<p>@neuroticdad, I didn’t “ignore” anything you mentioned. My “narrative” was constructed upon reading the site. </p>
<p>Yes, I understand what middle 50% means. The 25th percentiles for math and writing are in the 500’s. That is below 600 in my book. You take issue with that? </p>
<p>I said “Personally, I don’t think it’s appropriate to be pushing kids whose SAT scores are below 600 through 8+ AP classes in high school.” According to the site, BASIS “requires them to complete at least 8 AP courses”. That is copied and pasted from the BASIS site. You take issue with that?</p>
<p>As far as all those AP awards go, it just seems that the school puts too much emphasis on that. I don’t see those things listed that way on other school profiles I’ve looked at. It’s not really that informative.</p>
<p>Also, you only need to score a 3 on the AP for some of those awards, and even the National AP scholar award only requires a 4. I think if you are the kind of student who would even consider going to a school like BASIS, it’s hard to see how you wouldn’t at least score a 3. Many schools won’t even accept a 3 for credit anyhow, and if you look at the percent you need correct it’s not impressive. That’s probably why schools don’t take it. So what does it mean then? My feeling about all those awards is they are gold stars created by the college board to drum up business and encourage kids to take more tests than they would otherwise, and to take tests that aren’t going to do them any good anyhow. </p>
<p>I don’t quite get the extreme emphasis on AP courses as a standard of excellence. I know my daughter will have taken 11 AP courses by the time she graduates from our local public high school, which is not an academic powerhouse by any definition. And there are several of her friends who have taken more than that. </p>
<p>I don’t have anything against AP’s. Actually, I like them. I think they provide a more rigorous curriculum than many high schools would otherwise provide. I know that is the case at our school. But I also feel that BASIS is a bit of a wasted opportunity. If you have kids who are so motivated and talented and hard working, it seems like you could do more than kind of overemphasize AP tests.</p>
<p>So, 34 seniors, and 15 national AP scholars, then more than half the kids are not performing at 4 or 5 on 8 AP exams. it would of course be far simpler to list AP results than play guessing games with these “awards” which are nothing more than AP results.</p>
<p>I would like to hear more about the capstone classes. I think unique offerings, rather than the plethora of APs, could be something that would set BASIS apart from the other alternatives. </p>
<p>Yes, I agree. Lots of schools have AP classes. Top students at our school take lots of APs. Once they are upperclassmen, it’s mostly a choice of AP or regular level. Depending how you count, my daughter has done 14 of them. I think it would be crazy for the OP to pull a child out of an excellent public school system that offers AP classes, just to take AP classes at BASIS. The real question is what happens afterwards.</p>
<p>There are two private BASIS locations planned. This is off of NY site.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.basisindependentbrooklyn.com/capstone-srprojects”>http://www.basisindependentbrooklyn.com/capstone-srprojects</a></p>
<p>And this is from BASIS Scottsdale. The OP should note that at the bottom newer schools will not have the Capstone program available immediately.</p>
<p>Grade 12</p>
<p>The courses offered by the typical high school stop at the AP level—after all, these courses are meant to be substitutes for introductory-level college courses. However, the advanced nature of the BASIS curriculum allows us to offer a variety of even more rigorous courses to our students. The final academic challenge of BASIS is not AP exams. Instead, students are able to enroll in Capstone courses.</p>
<p>CAPSTONE COURSES
Essentially, 12th grade Capstone courses transition students from student-centered learning to independent learning. Capstone students study subjects like Category Theory, Organic Chemistry, Quantum Mechanics, Differential Equations, and Game Theory. These courses delve deeply into advanced material and are roughly equivalent to upper-level college courses. The result is that BASIS students enter college prepared to excel in at least intermediate-level college work.</p>
<p>THE SENIOR PROJECT
A BASIS education cultivates students who are highly engaged, inquisitive, and autonomous learners. The Senior Project is the culmination of the BASIS high school experience. After three and a half years of intensive academic college preparation, BASIS seniors are ready to spend the last trimester of their high school careers applying what they have learned in previous years to an independent project that explores their individual path of learning and future course of study. Students embark on a mentor-guided program of academic inquiry with limitless possibilities. Senior Projects vary from internships to university-level research laboratories to field work abroad.</p>
<p>NEW SCHOOLS NOTE:
During a school’s first several years in operation, students in grade 12 will complete individualized academic plans rather than participate in Capstone courses or a Senior Project.</p>
<hr>
<p>Our location is too new so most of the seniors are doing AP’s.</p>
<p>I have heard that the school encourages mentored or individual research projects or studying abroad, keep in mind this is all anecdotal.</p>
