like it or lump it, which is basically what we get from the public schools, and I still feel as an private school and ivy-league educated person, that our BASIS is making an unfortunate mistake in taking a good idea (rigor and high expectations) to a suboptimal extreme. 
[/quote]

And exactly what would that "European" model be?
LOL[/quote]

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