Dr. Theresa Trevino, a public school parent in Austin, wrote to Texas Commissioner of Education Mike Morath to complain about the insertion of a BASIS charter school into a community where the school is neither wanted nor needed. BASIS is owned by a couple who pay themselves $10 million a year. Their charter schools require students to pass multiple AP exams, which effectively winnows out low-performing students, who no longer bother to apply. Most of their charters are in Arizona, where they are celebrated for their high scores. Their high scores are achieved by excluding students who might get low scores.
See the letters here and here.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
BASIS is one of the bigger lies of ed reform.
Why not just admit they started and fund a selective private school for certain chosen students? They don’t even pretend it’s “public”.
If ed reform wanted to start privately managed “magnet schools” why didn’t they just sell THAT to the public, instead of this elaborate ruse where they pretend they’re comparable to public schools?
They’re still doing the innumerate “100!” thing by the way. Success Charters crows about 100%, not mentioning that 1/3 of the students magically disappeared between 9th and 12th grades.
My public school could do this, too. If we chased out the bottom third we would have “100%”, except we can add and subtract and do percentages, so we would know that’s nonsense. Where did the rejected Success students GO, I wonder? Are any of the “researchers” in ed reform interested?
Success Academy charters lost 72% of the kids who were admitted in kindergarten. The chain does not admit new students after third grade.
It must be great to run a charter school. You just open up with no concern at all for the system as a whole, contribute nothing outside your chosen population of students, and have a public system “back up” standing ready to take the students you reject.
The same public system your lobbyists bash and defund.
BASIS couldn’t exist without the unfashionable “safety net” public schools behind it. Charter schools selectivity is wholly dependent on the public schools they all denigrate and lobby against.
I think ed reform’s ideological and political leader states their (lockstep) response to the coronavirus best:
“Secretary Betsy DeVos
·Apr 29
The disruption to our education system caused by #coronavirus reaffirms what I’ve said for years…”
The whole echo chamber are churning out the talking points they’ve been using for 20 years, except now it’s supposedly “in response” to coronavirus. There’s no learning at all going on here. They simply jammed their existing dogma into a new challenge.
Strip out “virus” from the ed reform agenda and you’ll see it’s exactly what they all always advise. They simply added a word.
The Texas legislature should be ashamed of allowing Basis to obtain taxpayer funding. Choose to Succeed, Ewing Halsell Foundation and Brackenridge Foundation should be accountable for donating $6 million to support segregation in local communities. San Antonio ISD is 90.3% Hispanic and 2.8% White/Asian. Basis is 19.4% Hispanic and 70.3% White/Asian.
Northside ISD (the 3rd largest school district in Texas) spends $5,503 per student for “Instruction”. Basis spends $4,036 per student. Northside ISD maximizes funding for students by allocating $616 per student for Administration/Leadership. Basis allocates
$2,079 per student for Administration/Leadership.
Basis spends $133 for each student with disabilities. Northside ISD spends $1,396 for each student with disabilities.
Despite all the promotions, 45.7% of 8th grade students do not return for the 9th grade.
During the pandemic, Northside ISD is providing free breakfast and lunch to any student under 18. Basis does not even provide food to enrolled students during normal times.
Basis – INCREASING the opportunity gap for economically disadvantaged and minority students! Time to call it what it is!