I didn’t make the policy. Am just reporting on it. There’s more details and contact info at https://basised.com/ if one would like to ask them.
My kid has not passed every AP exam that she’s taken. For example, when most of the school year in 9th grade was online, she took an AP exam and got a 2, but that whole year was rough for everybody. She learned through that process that she really needs in person instruction…but that’s off-topic from the WJS article.
I do think the general philosophy is to reward teachers’ performance, and one way to measure that is by AP test scores. The school pays for the AP exam fees. If your kid switches to a different HS, though, you have to reimburse the school for those fees when you leave.
My kids had the biggest HW load in middle school. HS has been a little less than that.
The other poster was correct re: the academics…The requirements of being promoted to the next grade are all spelled out in the parent-student handbook, that parents sign each school year stating that they’ve reviewed & understand the policies in that book. Students have to sign a similar statement. If you don’t pass a class, you CAN be held back a year. There is wiggle room with that, though. There have been instances in which a student repeats a grade, but it’s more likely to happen at the middle school years.
BUT there are lots of interventions used before a student gets to that point at the end of the school year.
It’s not a school for parents who just want to ‘set it and forget it’ in terms of education. Parents need to be plugged in. But it works. 1 family at our school adopted something like 4 or 5 foster kids who are all siblings…they’re doing pretty well.
That’s the issue we see in our poor rural school districts as well. So many of the kids are just not able to pass the state keystone exams. In many cases, it doesn’t mean the kids are “less worthy” of instruction, it just means that many of them are not going to learn algebra or biology or vocabulary to pass. However, when we mix these kids all together in classes in middle school and early high school the ultimate result is that the teacher is focused on doing everything they can to get the students to pass the standardized test. So in reality one segment of the class is bored and not challenged at all, while another group is feeling like a failure because they can’t keep up. It’s a terrible situation.
Argument for separate honors classes based on this imply that every kid who would have been placed in “college prep” is of that level.
It’s true that kids who are at that level shouldn’t be an an honors-level classroom. However, they should not be in a college-prep classroom either. That is exactly the problem here and in the schools. I do agree that if schools are going to teach mixed honors/college prep kids together, they also need to have seperate classes for kids who need to catch up to reach the basics in math.
However, claiming that the mixed-class won’t work because the school also has students who are not even at the basic level is both insulting to the most of the kids who take “college-prep” level classes, and ignores the kids who are behind by implying that they should be dumped in “college-prep” level classes.
Stop and think what the issue is and what the solution should be. If the school is putting kids without middle-school math in the college-prep classes, that is a strong argument for having a plan to help them.
As an aside - I’m not for getting rid of honors classes entirely, just for having a freshman year which allows teachers and students to reassess where they are, what their skills and talents are, and what direction should they follow. As it is, this is being determined in middle school, or even elementary school, which is wrong.
After that, teachers and the school should be tasked with making sure that everybody is encouraged to do their best. If not enough minority students or kids from rural areas are in the honors classes, that means that the school should be doing more in freshman year to change that.
Bottom line - there should be higher-level classes for kids who are really want to go beyond the basics, but a kid’s high school trajectory should not be pre-determined by whatever issues they had in middle school.
My opinion - no honors classes in freshman year, summer classes for kids who want to catch up, and what used to be known as “remedial” classes for kids who arrive to the high school without the basic background in things like language and math.
Despite what many people on this thread seem to believe, it’s not an either/or situation. Either we have equitable education or we support excellence. We can acknowledge both that some kids do best when they are surrounded by academic peers AND that designation as being academically advanced is strongly affected by race and income level, regardless of actual talent.
It ties directly into income and admissions to “elite” colleges. The issue is rarely that the kids who are in honors classes are not academically advanced. The issue is that there are many poor and URM kids who should also be there but are not.
To repeat myself (kind of). Dividing kids to “honors” and “not-honors” the moment they walk into the high school will, more often than not, determine a kid’s trajectory. A smart kid who is not put into an honors class will only rarely try and move. However, the same kid, if they were in an honors class to begin with, would keep up and go on to the AP class. On the other hand, different kids have different interests and talents, and they should not be required to follow the same academic trajectory.
There is a way to, figuratively, eat your cake and have it too regarding equitable education and honors classes. You just have to really want to have both, and be willing to put in the effort and to think outside the present false dichotomy.
Revised so as not to imply anything about anybody.
