Anonymous wrote:

What do the children who mastered the material do while the teacher provides remedial instruction to those that did not? Twiddle their thumbs? Is that their reward for having studied hard the previous year?

Exactly. BASIS DC is not a magnet school. Anyone can be admitted there, so there will be all levels of students, anyone from below basic to advanced. I keep wondering how they are going to maintain their high achieving rate with under performing students. Somehow those parents think that their kids are not at the right school; if they move their kids to a high achieving school then their kids will do much better. While it may be true in some aspects, I don't think the school makes a student better achiever.

I wonder how BASIS is going to persuade you to leave if your student isn't up to speed.

Anonymous wrote:Basis offers tutoring and extensive support, and if that doesn't work, the student repeats the grade if they still can't master it. As I understand it, that's entirely within the law, and parents and students are left to their own choices. Yes, they could keep their student at Basis and if they still don't want to or can't work at the material and master it, have their student keep being held behind year after year but just because you can do that doesn't mean it makes sense or that it's the right thing to do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just to expose people to some thoughts (and research!) on the subject of retention, check out this article:

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar08/vol65/num06/Grade-Retention.aspx

Early and steady intervention is the key to success here. That may mean longer days and summer academic programs.

It is interesting that the studies seem focused exclusively on the educational and social impact of a policy of retention on the retained student. Perhaps I was not reading carefully, but I saw no mention of studies gauging the impact of a policy of retention on the retained student's peers.

When a student is retained, not only does he get a second chance to master the material he is having trouble with, but his peers get a chance to advance to more challenging material without the burden of devoting class time to remediation.

It is difficult enough to teach Algebra II to a group of students who have mastered Algebra I. It is much more difficult to do so if you must devote precious instruction time to repeating concepts from Algebra I or Pre-Algebra to those students who were promoted socially. How do you teach a child to factor polynomials when he has trouble factoring integers?

What do the children who mastered the material do while the teacher provides remedial instruction to those that did not? Twiddle their thumbs? Is that their reward for having studied hard the previous year?

Exactly. BASIS DC is not a magnet school. Anyone can be admitted there, so there will be all levels of students, anyone from below basic to advanced. I keep wondering how they are going to maintain their high achieving rate with under performing students. Somehow those parents think that their kids are not at the right school; if they move their kids to a high achieving school then their kids will do much better. While it may be true in some aspects, I don't think the school makes a student better achiever.

I wonder how BASIS is going to persuade you to leave if your student isn't up to speed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


Something tells me you have never set foot inside a low-SES urban classroom.

How come in many parts of the world students from low-SES urban areas jump at the chance for an education and excel in their schooling but often not here???? Attitude maybe???

Anonymous wrote:


Something tells me you have never set foot inside a low-SES urban classroom.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I favor kids being academically prepared to go to the next grade. At the junior high level it's hard to begin to demand this.

So the alternative is what?

It's called "meeting them where they are" and finding an academic pathway to a HS diploma. Just because a student isn't going to take AP classes doesn't mean they're not worth educating or don't deserve a HS diploma. A public charter school doesn't get to say "we'll only take the wheat thank-you-very-much, the chaff needs to be sent back to their neighborhood school."

Why not? The achievement gap has proven impossible to close. Why do we guarantee the failure of charters by demanding that they close the achievement gap?

The charter law creates a financial incentive to serve the needs of all children, provided those needs can be served for about $9,000 per student per year, plus the facilities allotment. Charters that focus on particular segments can serve the needs of those segments more efficiently.

What's wrong with having a charter that focuses on providing a rigorous college prep curriculum? Clearly, not all DC kids are college bound. Aren't the needs of those DC kids who are not college bound better served by charters that provide vocational training?

Isn't the charter law about school choice? About creating alternatives to DCPS?

Because if charters are allowed to cherry pick the best students and leave everyone behind we'll have a two-tiered system for sure. Charters offer choice, they also offer the district schools competition so that they will reform. I am all in favor of more rigorous schools. If DCPS wants to create a magnet MS, then it can be selective. But charters have to educate everyone who walks through the door, regardless of ability or disability.

