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][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]

Those criticisms only emerge because people are resentful about how unavailable BASIS is as an option. It makes BASIS an all or nothing option, which heightens criticism of their approach. If BASIS were an option you could opt into later, when it was clear your kid would do well in their system, people wouldn't be as critical.

The backfilling issue makes BASIS exclusive and out of reach for a lot of families, and that's going to attract negative attention.[/quote]

But Latin is even more exclusive, even with (sibling) backfilling. This is pure emotion and pathetic. [/quote]

So Latin and DCI do backfill?
[/quote]

Yes - but not to a degree adequate to address the problem of two few UMC-acceptable middle and high schools. Those schools may allow more opportunities for later entry, but statistically, one has a much better chance at getting a 5th grade slot at Basis (~50%) than EVER getting a spot Latin or DCI.

[/quote]

Weak teaching is my biggest fear at Basis. Looking at it as a prospective parent, I see lower compensated non-union teachers and a fairly standard administration. Is this overcome by the cohort since the Basis model weeds out at-risk kids? In other words, having more kids from educated  parents will help children excel even if the teachers are sub-optimal? Asking because this is a major reversal for my family if we pursue Basis; we are currently in a Title 1 school with a high at-risk population, but fantastic administration that attracts high quality teachers. [/quote]

Please, please talk to real BASIS families and teachers before making this choice.

We also came from a title 1 DCPS and loved the teachers and were worried about this.

More than half of my kids teachers at BASIS are better than any DCPS teacher they've ever had. A couple were young and inexperienced, but the curriculum was strong enough that my child still learned. But the good teachers are truly fantastic, and they are different than DCPS bc they are subject matter experts, so they have degrees in history or biology, etc. whereas DCPS teachers are experts in teaching. This was useful in elementary, but my child gets excited by the topics at BASIS bc the teachers are more interested in the topics.

[/quote]
Above is a really rosy view of what the story is with the BASIS teachers, especially in the middle school. As background, several few years ago, a parent group formed at BASIS (without authorization, mostly parents of HS students as older sibs) that took it upon itself to check into teachers' backgrounds and to politely confront admins who were exaggerating their expertise, among other things. What these parents found that a good many of these so-called "subject matter experts" in fact had no substantive expertise in the subjects they were hired to teach. Some of them weren't in fact, people with MAs, or even BAs, in sciences teaching sciences.

Sure, BASIS teachers probably are better overall than those in your run of the mill DCPS elementary school (outside Upper NW and a few in Ward 6), but that's not a high bar to clear. If you don't expect the sun, the moon and the stars where BASIS teachers go, you won't be disappointed.  What we found in the middle school is that good teachers had a way of disappearing to the burbs wherever else after a year or two. They use BASIS as a teacher training program/hands-on experience before running off to jobs with better benefits, pay and training.[/quote]

I'm somewhat in between the two previous posts. Most importantly, I think there's a LOT of variation in the quality of the teachers. Overall, I think the teaching is stronger in HS, but there's variation in both MS and HS. Most teachers are good, some are excellent, and many of those have been teaching for decades. But there certainly are bad teachers: The good news is that because of the flexibility that comes with being a charter school, the truly awful teachers are not rehired after the end of the year or are in some cases fired. The bad news is that leads to more turnover, but turnover is down from a few years ago.

With teaching as with all aspects of the school, or any school, the question is not whether it's great, but how it compares to other alternatives you might be considering.[/quote]

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