Reply to Does anyone know the status of the Proposed BASIS Expansion

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Give us a break, it's the rare BASIS junior who's taken a dozen AP courses and exams. Few BASIS seniors bother with more APs.

PP above obviously meant anywhere where many AP or IB Diploma classes are taught to a high standard to a high-achieving cohort.  [/quote]

Parent of graduating BASIS senior here. I’m loathe to enter this fray because the BASIS detractors are so emotional, but this statement just isn’t true. My kid took 12 AP exams (I guess one was a submission for 2D Art as a freshman) by the end of junior year. Several of their academic peers took 12+ AP exams by the end of junior year. No BASIS seniors take APs unless they failed to satisfy one of the AP graduation requirements for a BASIS diploma. BASIS students technically satisfy DC high school grad requirements by the end of junior year, so that is a feature, not a bug. Senior year is reserved for post AP capstone courses the first two trimesters, and an optional senior project consisting of an internship, research, and presentation. Detractors can feel free to harp on the charter management, lack of space, perceived weaknesses in curriculum, etc. but the college results this speak for themselves. BASIS is not for every kid, but if it does work for your family, the outcomes
will be there when it is time to apply to colleges. [/quote]

Don't buy this take, folks. PP is whitewashing structural problems with their BS loathe to enter the fray. I say this as the parent of a student who left after 10th grade for a private where extra curriculars, community and liberal learning are celebrated as much as exam and college results. Senior year at BASIS is a largely wasted. The focus isn't on learning or enjoying the year, it's on pushy, time-wasting forced college counseling. The AP capstone courses mentioned are poorly thought through, taught and resourced and the optional senior project is lonely, supported minimally and dramatically under-funded. No, the college results don't speak for themselves, not across the board. Fewer BASIS DC grads crack blue chip colleges than you might think. More would if they could bring serious extra-curricular accomplishments and, frankly, more time to absorb subject content, to the table. They neither have the time nor support for them in a curriculum where four years of high school is needlessly jammed into three, enrichment is paltry, parents are marginalized, respect for individual backgrounds, learning styles and interests is weak, and intellectuality is seldom promoted.

If you can afford to leave for greener pastures, you do that. Hint: The BASIS wasn't founded by, and isn't run by, educators. [/quote]

Yawn.  Bitter much?

Your kid washed out years ago and now you bash the school?

Per capita, Basis DC has the best college admissions results of any public school in DC.

You really can’t do better for an academically motivated kid in DC unless you want to pay $60,000/year at one of the Big 3 privates. [/quote]

I really hate the way Basis boosters seem to feel the need to sneer at absolutely everyone else.[/quote]

Seriously. BASIS is a mid school and if you like it, fine. But there's no need for the nastiness, defensiveness, and constant obsession with the ratings that BASIS openly games. BASIS boosters are annoying and that's why people get like this about it.[/quote]

How does BASIS “game the ratings?” Do you mean that kids who can’t keep up with the work are counseled out or leave of their own accord? How is that different than the private schools that BASIS detractors seem to think are the reasonable alternative for all. Does SWW game the ratings by requiring testing for applicants? As a
Long time BASIS parent, I have plenty of criticisms of the school. To the extent that I get “boosterish” is when recalcitrant former families or people with a strong anti-BASIS network bias attack the school as wholly unworthy. Like it shouldn’t exist or families only stay there if they literally have no other options. And that’s obviously just not a reasonable take, so parents lash out. You say BASIS is mid, compared to what? Sidwell? SWW, Banneker, & JR all have their warts too. They’re just not charters. [/quote]

Mid compared to the claims of its boosters. And mid compared to how it would score if it has to take by-right enrollment like J-R does.

Gaming the ratings does include retention and counseling out, but also things like what CAPE test they have the kids take.

SWW and Banneker are explicitly selective schools. BASIS is functionally running a lottery 5th grade and then a selective 7-12 by not letting kids matriculate upwards if they are below grade level, while pretending it is lottery and nothing but lottery. Jeff will probably delete this post as misleading but I don't know how much clearer I can be. [/quote]

It seems like you’re fixated on the question of how much institutional credit BASIS deserves, especially in comparison to schools like JR, Reed, or others that serve by-right populations. And sure, from a school-rating or policy-analysis perspective, that’s a fair question. But from the vantage point of a family evaluating what’s best for their child, it’s largely irrelevant.

