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 Learning
the BASIS for Advanced Placement Courses
by Jay Mathews, Washington Post, May 25, 2004
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It was about
three years ago when I first met Olga and Michael Block. They
came by to talk about their plans for something that had never
been done before, and which struck me as way too ambitious. They
were creating a high school almost entirely devoted to Advanced
Placement courses.
There is no denying I am a shameless cheerleader for AP. Jaime
Escalante, the AP calculus teacher at Garfield High School in
East Los Angeles, changed my life 22 years ago by showing me the
power these college-level tests and courses could bestow on
low-income students in the inner city. I wrote a book about
Escalante, and then a second book about how wrong suburban high
schools were to bar their average students from AP. I created
the Challenge Index, published in The Washington Post and
Newsweek, to identify those schools that had adopted Escalante's
ideas and had high participation rates in either AP or a much
smaller but similar program, International Baccalaureate.
Nationally, AP is considered a program for high school juniors
and seniors. Until I met the Blocks, I never envisioned a school
where ninth graders could take AP English Language and
Composition, or AP European History, or AP Computer Science, and
10th graders would be welcome in AP Calculus, AP Physics or AP
Chemistry. Nor did I think it would be possible to have a school
in which at least seven AP courses would be required for
graduation.
And yet that is what the Blocks have created in a
concrete-block, one-story former day care center in a well-worn
commercial area of Tucson, Ariz. They call it the BASIS school.
Olga, 48, a college educator from the Czech Republic, and
Michael, 62, a University of Arizona economics professor, met in
1992 when Olga enrolled in a World Bank seminar Michael was
teaching in Vienna, Austria. They married in 1996 and Olga, the
driving force behind their eventual decision to start a school,
began to learn about the educational options in America for her
daughter Petra, who was ready for fifth grade.
Olga's story has the charm of many immigrant tales, although in
this case the opposite of the usual astonishment over the
richness of American life. Being European, she assumed that this
very civilized country must have a set curriculum. The Borders
bookstore clerk had no idea what she was talking about when she
asked for the standard texts for the American curriculum, but
she found a fifth grade book for E. D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge
curriculum, and figured that was it.
Educators and parents who know Core Knowledge will be laughing
at this point. It is a very rigorous program, based on the
notion that children must learn lots of facts in order to be
able to read and write well. To Olga Block, it seemed like
something European children would handle without complaint, so
she home-schooled Petra that year using the book. The shock came
when she enrolled the child in a public school in Scottsdale,
Ariz., for sixth grade, and discovered that typical American
middle schools, even in affluent communities like Scottsdale, do
not require that students learn much.
"They were going to study a whale for awhile and then a
volcano," said Michael Block. To Olga, the program did not make
any sense at all. So they decided to start their own middle
school in Tucson in 1998, which expanded into high school grades
in 1999, and then spun off a second school in Scottsdale that is
finishing its first year with 140 middle schoolers.
The original BASIS school at 3825 E. 2nd Street in Tucson,
reachable at BASISinfo@aol.com, has 237 students, although no
seniors this year because all of last year's juniors graduated
early, one of the options the school offers. There are 191
students in the fifth through eighth grades, and just 22 ninth
graders, 12 tenth graders and 12 eleventh graders. Many BASIS
middle schoolers transfer to larger high schools that have the
usual wide assortment of sports and other extracurricular
activities, which BASIS does not.
What it does have is probably the highest AP participation rate
of any public school in the country. That's right. It's a public
school. BASIS is in Arizona, which to the public charter school
movement is Mecca, Jerusalem, Fenway Park, Lambeau Field or any
other symbol of what is good and true you might worship. Charter
schools have had their ups and downs in that very
pro-school-choice state, but the Blocks quickly realized that
the Arizona law would allow the kind of wild experiment they had
in mind and give them tax dollars for every child they enrolled.
They chose AP as their graduation requirement, said Michael
Block, who serves as chairman of the school's board of trustees,
"because it gave us this wonderful content, communicated that
this is a very high level program and provided an extra check on
teaching." AP examinations are written and scored by outside
experts, and can help administrators see which teachers are
doing the best jobs, although few schools use them that way.
Here are BASIS's latest college-level course numbers. In 2003
the school gave 89 AP exams and had 12 graduating students, for
a Challenge Index rating of 7.417. That ratio of exam to
graduates would likely make BASIS the number one public school
in the country on that scale, except that I did not compile a
national list for 2003 (I don't have the stamina to do it every
year) and I do not include new schools like BASIS that haven't
reached their full size.