<p>For the more established locations, yes (Tucson,Scottsdale maybe Oro Valley). BASIS is a 5-12 school and I think the sequence is geared towards those kids that come up through the earlier grades or are already very advanced. The newer locations realize that they are getting kids with differing experiences from their former schools and are coming in at the higher grades so the sequence is altered and slowed down.</p>
<p>For all the talk about APs, do these schools release their statistics on AP scores, or just lists of college board “scholars” awards? What is the distribution of scores? When 7 of 34 kids (12 last year) qualify only for “AP Scholar” (at least 3 on 3 AP exams), despite taking 8 AP classes and attending a school where the average kid is taking 9-10 exams, that makes me wonder if there were a lot of 1’s/2’s. Not sure how else to explain it but maybe someone else can.</p>
<p>@mathyone–You are hilarious. I guess US News & World Report and Newsweek have nothing on your deductive brilliance. They must feel so stupid for ranking BASIS Scottsdale #2 and #7, respectively, in the nation. And your incisive query about whether BASIS reveals its AP scores is spellbinding. Of course, you probably were blinded by your own mental fireworks to notice that tab on the homepage titled “results,” or the drop-down tab titled “AP Results,” or the actual contents of that tab that reflect an “overall pass rate (higher than a 3)” of 84.2% for BASIS versus 56.7% for Arizona and 58.6% nationwide. And I can only assume that your “wonderment” would have been assuaged had you looked at the graph on that very same page that showed the scores for every single test taken at BASIS last year. But why do any of those things when you can just say stuff and ask questions, right?</p>
<p>@mathyone–And you should get on the phone right away with the admissions office at Stanford, Berkeley, and UCLA, which admitted 4, 7, and 6 students (from a class of 36), respectively from BASIS Scottsdale. I guess those admissions officers just didn’t notice “a lot of 1s/2s,” which would otherwise be shocking if it was not for your demonstrated acuity on such matters.</p>
<p>Actually I did explore the site before I posted. In particular, I did click on the “results” tab. That takes you to this page <a href=“http://basistucsonnorth.com/basis-charter-schools-results”>http://basistucsonnorth.com/basis-charter-schools-results</a> with list of links to test scores. Clicking on AP results takes you this message: “We are sorry. The page you were looking for can’t be found.” on this page <a href=“http://basistucsonnorth.com/ap%25C2%25AE-scores”>http://basistucsonnorth.com/ap%25C2%25AE-scores</a> which also contains links to a list of all BASIS school home pages. Clicking on the link to Basis Tucson North, which is the school I started with gets me to the school homepage–I am not going to paste the link because it appears to be collecting personal information from me. Ah, now that you have alerted me, I see that if I go around again in this circle and select results from <em>this</em> page, I can find the information. So, I guess I am indeed some kind of idiot not to have found it. </p>
<p>I see the 84.2% rate of scores of 3 or higher. Hmm. Our school isn’t any kind of special acceleration magnet, middle school curriculum is mostly weak, our per-student rate of National Merit commended is pitiful compared to BASIS, and yet we do slightly better with the APs.</p>
<p>I did not say the school lacks outstanding students worthy of admission to top colleges. The concern I stated before was that some kids (likely those with SAT scores in the 500’s) may be in over their heads when they are in a school where 8 AP classes are expected. If 16% of the kids are getting 1s and 2s, and they have to take these classes to stay in their school, then yes, I’d consider that to be a problem. Pushing bright kids too fast and making them struggle and fail isn’t a success in my opinion.</p>
<p>I just checked D’s high school. Their AP “overall pass rate” is 100% and their “exam pass rate” is 86%, with 36% AP participation. That suggests that—based solely on AP scores, which seems to be the metric of choice in this defense of the BASIS program—the top one-third of a fair-to-middling, Title1 high school are performing at basically the same level as the hand-picked magnet-school students. That doesn’t seem like news to me: BASIS students are doing just about as well on AP exams as their peers at our unranked public high school.</p>
<p>So, can we hear more about the programs at BASIS that DO set it apart from the crowd? </p>
<p>What I’ve heard so far about the capstone courses is intriguing. But if I were contemplating the program for my child, the fact that in newer schools seniors are still focused on AP courses would not convince me that it is any different from what my neighborhood public school is doing. </p>
<p>Edited to add: I’m not saying our local school is doing a great job either. In fact, It’s the lowest performing school overall in our district and is on “academic watch”. But, based on the figures that Neuroticdad is focused on, it does appear to be offering its top students an education that would be fairly similar to that of a start-up BASIS school. </p>
<p>Thank you, @Mokusatsu! Reading the senior research blogs provides a lot more illumination on what the school is offering its students than the self-serving lists of college acceptances and AP awards. 
