Arizona has no restrictions on the makeup of a charter school’s student body, so if a school happens to attract lots of upper income families, that’s fine. Not so in Louisiana. If a school district is the chartering agent, the law says the student body has to have a similar percentage of “at risk” students as the district. That presents a problem for BASIS, which wants to open a school in Baton Rouge, where more than 70 percent of students come from families considered “at risk.” BASIS thrives on catering to advantaged students. What to do?
BASIS came up with an answer. Build the school on the property of Woman’s Hospital. Then half the school’s student body can be children of the hospital employees—they get the first shot before other applicants are considered—and they aren’t counted in the school’s socioeconomic mix. So BASIS can forget the usual 70 percent mark for “at risk” students.
BASIS’ application estimates that only 20 percent of those students will come from poor backgrounds, sometimes called “at risk,” which would make it one of the most affluent public schools in the state.
I’m not sure how BASIS came up with the 20 percent figure. If half the student body follows the Louisiana guidelines, the number should be closer to 35 percent. But whatever the final numbers turn out to be, the school district’s board is fine with the arrangement. It voted 6-0 to give BASIS a provisional contract.
The next time BASIS says its schools don’t cater to an elite student body, think about Baton Rouge where BASIS is gaming the system to make sure most it enrolls as few “at risk” kids as possible. The truth is, BASIS’s much-touted “best in the nation” status has always had more to do with its pupils than its pedagogy.
This article appears in Jul 20-26, 2017.
David,
Wasn’t BASIS recruited to come to Baton Rouge, not the other way around. As far as the corporate partnership, that is state law, not something that BASIS ‘came up with’.
As reported here…
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_e51f2a1e-6cf3-11e7-b4f0-732d4134b101.html
“The 2011 corporate partnership law exempts children of Womans Hospital employees from the at risk requirement. The remaining 50 percent-plus children at the school, however, still have to meet the “at risk” threshold.”
…
“The draft version of the contract the board looked at Thursday allows the school system to require BASIS to complete a corrective action plan if it falls short in this area, as well as in its enrollment of special education students.”
Now you know the rest of the story.
CW
And BTW, did I miss your post on this…
“Basis school network is planning to open a primary campus on Tucsons south side as part of an initiative to bring its challenging curriculum to underserved areas.”
…
“An analysis included in Basis proposal to the charter schools board says the population in the area of the new school has about 69 percent of students who qualify for free or reduced lunch an indicator of poverty and nearly 64 percent are Hispanic.”
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/basis-planning-new-charter-school-on-tucson-s-south-side/article_a2779b77-140e-5b63-ae86-fa3a818e8dbd.html
David, your premise that Basis makes a living catering to advantaged students twists a fundamental part of the American Dream. You can start in America with nothing and through hard work give a better life to your children and they do better than you. That is the basis of Basis. When you look at the students at Basis in OV many if not most are from second generation Asian or Indian families. They want their kids to have opportunities so they put their kids in the best school possible. Perhaps we should encourage good parenting where kids have advantages because of that? That doesn’t mean we ignore kids who don’t have that advantage, but you shouldn’t punish good behavior.
Another fascinating story by David Safier. Sure, there are other viewpoints (the comments above), but David’s tells something which has been ignored by much of the press. Good to hear both sides of the story by commenters and by David, but where else do you get a report like David’s? Much appreciated.
If you look at a continuous cohort of students, meaning looking at all the kids who were in Arizona schools at the end of 3rd grade and still in our schools at the end of 8th grade, the BASIS cohort gains 20% more annually than the statewide average. Put in terms of SAT points, that’s about 3 extra SAT points per year. However, when you look at those same students when they attend other schools, their gains are only slightly less – about 2.5 SAT points per year.
You keep beating up on them because their sky high test scores make them the poster boys and girls for school choice. That’s what education culture values, falsely associating these high test scores with the school that collects them and ignoring those schools that actually create them. The measure of academic gains, in scale score points, is where we should be looking to find uniquely valuable schools.
There are over 50 schools with higher academic gains than the average of BASIS system.
Many of them are producing those gains year after year. Sooner or later, they will begin to propagate the way BASIS has propagated. Then, the game will be on.