Julie Erfle enrolled her oldest son in the BASIS Charter School in Arizona. She went to a parent night and was impressed. Basis is ranked by U.S. New & World Report as one of the best high schools in the U.S. “Teachers with degrees from Harvard and Yale and Stanford, with PhD’s and real-world experience. A curriculum that entails AP coursework as early as 7th grade, and the ability to finish high school with every AP class completed by 11th grade. Wow. What’s not to love?” Her son is happy at the school and doing well. She has no complaint about the school but she knows it is not a model for public education.
On her blog, Erfle revealed the “secret” of BASIS and other very high-performing charter schools.
In a nutshell, the BASIS expectations and requirements are so high that the students who can’t meet them leave.
She writes:
Governor Ducey wants to “fund the wait lists” at schools such as BASIS. He’s fond of using the school as the poster child for reform. But those wait lists are a mirage.
It’s true that hundreds of students are turned away from BASIS and other top-rated charter schools in 5th and 6th grade. But it’s also true that the turnover rate at these charter schools is astronomical, with hundreds of students opting out of the schools after a short period of time, and schools graduating as few as 20-30 students.
Many of the critics will say it’s because BASIS filters out undesirable students, such as those with learning or attention differences, while keeping the “cream of the crop.” And they’re correct.
The curriculum at BASIS isn’t advanced. It’s highly advanced, as in 2 or 3 years ahead of most schools, similar to the curriculum for highly gifted students. Remember when I said AP classes start in 7th grade? That’s not normal. And it’s not something that just any student can handle.
Starting in 6th grade, students take midterms and finals, and the final is a significant portion of the student’s overall class grade. It’s high-stakes testing at its highest. If a student fails even one class (with a small exception for some math classes), that student must retake the entire grade.
The vast majority of students, when faced with retaking an entire grade or moving on to a different school, will move on. So will the vast majority of students who struggle with such an advanced load and who find themselves spending 4-5 hours on homework every night. And the same with many students who are involved in extracurricular activities such as club sports, which requires time for evening practices and weekend tournaments.
This is why BASIS schools start out with hundreds of students and long waiting lists in 5th and 6th grade but end up graduating only a handful of students. And when a school graduates 25 students who have made it through every advanced, AP course available, one would hope these students would have sky-high test scores.
Maybe it is a good idea to give public funding to a school like BASIS, that is so rigorous that few of those who enroll will ever graduate. After all, there are high schools for unusually smart students, like Bronx Science and Stuyvesant High School in New York City, where students who want to attend must first pass an examination. But no one pretends that every school should be just like Bronx Science and Stuyvesant. It is well known that they are highly selective. Their students get high scores because they are selective schools. As Julie writes, BASIS is not for everyone, and it is not a model for public education.
As she writes:
BASIS schools start out with hundreds of students and long waiting lists in 5th and 6th grade but end up graduating only a handful of students. And when a school graduates 25 students who have made it through every advanced, AP course available, one would hope these students would have sky-high test scores.
It’s easy to understand why BASIS makes the list as one of the top high schools in the nation. But to compare a class of 25 students to one with hundreds of students from every background and with every learning challenge imaginable at a school in an economically challenged neighborhood doesn’t really seem like a fair comparison, does it?
Of course not. And yet that is what our politicians routinely do.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Basis sounds like a true Darwinian school, which is not for everyone. Even some very bright students may not be able to handle the pressure. If your IQ is high, but your EQ (emotional quotient) is low, this is not the school for you. Remember the Unabomber was an MIT graduate. People are so much more than the sum of their test scores.
“BASIS Charter School”
The BASIS of success?
Selection at its best
For Darwin’s fittest cases
Had nothin’ on the BASIS
Exactly stated.
Who could possibly think that 4-5 hours of homework a night – on top of extracurriculars – is a good idea? I’m less interested in this school’s test scores than their suicide rate.
Dienne, didn’t you get the memo?
The “weak” deserve their fate, and one of the purposes of charter schools is to see they get it.
I guess we should celebrate suicide – just one more weakling that we no longer need worry about.
