In a quiet classroom, 25 students sit in desks, heads down, working on the day's writing assignment, a compare/contrast essay about men and women.
The ninth-graders in Robert Witz's honors English language class are sitting in one of two English courses they're required to take at Scottsdale BASIS, a charter school organization that has received national recognition.
Like its Tucson and Oro Valley counterparts, Scottsdale BASIS prepares students for Advanced Placement classes years before other public high schools.
Beginning next fall, students in the East Valley will also have a chance to attend a BASIS campus.
Former Intel Chairman and CEO Craig Barrett and The Rodel Foundation announced a combined $600,000 over the next three years to open BASIS Schools in Chandler, Peoria and Flagstaff. Barrett is now president and chairman of BASIS Schools.
Nick Fleege, director of new school development for BASIS, said plans are underway to build a new facility in Chandler, rather than renovate an existing building. The campus will open next fall with about 400 fifth- through 10th-graders, he said.
Parents approached BASIS about opening a school in the community, Fleege said. Combined with the businesses and employee base in the city, it made Chandler an ideal candidate, Fleege said.
Christy Allen, 16, is an 11th-grader at the Scottsdale campus. She came to BASIS from district school in the eighth grade. But because she was behind in math, based on her placement test for BASIS, she was told she would have to repeat the seventh grade or study and retest before entering school.
Allen did that and today she is set to graduate a year early.
"The difference I think lies in the respect for the students," Allen said of her experience at BASIS. "The kids (at the district school) didn't care and didn't want to be there. Here the teachers know they can learn from us. We want to learn. We want to be here. It's not for everyone."
BASIS sets students up so they could have all the required academic classes to graduate after their junior year, she said. But most students stay to continue higher-level "capstone" classes their senior year that include a research project. Allen, however, wants to study in France.
Her coursework this year includes Advanced Placement classes in calculus, U.S. history, English language and biology, along with honors chemistry, advanced topic financial economics and government.
English teacher Witz came to Arizona from South Carolina where he taught at a magnet school with an emphasis on academics. He heard about BASIS and jumped at the opportunity to teach for the schools.
"What's different are the expectations placed upon everybody in the building," he said. "I think it's understood by most people if you have high expectations the students will rise and meet them," he said. "Here the expectations are very, very high but the theory is proven. The students do rise."
It takes an extra measure of work by the staff as well, he said.
"If the teachers aren't willing to work hard, and go the extra miles, the students can't get there. We have this building where everyone works really hard and everyone cares."
Besides the curriculum, the schools also offer martial arts-based physical education classes. And starting next year, eighth-graders will be tested using the Cambridge test, a European-based exam, to measure how they're doing against 10th-graders around the world.
In Arizona, charter schools are privately-operated public schools funded with state dollars based on enrollment. The movement started 15 years ago, and today, 10 percent of students in a public school are educated on a charter campus.
Mike McClellan posted at 9:13 am on Tue, Nov 2, 2010.
Terrific schools. Great teaching, small classes, high standards.
One question, though: When will we see charter schools with this kind of excellence focus on minority and poorer kids?
What charter schools like BASIS do is great, but the schools tend to be overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly suburban, and overwhelmingly middle class.
mesateacher posted at 10:59 am on Tue, Nov 2, 2010.
Hold on there. Charter schools are open to ANYONE. They cannot turn away students. They must accept minorities, disabled, illegal and other students just like any public school. BASIS has very high standards and places high demands on students, teachers, and parents. Your question should be: when are minority and pooer parents going to take the initiative to get their kids into a school like BASIS and demand that their students start doing hard work like do many white, suburban, middle class kids? And while I'm at it, public schools could get the same results BASIS does, but public school teachers, administrators, parents and kids don't have the work ethic or standards of BASIS. When will Mesa Schools raise its standards?
Mike McClellan posted at 2:37 pm on Tue, Nov 2, 2010.
Gosh, I guess I assumed that not all minority and poor parents neglected their kids. My mistake.
In the meantime, public schools could get the same results as BASIS does? Sure we could, if we had that population.
The question is, could BASIS get the same results it does with a traditional public school population?
Knarf88 posted at 10:24 am on Sat, Apr 9, 2011.
We are fortunate to have so many choices in charter and non-charter prep schools offering us a stronger academic alternative to the standard public schools at minimal expense. In many other states, the alternative to charter schools is private (which may be expensive when you have more than one child).
Although my children are in the public school system, I am considering the switch in order to take advantage of the stronger academic challenges and the small school environment.
Children can do well in the public school system. However, they must be more focused and self-disciplined because there are so many distractions today.
Sending our children to a charter school only costs minimally more (in gas and commute time), but it may take a greater commitment to studying.
The traditional school population tends to include many children who don't want to be in school and/or children of parents who do not place such a strong emphasis on education. Thus, on average, test scores from charter or prep schools are higher than from the traditional schools.
Also, I have noticed that when the traditional schools are understaffed, the quality of teaching may not be quite as high as it could or should be. In such cases, it becomes the responsibility of the parents and children to work harder to get the most out of school. I suspect the charter schools (like private schools) demand more from their teachers as well as from their students.