^^ BTW - thanks for the posts about the English. It has made me more comfortable although we will be practicing writing this summer.

Anonymous wrote:Where is the "common knowledge" allegation about Latin coming from? The school is 60% AA, more in the upper grades. The school had a 93% graduation rate last year with its second graduating class (which was probably at least over 85% AA) and an amazing college placement record. My speculation as a Latin parent is that if certain DC AA families have issues with Latin it is because Latin does not apply the "soft bigotry of low expectations" customarily seen in the poorer-performing DCPS schools. Not getting your kid to school on time? Then Latin is going to want to talk to you. Is your kid trying to wear his uniform pants hanging below his butt (like I saw one kid going in last week)? Then Latin is going to tell your kid to pull his pants up and wear a belt. Your kid being disrespectful in class and talking to classmates when the teacher is trying to teach? Then Latin is not going to be very patient with any classroom behavior that impedes the ability of other children who DO want to be quiet and listen. Latin has clear expectations of its students---of any race.

It is obvious that you are not the parent of an AA male from an upperclass background who has attended Latin. Most of my friends left for private school. I am talking about parents who have exceedingly high expectations and are not in any of the categories you generalized about. Just because the quality middle school options are limited doesn't mean people don't know what is going on. Most parents of AA males from high achieving families are happy at Latin until it happens to them and then they flee and warn the rest of us of the pitfalls. Cutts assumes they are all from the same background unless you are very visible. A few of them have been on the Board and report back about their attitude regarding the FARM boys. One example of many - The part that did it for me was when Martha Cutts wrote off some of the 7th grade boys that were having issues in math. They even told my friend's son that he didn't have to come to school the day of DC CAS. When he went anyway; he secretly texted her and told her that they were being assigned to a separate room together, not with their class, to take the DC CAS. Hmmmm, I wonder why. Could it be that they could conveniently loose that room's tests? She had to go to the school to insist that he take the DC CAS with his class; she also paid for private tutoring throughout the rest of the year once she realized Latin had written those boys off. We were both very sad for the parents that didn't realize that their children were not being educated. It was Martha Cutts doing; she did not give the teacher support with this class (the teacher had a good heart but was very young and inexperienced) because she could care less and didn't want them there. I'm sure they washed out; my friend's son went to private school. For the parents I know that are still there; they have their eye peeled and are ever present and have a back-up plan to flee if needed. Just because they don't go around complaining to you doesn't mean that they don't see what is happening. In addition, most of us realize that you have to teach your child to deal with unfairness and adversity and to not let it get the best of you because they will deal with it most days of their life once they are close to 6 feet tall and look like a man rather than the teenager that they are.

Although I have an issue with some of the quality at BASIS; it is the type of adversity that I expect and want my AA male exposed too. If you are late with an assignment you get no credit or half. ALL the kids learn quickly to rise to the level expected or your grades suffer. I couldn't ask for a better peer group for him in his class although it is over 2/3 girls. He and his friends have taken on an IEP child who doesn't do his work and are constantly on him to improve. This kid made most improved last grading period. You can't pay for that type of experience. When the kid calls on the weekend, I teach him phone etiquette and have encouraged my child not to spend all his time making chit chat but in order to stay on the phone longer than 20-30 minutes they must be doing work together. The environment is great and as a native Washingtonian I love that he is going to school on the mall. When I grew up we went all over the city on the bus and I hung out on the mall a lot. When you are an adult it is an experience that you remember. I still remember our impromptu picnics on the Capitol gounds - this was way before 9/11. It is funny, according to the Post the city was 70% AA then yet you could hang out on the Capitol grounds and the Congress people didn't bother you. BASIS is not nirvana but he is learning to be a good person that stives to be high-performing during his formative years. When it is unfair, it is fair unfairness as in applied to ALL. I will reevaluate at high school whether it is still the program for us. In the meantime, I will supplement with what I think he is missing. Hope this helps the OP. Not saying not to go to Latin just be VERY aware and careful or it could cost you a lot of expense and time on the backend.

Bear in mind that behavior problems showing up in a middle school aren't necessarily reflective on the school. It's more a reflection on the background of the students leading up to the point where they changed to a new school. Many DCPS schools have serious problems with classroom management, discipline and behavior - they tend to only focus on the worst of the worst, and much else is left to slide.

Add to this that soft bigotry of low expectations, with many bleeding hearts in the system saying "what do you expect from student 'x', he/she is coming from a bad home life".

Add to this, a lack of proper parenting in some homes - the kid who shows up late to school, has nothing but cheetos and purple drank for lunch.

By the time they are in 5th or 6th grade, that student already as 11 or 12 years of this, no parenting, no guidance, having bad behavior ignored, they are accustomed to getting their way, for example if they don't like a class or teacher, they figure they can just ignore the teacher and disrupt that class - there's over a decade of negative conditioning already in these kids by the time they arrive in middle school - a huge amount of issues to overcome and a lot of bad habits and bad behaviors that have to be unlearned - and that's not going to just magically happen within a few months of changing to a new school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:BASIS parent here...

I feel the English instruction is very poor in the 5th grade at BASIS. All they have done is diagram sentences and have not written one paragragh, let alone essay, in English. They are now reading Peter Pan as their 1st book and it is almost February. They also have not done any vocabulary. I had to use the music assignment to reinforce paragraph and essay structure.

PP (Math prof) here -- I wanted to reply separately. DS falls into this category, as well. Because we used the MCT language arts curriculum, we have found BASIS English to be very remedial. With AP exams expected in 8th grade, we would prefer proper essay writing to hold greater priority.

But, to be fair, this is DC. Many kids need remedial grammar in 5th, and there is a method to BASIS' madness. MCT followed a similar approach, and it is a good one. First, focus on the parts of speech, and understand how the sentence is properly constructed. Once you do that, you can move on to proper paragraph formation. Only then are you ready for essay construction. Otherwise, the kids' essays would tend to look like a lot our posts on DCUM.

Maybe slightly OT--but almost all of what I did in 5th grade in English was diagram sentences and learn grammar. I went to a very good parochial school in another part of the country 30 years ago. At the time, of course, it wasn't that exciting, but it has been INVALUABLE. I see adults who can't write a coherent or grammatical sentence, and I silently thank my fifth-grade teacher for the excellent grounding she gave me. You can't write good paragraphs or good essays if you can't write a good sentence.

Anonymous wrote:Fwiw I know of 3 families at the moment who would like to switch out of Basis 6th and 7th grades because the teachers can't keep control of the class.

Knowing the content area inside out is a requisite of being a good teacher, but there is more to it as well.

It is very sad that there is truth in that statement. Teaching has become less about teaching, and more about babysitting. In college, prospective teachers spend far more time learning classroom management than they do learning the content to be delivered. A math teacher often needs little more than D's in college algebra and elementary statistics.

Wonder why some kids are left wanting by our schools?

So, as a parent, you have to choose whether the content is more important to you, or the classroom etiquette is more important to you. Unfortunately, no available public or charter school truly offers both. BASIS does as good a job as any. Over time, the disruptions should diminish. The kids that survive will be the ones that do not cause major problems. Then, the culture will start to set in, and the younger ones will start to fall in line. In DC, it's going to take a little longer than the folks at the corporate office realized.