If a family believes their child can thrive in BASIS’s rigorous environment—whether entering at 5th grade or later—then the fact that BASIS ends up with a more curated, academically oriented student body is actually a point in its favor, not a strike against it. The peer environment matters. So if the selectivity or attrition that happens along the way results in a cohort that’s better aligned for certain kinds of academic engagement, many parents will see that as a plus.

Now, I totally get that some people object to BASIS’s model on policy grounds—particularly the publicly funded nature of the school, the attrition rates, and the lack of backfilling. That’s a legitimate debate to have at the systems level. But those very features that raise red flags for some are seen as benefits by many families trying to navigate a landscape where middle school options in D.C. are often limited or uneven. In other words, what’s framed as a systemic flaw from one angle can be a practical advantage from another.

So yes, it’s true that BASIS benefits in some ways from the fact that not everyone stays, and that it doesn’t face the same structural burdens as some DCPS schools. But the real-world question for most families isn’t whether BASIS is getting “too much credit”—it’s whether their own child would benefit from being there. And for plenty of families, the answer is yes.

[/quote]

Well, for me those things are connected. It's not just policy grounds, it's what it says about BASIS and the quality of the experience there. BASIS loves to tout their stats and ratings, but if I believe those things are the result of attrition and class curation and external factors that don't benefit my kid, rather than the result of quality teaching, that's unappealing. And personally I think the small senior class is a con rather than a pro, but not everyone thinks that I guess. [/quote]

You raise a point about “quality teaching,” and I think what you’re really getting at is a discomfort with the idea that BASIS might be benefiting from largely extrinsic factors—like the SES makeup of the student body—rather than intrinsic factors like curriculum design or teacher excellence. And I get that. It’s a completely valid question to ask: what actually makes a school “good”?

But here’s the thing—whether we like it or not, we know from decades of research (and frankly from common sense) that a very large share—maybe 70 to 90 percent—of school outcomes are driven by demographics. Not because teachers don’t matter, but because concentrated advantage (or disadvantage) shows up in all kinds of ways: classroom culture, peer effects, parental involvement, behavioral norms, expectations. This is precisely why schools like Janney, SWS, JRE, and others have long been coveted in D.C.—not only because of their programming, but because of the demographic profile of the families they serve. And often, the quality of the programming flows from that demographic context, not the other way around.

So yes, you’re right to want to tease apart what BASIS’s results really reflect. But at the same time, let’s not pretend this is some BASIS-specific phenomenon. In this city, nearly every family decision about schools is heavily shaped by demographic cues. That’s not always fair or admirable, but it’s real. It’s why we see demand spikes for certain schools before and after boundary or program changes. It’s not because a secret pedagogical revolution occurred.

And as for BASIS, I don’t think many of us are pretending it’s perfect—or beloved. It’s not. It’s not universally praised, and many families are pretty clear-eyed about its tradeoffs. But for some of us who came from schools—often highly rated charters—that were lax in academic rigor, didn’t enforce behavior standards, and where our kids ended up underserved or even harmed, a school like BASIS feels not just “rigid” but also safe and predictable. It doesn’t bend itself into knots to accommodate every form of disruption. It doesn’t treat all variance as equally virtuous. And for many kids, that creates a much more functional learning environment.

That doesn’t mean it works for everyone. Of course not. And if your child feels excluded or unsupported there, that’s a real and important experience. But it’s also true that many families have felt the exact same thing in other D.C. schools—particularly those where wide ability ranges are crammed together with no differentiation, and where behavioral standards are unevenly enforced in the name of inclusion. That too is exclusion, just in a different form.

So for a lot of us, BASIS isn’t good because it’s “better” than everyone else—it’s good because it doesn’t index everything to vulnerability, it doesn’t apologize for standards, and it provides a structured academic environment without pretending every child is the same. If your kid doesn’t thrive in that space, that’s okay. But for those whose kids do, we shouldn’t feel guilty or have to justify it in broader political terms. It just works.

[/quote]

Well, of course it's demographically linked. But people who go to BASIS often complain about unskilled and inexperienced teachers, and I don't hear that as much from other schools, so that's a particular concern with BASIS. If BASIS' "results" are due to demographics and from avoiding serving the more challenging students, and I could get a similar peer group in the honors program at J-R, but with all the benefits of a bigger school (sports, activities, etc), then why choose BASIS? Is it really that different from the honors classes at J-R, in quality and outcomes? I don't think it is. I don't think my kid would have a different outcome. [/quote]

It’s quite different because those of us not zoned for JR have no shot of attending. [/quote]

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