Reply to Basis fills a gap that shouldn’t exist.

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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]Bottom line, choose Basis and high chance it will not be a good fit either in middle or high school.

No guarantee of anything and you take your risk, play lottery, try to get into private or move.

Chances of any of the above options gets lower each year.  The only sure thing is move.

The end [/quote]

Is moving really a sure thing?

We know families that moved from Ward 6 to MoCo, or Arlington, or Fairfax mainly for schools and seem to regret it. We also know people who paid through the nose to send their kids to the perfect seeming DC privates only to find that their children were miserable at these schools. We even know people who nervously sent a kid who was deeply average at math in ES to BASIS only to discover that the kid liked the program well enough to stay through high school.

I'm no BASIS fan; we only lasted a couple years. But I no longer believe in sure things where adolescents and their schools go. [/quote]

So true. Sometimes I think we agonize over school choice because it’s easier than grappling with the real challenges of adolescence. [/quote]

+1. Why is this concept so hard to understand? Pick the school that is best for your kid! For some that will be BASIS, for some it won’t. For some it will work for only middle school, for some it will work all the way through. Deal with it, because that’s what you chose to deal with when you decided to become a parent.[/quote]

If only you could simply pick. Not in DC, with the lottery system and schools that are basically closed out after fifth or sixth grade, due to limited seats and, in the case of Basis, no backfilling. [/quote]

From this thread, most people don't want to send their kid to BASIS anyway, so it should be easy to get a lottery seat if you are one of the few who do.[/quote]

At least 50% of kids who lottery for BASIS don't get spots. Also, the lack of backfilling compounds this problem because even though some of the kids who DO get spots later decide it's not for them and leave, if you have bad lottery luck the one year you can enter BASIS (5th) then you will never get a spot there again.

The no backfilling is a major reason BASIS attracts a lot of negative attention on these boards. It's important to understand this. And you can defend the no backfilling policy if you want but if you can't understand why it pisses people off, especially given the level of attrition at BASIS and how miserable that 5th grade lottery is for parents thanks to the near impossibility of getting into Latin or DCI, then you don't understand this conversation. Latin and DCI have lower attrition *and* they backfill. All the acceptable DCPS middle and high schools are required to backfill if they have space. Only BASIS doesn't backfill which means [b]it's the one acceptable MS/HS option in the city[/b] that you have exactly one chance at. Of course that is going to result in resentment and criticism.[/quote]

Wait - this is a bit schizophrenic. In this thread, I keep hearing about all the ways that Basis is fundamentally UNacceptable, e.g., lack of flexibility, poor physical plant, sparse extracurriculars, sky high attrition, etc.

If Basis is so awful, who cares about its relatively narrow entry pathway and aversion to backfilling? 
[/quote]

Also it is NOT the one acceptable middle/high school in the city.

Many families don’t even entertain Basis as an option due to above and have absolutely no resentment about the backfilling.

[/quote]

Also add chances are negligible at schools such as Latin and DCI after 5th and 6th.  You basically have the best and one chance in the entry grades

[/quote]

Again, no one said BASIS was the one acceptable option.

But also, DCI is a school where people have tons of chances to get into, because there are a number of DCI feeders where it's fairly easy to lottery in after ECE. Also DCI is easier to enter for some language tracks than others, so you can game the system that way if you are coming from outside of a feeder.

Latin is virtually impossible to get into except in 5th, and recently if you didn't also have a sibling already at the school it was especially hard. However Latin has a middle-of-the-road curriculum and doesn't make grand claims about college admissions or scholarship money. I think Latin gets less resentment because they don't crow about themselves. You almost never see Latin parents on here talking about how great it is. The Latin families I know are basically silently relieved to not have to participate in the MS/HS rat race in the city and don't brag and don't try to convince other people Latin is amazing. But also I think they don't view it as "amazing" for the most part, just acceptable. Whereas BASIS parents don't tend to say "yes, it's good enough, not perfect, we're happy enough." They tend to talk it up and get competitive.[/quote]

I tend to think that less than 3% of Basis or Latin families post on here. [/quote]

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