Basis may go the way of Latin and Yu Ying and skew disproportionately upper middle-class, but at the end of the day they don't get to choose their students.

BASIS does, however, get to choose which of their students advance to 7th grade, 8th grade, etc. Is there any difference other than in 5th and 6th grade?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I favor kids being academically prepared to go to the next grade. At the junior high level it's hard to begin to demand this.

So the alternative is what?

It's called "meeting them where they are" and finding an academic pathway to a HS diploma. Just because a student isn't going to take AP classes doesn't mean they're not worth educating or don't deserve a HS diploma. A public charter school doesn't get to say "we'll only take the wheat thank-you-very-much, the chaff needs to be sent back to their neighborhood school."

What a cop-out. Meeting them where they are ends up meaning not educating them. The idea is academic ADVANCEMENT. First you crawl, then you walk, then you run. But your rationale would have us telling the kids who can walk and who want to run that they have to give all that up and slow down to the crawl of the lowest common denominator all the way through high school.

Sorry, but that is NOT meeting the needs of children for education.

As stated above, that approach is nothing but a glorified daycare and totally misses the point of educating.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I favor kids being academically prepared to go to the next grade. At the junior high level it's hard to begin to demand this.

So the alternative is what?

It's called "meeting them where they are" and finding an academic pathway to a HS diploma. Just because a student isn't going to take AP classes doesn't mean they're not worth educating or don't deserve a HS diploma. A public charter school doesn't get to say "we'll only take the wheat thank-you-very-much, the chaff needs to be sent back to their neighborhood school."

Why not? The achievement gap has proven impossible to close. Why do we guarantee the failure of charters by demanding that they close the achievement gap?

The charter law creates a financial incentive to serve the needs of all children, provided those needs can be served for about $9,000 per student per year, plus the facilities allotment. Charters that focus on particular segments can serve the needs of those segments more efficiently.

What's wrong with having a charter that focuses on providing a rigorous college prep curriculum? Clearly, not all DC kids are college bound. Aren't the needs of those DC kids who are not college bound better served by charters that provide vocational training?

Isn't the charter law about school choice? About creating alternatives to DCPS?

Because if charters are allowed to cherry pick the best students and leave everyone behind we'll have a two-tiered system for sure. Charters offer choice, they also offer the district schools competition so that they will reform. I am all in favor of more rigorous schools. If DCPS wants to create a magnet MS, then it can be selective. But charters have to educate everyone who walks through the door, regardless of ability or disability.

Basis may go the way of Latin and Yu Ying and skew disproportionately upper middle-class, but at the end of the day they don't get to choose their students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I favor kids being academically prepared to go to the next grade. At the junior high level it's hard to begin to demand this.

So the alternative is what?

It's called "meeting them where they are" and finding an academic pathway to a HS diploma. Just because a student isn't going to take AP classes doesn't mean they're not worth educating or don't deserve a HS diploma. A public charter school doesn't get to say "we'll only take the wheat thank-you-very-much, the chaff needs to be sent back to their neighborhood school."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What's wrong with having a charter that focuses on providing a rigorous college prep curriculum? Clearly, not all DC kids are college bound. Aren't the needs of those DC kids who are not college bound better served by charters that provide vocational training?

Isn't the charter law about school choice? About creating alternatives to DCPS?

This is my first post on this board about BASIS. My children are way too young but I've been following the debate with interest. Certainly, we do have tech-oriented charters and a hospitality high etc. So BASIS could round out the mix.

This post (quoted) sparked my memory that there is a charter school for the "gifted, talented, and creative" in Colorado Springs. Here's an introduction to it: http://charterinsights.blogspot.com/2010/01/its-always-interesting-experience.html Open to all, but they're looking for self-identified gifted, talented, and creative learners I guess. One thing that seems different (and good) about this school is that they recognize that kids have different gifts so it sounds like the whole school has math at the same time, and kids can take 2nd grade math (for ex) but 4th grade English (or whatever). No admission requirements, no entrance test, but they do ask you to look at whether your child would be a good fit (while mentioning they are welcoming to all): http://www.academyacl.org/site/goodfit.html

Would this kind of thing fly in DC? I tend to doubt it but I welcome thoughts on this!