Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do BASIS students ever leave for academic or social reasons? If so, where do they go?

Serious question?! BASIS has been admitting more than 120 5th graders annually for more than a decade and graduating fewer than 70 seniors.

Is BASIS the only acceptable middle school in the DC Metropolitan area for UMC families EotP? Of course not. We know kids who left BASIS after 1-4 years for non-sectarian privates, parochial schools, suburban schools, homeschooling, schools abroad, Stuart Hobson, DCI, Two Rivers, Inspired Teaching etc.

So BASIS regularly loses a large percent of its students from fifth to 12th grade? Currently, the fifth grade has 143 students and the 12th grade has 50. They have 1% ELL students and 4% students with disabilities. And they do not backfill or have to take any new students no matter how well those students may test.

Why wouldn’t they score well on PARCC?

BASIS comes under almost no pressure to serve ELL students and those with the disabilities in the absence of other equally high-performing middle schools East of the Park. BASIS requires ELL students to study either their language spoken at home at the beginning level from 8th grade (yes, the beginning level even if a student is fully bilingual and biliterate), or a second foreign language, a tall order for a kid who already faces challenges learning English. This policy turns many ELL families off, never mind that it's defended tooth and nail by admins and the parent community.

What on earth is the justification for this? Neither option makes sense -- it is not academically sensible to force a fluent speaker into an entry-level course, but most ELL students, while fluent, are often not as fully literate in their first language as they would be were they attending school in that language, so it is more appropriate to take high level language courses in their first language than to start a third language at that age.

It also makes no sense to me because as a school with a MS and HS, it's not like they don't have the high level language courses available, which is the main reason I can think of for doing this.

BASIS sounds like a great school for the right kid but, even though we have an extremely academic child, there are enough little details like this that just confound me that we are likely going to preference ITS and Stuart Hobson over BASIS in the lottery (Latin being our first choice but of course it's a crapshoot). I think our child would do well there academically but I think it would be a tough fit for our family.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do BASIS students ever leave for academic or social reasons? If so, where do they go?

Serious question?! BASIS has been admitting more than 120 5th graders annually for more than a decade and graduating fewer than 70 seniors.

Is BASIS the only acceptable middle school in the DC Metropolitan area for UMC families EotP? Of course not. We know kids who left BASIS after 1-4 years for non-sectarian privates, parochial schools, suburban schools, homeschooling, schools abroad, Stuart Hobson, DCI, Two Rivers, Inspired Teaching etc.

So BASIS regularly loses a large percent of its students from fifth to 12th grade? Currently, the fifth grade has 143 students and the 12th grade has 50. They have 1% ELL students and 4% students with disabilities. And they do not backfill or have to take any new students no matter how well those students may test.

Why wouldn’t they score well on PARCC?

BASIS comes under almost no pressure to serve ELL students and those with the disabilities in the absence of other equally high-performing middle schools East of the Park. BASIS requires ELL students to study either their language spoken at home at the beginning level from 8th grade (yes, the beginning level even if a student is fully bilingual and biliterate), or a second foreign language, a tall order for a kid who already faces challenges learning English. This policy turns many ELL families off, never mind that it's defended tooth and nail by admins and the parent community.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do BASIS students ever leave for academic or social reasons? If so, where do they go?

Serious question?! BASIS has been admitting more than 120 5th graders annually for more than a decade and graduating fewer than 70 seniors.

Is BASIS the only acceptable middle school in the DC Metropolitan area for UMC families EotP? Of course not. We know kids who left BASIS after 1-4 years for non-sectarian privates, parochial schools, suburban schools, homeschooling, schools abroad, Stuart Hobson, DCI, Two Rivers, Inspired Teaching etc.

So BASIS regularly loses a large percent of its students from fifth to 12th grade? Currently, the fifth grade has 143 students and the 12th grade has 50. They have 1% ELL students and 4% students with disabilities. And they do not backfill or have to take any new students no matter how well those students may test.

Why wouldn’t they score well on PARCC?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do BASIS students ever leave for academic or social reasons? If so, where do they go?

Serious question?! BASIS has been admitting more than 120 5th graders annually for more than a decade and graduating fewer than 70 seniors.