/sarcasm
It’s one thing to offer programs like this for students who are interested within a public school, but to make this the “BASIS” for a public school and serve so few with public dollars is the antithesis of what public education is about.
Sounds like another plan for creating the Master Race. Sadly, many very capable kids with LD issues would be excluded when all they need is someone looking at THEM and not the numbers. So much for the Edisons, Gödels, Nashes, and Kellers of the world.
I think ed reformers are going to have a real problem with the “commons” idea in public education.
It’s going to come back to bite them. It already is. You can’t sell people on accepting national tests and the Common Core as “for the good of the whole” when your whole freaking ethos is based on competition and “choice”.
Those two ideas are incompatible.
They’ve dismantled the whole idea of a common good in public education and then they’re amazed when they can’t sell The Common Core or standardized testing with a “commons” argument.
Here’s an argument for the Common Core:
“They need to know how their kids will benefit from this program—and if their kids won’t benefit, parents need to know why these test results serve the larger public good, that they can help shape policies that will help others”
Yeah, good luck with that, ed reform liberals. If you wanted to sell the “common good” maybe you shouldn’t have set this up as every man for himself with winners and losers where the public schools are always the loser. Actions have consequences. Denigrating the idea that public ed is a public good was very “transformative”, all right.
Reap the freaking whirlwind.
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/02/suburbia-and-its-common-core-conspiracy-theories/385424/
Chiara: once again you have hit the nail on the head!
One of the talking points of the self-styled “education reformers” is the notion of a “competition” but they imply that’s it’s friendly and cooperative and helpful. Uh, reality intrudes: has anyone told this to the heavy hitters in the rheephorm establishment, like, say, Eva Moskowitz?!?!?!?
The kind of competition they mean is what you have relentlessly detailed in so many of your comments on this blog: they are in it to win it because winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. They act, over and over again, as if it’s the old-fashioned “king of the mountain” game—there’s room for only one winner at the top of the hill, and everyone else is a loser.
Keep writing. I’ll keep reading.
😎
Free marketers believe in “competition” as a means to an end. But Adam Smith wrote a book prior Wealth of Nations dealing with morality. I recently revisited Wealth of Nations as a seasoned adult with more scars on my back and found the basis of the book far from the souless, sociopathic, Randian ideology of today’s “libertarian” Reformers preaching their creative destruction, competition, and choice – often excluding themselves from the negative effects when it suits their interests. There is a thread of morality in early capitalism and a sense of justice and fairness sadly missing today.
Today’s Reformers hide behind “competition” and “free markets” as shiny objects distracting the public from the destruction of democracy and the eroding community of common good.
Well, because with magnet schools there was a recognition of reality- “schools of choice” can’t exist without regular public schools acting as a safety net.
Our feckless and captured modern lawmakers refuse to acknowledge that public schools are SYSTEMS in any given area and there are consequences for abandoning the unfashionable public sector schools and pretending they’re NOT serving this role.
Admitting that would be politically dicey for them, because there are of course millions of children in the disfavored public system, so don’t expect any of them to admit this obvious fact.
Yes, I have commented here on this very phenomenon. I worked in a highly-rated district in Tucson and knew some of the first kids who went to Basis. They left our gifted program. My son attended another nearby district (where he earned 18 hrs AP credits). When I noted that my school district and my son’s had such opportunities and had programs for Special Ed (required by our laws, of course), Basis parents responded with comments like this. (paraphrase)
“Well, if they can’t cut it, they should go back to public school”. I also wrote about how they hide how our tax dollars are spent. You can’t find out how much the founders are paid, they claim that’s proprietary information . I have stated here, (in discussions with Teaching Economist) that I believe in choices. I just want honesty. Stop pretending you serve the same students as a zoned public school.
The POINT OF CHARTERS = NO ACCOUNTABILITY!
The appeal is NO ACCOUNTABILITY!
The Teacher Hiring is NO ACCOUNTABILITY!
The curriculum is NO ACCOUNTABILITY!
The data = NO ACCOUNTABILITIES!
