Mercedes Schneider has done a deep dive into the financials of the BASIS Schools. It is an eye-opener.
BASIS charter schools won the top spots in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of the nation’s high schools.
BASIS Scottsdale was rated number 1 in the nation.
If you were thinking of sending your son or daughter there, think twice.
This is not a typical American high school. It is focused to an extreme on AP exams.
Turns out that AP test scores matter much in the US News high-school-ranking system, and BASIS high schools require their students to take at least eight AP courses and six AP exams. In 2016, the average BASIS graduate took over 11 AP exams. BASIS contends that “AP exam scores are by no means the focus of our curriculum”; however, the same page boasts that “many BASIS.ed graduates take as many as 20 AP Exams.”
These are the demands that make BASIS #1, but these are clearly not models for other high schools. They are for students who are academically driven.
But what about those financials?
The owners of the BASIS chains pay themselves millions. Yet BASIS is in debt.
Schneider asks: “Which Is Higher at BASIS Schools: Its AP Scores, or Its Debt?”
Which Is Higher at BASIS Schools: Its AP Scores, or Its Debt?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
BASIS kids are “cream of the crop” huh?
How would you like to be a public school parent or kid in Arizona? They’ve been designated the losers in this grand privatization experiment, I guess.
Oh, well. Onward with the privatization crusade! If every public school kid in the state takes a hit in service of this ideology, who cares? That’s just collateral damage.
If we’re going to a privatized system can public schools be compensated for their additional duties, serving as back-up to the “choice” schools?
That seems only fair. If we’re now serving as the back-up “public system” for private contractors, can we get recognition and funding commensurate with that role?
Here’s a supposed “agnostic” in ed reform. LA charter schools serve 16% of students.
You’re probably surprised by that number, given the EXCLUSIVE focus of ed reformers on charter schools.
They simply omit public schools completely. They offer absolutely nothing to 84% of students. This is somehow “agnostic”, where public school kids have zero adult advocates for the schools they currently attend.
My nephew was able to graduate from college in three years because he had acquired so many AP credits in his unfashionable public high school. He attended a highly ranked comprehensive public school in New Jersey, but I am sure it wasn’t in the top of ‘US News and World Report’s’ list. He also got a perfect SAT score of 1600, and never felt his public school held him back.
The Burris response in The Washington Post (linked at Deutsch 29) presents info. about the attrition rates and demographics. She reports 83%, as the combined total of Basics students, who were Asian and White. Arizona’s demographic profile of students in the state, is a combined total of 42% Asian and White. Attaching median incomes by race, would probably highlight what research has repeatedly shown. Children in families with higher incomes get higher test scores.
The three signs that a proposed charter school is at risk of failing
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute came out with a new analysis of “risk factors in charter school applications.
Lack of identified leadership: Charter applications that propose a self-managed school without naming a school leader.
High risk, low dose: Charter applications that propose to serve at-risk pupils but plan to employ “low dose” academic programs that do not include sufficient academic supports, such as intensive small-group instruction or extensive individual tutoring.
A child-centered curriculum: Charter applications that propose to deploy child-centered, inquiry-based pedagogies, such as Montessori, Waldorf, Paideia, or experiential programs.
Read the report here.
You forgot the link or else it didn’t make it through the wordpress gauntlet-ha ha!
The biggest predictor for the destruction of public education and democracy is colonialists like Gates and Walton heirs deciding to play God in the oligarchy, created by the 400 families that run the U.S.
When a system is created that guarantees business a cut from middle class and poor kids’ educations, there’s a depraved oligarchy, a self-serving collection of politicians, and assorted minions working for pseudo philanthropies.
This brings back memories of NYC grading of schools 10 years or so ago. Stats are all about gaming when motives are suspect!!! The schools were rated based on “gains” made on tests. So if a school like Brooklyn Tech had a 96 percent pass rate on high stakes tests and then the next year maintained that 96 percent rate but did not go up, they would get a poor letter grade ranking for the school (say a C or D letter grade). The elementary school where I worked received an A- grade. Why? The pass rate went from something like 23 percent in year one of this grading system to a 30 percent pass rate. This grading system did not make any sense at all!!!
I had one student who had just arrived from Nicaragua and who had straight A’s from a top school in her native country. Her parents believed the NYC grading system and came to my school. This family had a rude awakening.
The mayor wanted to prove that all of his “efforts” were enabling great successes in the NYC public school system! This was the way to do it (his way of gaming the system).
So it is not at all surprising that a Basis charter school in deep trouble gets a number one spot in the US News & World Report. Those who profit from public education show little care or concern about the REALITY of educating our nation’s students. They figure out how to game the system in order to meet their needs – usually greedy profit over what should be the real goal of GENUINELY EDUCATING OUR NATIONS STUDENTS! So whether it is PBS, Harcourt, Education Week, just about any hedge-fund manager… count them in when it is profit at the expense of the kids. Basis Charters… COUNT THEM IN TOO! US World and News Report makes a mint on its annual rankings I am sure… COUNT THEM IN! 😦