<p>This is a young kid. I hope he is given a chance to be a kid. Time to play with friends, go outdoors, play an instrument, ride his bike. Just have fun. </p>
<p>These posts sound like the goal is to package a 13 year old kid for a future stem career. </p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I think this is very premature. Let this kid be a kid. </p>
<p>No Geometry in BASIS? I didn’t see any. </p>
<p>Yes, that seems odd that geometry is not listed. Perhaps it is included in other courses? (The two years for calculus is another oddity considering how advanced the students are expected to be, as noted previously.)</p>
<p>In any case, it appears that this school is appropriate for a specific type of very advanced student (particularly in math) whose normal public and private school options are unable to provide appropriate courses and curricula for the student’s learning pace. But the OP’s student appears to be advanced within the normal range (one year ahead in math) that is easily accommodated within a normal good public or private school. Attending a normal good public or private school would likely be a better choice for the student than being at the bottom of the class struggling to catch up at the BASIS school in what he thinks is his strongest subject (math).</p>
<p>It is not necessary to try to force a good somewhat advanced student to be super-advanced in order to have a good academic outcome – indeed, such “tiger parenting” may be unhelpful to student mental health and family relations, especially if the student fails to live up to the parent’s expectations by being merely very good rather than super elite.</p>
<p>They will first time have 400 new students(most of them will be 5th and 8th grade students) from local public and private school. I don’t think he will be at the bottom of the class if he attends. But I don’t know if BASIS will slow paces for them.</p>
<p>There are many well established private high schools in Silicon Valley with long track records of success and advanced coursework.There are also many very good public schools in some areas. I’d certainly choose a proven school over BASIS-- with no track record in this location. </p>
<p>What is the big rush? Why is there a need to stuff the students full of AP classes? Kids are not geese.</p>
<p>I mean if your child shows a natural inclination well beyond the norm, I can see encouraging those interests, whether they are in math, computer science, dance, art, writing, whatever. But I’ll not seeing this in the curriculum at all. </p>
<p>It’s okay to take just two AP sciences if the child has taken all three sciences at the high school level. Few kids want to take all three sciences in college.</p>
<p>I, like others, would also be worried about the focus on standardized tests. Teaching students knowledge that will be on a test is great, but teaching to a test is awful. There is a difference between learning for knowledge and learning for the grade.</p>
<p>My daughter is in a high school STEM program. The academic part is just okay; she could have recreated the academic schedule outside the program. (Very few, if any, of these students take all three AP sciences) What sets it apart are a series of field trips in 9th and 10th grades to various places where scientists work; short but fun STEM focused summer programs; the requirement to participate in a competition such as robotics, emvironthon, sea perch, math team, AMC, etc; and, a junior summer internship of 140 hours. Check to see if the school does something similar - in other words, what do they provide outside the coursework?</p>
<p>I assume OP is so hot to trot because he wants his kid to go to a top tier STEM college some day. If so, by going to an unknown high school, no matter how good the curriculum is, maybe harder to get accepted to those colleges. At my kids’ private school, they didn’t offer that many APs or honors because they didn’t want to follow the testing curriculum. But most of the students were able to take SAT IIs and AP exams without a lot of prep and do well. </p>
<p>I would rather send my kid to a good public than to a new private. Another thing to keep in mind is that a new private may not have as much funding as a public school. My kid’s private spend more on each student than their tuition alone. They have state of art performing arts center, better lab equipments than top tier colleges, sports facilities rival most colleges. A new private, unless they have a huge endowment, will need to limit its spending to tuitions collected. A good school is very much dependent on its faculties. Public schools give teacher pension, higher pay and other benefits. My kid’s private give its teachers’ kids free tuition (or very discounted), that’s worth $30K/child/year. So yes, a lot of those teachers work there for years until their kids graduate. Could this new private offer that? BASIS’ tuition is 22K and it is run by a company. Need I say more!</p>
<p>The OP mentioned having access to a good public school. In addition, the area does have some good normal private schools (a few of which have elite-level offerings, although the non-Catholic ones may be more expensive than the BASIS school). The student being one year ahead in math seems to be one who would be well accommodated by the good public school or good normal private schools.</p>
