BASIS Schools Inc. received conditional approval April 25 to operate its first charter school outside of Arizona. If fully approved, the school would open for the 2012-13 school year and eventually serve grades 5-12. The District of Columbia Public Charter School Board (PCSB) also granted unconditional approval to Latin American Youth Center Career Academy to open its fourth school, while issuing conditional approvals to DC Scholars and Creative Minds. Of the 18 groups that submitted charter applications, 14 were denied.
“The board received a rich array of charter applications, some from founders with extraordinary track records in other states,” said Board Chair Brian W. Jones, in a released statement. “We conducted an exhaustive review of the applications including a rigorous public hearing and poured over mountains of data submitted to the board. The decisions we made were not made lightly.”
The Latin American Youth Center Career Academy will serve students between 16 and 24 years old who have not succeeded in a traditional school setting. The school will specialize in providing them skills to attain a GED certificate, vocational training in high-growth occupations, college-credit classes and preparation for success in college, postsecondary education, training programs or the workplace.
DC Scholars will serve students in preschool through the eighth grade and partner with Scholar Academies, a nonprofit, school management organization that has been successful operating schools in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. — including the highest performing charter middle school in Philadelphia, board officials said.
Creative Minds Public Charter School will offer students a comprehensive education program that involves an international primary, project-based curriculum, including the arts, and integrates standards-based literacy and math instruction in small classrooms. While the school’s proposal was to serve preschool through eighth grade, PCSB believed the application was stronger for preschool through the fifth grade and conditionally approved the application to serve those grades only, while keeping open the possibility of approving middle school grades at a later date.
BASIS officials said PCSB did not provide them with specific details under which its charter would be fully approved, but the board indicated that conditions will relate to concerns about how BASIS’ rigorous college preparatory academic model “will be adapted to the demographic profile of students in the District of Columbia.”
“Each community presents new opportunities and new challenges,” said Nick Fleege, BASIS director of new school development, “but the BASIS model rests on a proven academic program which can be replicated and adjusted to fit the diverse backgrounds and needs of students in various geographic locations.”
BASIS currently operates three charter schools in Arizona and will expand its footprint to six campuses in the fall. The organization’s flagship campus in Tucson has earned top 10 rankings in U.S. News & World Report and Newsweek. In addition, Businessweek named BASIS Scottsdale the top Arizona high school for overall academic performance.
Student achievement was a primary reason why a local committee was formed to bring BASIS to the nation’s capital, school officials said. BASIS students in Arizona have consistently passed the state’s standardized test (Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards) at rates approaching 100 percent. Last year, 87 percent of BASIS students passed their Advanced Placement exams, with 72 percent of Hispanic students passing and 87.5 percent of African-American students passing. Every BASIS student subgroup outperformed the overall national pass rate of 58 percent, school officials said.
In addition, 100 percent of BASIS graduates have been accepted to a four-year college or university, with many entering college as sophomores due to the advanced nature of their academic coursework, BASIS officials said. Graduates this year have been accepted to many top-tier institutions, including Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Duke, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Brown and Cornell.
“We are anxiously waiting the D.C. PCSB’s conditions,” said Michael Block, co-CEO of BASIS Educational Group. “It’s not yet clear to the committee how BASIS can demonstrate readiness to serve the D.C. population without being able to recruit students, assess their readiness, prepare necessary curriculum and support program adjustments and begin working with the students.”
“Time is of the essence,” added Olga Block, co-CEO of BASIS Educational Group. “We will work with the committee to persuade the PCSB members that we did not earn nationwide recognition as an excellent educational institution by failing to deliver on our promises. Our model can and will be focused on serving any population we are granted permission to serve.”