The Lottery = NO ACCOUNTABILITIES!
Graduation rates = NO ACCOUNTABILITIES!
SWD = try another school = NO ACCOUNTABILITIES!
The operating costs/salaries = NO ACCOUNTABILITIES!
Charters, here today, gone tomorrow = NO ACCOUNTABILITIES!
This is the BEST IDEA since sliced bread, Caymon Islands and
Basel Swiss banks.
ÜberRichProfiteers Love it!
Public Schools,
Public School Teachers,
Public School Students = 100% ACCOUNTABILITIES!
Got it?
Now, work on your GRIT!
I love the bait and switch ed reformers pulled off. It’s amazing. They went from “great schools for everyone!” to “if they can’t cut it they should go back to public schools” in record time.
No one could have predicted that, right? The Best and the Brightest in policy circles never saw that coming?
I urge everyone for a “better education for all” to access the link and read the entire piece by Julie Erfle. Don’t neglect the thread either.
Honest, thoughtful, informed.
I will remind viewers of this blog that she is politely delineating the reality of what Michael Petrilli, currently President of the Fordham Institute, wrote about in an online piece of 1-9-2013. I include his entire posting so I can’t be accused to taking his remarks out of context. I give you his “The charter expulsion flap”—
[start quote]
Predictably, the anti-reform crowd is having a field day with Sunday’s Washington Post article (and related video), which reported the relatively high rate of student expulsions in D.C.’s charter school sector. There’s some legitimacy to this exercise in schadenfreude, considering how many of us reformer types have used the success of high-flying “no excuses” charter schools to bludgeon middling (or worse) district schools with the accusation that “if the charters can do it, so can you.” The retort—well-founded, in my view—is that most, if not all, of these high-flying charters aren’t serving the same population of kids as their traditional public school peers. They inevitably do a bit of creaming (even if unintentionally) on the front end and a number of them push out disruptive students on the back end. Apples-to-apples comparisons are made difficult by this “selection bias.”
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In my view, we should be proud of the charter schools that are identifying and serving high-potential low-income students—kids who are committed to using education to escape poverty and are often supported in that effort by education-minded parents.
The reason to celebrate these schools and the role they play is because the traditional system has been downright hostile to the needs of such striving children and families—as have been many charter critics. Magnet “exam schools,” such as those recently profiled by Checker Finn and Jessica Hockett, are viewed with suspicion; tracking or ability grouping is seen as elitist; any effort to provide special classes, environments, or challenges for motivated or high-achieving kids is cast as perpetuating inequality—even when all the kids are poor, and even though there’s a ton of evidence that high achievers do best around other high achievers.
And now these “social justice” types want to berate schools for asking disruptive students to leave. For sure, there should be checks on pushing kids out willy-nilly. Thankfully, charter officials in D.C. are already on the case, publicizing discipline data and prodding the handful of schools with sky-high expulsion and suspension rates to find better approaches.
But let’s not forget about the needs (even rights) of the other kids to learn. Isn’t it possible that U.S. public schools have gone too far in the direction of accommodating the disruptors at the expense of everyone else? Or been guilty of “defining deviancy down,” in Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s words? As Eduwonk Andy wrote this week, it’s probably because charter schools are willing (and able) to enforce discipline that they are so popular with parents. That wouldn’t be true if they had to retain chronic disrupters.
To be sure, this raises tough questions for the system as a whole. As I said in the Washington Post video, there are reasons to be concerned that district schools will become the last resort for the toughest-to-serve kids.
But in life there are trade-offs, and I would be willing to accept a somewhat less ideal outcome for the most-challenged students if it meant tremendously better life outcomes for their peers.
Misguided notions of “equity” have turned many public school systems into leveling leviathans. We shouldn’t let the same happen to charters, the last salvation of the strivers.
[end quote]
Link: http://edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/2013/the-charter-expulsion-flap-who-speaks-for-the-strivers.html
*Note: 9 links indicated by color in his original posting have been replaced by plain text.*
In the interests of being “fair” and “balanced” and not engaging in a “shrill” and “strident” sales pitch, perhaps it should have been entitled “Educational Triage: Saving the Few, Throwing Away the Many.”