I disagree that someone reminding people to “stop and think” as an important part of discussion is somehow against the TOS.
But if you do believe MWolf has violated the TOS, please flag his post. Moderators will determine it as opposed to this becoming a distraction on the thread.
I’m a little unclear as to your post Wolf, but since you got some likes, perhaps I’m just dense.
In the first place, I think what Culver City HS did was drop Honors English. And they kept Frosh basic math, i.e. 8th grade or pre-Algebra, to be offered in a separate class than Alg I. (Those that took Alg in middle school can go into Geom or Honors Geom.) So they are ok with tracking math (aka dividing kids in middle school), which your post seems to agree with, correct.
But since they eliminated Honors English 9, tracking Math by middle school performance is ok, but English is not?
btw; yes, they do offer separate Frosh English for English Language Learners (which one could argue is also a ‘track’)
To be clear, I hadn’t heard of Basis Schools until reading about them in these posts. It sounds like they have been very successful for the poster, and others. Just passing this on as it seems to relate to the question about why they would pay teachers for students AP scores.
This is from the Wikipedia entry for the schools. Various citations to sources for the claims:
Other critics take issue with BASIS’s accelerated curriculum and general educational philosophy. Some argue that BASIS focuses too much on standardized testing.[17] Critics also point out that BASIS’s performance in national ranking systems like the U.S. News & World Report is largely a function of Basis’s singular focus on mandatory Advanced Placement (AP) testing, as these ranking systems give great weight to the percentage of students at a school that take the AP tests.[18] Critics also take issue with BASIS’s attrition rates (senior classes are typically a third to a quarter of the size of the fifth grade class) and argue that BASIS achieves good test scores in part by weeding out under-performing students.[19][20][21] In 2013, the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board rejected a request from BASIS DC to expand, citing concerns about the high number of students who had withdrawn from the school since it opened.[22]
But I’d like to know where discipline fits into the “have your cake and eat it too” philosophy that public schools inevitably have to deal with. Our school district had to reduce the numbers of detentions and expulsions due to department of Education mandates. They also had to implement a different system to deal with behavioral problems that includes positive behavior reinforcement and restorative justice. I used to volunteer in middle school science classrooms in our district and can attest to the fact that discipline problems have increased since this implementation because the kids are smart, albeit misbehaved, and know that there will be little consequence to their antics. Teaching a lab class is tough in these circumstances. I applaud the teachers’ efforts. I don’t know what the solution is but learning requires discipline and I would love to see schools teach it and provide it. How, I don’t know. When I was in school (different era, different country) disruptions to the class due to any issues just weren’t tolerated. I had to sit out of a history class in high school once (ok, maybe more than once) because my table mate and I got the giggles so bad we couldn’t stop. We were kicked out of class for 10 minutes to get our wits about us. I see the self-discipline issue (I don’t know if I’m even using the correct term here) as more problematic that English class differentiation in 9th grade. I’m interested in other parents and educators thoughts on this.
Here are the discipline guidelines for California.
To be fully honest, I was talking generalities. While I understand and support the reasoning behind the decisions made by Culver City, I think that they are not really going to solve the problem, except superficially. Specifically, they will not be increasing the number of minority kids who will take AP classes and AP tests.
I have a problem tracking math from middle school to high school, especially if the two systems are separate. Putting off separating honors and college-prep students until sophomore years would, in my opinion, help “reset” kids who have not done well as they should, based on their actual abilities. I used my kid’s HS as an example of a place which is doing this and is so far successful.
There are ways to deal with students who are coming it at different levels, but again, that does require work and planning, and doing more than just getting rid of honors classes and expecting that to magically solve the problem.
If this is for kids whose native language isn’t English, I wouldn’t really consider it a track. Kids who are tracked generally have had their “level” decided by other based on all sorts of things which aren’t always accurate or correct. A person who is not fluent in English because it’s not their native language is objectively behind native speakers. It carries no stigma regarding their intellectual talents, and nobody is surprised when they reach fluency.
