Reply to Why isn't there another academic charter middle school?

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Why isn't there another academic charter middle school?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]With it being increasingly difficult to get into Latin or BASIS, and with increased demand as more UMC families hit middle school, and with all the uncertainty around selective high school admissions, it seems like there would be a lot of interest in a new charter middle and/or high school whose value prop was differentiation/advanced classes. I know there's Latin Cooper. But are there not more attempts at this because they wouldn't get approved, or because it's very difficult to get the real estate, or something else? Thank you. [/quote]

Do those schools actually provide tracking/advanced classes? Or is it just that their school population is self-selective and primarily UMC, with all the benefits that come from that?  DCI has a level of tracking in math and languages (but it is not a G&T set-up at all), but it doesn't apply across the whole curriculum.  [/quote]

Basis generally does not track in MS; all students take the same classes. (There is a slight exception for MS math, where a handful of kids move up a level.) A lot of the benefit is the self selection, but it's also that the actual academics are (again, generally) more advanced. But you can't separate the two: It attracts the students it does because of the curriculum, and they can teach the curriculum they do because they have more advantaged (again generally) students, who are then more (generally) prepared.[/quote]

You're understating what BASIS does with STEM in MS and over-stating how tough the curriculum is. BASIS routinely teaches algebra to 6th graders who can handle it, possibly even a 5th grader or two.  They also teach more advanced 8th grade sci classes to students who can handle them than those who can't. My kid was bored in humanities classes at BASIS. He didn't find the humanities curriculum all that interesting. BASIS doesn't teach to a MS curriculum that promotes creativity, exploration, invention, group work or hands-on learning. Teachers aren't trained for GT instruction. What the school offers is strong pre AP prep and AP prep, super rigorous for DC public schools, nothing special by upscale suburban standards. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics