Congress and Bill Clinton mandated that DC implement charter schools to the city.

Which has nothing to do with this thread, which is about some students’ college acceptances at BASIS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yea, real problems.

Can we include a cram school housed in a cramped office building graduating 50 students a year substituting for acceptable neighborhood public middle and high schools EotP?

Not everyone at Basis has an acceptable public school option. Our options were Walker Jones and Dunbar.

What Fenty and the city council myopically chose to do over a decade ago was create a parallel public school system--dozens of DC charter schools--to address the problem of failing neighborhood schools. They did this rather than run with a vision to work with DCPS leaders and the teachers unions to dramatically improve at least some of the existing traditional middle and high schools, enabling these programs to begin to attract sizeable cohorts of UMC families. The unions were seen as the enemy, vs. partners in reform.

For example, the City could have created a serious test-in International Baccalaureate Diploma program at the rebooted Eastern HS with a City-wide draw and neighborhood preference, fed by a serious IB Middle Years Program at a DCPS MS. Instead, the politicians allowed DCI, Latin, BASIS etc. to be established as alternatives to failing Capitol Hill DCPS programs. In the suburbs, voters wouldn't have tolerated this short-sighted variant of ed reform, which has created classes of the unlucky and lucky in the charter lottery. It has also led to the rise of a variety of charters with decent academics but weak facilities and no real obligation to serve all comers (e.g. Sped and ELL students). If you aren't lucky, or even if you are and can't abide by somewhat dreary charters which don't serve all comers well (e.g. BASIS), your best option is often to move to a VA or MD suburb to access a strong neighborhood school.

DC could have had created strong comprehensive neighborhood middle and high school programs EotP, rather than charters, partly to keep UMC families in the City. We already had the demographics to support robust academics, but there was no political will to create the programs to house them. In short, DC voters have let the politicians off the hook.

Yale and Cornell ED lets you apply elsewhere but if you are accepted to Yale / Cornell you must attend Yale / Cornell.

Untrue. Cornell IS Early Decision. Yale is SCEA--Single Choice Early Action. That's the same as Harvard,Stanford and Princeton. You can't apply early to other private colleges, but it is NOT binding. You can still wait and see what your other financial aid offers look like.

Anonymous wrote:Yea, real problems.

Can we include a cram school housed in a cramped office building graduating 50 students a year substituting for acceptable neighborhood public middle and high schools EotP?

They graduate 50 a year. And prepare just as many or a strong high school experience at SWW, Banneker, Wilson or a private school very well.

Anonymous wrote:Yea, real problems.

Can we include a cram school housed in a cramped office building graduating 50 students a year substituting for acceptable neighborhood public middle and high schools EotP?

Not everyone at Basis has an acceptable public school option. Our options were Walker Jones and Dunbar.

Anonymous wrote:Not buying it. You're in no position to know how many got in early without being a Yale admissions officer, which you aren't.

Incorrect. Yale tells all alumni interviewers in DC that info. 18 kids from 9 schools.

Not buying it. You're in no position to know how many got in early without being a Yale admissions officer, which you aren't.

18 kids from DC schools got in early to Yale this year, so 3 being from BASIS alone is super impressive.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find this implausible, and I am not a BASIS hater or critic.

How many kids among those 5 acceptances? I know of 1 Ivy and 1 MIT.

Pp - 6 different kids. 3 at Yale, 1 Dartmouth, 1 MIT and 1 Tufts early confirmed.

Of these, bow many URM ?

Who cares how many legacies there are???!!!

Whether the answer is zero or numerous the reality seems the same: that bright, hard-working kids at Basis are able to access top colleges.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find this implausible, and I am not a BASIS hater or critic.

How many kids among those 5 acceptances? I know of 1 Ivy and 1 MIT.

Pp - 6 different kids. 3 at Yale, 1 Dartmouth, 1 MIT and 1 Tufts early confirmed.

3 legacies

No. One double-legacy.

So grandparents are not considered legacies?

Depends on the college. For a few it counts, for others it doesn't.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find this implausible, and I am not a BASIS hater or critic.

How many kids among those 5 acceptances? I know of 1 Ivy and 1 MIT.

Pp - 6 different kids. 3 at Yale, 1 Dartmouth, 1 MIT and 1 Tufts early confirmed.

3 legacies

No. One double-legacy.

So grandparents are not considered legacies?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find this implausible, and I am not a BASIS hater or critic.

How many kids among those 5 acceptances? I know of 1 Ivy and 1 MIT.

Pp - 6 different kids. 3 at Yale, 1 Dartmouth, 1 MIT and 1 Tufts early confirmed.

3 legacies

No. One double-legacy.

More "progressive charter" curricula for MS & HS? Washington Latin's curriculum looks a whole lot like the one my devout Catholic grandfather followed in the 1920s! All that school Latin helped him enter a seminary afterwards, until he decided not to graduate to become a priest. We want our children to study modern languages and current affairs in school. BASIS' STEM heavy curriculum is really weak on English lit. From where I sit, DCPS' MS and HS curriculum isn't the problem - lack of academic rigor is, and in a big way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yea, real problems.

Can we include a cram school housed in a cramped office building graduating 50 students a year substituting for acceptable neighborhood public middle and high schools EotP?

I think this is the real question: Are charter schools like Basis substituting for acceptable neighborhood public middle and high schools? Yes, it's absolutely true that if Basis weren't there, some engaged kids and parents would be going to neighborhood schools, bringing their talents, enthusiams, and ability to put political pressure on DCPS, and therefore helping to improve those schools. But how many - more than a handful? How much difference would they make in the overall quality of those schools? How much worse would the education of those kids be compared to what they are getting at BASIS? I really don't know.

I do know that the quality of neighborhood middle schools before charters was dismal. Granted, that was in a very different economic environment. There are many more upper-middle class families sending their children to public schools in DC now - both DCPS and charter. How much of that growth was due to charters? How much was because of other factors, such as the decline in crime? If those families were drawn into DC for other reasons, maybe without charters many of them would have gone to neighborhood schools.

- Basis middle school parent, whose child seems pretty happy and is certainly learning more than in his DCPS elementary school

As a parent if a high schooler and a middle schooler at BASIS EotP, we would have gone private or moved before we would have sent our DCs to the IB DCPS option. Going to a charter had no impact at all by us on our IB school.

Sure, there would be many to make that decision. But for other IB schools that are further along towards becoming desirable, nearby charters may have sucked any momentum out of them, or at least slowed it. These scenarios happen too.

Sure some charters take some kids from their IB. But some parents choose charters because of the more progressive curriculum in addition to the peer group.