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<p>Wow. Just wow. That is serious, serious grade inflation. What a joke.
I wonder if they also curve the grade to even get that C+</p>
<p>By the way, since AP scores for senior year don’t come out until after the admissions cycle, it seems to provide an incentive to load up on AP courses in the first three years. You don’t want to show those C+ on your mid-year report senior year.</p>
<p>@mathyone, if you are interested in Basis retention rates they are discussed at pp. 37-38 of this powerpoint presentation to the board of our local school district. <a href=“http://susd.schoolfusion.us/modules/groups/homepagefiles/cms/394763/File/Board%20Meeting%20Documents/01-14-14/SUSD-Enrollment-and-Demographics-Projection-to-2022.pdf?sessionid=a2cb86861697d95b3f280ec089de9fe9”>http://susd.schoolfusion.us/modules/groups/homepagefiles/cms/394763/File/Board%20Meeting%20Documents/01-14-14/SUSD-Enrollment-and-Demographics-Projection-to-2022.pdf?sessionid=a2cb86861697d95b3f280ec089de9fe9</a>
The largest number of students leave at the start of 9th grade, which is probably for a variety of reasons including just wanting a more traditional high school experience with football games, band, cheerleaders, wider selection of sports and extracurriculars, etc. But as others have noted, the students that are left in 12th grade are students who would excel anywhere. If you took the top 25 students at our public high school (out of a senior class of 550+) they would totally hold their own with the Basis senior class. We had 4 seniors be admitted to MIT this year, as well as kids who got into Stanford, Princeton, Duke, etc. and you can be sure none of them got to magically turn C’s into A’s by getting a 3 on their AP exams. But our public high school also has all the average and struggling kids, the special needs kids, the kids with IEP’s and 504 plans, the kids from totally dysfunctional homes, etc. In theory the charter schools are supposed to take all those kids too, but it doesn’t seem to work out that way.</p>
<p>Yes, 40% loss after 8th grade and about 18% per year thereafter.</p>
<p>I notice the “SUSD” overall AP pass rate is listed at 69%, so lower than BASIS but still well above average. A lot of those students are scoring 3 though. Roughly 40% getting 4 or 5 and roughly 30% getting 3.</p>
<p>Well I guess that means that 70% of SUSD AP students would get A’s at Basis. Seriously, though, I think Basis is a fine option for the right kind of student. But I’m unconvinced that Basis will be any more successful than a public school at taking an average middle school student and turning that student into a successful HYPSM applicant. </p>
<p>(BTW, I’m not at all opposed to charters. I have a middle school student on a waiting list for a charter – not Basis.)</p>
<p>It would be interesting if they did a longitudinal study where they matched kids entering BASIS with control kids who have very comparable records staying in the regular schools and just see what happens over the years.</p>
<p>Yes, I would be particularly interested in seeing how the Basis students do at the most accelerated math track, i.e., how many of them stay on it and how do they do in college. I think middle school parents get stars in their eyes when they see the math track and imagine their child is a math genius. I just know anecdotally that the ones who end up back at the public high school are given placement tests and usually placed either (1) at a more typical level for a public school AP/Honors student, or (2) made to go back and take geometry because it hasn’t been learned with adequate rigor. Presumably the real math geniuses are part of the 26 still standing at the end.</p>
<p>Our schools are quite liberal with math acceleration in middle school. Based on my observations, for our predominantly middle class and somewhat well educated community, I’d guess perhaps the top 10-20% of students would be well served to be in the bottom math track for BASIS (that’s starting algebra1 in 7th grade). Perhaps the top 2% would be right for the middle track (algebra 1 in 6th grade). And about the top 0.5% would benefit from the top math track (algebra1 in 5th grade). That’s assuming the kids are motivated of course. I’ve seen plenty of kids being pushed beyond their developmental ability, and I’ve also seen a few who didn’t have the opportunity or parental advocacy being bored out of their minds.</p>
<p>@Corinthian FYI the C grade of an AP student does not magically convert to an A if he or she gets a 3 on the AP> It converts to at B-. </p>
<p>Link to handbook. See page 89. <a href=“http://basisschools.org/sites/default/files/BIS_Handbook_2013_0114.pdf”>http://basisschools.org/sites/default/files/BIS_Handbook_2013_0114.pdf</a>?</p>
<p>just wanted to clarify. </p>
<p>A C+ converts to an A- if you get a 3. Not sure of the weighting, but obviously a 3, which college board says is “passing” is some kind of A at BASIS. </p>