</p>
<p>If you look at the National Merit commended numbers, you can get a different measure of the academic capabilities of the student body. Nearly 60% of the students at BASIS are National Merit commended or above. In our school, that figure would be about 10% for those who are going to graduate and attend a 4 year college. Our AP classes probably have about 25-40% National Merit commended students. And in both cases the bottom 15% of students or so are struggling with 1s and 2s. (Our school isn’t on any academic watch. It’s an above average public school in a community with above-average educated parents and income).</p>
<p>One difference is that BASIS factors in the AP exam results into grades, so those kids with 1s and 2s are also getting a final exam of F or D. I were the parent of a middling honor student considering BASIS, I’d be wary of both the acceleration and this grading policy which could be pretty damaging to a young and anxious student. The program seems better suited to kids who are super high achievers rather than typical honor students–I think one BASIS parent already said as much earlier in the thread.</p>
<p>Our school has a long history of over-accelerating kids in math at the middle school level, thus turning honors “A” students into “B” and “C” students when the difficulty increases in high school. It can be difficult to find the right placement for a child, but I think it really can hurt to push them too fast.</p>
<p>For the students taking AP world history, the BASIS rate of 1s and 2s is over 40% (Noted on the site that most of these students are 8th graders). To me, this would suggest that the students aren’t ready. By this I mean they probably just don’t have the maturity and the study habits. Knowing the sheer amount of material being covered and as the parent of a current 8th grader, I wouldn’t expect most of the 8th grade honor students we know to be successful with this. Our school offers AP world to 10th graders, for most as a first AP class, and even then it is a shock to many. I don’t know our particular AP exam numbers for that class, but they are better. (It took several minutes of clicking around circular and dead links for me to find the page again with the actual AP score info on it so I’m including the link to that page for any interested readers. <a href=“http://basistucsonnorth.org/ap®-scores”>http://basistucsonnorth.org/ap®-scores</a>).</p>
<p>If I understand correctly, BASIS schools are public charter schools in AZ, and so it’s interesting that the public school system at least accepts that some students are capable of this much acceleration and advanced work. Many school systems require students to be at a certain grade level to enroll in AP. But since the schools there are willing to acknowledge this, it would be nice to see it as more of a push-in program where kids can access the AP sequences at younger grades without having to leave their friends and larger curricular and extracurricular programs at their home schools. </p>
<p>@neuroticdad, The bar graphs shown on the AP results page are certainly more informative than the list of college board awards, but there’s still too much emphasis on “passing”. In my view, pushing a talented kid to the point where they can only score a 3 on an AP exam is not doing them a service. Better to wait until they can really master the material.</p>
<p>You mentioned I should call Stanford, so I checked Stanford’s info on AP classes and found, as I expected, that they do not regard a 3 as “passing”. With the exception of Physics C and BC calc, a 3 on an exam gets you nothing at Stanford. <a href=“http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/students/ap-charts”>http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/students/ap-charts</a> So, parents of students setting their sights on schools like that may want to know how many students are getting 4s and 5s. Perhaps you can direct us to some indication of what that rate might be. I didn’t find it on the website, but as we know I am not too good at finding things there. For all the talk about APs it seems a strange omission.</p>
<p>Based on what I have surmised from the BASIS website as well as following this thread, the students that survive BASIS (70% burn out) would likely be successful at any school. The assessment should not be what some extremely dedicated/motivated/hard-working kids can accomplish (at any school?). The assessment of a school should be based on what a school can accomplish for a set of kids (without burning out the overwhelming majority of them) in process.</p>
<p>Isn’t this school just an extreme version of Challenger or Harker? The question that I would ask the parents of Silicon Valley is why would you consider this school if you are already enrolled at Harker or Challenger OR if you think that Harker or Challenger are not the right school for your child? What does this school exactly offer that Harker or Challenger don’t? Is it more well rounded than Challenger? No. Does it offer more advanced courses than Harker? No. Does it have better teachers than either school? if so, why and How, particularly given that Harker has the prestige and deeper pockets? Is it more selective than Harker? Not even close. Is it better connected to the Silicon Valley community such that the students will have a leg up when the time comes for internship opportunities? No. Is it free for parents like in Arizona? No. </p>
<p>So how is it better? </p>
<p>Isn’t this school just a much riskier version of those schools? According to published statistics, 70% of the kids burn out at this school due to the ridiculous pressures. This school puts more stress and burden on kids than do those 2 well established schools and those schools are already stressful enough. The kids at those schools have far superior test scores than this school could even dream of. This students at this school are going to be so overloaded with homework load (6+ hours for most kids, I hear) that their education will be monotonic, not well-rounded. Ultimately, success in life is not just about spending 6-8 hours a day (every single day) studying textbooks. It’s about well rounded development.</p>
<p>For comparison:
Harker</p>
<p>Preschool Full Day: $23,900 / Half Day: $16,900
Kindergarten $29,800
1-5 $29,800
6-8 $37,600
9-12 $40,500</p>
<p>Challenger</p>
<p>Monthly tuition varies based on program (half-day preschool to middle school) and region.
General tuition ranges are:
Utah and Idaho $186-$862
California $300-$1,459
Nevada $272-$1,278
Texas $280-$1,053</p>
<p>BASIS does cost less than Harker.</p>
<p>However, for a student who is super-advanced, would BASIS (or even Harker) necessarily be that much better than a decent public school with a Middle College, Early College, or similar program available to allow taking courses at a local college after running out of courses at the high school? For example:</p>
<p><a href=“http://sjusd.org/sjmiddlecollege/”>http://sjusd.org/sjmiddlecollege/</a>
<a href=“http://www.fuhsd.org/MIDDLEcollege”>http://www.fuhsd.org/MIDDLEcollege</a></p>