Reply to BASIS DC to open in 2012-2013

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[quote=Anonymous]A school like Basis, or Latin, for that matter, would surely flourish as an academic magnet, like those in NYC.  With luck as the only criterion for admission, the middle school will surely muddle through, but the high school can only be mediocre when compared to suburban magnets (look at Latin, where the the middle school is 41% white and the high school just 11%, with white as a proxy for upper-middle-class and nothing more).  Great teaching, great leadership, great planning, great facilities won't change this in DC.

As you probably know, in NYC, kids test into talented and gifted elementary and middle schools, which feed into some of the nation's best public high schools, Bronx Science, Hunter, Stuyvesant, Bronx Tech, Bard etc. If a student scores poorly on the SSAT, NYC's magent admissions exam given in 8th grade, they can't attend one of the elite high schools.  But rigorous test prep is given freely to middle school kids from low-income families at various city centers.

Why is the concept of what some cities call "exam schools" (Boston Latin was the first) still anathama in DC when such schools are now found all over the country?  I note that the great majority of the high schools on the US News and World Report "Gold" list are magnets, not charters where the state law mandates one open lottery per school as the only route to admission.  Why is luck the best criterion for admission when, as a society, we don't hesitate to exclude kids without the requisite talent and drive from competing in elite youth sports, music, chess or whatever.  Genius springs up in odd places - why not focus on finding some of the brightest and most disciplined kids in the District and drawing them to Basis?  That's what Takoma Park MS does with its math/science/computer magenet (admitting 16% of students) and the spectacular results are plain to see - kids, even poor ones, winning INTEL prizes etc. a few years hence.  I don't get it, why not in DC.  Why is this impossible in our city but not in others with large minority populations, like Chicago and Atlanta? Enlighten me.

My own children aren't even of school age yet, but I ask this in all seriousness.  In the DC burbs, academic magnet programs serve to keep upper-middle-class parents from voting with their feet in droves after elementary - what's so horrible about that?  Surely poor kids benefit from keeping the affluent engaged in K-12 public education in large numbers.  I interview seniors in DCPS and charters applying to my Ivy alma mater as an alum volunteer every fall. They don't fare at all well as a group, and not for lack of brains or industry.  While Stuyveswant will get 30-40 into any particular Ivy every year, Wilson, SWW, Banneker, and now Latin, are lucky to get a handful.   Ivies work well for the poor because they're practically  a free college education as much as anything else.

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