Reply to Meeting re BASIS DC wanting to expand to PK-4th

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Apparently no one on this thread went to the info session last week.

What would be interesting to know is whether they plan on starting up with all grades immediately, pending charter amendment approval.

In other cities BASIS has 'grown down' by one grade a year (adding 4th, then 3rd, then 2nd) etc.

Given the cost of real estate here if that is feasible or not and they now have experience in other cities with all those grades, so there may be less need to go slow.

[/quote]

Except they learned the hard way that DC is different.  As Mr. Aiken, who I think is really the only decent HOS we ever had, said right before he left, he wanted to apologize for one statement he made at the beginning of his time as HOS - declaring that DC was just like AZ.  We have more desperation, more poverty, more struggling kids here.  They have coped with this in the MS by creating a really strict and punitive environment, which leads many of the best and brightest to leave before high school.  I imagine BASIS would find themselves doing the same with an ES.

I don't think BASIS should be given permission until they do something about their attrition rate, because Olga Block said the attrition between 8th and 9th in the BASIS model consisted of students who were not "college bound," and here that is definitely NOT the case, we are having atypical attrition (assuming she was telling the truth) so again, DC is different.  Until BASIS can stem a little of the profound exodus to Walls and Wilson, and prove to be a viable high school, the Charter Board should not accept what is surely going to be anothery pyramid model, this time in an elementary school.  Because BASIS already knows they can refill the ranks in 5th grade. There are quite a few kids who choose BASIS over Deal, at least initially.  But what happens at the best BASIS schools does not apply here, because we are not being run like one of the best BASIS schools.[/quote]

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