Is BASIS the only acceptable middle school in the DC Metropolitan area for UMC families EotP? Of course not. We know kids who left BASIS after 1-4 years for non-sectarian privates, parochial schools, suburban schools, homeschooling, schools abroad, Stuart Hobson, DCI, Two Rivers, Inspired Teaching etc.

So BASIS regularly loses a large percent of its students from fifth to 12th grade? Currently, the fifth grade has 143 students and the 12th grade has 50. They have 1% ELL students and 4% students with disabilities. And they do not backfill or have to take any new students no matter how well those students may test.

Why wouldn’t they score well on PARCC?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do BASIS students ever leave for academic or social reasons? If so, where do they go?

Serious question?! BASIS has been admitting more than 120 5th graders annually for more than a decade and graduating fewer than 70 seniors.

Is BASIS the only acceptable middle school in the DC Metropolitan area for UMC families EotP? Of course not. We know kids who left BASIS after 1-4 years for non-sectarian privates, parochial schools, suburban schools, homeschooling, schools abroad, Stuart Hobson, DCI, Two Rivers, Inspired Teaching etc.

Anonymous wrote:I just love all the reasoning and justifications to why scores are what they are. How about we just accept the scores. They are what they are. It looks like kids at BASIS score very high. Let's move on and see what can be done to help other students/schools score better.

Anonymous wrote:I just love all the reasoning and justifications to why scores are what they are. How about we just accept the scores. They are what they are. It looks like kids at BASIS score very high. Let's move on and see what can be done to help other students/schools score better.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


PP has some serious issues regarding BASIS. BASIS does not control what students come through its doors. Complaining that a school is a great example and has high scores sounds ironic and desperate in a city lacking quality MS and HS. When my in-boundary MS and HS reach BASIS proficiency levels I'll do a rethink. Remember jealousy is a curse.

Actually, if you look at 6th grade scores across schools, Basis doesn't seem all that great, especially for ELA. Our kid was in Basis through 6th, and we decided to leave for a variety of reasons, one of which was the English curriculum (with an extreme focus on grammar and very little writing or reading). It's harder to compare Basis to other schools after 6th, given that many kids get weeded out due to the comps. Kids who are still at Basis by 8th or 9th are probably pretty good at taking tests.

6th grade ELA:
Deal 71
Hardy 67
Oyster 62
Inspired 61
Latin 60
Basis 57

6th grade Math:
Deal 62
Latin 56
Basis 55
Hardy 49
Inspired 43

Basis is a 100% lottery school that draws from all of DC. Deal is mostly in-bounds and draws from wealthy upper NW. And if you look at 6th grade, you are missing the point—the kids haven’t been at middle school that long. Also, you are looking at proficiency rather than looking at what percentage of kids are testing above grade level.

Take a look the 8th grade numbers, which you probably looked at but didn’t bother to cite.

For example, compare Basis to Deal, your top-listed school. This is after most kids have been at both schools for almost 4 years.

8th grade ELA (4 or 5):

Basis 85.22
Deal 71.81

8th grade math (4 or 5):

Basis 73.03
Deal 53.33

As you can see, 8th grade Basis students are far ahead of Deal students in both ELA and math. The fact is that Basis does a far better job teaching advanced English and math than Deal and other schools in DCPS.

If you think that these results are just because older Basis students are “probably pretty good at taking tests,” that is a dumb take. I would also add that there is not much grammar after 6th grade, so your point about English classes is based on an incorrect assumption as well.

The bottom line is that your kid didn’t do well at Basis and dropped out after 6th grade, and is probably at Deal. So, you need to rationalize your decision by citing misleading numbers.

Basis has its faults. But it is by far the best choice for parents in DC with academically minded kids.

Anonymous wrote:Do BASIS students ever leave for academic or social reasons? If so, where do they go?

Anonymous wrote:I think the BASIS data likely has a selection bias problem - kids who score well on PARCC persist at the school between 6ht and 8th grade, while those who score poorly in 6th grade leave by 8th. You can see this in the data (or at least speculate about it) if they test substantially fewer kids in 8th compared to 6th.

So the test is not measuring increasing PROFICIENCY among the same group of students due to BASIS's high-quality teaching. It's reflecting a change in the student population as well.