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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you’ve never had to think about how low expectations attach to your child before they even speak, you’ll probably miss the point.

I’m not really trying to defend BASIS. Who wouldn’t want a better building, more green space, a gym? Of course we would. But for us, the real value of BASIS isn’t about facilities—it’s about insulation.

For some families, the big question is whether a school “fits.” For ours, it’s how to keep our kid from getting buried under the low expectations that seem to follow him everywhere—public, charter, suburban, wherever. That shifts what kind of environment feels like relief.

And sure, if your child has ADHD or another neurodivergence, BASIS can feel harsh. That’s real. But those are intrinsic challenges a child carries anywhere. They’re not the same as the extrinsic bias that lands before my kid even opens his mouth.

We’ve seen the difference. At our old school, “central-casting” kids—affluent, white, sometimes clearly struggling—still got the enrichment slots and leadership nods, while our child, who outperformed them on every metric, got overlooked. That quiet favoritism doesn’t play the same way at BASIS, and that’s part of the relief.

And look, we can overcome bias anywhere—we do it all the time. But if there’s a school that spares us some of that emotional labor, why wouldn’t we choose it? Why root for it to change in ways that put that burden right back on us?

BASIS isn’t perfect. But it gives our child space to push back against the slow, steady build-up of low expectations. For us, that’s not nothing. And for others who’ve never had to think about it—that’s a luxury.[/quote]

Why do you keep writing the same post over and over.

Everyone is glad BASIS is working for your kid. Good.

Now, what about all the kids for whom BASIS does not work? [b]What about the kids for whom the problem is not that they are underestimated, but that they are presumed to be fine without engagement or challenge because the focus is on kids who are struggling with grade level material?[/b] Which, by the way, is a much more common occurrence in DC public schools than the situation of a high achieving kid being overlooked in favor of rich white kids, who are not only rare in DC publics but also tend to be concentrated in a small handful of schools.

So, your kid is getting what he needs. Great. What about everyone else?[/quote]

I think the problem I’m identifying is one that’s almost universal across schools and public systems. The problem you’re describing sounds more like the general issue of fit—and honestly, that’s diffuse. There’s probably no school that’s a perfect fit for any child. Most have strengths in some areas, gaps in others. You take the good with the bad and adapt where you need to. That’s just life.

But let’s be clear—this thread has been focused on BASIS and its supposed deficits. You just brought up the problem of under-challenged kids being overlooked because they’re presumed fine. That’s not a BASIS issue. If anything, BASIS is a corrective for that problem. So I’m not sure why that’s being framed as part of the critique.

And no, I’m not saying people who want a different kind of school should “just” move. I’m saying it’s much harder to find institutions that give kids on the wrong side of the achievement gap—kids who don’t look like the default high-achiever—clear, consistent, data-driven opportunities to demonstrate mastery. In most environments, those kids have to prove themselves over and over again because the feedback is so sporadic or subjective.

Schools like BASIS, or the test-in models like TJ (?) or Stuyvesant, work differently. Once you meet the bar, the feedback loop is constant and objective—you can’t as easily be written off between report cards or dismissed as an exception. That steady, quantifiable record insulates our child from the low-expectations trap that persists almost everywhere else. Very few schools offer that.

Problems having to do with generalized “fit” are relatively simple (if not immediately practical) to solve—you can usually find or move to an institution that comes closer to what you want. What I’m talking about is a much tougher nut to crack—and a far more pervasive one.

[/quote]

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