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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Yes, need real alternatives in middle school choices.  There's MS2 at Howard U, Latin, EL Haynes, Two Rivers, Paul PCS, Chavez Prep, all of them for college-bound kids.[/quote]

Poster 18:02 again. I don't know about your public middle school choices but you must not have many good ones, or Basis DC wouldn't be attracting so many kids who probably aren't right for the set curriculum, and such defensive sounding parents.

If I were a DC parent starting out on this journey, or considering taking it, I might consider organizing fellow parents to educate politicians on the merits of selective admissions in the inner city environment.  If the concept that "the politics here will never support what is fairest, kindest and works best" is allowed to rule the day from the outset, you're helping give empire building Basis a carte blanche to play cynical income-generating games in your city and others.

Tuscon isn't a big city.  And yet kids who didn't come in with strong prep or aptitude tended to suffer cruelly at Basis.  Those of us who were a good fit for the curriculum would place bets in the spring, with money riding on accurately predicting who would fail comps once, who would fail them twice, and who wouldn't be back in the fall.  One August, I found that I'd won around 75 bucks from classmates for having predicted who would bite the dust over the summer with some accuracy.  Were we kids to blame for such meaness when the culling encouraged survivors to look down our noses at those who learned differently?  My local middle school wasn't great on math instruction, but it was a nurturing place and, looking back, I might have been fine there.

In perusing earlier posts, I noticed that many here appear to have come to the conclusion that all it takes to succeed at a Basis branch is discipline and hard work.  If you leave, it's your own fault.  Only half true.  Basis is essentially offering a math gifted curriculum without screening for math giftedness, or strong foundational preparation for a lot of the kids.  If Basis were starting in the early or mid elementary grades with screening, OK.  What you're going to see if you start in 5th grade is that many of the casualties in 7th to 9th grades will be hardworking kids.  Why is this outcome better than finding kids with a good chance of doing well and keeping almost all of them?  This is why I suggest that you talk to your pols.  It might get you nowhere, but at least you could say you tried.
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You are right, PP.  There are few viable MS options in DC.  Many families have enrolled at BASIS DC this year who would probably have chosen a different model if it were available.  Also, I think many parents are being unrealistic about their DC's capabilities and about the amount of support that they will have to provide at home to ensure success.  Finally, I suspect that some families are in denial about the lack of social promotion.  I don't think they realize that BASIS is prepared to hold back a large percentage of the sixth graders.  I fear the the attrition rate will be higher than the norm for a BASIS school during the first few years.

Would you be willing to elaborate on your experiences with BASIS comps?  I assume that class performance is highly correlated comp performance.  That is, A students always pass the comp, B students usually pass the comp, C pass the comp if they study, D students might pass with a lot of work, etc.

Was that your experience at BASIS?  Is the comp easy for the student who is doing well in the class and impossible for the student who is doing poorly?  Did you ever know of an A student who failed the comp?  How about a D or F student who passed?

Our DC just started the 6th grade and has thus far received mostly 90s with a few 80s.  When DC expresses anxiety about comps, I usually provided reassurance by claiming that comps will not be hard with those grades.  Am I wrong?

By the way, have you considered starting another thread with the title "I graduated from BASIS Tucson, ask me anything?"?

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