Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nothing against her, but she's not a college counselor by trade or experience, she's a chemistry teacher. BASIS should hire a bona fide college counselor to mentor her for a year or two.

Anonymous wrote:She's very smart and pleasant but not experienced or trained, no National Association of College Counselors certification in her background. Good luck to her and you.

Maybe none of you realize, but in 2014 BASIS did initially hire a "certified college counselor" who bragged during info sessions that she "trained under the greatest college counselors in the nation." Her sessions with the students were pointless and wastes of time. She was unhelpful, disorganized, and generally not knowledgeable. So much for being "certified".

I'm not sure what prior experience you think is necessary to be a college counselor. The job essentially guiding students through filling out applications and applying for financial aid/scholarships, plus networking with schools. Competency in those areas relies so much more on the qualities of the person than their "background".

And it's not like the current counselor is just going maverick and winging it because she doesn't have this magic certification. She is connected with a national network of college counselors and travels to national college counselor conferences. She's arranged hundreds of college visits to BASIS including numerous prestigious institutions. The previous counselor arranged a grand total of zero visits.

The current counselor is incredibly knowledgeable and knows what she's doing. The seniors have a daily college counseling course with her, and if you saw how organized and methodical all of it is, your discomfort from her "lack of experience" might be alleviated. The students are in good hands.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The reality for my kid-3 years at Basis and they never went to the library, or anywhere except for the Mall for gym and the Navy/Archives plaza for fire drills.

This BS. Every year the 5th grade students do field trips during comps. Also, my kid had a class where they often went to Smithsonian Art Museum for class or to the sculpture garden. There are also after school clubs that take kids to art museums. Of course, there could be more field trips but there definitely has not been none.

Anonymous wrote:Nothing against her, but she's not a college counselor by trade or experience, she's a chemistry teacher. BASIS should hire a bona fide college counselor to mentor her for a year or two.

Anonymous wrote:She's very smart and pleasant but not experienced or trained, no National Association of College Counselors certification in her background. Good luck to her and you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You make the best of things at BASIS. What you want are better facilities, trained college counselors, a library and so forth on top of all the good rigor. But you can't have all that without moving to the burbs or paying for a private, so you make the best of things. That's all you do. You came here and boost and rationalize away without changing that.

The BASIS facilities are given an unfair bad rap, particularly considering the location -- blocks away from museums, the mall, everything that DC has to offer. As far as a on campus library, what is a waste of resources when we are a couple blocks from the MLK library. I'd personally rather my DC learn to use a real library that they can use for the rest of their life that has so much more to offer than a limited school library. Trained college counselors? That is the last thing on my "wish list." I would like more sports teams, a leadership class, and a parent google group. Expert college counselors are easy to outsource if you aren't happy with the in-house options.

BASIS is better than many of the burb schools or the privates. Maybe not compared to Sidwell, but that can't be the standard since 99% of Americans cannot afford to send their children to Sidwell. DC should be commended for having a public school like BASIS available, particularly with the rich NoVA burbs paying for the private equivalent. DC doesn't appreciate it, because we see schools like Sidwell, Georgetown Day, etc, but if I lived anywhere else, I'd knock DC parents on top of their heads for having any complaints about a public option like BASIS. Friends that rubbed in their admissions to Latin now wish they had ended up in BASIS, IB Deal parents tell me that they had considered BASIS, the K-8 charter schools wish they could compete with a school like BASIS. Those who got in should be counting their lucky stars.

The reality for my kid-3 years at Basis and they never went to the library, or anywhere except for the Mall for gym and the Navy/Archives plaza for fire drills.

Anonymous wrote:

The reality for my kid-3 years at Basis and they never went to the library, or anywhere except for the Mall for gym and the Navy/Archives plaza for fire drills.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Former BASIS parent, promoting teachers to administration without them possessing the requisite qualifications to do the new job or without considering the impact on the impact on the students in the classroom, is SOP at Basis. Promotions there seem to be run like a high school popularity contest.

Another former parent. I knew two former teachers well enough that they confided that their departures were prompted by what they felt was fundamental unfairness with the way the administration treated students.