Not an apples to apples comparison. The feeder middle schools do not offer honors/tracked English, so all the kids are entering 9th grade having taken the same level course. In math they have already been tracked into different courses/levels.
both of my kids attend a BASIS school. What I know about attrition rates at the BASIS school that MY kids attend is this:
the biggest drop off in enrollment is between 8th and 9th grade. D26’s class went from about 75 kids to 40 after 8th grade.
a LOT of those kids leave to go to public high schools because they want to play a sport in high school…soccer, baseball, swimming, etc. BASIS schools pretty much do not compete in inter-high school athletics like all of the regular public schools do. So if you’re, let’s say, a gifted soccer player and you want to get noticed by college coaches and hopefully get recruited because they saw you play in a state championship match, BASIS is not where you’d go.
some kids also leave because they want the traditional HS experience going to football & basketball games, homecoming dances, etc. BASIS has school dances, but it’s not like it’s a school dance with >2000 students there. There’s, like, maybe 200 kids tops.
both of my kids have had friends leave the school because their parents got jobs in another part of the country.
a couple of my kids friends moved to another BASIS school because the parent(s) moved to another part of the state and staying at the prior BASIS school was logistically impossible.
a few kids leave because they don’t want to have to work that hard. But ironically, 8th grade is, overall, probably the most challenging compared to grades 9-12. That’s what 1 of the administrators told me and based on our experience, I’d agree w/that…in 8th grade, they take 3 science classes 3 days/week (bio, chem, physics), plus they have an economics class also…which covers college-level macro & micro econ material. D26’s econ teacher last year was awesome. Seriously…that guy was SO good at teaching that subject.
some parents move their kids out of BASIS after 8th grade because they’re tired of driving their kids to & from school every day. This was the case for 1 of D24’s BFFs in 8th grade. And that’s what occurred w/1 of the 8th graders last year who was on the robotics team w/my kids…the student’s dad complained to DH & I about having to drive 30 min each way to school every day. Same dad ooh’d and ah’d over a local HS’s big fancy marching band semi trailer & equipment (but, ironically, that dad’s kid doesn’t play a musical instrument). That dad thought that the public school with the shiny new semi trailer was better because of the flashy truck and fancy sign out in front of the school…yet his son was literally, in front of us, begging his dad to let him stay at BASIS for high school because that’s where his friends were, he loved doing robotics, didn’t want to make new friends, and “Dad, all of the cool kids here are nerds like me.”
some other kids end up leaving for public school because their parents think that their kid will have an easier time in the public school advanced classes and, thus, will end up with a higher GPA than if they stayed at BASIS.
I have gotten a lot of…verbal poo from people I know over the years for keeping my kids in this school system. I no longer give a flying fart what any of them think. I am all for everybody finding a solution that works best for THEIR family.
I’ve also heard all of the ridiculous claims from naysayers - like the rumor that BASIS makes kids pass an entrance exam before you’re admitted there. In AZ, this simply isn’t true. Why? Requiring a student to get a certain score on an entrance exam is against AZ charter school law.
But if you want to enroll your kid at University High School in Tucson? Oh…you can’t do open enrollment there unless you get a high enough test score.
I’ve also heard people claim that BASIS does grade inflation. I can definitively report that there is NOT grade inflation at all. In fact, my D24 has had to work her butt off for her 3.33 unweighted GPA.
Some claim that BASIS hands out A’s like candy. Every BASIS student who gets an A in a class has worked hard for it.
At the elementary school level, I had 1 mom friend who got mad that her kid got a D in Latin in 6th grade, so she moved her kids the following school year to a different charter school…and then proceeded to claim that BASIS schools were run by “Nazis” because BASIS school policy is such that parent volunteers are not allowed inside the classroom. Why is that policy in place? To reduce constant classroom instruction interruptions.
Said mom also thought the school was run by a pack of generals because BASIS strictly enforced its late/tardy policy…and she could never manage to get her kids to school on time (always 10-15 min late). She asked me how could I possibly get my kids to school on time when we lived a 45 min drive away from school. It’s simple. We got organized and got our act together and left with enough time to get there.
The same rules apply to everybody there. They won’t bend them just because you think that your special snowflake is special and should get an exception.
Usually, the biggest drop off is between 8th and 9th grade and then the high school class stays pretty much as is through graduation. Last year in 10th grade, D24’s class lost a few kids because parents’ jobs were relocating. This year, 1 kid left 2 wk before school year started…that kid didn’t learn until she was supposed to get her locker assignment that her family was moving to Florida. At the end of 11th grade, 2 of the current 11th graders are graduating high school - 1 of whom is an 18 yr old from China.
If a student is failing in multiple subjects, they WILL hold you back. If one wants to call that “weeding out,” then so be it.