This year the school gave 99 AP tests, the last of those exams
just completed. Their Challenge Index would not compute at all
since they have nobody graduating, this year's eleventh graders
deciding that they did not want to leave early like last year's
eleventh graders. It is a very diverse group of students, at
least half of them with parents who did not graduate from
college. When BASIS opened, many families signed up just because
it was a small, safe and apparently good school in a part of
town that didn't have many schools like that. Although many
parents who do not live in the neighborhood, including some
University of Arizona faculty, are now signing up their
children, BASIS as a public school must admit anyone who signs
up until it reaches capacity, which has not happened yet.
Most of the families seem very happy with it, despite, or more
likely because of, the challenge of college-size reading lists
and college-length final exams beginning in the ninth grade.
There are 11 anonymous parent or student reviews of BASIS on the
greatschools.net Web site, and nine are very positive:
"This school is as close to perfect as I can imagine." (Oct.
2002)
"This is a great school. Very challenging and worthwhile."
(April 2003)
"This is the best school I ever attended. While strenuous
(Economics in 8th grade!), it makes it easy to get ahead in the
game of life. The teachers have time to answer questions
personally, and they make sure no one who makes the effort falls
behind."
The two negative reviews complained about staff being
ineffective in or new to their jobs, although the Blocks say
they have made progress in that regard. They say the problem has
been that almost no one, including many of the teachers they
hired, at first thought students that age were capable of doing
AP. When they sent their new faculty to train as AP teachers,
the other trainees were aghast that their school was requiring
so many college-level courses, and starting them in the ninth
grade.
The Blocks say even the College Board officials who run the AP
program have appeared uncertain what to make of them, although
when I asked Trevor Packer, the College Board's AP operations
director, about the Blocks, he was very enthusiastic. "BASIS is
a truly inspiring school," he said, "led by administrators who
stand at the forefront of a growing body of educators who are
seeing tremendous results as they act on the belief that all
students deserve preparation for and access to the sort of
stimulating coursework found in AP classes."
To graduate, a BASIS student must pass AP English Language &
Composition, AP English Literature, AP Calculus or AP
Statistics, AP European History, AP American History and two of
the three available AP science courses in physics, chemistry and
biology. There are also AP courses in computer science and
foreign language. The three-hour AP tests at the end of each
course are not required at most high schools, but at BASIS
students must take the test at the end of at least five of the
required AP courses. The middle school students are also
accelerated, all of them finishing first year algebra by seventh
grade, to prepare them for early AP.
The grading system is also unique. BASIS high school students
don't get their final grades until July. Almost all American AP
teachers fill out their report cards based on just their
student's classroom work, since the AP test scores arrive too
late. Half of each AP test is usually essays or similar free
response questions that have to be scored by human beings, and
that doesn't get done until long after school closes for the
summer.
But BASIS teachers wait for the AP results. AP scores go from 5
to 1, the equivalent of a college A to a college F. If a BASIS
student's course grade before the AP test is a D, she still gets
an A for the course if she gets a 5 on the exam, and a B if she
gets a 4 on the exam. Students whose pre-test course grades were
As or Bs before the AP test are bumped down to Cs if they get a
1 on the exam.
The Blocks say they are working on improving the scores of their
students on the tests. Only 47 percent of the 2003 tests scored
3 or higher, below the national average of about 59 percent,
although no other schools I know of have mostly ninth graders
taking AP English Language & Composition and mostly tenth
graders taking AP Calculus and AP European History. The Blocks
say they share Escalante's view that even a student who
struggles in an AP course and gets a low grade on the final exam
is much better off than a student who sails through a typically
undemanding average high school course.
The BASIS students have just a drama club, a band and sports
teams for soccer, basketball and flag football, but there are
interesting academic competitions. BASIS eighth graders recently
finished in the middle of the pack in a high school economics
competition, beating eight high schools with teams much older
and with much more preparation time.
Outside visitors say they are impressed. "You can't argue with
the success of a school in which you can visit the ninth grade
class (all the kids) studying pre-calculus, and an eighth grade
working through hydrocarbon structures all in the same hour,"
said Martha Schwartz, a science education consultant. And rather
than the fashionable high school block system of 90 minute
classes meeting every other day, "they have eight 45-minute
classes per day," Schwartz said. "That allows them to have three
different science subjects running concurrently as is done in
many countries."
Olga Block, who serves as the school's director, said she
noticed a different atmosphere during this year's AP tests. The
middle school students were walking on tip-toe during testing
hours. There was a sense, she said, that they felt the AP
students "were the gladiators."
I don't know of any other high school, public or private, that
has so closely tied itself to AP. If there are some, I would
love to hear about them. I can't imagine many other high schools
following the BASIS example any time soon, but Michael Block,
watching the numbers like a good economist, says the volume of
applications to the school is growing every year.
He said he has been reading and admiring Michael Barone's new
book, "Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and
the Battle for the Nation's Future." "We are part of the new
hard America," Block said. "I think our resistance to softness
is one of our comparative advantages."
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