<p>My daughter commented this week that one of her AP tests hardly asked anything about what she considered was 1/3 of the course content. It seems like a poor practice to base an entire year’s grade so heavily on a 3 hour test. But I guess it would help motivate the kids to get those scores.</p>
<p>I just read this article. The first thought that occurred to me was that is it ethical/legal to build a reputation of being one of the best schools in the country based on “firing” most of the weaker students and then open a private school to further cash in? </p>
<p>Nothing wrong with opening a private school but should it be allowable to leverage assets and reputation gained via public money to be utilized for private purposes? I am all for privatization to drive up quality, responsibility and accountability but isn’t there something troubling about this?</p>
<p><a href=“How to Properly Cash in on the Charter School Movement | HuffPost Latest News”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;
<p>As a Silicon Valley teacher myself, I’m very skeptical of a school that touts its PISA scores as evidence of its own excellence. Basis kids (and parents) select the school based on its perceived suitability and challenge – my guess is that these kids would do well on the PISA test regardless of their school. What evidence does Basis have that the kids are succeeding BECAUSE OF the education Basis is providing? How many of these students were struggling academically before they enrolled in Basis? What particular aspect of Basis’s educational philosophy is responsible for major leaps in achievement expected in such a superior school? </p>
Hello. We sent our daughter to Basis Tucson (5th and 6th grades)… whew! What stress-pool! The focus is all on tests and memorization–although they give lip-service to the “well-rounded student”. We discovered that all extra-curricular activities were at the expense/time of the parents and weren’t really a part of the school’s central focus of “score higher”. Our Basis was in a tiny strip mall --overcrowed, and the staff using the local park for PE. Interestingly, the new Basis in Tucson is on a tiny strip of land with no outdoor resources–and the school still uses public parks as the gymnasium for the school. I don’t know if they are building their new schools near public facilities and using these to augment their curriculum, but it was and is the way they work here in Tucson.
Anyway, our beautiful, funny, smart daughter came home many days in tears–we pulled her out for 7th grade and home-schooled her/traveled --basically allowed her to be a kid again and to recuperate from the nightmarish place that we found Basis to be. In 8th grade, she was ready to go back, but we chose a private school that was academically rigorous and had arts/community as a part of the whole environment. Now, she is a sophomore at the tough (ie.: test to get in), public high school in town. Overall, I think some kids and parents adapt well to what Basis is all about—and there is no doubt you will cover a lot of material at the school–and do very well in college. But some kids, my daughter among them, was drowned by the stress to succeed (and she did spectacularly well!) but at the cost of being happy and having time to do kid stuff.
I never liked the fact that BASIS Schools were founded by two economists—their focus is to develop a very finely honed school environment that almost promises your child admittance to the most selective colleges if you just “stick with our program”–and they used Arizona’s charter school/free school to develop their ideas, but with the long-view of creating private schools (in wealthy communities around the country) that would create a lucrative business for them. There are several BASIS entities: Basis Schools .ORG and Basis .COM. The .org part contracts with the .com part —there is a lot of money being made by the owners and their family members.
“What evidence does Basis have that the kids are succeeding BECAUSE OF the education Basis is providing?” I have no experience with Basis, but as far as I can tell from looking over their materials when this thread was previously active, the main benefit would be in the earlier grades, for kids who are very gifted and very motivated. I think most middle schools do a very poor job of challenging highly gifted kids. (As I understand, middle school is where US schools fall behind in international comparisons). Our school system is above average. But most of the middle school curriculum is way below what our top students–the sort of students who might be attracted to and successful at Basis–are capable of and they are bored out of their minds. At the high school level we have plenty of AP courses and I don’t see much difference between Basis and what our top students are doing. In fact our students get slightly higher scores on the AP tests, and that includes kids who likely would never have signed up for Basis or would have dropped out early on. At the same time, our middle school is math-acceleration happy and we see a lot of good students floundering. So I don’t think that putting a good but not really exceptional student in an environment like Basis is going to magically convert them into a math whiz.