This concerns me. Please expand. DC and I have visited the campus (niece attends) and we both liked it. I was planning on it being the first choice on the lottery next Spring, as we had only heard good things from niece and SIL.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You make the best of things at BASIS. What you want are better facilities, trained college counselors, a library and so forth on top of all the good rigor. But you can't have all that without moving to the burbs or paying for a private, so you make the best of things. That's all you do. You came here and boost and rationalize away without changing that.

The BASIS facilities are given an unfair bad rap, particularly considering the location -- blocks away from museums, the mall, everything that DC has to offer. As far as a on campus library, what is a waste of resources when we are a couple blocks from the MLK library. I'd personally rather my DC learn to use a real library that they can use for the rest of their life that has so much more to offer than a limited school library. Trained college counselors? That is the last thing on my "wish list." I would like more sports teams, a leadership class, and a parent google group. Expert college counselors are easy to outsource if you aren't happy with the in-house options.

BASIS is better than many of the burb schools or the privates. Maybe not compared to Sidwell, but that can't be the standard since 99% of Americans cannot afford to send their children to Sidwell. DC should be commended for having a public school like BASIS available, particularly with the rich NoVA burbs paying for the private equivalent. DC doesn't appreciate it, because we see schools like Sidwell, Georgetown Day, etc, but if I lived anywhere else, I'd knock DC parents on top of their heads for having any complaints about a public option like BASIS. Friends that rubbed in their admissions to Latin now wish they had ended up in BASIS, IB Deal parents tell me that they had considered BASIS, the K-8 charter schools wish they could compete with a school like BASIS. Those who got in should be counting their lucky stars.

Anonymous wrote:You make the best of things at BASIS. What you want are better facilities, trained college counselors, a library and so forth on top of all the good rigor. But you can't have all that without moving to the burbs or paying for a private, so you make the best of things. That's all you do. You came here and boost and rationalize away without changing that.

Anonymous wrote:If you're satisfied with the current BASIS college counselor, great, lucky for you. We're not, although we adored her as a chem teacher and admire her smarts and commitment to helping kids.

As things stand, we plan to hire an independent counselor to assist our BASIS student (a sophomore) in preparing her applications. We know other BASIS parents who plan to do the same. College counseling speakers in the last 18 months have impressed us, one in particular, so we're making arrangements to hire her. We plan to pay at least 1K for admissions support, maybe as much as 2K.

Our student has her heart set on a school admitting in the single digits, along with the academics, extra-curriculars and drive if she keeps going the way she's going, so we don't want to mess around. We don't need college fairs - we know the schools we're aiming for and what they have to offer (reference FISKE Guide "Academics 5 Pens"). One school is mom's alma mater.

But, hey, who's complaining, the arrangement is vastly cheaper than years of tuition at Sidwell or NCS.

Yay, you?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:not pp but another former parent.
BASIS uses the survival of the fittest model, with the fittest not necessarily being the smartest or most hard working. A student can get really good grades all year long; however 2 exams January precomp and June comp/final test) count for 60% of the entire year. So when admin wants to get rid of a student, they just give an F for the final exam and The A's becomes a C- and the B's becomes a D. And there have been several cases of large discrepancies in the grades given by teachers and marks in the report cards. I understand grade manipulation happens in many schools, but not to this extend.

This is BS. Any parent and student can request a meeting to review actual comprehensive tests per their policy which would make grade manipulation impossible.

Also, the comprehensive exams I saw were rather easy IMO and you only need 60% to pass which is a low bar.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Terrific chemistry teacher and extremely smart, decent and personable person. But there are various certifications in counseling she could have completed but hasn't, e.g. a popular 8-course certificate offered by UCLA Extension. She also hasn't graduated from blue chip schools (Ivies, high octane STEM programs). You think that BASIS would hire an experienced college counselor who really knows the ropes, rather than a 20-something eager beaver who really knows the kids.

People with an Ivy degree on their resume (and I am one) often tend to think that the prestige means they're obviously smarter and somehow "better" than those who don't. We're not. A lot of very smart people get degrees from schools that aren't on the US News Top Ten list.

Anonymous wrote:Terrific chemistry teacher and extremely smart, decent and personable person. But there are various certifications in counseling she could have completed but hasn't, e.g. a popular 8-course certificate offered by UCLA Extension. She also hasn't graduated from blue chip schools (Ivies, high octane STEM programs). You think that BASIS would hire an experienced college counselor who really knows the ropes, rather than a 20-something eager beaver who really knows the kids.