BASIS, an Arizona charter chain known for its intense academic standards, plans to open five charter schools in Louisiana. BASIS expects all students to complete AP courses and work very hard to reach its high standards. It accepts everyone, but loses large numbers of students who can’t keep up with the school’s academic pressure.
BASIS is ranked high on lists of “the best schools,” because it gets top test scores after booting most of its students.
This is so far from the original conception of charter schools in the late 1980s. They were promoted by Albert Shanker, the president of the AFT, as schools that would recruit the lowest performing, least motivated students and develop innovative ways of reconnecting them with school. They would share whatever they learned with the public schools. They were intended not to compete but to help public schools by discovering better ways to help the reluctant learners.
BASIS, by contrast, is an exceptionally competitive school that appeals to high performing students and drops the reluctant learners.
Here is what Louisiana will get: This. This. And this.
Keep the best, get rid of the rest.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Private schools with public money… but no oversight by the public via democratically elected school boards… no accountability or transparency to the public… no obligation to educated ALL of the public, especially if certain categories of students cost more, or do not produce high test scores.
are any stats available regarding where I am guessing at least 16 percent of the school population, special needs students, are enrolled?
Diane, how can an area like New Orleans, who has no public schools left, get them back? Can they?
Nola: elect a new governor committed to public education, appointing better people to state board, telling truth about NOLA
Keep the best, get rid of the rest.
That is a great summary of the problem with charter schools and consumer choice.
Two many charter schools are designed to do a triage on the kids. If they survive the regime imposed upon them then they are, by definition, the best, full of grit, able to score high on tests, and “worthy” human beings.
The value system is transparent and it is dangerous…a version of eugenics marketed under the banner of a meritocracy that does not exist—because there is not equal opportunity to thrive and to learn.
Laura H. Chapman: which is why I refer to the heavyweights in the charter movement as practicing “educational triage.”
But, of course, for the rheephormistas it’s all about the kids.
Sure. Although, interestingly, at the end of the triage rainbow is a big fat pot of $tudent $ucce$$ that ends up in a few adult hands.
Example. Eva Moskowitz: $57.50@student. Carmen Fariña: less than 25¢@student.
It all makes a lot of ₵ent¢ now.
😎
“Chartering a Course to $ucce$$”
The lesson of the charter
The key to their $ucce$$
Is focus on the “smarter”
Eliminate the rest
“BASIS Charter School”
The BASIS of success?
Selection at its best
Cuz Darwin’s fittest cases
Got nothin’ on the BASIS
Kicking large numbers of students to the curb is no systemic solution to improve education. A few students that can take the rigor benefit, but the majority are worse off in more impoverished public schools with fewer options. How does failure and getting the boot impact the rejected students? How is this an improvement or reform of any kind? This Darwinism applied to education.
The model is a very old one.
“Better fewer but better.”
It’s the basis [shills & trolls—word play. Get it?] for, among others, elite combat units and elite sports team.
Retention is bad, attrition is good. Translation: low retention with its conjoined twin high attrition is a mark of success not failure.
Think of Bizarro World [Superman comics]. Google if necessary. Then ponder why on the Bizarro World of Rheephorm the Jamie Vollmer story about blueberries is a lesson in what NOT to do.
Link: http://www.jamievollmer.com/blueberries
😎
Ah…schools for the ELITE (at public $$$$$) and the poor who CONFORM totally and become even more enslaved. This wreaks of Jim Crow.
We have a charter school here in NH called the academy of science and design that does the same thing. They state on their website that if you are not in the gifted program at your public school and a participant in first robotics or destination imagination you will most likely not succeed at their school. They also ask you to take an entrance exam. If you don’t score an 80 or above your parents must meet admin for counceling. If parents refuse counceling they must sign something saying they refused. What a joke. They defend these practices by saying that it’s all part of the school’s mission. Why are they allowed to cherry pick like this? Of course, they have the highest test scores in the state which makes the ignorant masses think charters are superior to public schools.
“Keep the best get rid of the rest.”
Most schools, even “failing” public ones can get good results out of the best. This is why schools, though “failing”, still have a 30-40 percent proficiency rate. The trick is to collect all these proficient students into one charter school so that the CEO can walk around feeling great having done what any one can do.
Why not have a charter like Basis pull the lowest performing students from the public schools and focus are their needs, so that the public school teachers can better serve students who come to school ready to learn?
Here’s the latest “best” list from Jay Mathews, who has pimped regularly and unabashedly for the College Board’s Advanced Placement program. Notice that BASIS schoos make up three of the “top” ten.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/04/19/americas-most-challenging-high-schools-national-top-25-list-for-2015/
Mathews has convinced an awful lot of people – students, parents, and educators – that AP is “better” than regular high school courses that focus on critical thinking. It’s not.
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.” Other university research (Harvard, Dartmouth) has found the same thing. Those results shouldn’t be surprising because students admit that “You’re not trying to get educated; you’re trying to look good” in the college admission process.
In The ToolBox Revisited (2006), Clifford Adelman finds that “Advanced Placement has almost no bearing on entering postsecondary education,” and when examining and statistically quantifying the factors that relate to bachelor’s degree completion, Advanced Placement does NOT “reach the threshold level of significance.”
As Geiser (2007) notes, “systematic differences in student motivation, academic preparation, family background and high-school quality account for much of the observed difference in college outcomes between AP and non-AP students.” Klopfenstein and Thomas (2010) find that when these demographic characteristics are controlled for, the claims made for AP disappear.
And yet, AP is an integral component of “reform.” Exxon-Mobil touts it. So does the Business Roundtable, which says that AP courses – along with STEM and charter schools and virtual schools – should be a priority in “reform.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce uses AP as a gauge -– alongside support for charter and private schools and “return on investment” –– to measure school “effectiveness.” The NEA and AFT are on board too.
The Chamber and the Roundtable and Exxon-Mobil and other top corporations and organizations (among them, the Gates Foundation, the College Board, Lockheed Martin, JP Morgan Chase, Boeing, Northrop Grumman…) all subscribe to and promote the myth that American economic competitiveness, innovation and economic growth depend on school “reform” that’s based on the Common Core, AP courses, and STEM emphasis.
It’s interesting. Those protesting PARCC and Smarter Balanced testing seem to be almost oblivious to the fact that the ACT and PSAT and SAT and AP are all part-and-parcel of the same thing.
It’s kind of hard to be against something while simultaneously being supportive of it.
Basis Oro Valley had 13 graduating seniors in 2014.
And you’ll never know how much Olga and Michael Block make, because Basis is run by a For-Profit Company owned by the Blocks.