Reply to If you gave BASIS a chance and it didn't work out, when did you know?

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Reply to "If you gave BASIS a chance and it didn't work out, when did you know?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think it's a question of what your options are for 6th-- like what are you willing to accept if you have a bad number.

People leave BASIS in 6th just because they thought it was fine but like something else better. An good-not-great number gets you into BASIS but it takes a really good number for Latin and DCI. So their 6th grade pick might be what they preferred all along.[/quote]

People should really not choose BASIS bc they lack better options. Those people (like people who would rather be at Latin) are almost always super unhappy and then leave.

[b]they should only do it if their kid actively wants that curriculum, and is interested in STEM. [/b]We made sure we gave our kid a shadow day there, told him all about the academics, and knew he could handle the workload and memorization necessary to succeed there.

A much higher proportion of these kinds of kids stay. Everyone we know who ranked BASIS higher than Latin is still there.[/quote]

It's not that simple. Middle school kids can develop new interests, including ECs that are standard at most good schools but aren't available at BASIS (like halfway decent performing arts and serious sports).

Our family wasn't impressed with too many of the middle school teachers. They were young with insufficient training and weak classroom management skills. And we disliked the top-down management and pressure to donate to top up teachers' pay. None of this had anything to do with my kids' strong interest in STEM.

All you guys want to talk about is kids being able to handle the workload. That's around half the story at BASIS. [b]It's not a very happy environment.[/b]  [/quote]

That’s not universally true, obviously. [b]There are plenty of kids who are happy there, but what makes one kid happy will be different from the next.[/b][/quote]

Not really buying it. What we experienced in the BASIS MS was that, by 8th grade, even dyed-in-the-wool booster families weren't doing more than making the best of an OK school in a bad building with an unstable teaching force (indicating not-so-great working conditions, including training, pay and hours) a narrow curriculum and a lot of unserious ECs.  As far as I could tell, electives and ECs weren't too hot mainly for lack of funding in a cash-strapped charter. No kid is leaping for joy in a crappy building where electives aren't too good and inspiration isn't the strong suit.

I went to Hunter in NYC. Our building was almost as bad, but it was GT program where hands-on learning (like sophisticated research projects in the community), offbeat interests, unique talents and unusual backgrounds were celebrated. In our experience, BASIS DC is essentially a factory, a one-size-fits all education with 4 years of HS stressfully crammed into 3. Had it been a happier place, with better choices for us, we'd have stayed for HS. We know many Ward 6 BASIS families who've stayed through 12th grade in the last 15 years. I've never heard any of them talk about loving BASIS, although some of the students have gone on to top 10 SLACs and Ivies.  [/quote]

You’re not buying that different things make different kids happy? Or that kids have different experiences? Ok then.

I’ll never understand posters who insist their experience and view of the things is the only correct one. [/quote]

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