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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP who has a couple weeks to decide if we take our BASIS spot for a kid who excels in math and Spanish or stay at Oyster-Adams with a view to going private at some point, trying to lottery into DCI (which sounds impossible for Spanish), or moving to the burbs. We haven't been happy with STEM or humanities challenge in DCPS thus far.

I just read through this thread, and a couple other recent BASIS threads. Reading between the lines, BASIS sounds militant about what students learn and don't learn. The business of demanding that kids who came up through immersion language study take beginning languages sounds a big detour from best ed practices. Why can't middle school kids with the background to study a particular AP subject offered at BASIS do so long before 11th grade, be it calculus (which, apparently, is allowed), or a humanities subject, or a language? Who would be hurt by some flexibility, particularly where like-minded parents are prepared to organize and pay for after-school instruction? I also don't get why there's no PTA at BASIS, if I got that right.

On a call with a BASIS admin to ask these questions this past week, I was told that the obstacles to middle school students who are ready for AP work from pursuing it outside math are threefold. In a nutshell, "scheduling and resource obstacles and a policy not to overwhelm students pursuing rigor in other areas." This approach doesn't sound like a 21st century solution. Before anybody jumps on me for being entitled in wanting "preferential treatment," consider the fact that the highest-performing middle schools in this country aren't prone to require their most advanced students to take beginning classes in subjects they've long since mastered.[/quote]

I used to think that parents who enrolled at BASIS expecting the school to bend to their whims were the most entitled parents on earth. You, madam, have shown me the error of my ways. You aren't even enrolled and still have 3 paragraphs of suggestions and critiques about the way the school is run. You seem genuinely surprised that the HOS didn't change the school based on your suggestions. Well played!!!![/quote]

Your problem, sir, is that the parent and taxpayer above is right.

We'd have better public schools if "best ed practices" were the order of the day, vs. having charter franchises force students who've already mastered content to sit in beginning classes, yea.

More actual innovation wouldn't be misplaced in one of the country's lowest performing urban school systems. I'm tired of charters paying lip service to innovation and experimentation when the game they're playing is to promote the opposite. Too many talented, accomplished kids who get spots at BASIS don't enroll because their parents read the writing on the wall. We know top 5th grade math students EotP whose parents had the same (logical) reaction as PP above.

These kids move or go private. Who wins, you? How?

-Signed BASIS parent of 2 years [/quote]

The point you fail to grasp is that no one is "forced" to attend BASIS or be subjected to their curriculum choices. We have choice in DC. I happen to agree that we'd be better off if DCPS provided better options, but they don't. So your choice is a DCPS option, BASIS, private or move out of DC. You chose, but what you really advocate for is BASIS to be what you want and wish DCPS provided. It's ok to want things. It is something else entirely to play the martyr card and act like you are being forced to stay at BASIS. I have more patience and respect for the people that left and come here to complain years later. You, sir, are hypocrite. You stay at BASIS and enjoy the STEM focused curriculum and rigor that is by all accounts innovative, while you loudly complain.

The "winners" are the kids who choose to stay at BASIS and thrive, the kids who choose to move to privates and thrive, the kids who choose to go to Walls and thrive, and the kids who choose to move to Fairfax and thrive. You seem not to understand "choice".        [/quote]

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