Reply to How was the meeting with the admin meeting last week at BASIS?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]As for your previous comment about the "rare" student populace, consider this: unlike some of the other BASIS locations, DC also has a very unusually skewed populace at both ends - while we have 40%, predominantly low SES who drop out, at the other end, given Washington DC's unique position and role where it comes to national and international policy, it's filled with think tanks, research organizations, et cetera and has a disproportionately high number of A-type, and PhD type families (one of the highest concentrations of PhDs in the nation) who've come to DC from all over the nation, and all over the world - that are highly motivated and driven and who are perfectly fine with the acceleration, expectations and workload that BASIS puts on kids - it's not such a "rare" thing here, and certainly a very different demographic, culture and mindset from the southwest, where I also lived for a while. [/quote]

NP here: That may be the case, but many of us who do have a Ph.D. don't support the mad rush to teach calculus to 8th graders, to take 5 AP classes in 10th grade, etc. We want and expect our kids to excel academically but to also have time and energy to be in the school play, join the cross country team, learn to paint, read for leisure, and yes, even play travel soccer. We don't want to raise automatons who can excel in cram schools (see the many articles about kids pushed too far, too fast by these in, for instance, S. Korea); we want well-rounded, well-adjusted, and happy children who can do quite well in math and science while also writing 20-page papers on Plato, learning an instrument or two, and having some semblance of a normal teenage lifestyle. I know Basis has a plan for the math and science, but I am much less sure about the other things. Having visited the school fairly recently, it's quite clear that the other departments--especially English, visual arts, music, and languages--are way behind the game vs. many other schools (public, private, and charter) in the area. Yes, I know that they have a drama club, etc., but what they're offering is not going to meet the standards of many parents who want well-rounded kids AND who have choices, and that may well be why they're losing rising 9th graders. The program just seems very extreme and one-dimensional.

Since there are now, happily, several good choices available for many incoming high schoolers, there's no reason that Basis wouldn't be carefully considered by those who are exclusively interested in STEM--except that Basis doesn't accept ninth graders. In the end, Basis in DC might have a very, very small group of kids, and so might not be able to weather the storm financially.[/quote]

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