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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] The potential for galloping middle-class attrition is what concerns me about Basis so far, not more.  My kid is good at math and disciplined enough to excel at this and that (from karate to playing piano).   Is anybody else concerned?

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Thank you for asking this hard-hitting question, PP.  With DC1 in 5th, my wife and I are certainly concerned.  It doesn't sound like high-SES families evern abandoned the public school system in Arizona.   With Chicago seriously considering opening a Basis branch shortly, perhaps those urban parents will be turning to us for answers a few years hence.

As a strategy to keep high-SES families on board for high school, helping ensure success, BASIS would have been a lot better off being more patient, starting only with 5th and adding a grade at a time to 12th.  Other charters have grown more slowly.

As things stand, the likelihood that many high-SES parents will be scared off by seeing mostly low-SES kids in the high school appears high.  The terrible battle to attract many high-SES families to DC public high schools as good as Banneker, Walls, Wilson and Latin seems to have been lost on a Basis operating on unfamiliar territory.

What needs to be done, and what sort of conversations need to be had, to keep high-SES families to 12th grade is perhaps the most awkward of issues and, hence, the one most likely to be addressed only indirectly.  We talk about curriculum and teaching and structure and rigor on DCUM without talking much about the social issues that are, frankly, as likely to drive out high-SES families as academic ones.

There will always be an adventurous high-SES minority OK with majority low-SES schools.  There will also be plenty of high-SES parents willing to err on the side of optimism in assuming that a rigorous curriculum, an orderly environment, decent facilities and solid teaching will be all that's needed to convince the majority that the waters are safe for their children.  I worry that a silent majority will continue to vote with its feet just the same.

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