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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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, [b]along with other families of strong students we got to know at BASIS[/b], 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]

So in sum, you are denigrating those "strong students" you got to know who stayed at BASIS for HS b/c they didn't get in to an ivy, etc., this year?  Nice.  My theory on college admissions this year is that the old measures - excellent test scores and difficult course content/numerous APs - are no longer reliable methods to get in to college post-pandemic when colleges have thrown out/no longer look at many of these "hard" metrics (test scores, etc) and are now admitting students on soft stuff (since they can't use the hard measures any longer to distinguish).  And then it turns in to a lottery as generally all students have the "soft" stuff  (as many have complained on other threads not having to do with BASIS - college admissions were a lottery this year).  With a much smaller class size, BASIS has many fewer lottery tickets (students).  But you keep on with your schadenfreude.

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My theory on college admissions is that "excellent test scores and difficult course content/numerous APs" are still reliable methods to get into blue chip colleges as long as an applicant also brings extraordinary ECs to be the table, particularly in the form of somewhat unusual intellectual interests and accomplishments. That's where BASIS falls down in my book. The lack of flexibility in the curriculum and respect for individual learning styles and backgrounds isn't producing the college admissions goods like it could.[b] When your middle school kid's a top artist, musician or linguist for their age yet BASIS orders them into beginning enrichment classes[/b], you begin to doubt the approach.  [/quote]

What public schools in DC offer middle school tracking for kids who are a "top artist, musician or linguist for their age," whatever that means.[/quote]

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