<p>My public school D took AP Bio, AP Calc and 2 years of IB Physics in HS (plus freshman chem) along with AP Calc Jr year. She could have gone 2 classes higher in math in public school but opted for AP Stats as a break class senior year (no STEM goals). There was plenty of time to take 2 years of physics and it would be bad to take it without at least pre-calc ahead.</p>
<p>Agree with Oldfort on facilities and teacher pay and benefits at public schools particularly as compared to a new for-profit endeavor. </p>
<p>Local public school has limited resources to students. He only can pick one science and one math per year </p>
<p>Since each math class at the HS (even advanced) level builds on the successive class why would you WANT to take more than one per year?</p>
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<p>Before you dismiss the local school district, you may want to look into it a little more. At first glance, you would have thought the same thing about our school, but the reality is more complex and actually serves the needs of bright and motivated STEM students pretty well. </p>
<p>Math: While he may only be able to take one course a year, there may be several levels of acceleration. For example, in our school, everybody takes one math course a year. Everybody. But those math courses go at different speeds. By graduation, the kids who were in prealgebra with D in 7th grade and have taken the most accelerated courses will be finishing up multivariate calc (having taken Calc B/C as juniors) but others who have dropped down in terms of acceleration will get no further than trig/precalc. There’s no need to take concurrent math courses if the one math course he is in is progressing at the right speed. </p>
<p>Science: While a single science a year may be the “typical” route, many schools allow for exceptions once the student has proven him/herself as a freshman. Looking at D’s high school manual, one would assume that there is no way a student could take three years of AP science, since AP science is not open to freshmen or sophomores. But I know of several students, D included, who have talked to their guidance counselors and been given permission to take AP Physics and AP Chem both junior year. That option, while not official, has even been accommodated by offering those courses (which meet 1.5 rather than 1 period a day) first period with an “early bird start” 30 minutes before the official beginning of the school day. Those kids will likely have completed 4 AP science courses by the time they graduate.</p>
<p>And, in addition, to basic science and math, there may be other courses, like engineering, CS, and statistics that are considered electives rather than core and, therefore, have more flexibility. That’s certainly the case at our large, diverse public school, and it seems to provide a lot of options for varying interests and skill levels. </p>
<p>You can read the following link.
<a href=“Sign Up | LinkedIn”>Sign Up | LinkedIn;
<p>You will find how struggling a science teacher try to put physics, AP physics 1, 2, AP physics C Mechanics and EM into high school science agenda. </p>
<p>From this point, I believe BASIS will do right thing which is our local school didn’t.</p>
<p>@wzg69g Did you read the entire discussion? I thought it was interesting that a physics teacher from a VERY prestigious SV private school with an excellent history of successful graduates makes the argument for a more flexible curriculum. </p>
<p>Yes, her school has 3 years program which is one year more than our public school. But as she said, most students may not finish them since they have many things to do. I know her school is great and has a lot of flexibility for students.</p>
<p>BASIS will be the second STEM school in silicon valley. I guess BASIS will be a strong competitor to her school 5 years later.</p>
<p>Especially given the tuition…YIKES! (I just looked it up to see why one would consider BASIS when the other school might be a possibility.) </p>
<p>OP, I have a suggestion:
send your son to the fine public HS and ALSO have him take some Stanford EPGY physics or other advanced science classes if he so desires and has the time.
<a href=“http://epgy.stanford.edu/”>http://epgy.stanford.edu/</a>
He may also want to go to some of the Stanford EPGY Summer programs.
<a href=“http://summerinstitutes.stanford.edu/”>http://summerinstitutes.stanford.edu/</a>
That way he can advance at his own pace academically and have the benefit of going to an accredited and highly recognized public HS. </p>
<p>Yes, I have a similar plan. </p>
<p>Is this new BASIS school run by nonnative speakers of English? I’m asking because the description page reads like it was written by a well-educated person for whom English is a second language. Odd that they didn’t have a native speaker proofread.</p>
<p>“BASIS Independent Schools emphasize on results,”
“Our private schools implore the most state of the art tactics…”</p>
<p>BASIS Schools Are VERY Excellent. They outperformed the Top Top Students In Shanghai On The PISA Test(Shanghai was the very top performing city) and countries like Finland Sout Korea and China( which were at the very top). I’m pretty sure the Arizona ones r charter schools so theri proposal probz got rejected,which I’d be surprised about. For more information, I highly and very strongly suggest you read The Smartest Kids In The World And How They Got There By Amanda Ripley. It’s about international education and the PISA And how shocked everyone was when the USA Wasn’t even close to the first. I have a plethora of information on this topic, So PM Me for deeper informaation. Good luck! :D</p>