It’s not a school system that’s for everybody. Back when BASIS’s first elementary school was starting (that was the year that D26 started kindergarten), the principal said that every student has the ability to succeed at this school if they’re willing to put in the work, but not everybody’s willing to put in the work.
In the case of my mom friend who complained about the “Nazis” preventing her from dropping her kids off 15 min late every day, she wanted a school system in which she didn’t have to be bothered to even know what the HW was or how her kids were doing in school. She eventually embraced the philosophy that it was the “school’s job” to deal with educating her kids because she didn’t want to deal with it. She & I eventually drifted apart.
Re: standardized testing:
Ironically, my kids haven’t had a whole mess of standardized testing every year. D24 had more standardized testing in K and 1st grade in our local public school than at BASIS. D26 is in 9th grade and I don’t think she’s had to take any standardized tests this year. I think they all have to take a state-mandated test in 10th grade. 11th graders will all be taking the ACT during the school day next week, but I think that’s a state mandated thing. Other than that, the testing involves AP exams. And even then, it’s up to the parents & student to decide if you want to take the AP exam for an AP class.
HOWEVER, if you take an AP class and do NOT take the AP exam, your final exam is basically a prior year’s AP exam. It’s just not administered by the College Board. All of the AP teachers are required by BASIS to offer practice AP exams on a Saturday between late Jan and middle-to-late March. Teacher then grades it (but this doesn’t count toward your grade in the class), and sits down w/student for 10-15 min 1-on-1 to review how you did, make a recommendation on whether or not to take the actual AP test, and gives recommendations on how to study & prepare.
By comparison, when I was in HS, I got zero help from anybody on prepping for an AP exam. you were totally on your own. It sucked.
12th grade classes are ‘capstone’ classes. Senior school counselor said the capstone classes are similar to an upper division college seminar class. Last year, 1 of the options was all about French fairytales. 1 of this year’s history capstone options is History of Food. D26 has already asked her history teacher to teach a ‘history of war’ class when she’s a senior (i.e., Civil War, WWI, WWII because those are her favorite time periods to study in history).
Here is a is a gifted WaPo profile on BASIS. It is worth a read with a lot of noteworthy information, including the attrition rates for a 2016 graduating class from one of the schools. It seems the attrition isn’t just happening after eighth grade.
Below is the attrition rate for the cohort of students that remained to become twelfth-graders at BASIS Tucson North in 2015-16.
7th grade
8th grade
9th grade
10th grade
11th grade
12th grade
130
100
82
69
61
54
Lots in the article linked above. Perhaps it needs its own thread . . .
When my kids attended BASIS Tucson Primary, there was ~40% Hispanic students at Tucson Primary & Tucson North. Tucson Primary is not located in the best part of town…parents’ cars got broken into fairly often. The BASIS Phoenix South primary school is also not in the most ideal part of the Phoenix area either.
While the #s in the Washington Post article are averages across the AZ schools, in D24’s class, she’s the only Caucasian kid. there are Hispanic kids, Asian kids (I’m including kids of Indian descent…the country, I mean), African-American, kids whose parents are FROM Africa, kids of Middle Eastern descent, a lot of mixed race/mixed ethnicity kids, and just about every religion you could imagine. It’s been pretty great.
Getting back to the elimination of honors classes, though…students who are struggling in WHATEVER school they attend need assistance. Getting rid of honors classes in southern CA is not the answer. It’s a very frustrating situation, especially if you’re a parent of 1 of those struggling kids and you can’t afford private tutoring.
Sounds like a great alternative for the motivated. Interesting that the op-ed, which is more than 5 years old, openly complained about the over-enrollment of Asian-Americans at the schools…
The Basis schools stand as an interesting example. They attract many students requiring lottery admissions (at least in the one I am most familiar with), they are unabashedly focused on academics. Sounds like many of our elite universities.
I basically observed two main groups of students there. onefrom the engineering/tech employees from the area and the other from lower ses community seeking better education.
I sincerely believe there shouldn’t have to be a lottery to get into a school focusing on academics. Your tax dollars should follow the student. As it stands now private schools are an option for the rich and the poor hope they get a “winning ticket”. That’s ridiculous. I applaud Arizona for changing the system.
All AZ charter schools follow a state-law-mandated procedure for open enrollment. The BASIS open enrollment policies are all spelled out in https://apply.bsischools.org/site451.php. See pg. 3 for a list of the priority order.
There’s more details and contact info at https://basised.com/ if one would like to ask them.