Reply to BASIS DC will seek to expand to include K to 4th grade

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[quote=Anonymous]There's an entrenched tradition on DCUM of BASIS parents jumping on threads claiming not only that the kids who leave "washed out," but asserting that if you left, well, you're a "hater" whose kid couldn't hack the curriculum. This year seems to be something of a turning point. As noted, Walls, JR and Latin got students into Ivy League schools, and other colleges admitting in the single digits, but not BASIS. The two excuses offered on this thread for lackluster college admissions is that, a) this year's senior class was unusually small and that, b) BASIS students gravitate toward merit aid at 2nd tier schools rather than shooting for top tier programs their families couldn't afford.

As the parent of a student who started in this year's graduating cohort and tried the HS, I'm not buying that the small class size was crux of the problem, or family finances either. I'm also not buying that a BASIS expansion to include K-4th grade will solve the problem eventually. What I'm seeing is that BASIS' top-down, one-size fits all approach to teaching and learning at the MS level has caught up with them at the HS level, along with management's tendency to burn out good teachers, weak facilities and subpar HS ECs. We might have stayed though HS, along with other families of strong students we got to know at BASIS, if the curriculum had offered us flexibility, if critical thinking skills and joy of learning had been emphasized, if humanities instruction had been stronger, if the teaching force had been more stable, and if our teen could have pursued serious HS ECs with classmates. There doesn't seem to be any sort of fix for what ails the BASIS HS in the works, no reckoning, no agenda for change. [/quote]

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