What oh what are we to make of this? Perhaps it’s best to get back to fundamentals. His fundamentals. So I am going to throw one of Petrilli’s Marxist aphorisms right back at him.
When one brother told another “The garbage man is here” he got this retort:
“Well, tell him we don’t want any.”
¿😳? Chico and Groucho, of course. Are there any other Marx’s worth citing?
But let’s use a little of our eduboomerang on this. When it comes to “education reform” salvage operations that sacrifice the vast majority of the [falsely labeled] unworthy for the [falsely labeled] meritocratic few—
We don’t want any either.
Really!
And not rheeally, even in the most Johnsonally sort of ways…
All lives matter, even those of the vast majority that consist of “non-strivers” [Petrilli] and “uneducables” [Rahm Emanuel].
😎
“KrazyTA
February 13, 2015 at 11:17 am
Chiara: once again you have hit the nail on the head!
One of the talking points of the self-styled “education reformers” is the notion of a “competition” but they imply that’s it’s friendly and cooperative and helpful. Uh, reality intrudes: has anyone told this to the heavy hitters in the rheephorm establishment, like, say, Eva Moskowitz?!?!?!?”
Hey, if it’s going to be My Child, My Choice, why should anyone do anything for the good of the whole?
Why should I raise my own property taxes because ed reformers just cut state funding for public schools again? My child will probably be fine. I can supplement with lessons and such. The 50% in his school who are low income will suffer, but it’s My Child, My Choice. What’s in it for me?
That they’re shocked an amazed at opting out or Common Core resistance is stunning. This is their ethos! It’s what they sold! Now they want to go back to The Common Good after conducting The Hunger Games? I don’t think so.
I have to take issue with Julie Erfle’s contention that BASIS schools are “good choices.”
They’re not. They represent all that is wrong in public education, and in what passes for “reform.”
The BASIS schools have tight ties to the very conservative Goldwater Institute (check their board of directors), and the Goldwater shills for the American Legislative Exchange Council. They pay “merit bonuses” to teachers for “learning gains,” and push relentlessly the College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) courses and tests. It’s corporate-style “reform” on steroids.
The Goldwater Institute advocates all the kinds of economic policies that piled up deficits and debt and broke the economy. Its directors have made the claim that it “is staffed by the brightest minds.” It isn’t.
Its ideas for education “reform” are more charter schools, merit pay, more testing, and vouchers. It wants to privatize public education.
The research on AP is quite clear. It is grossly overhyped.
A 2002 National Research Council study of AP courses and tests found them to be a “mile wide and an inch deep” and inconsistent with research-based principles of learning.
A 2004 study found that “the best predictor of both first- and second-year college grades” is unweighted high school grade point average, and a high school grade point average “weighted with a full bonus point for AP…is invariably the worst predictor of college performance.”
A 2005 study found AP students “…generally no more likely than non-AP students to return to school for a second year or to have higher first semester grades.” Moreover, the authors wrote that “close inspection of the [College Board] studies cited reveals that the existing evidence regarding the benefits of AP experience is questionable,” and “AP courses are not a necessary component of a rigorous curriculum.”
A 2006 MIT faculty report noted ““there is ‘a growing body of research’ that students who earn top AP scores and place out of institute introductory courses end up having ‘difficulty’ when taking the next course.”
The 2010 book “AP: A Critical Examination” noted that “Students see AP courses on their transcripts as the ticket ensuring entry into the college of their choice,” yet, “there is a shortage of evidence about the efficacy, cost, and value of these programs.” And this: AP has become “the juggernaut of American high school education,” but “ the research evidence on its value is minimal.”
BASIS may be ranked highly in the US News list But that doesn’t mean that what it stands for is good policy, or what it does makes sound educational sense. Nor does it mean it’s worth replicating.
Because, ultimately, the people behind the BASIS schools are responsible for the kinds of ideas and policies that have undermined not only public education but also the American economy.