The Washington region is a hot zone of student achievement, with leading high schools offering a plethora of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes to prove that theirs is a rigorous path to college.
But next year, a public charter school will open in the nation’s capital that raises the concept of academic rigor to a new level. Seventh-graders will take Algebra I and Latin. AP courses will not be an option for high school students — they’ll be the heart of the curriculum.
To graduate, students will be required to complete at least eight AP courses and pass six exams.
The school, to be known as Basis DC, replicates a model developed in Arizona and represents a potential turning point for a charter sector in the District that has grown explosively in the past decade but yielded uneven results.
Its founders say the school will be a game-changer for a city struggling to raise the quality of educational offerings for poor children.
Skeptics question whether the intensely demanding approach can succeed in a city that is poorer and more diverse than the communities the charter operators have served.
“I’m all for high standards. I’m all for excellent curriculum. Kids should be pushed. But you have to recognize the population,” said Skip McKoy, a member of the D.C. Public Charter School Board.
McKoy, the only board member who voted against the opening of Basis when it was approved last month, said he thought that the charter operator “brushed aside” concerns about the ability of students behind grade level to succeed.
Olga Block, a Czech native and former college professor who founded Basis 13 years ago with her husband, economist Michael Block, said their schools can educate anyone who walks in the door.
“We know how to do this,” she said. “We’re very good at it.”
The District isn’t the Blocks’ only target. They indicated in their application that they plan to open two to four new schools a year across the country by 2016.
For the D.C. charter sector, the nation’s fastest-growing outside of New Orleans, Basis represents a new direction. D.C. charter schools educate nearly 29,000 students — about 40 percent of the city’s public school population — on 93 campuses at an annual cost of $400 million.
But with expansion have come concerns about quality. In the past two years, 11 charter schools have closed voluntarily or by order of the charter board, primarily because of academic or financial problems.
The overwhelming majority of D.C. charter schools were founded by local groups. Some board members say it is time to look for more organizations, such as Basis, with a track record of success outside the city.
The Basis formula offers austere, European-style rigor — eighth-graders must pass the University of Cambridge international benchmarking exam — without many of the usual extracurricular bells and whistles of U.S. high schools.
“I have a math program. I have a physics program. I have a calculus program. What is this about a music band?” Block told the Arizona Republic in 2006. She said her classrooms were for “workaholics.”
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