Newsweek Keeps Local School in U.S. Top 10
By Nathan Olivarez-Giles, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson
May 24–For the second year in a row, BASIS Tucson is ranked among the top 10 of Newsweek magazine’s “America’s Top Public High Schools.”
But coming in at No. 6 this year and No. 3 in 2006 has changed little at the charter school — other than the number of students waiting to get in.
“We’re definitely proud of it,” said senior Amal Elhag of the rankings. “But we know we can do better and we know we can get No. 1.”
Schools are ranked based on a ratio that measures the number of Advanced Placement and Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in one year, divided by the number of graduating seniors.
Next Wednesday, BASIS will see its third graduating class don caps and gowns. The 2007 senior class is the school’s largest thus far, with 12 students.
Every student who’s attended BASIS high school has graduated and gone directly to a university, said Carolyn McGarvey, director of BASIS Tucson Upper School, which houses eighth-graders and the high school. BASIS also has middle schools in Tucson and in Scottsdale.
“Most of our curriculum is based on AP exams and standards,” McGarvey said. “We are tough — we are very rigorous on our students — but we believe that at fifth and sixth grade our kids are like sponges and they want to soak it all up and learn and if they get this sort of education so young, they run with it.”
That rigorous curriculum includes three years each of chemistry, physics and biology classes before students reach ninth grade.
Students also study Latin in fifth and sixth grades and a third language — Spanish, French or Mandarin Chinese — from seventh grade until graduation.
“It’s stressful sometimes,” senior Elliot Schrock said. “BASIS kids are best at making fun of ourselves. When one of us calls another a ‘geek’ or something, we look around like, ‘Look who’s talking.’ ” With a schoolwide focus on AP classes and exams, the idea of preparing them to excel at a university after high school isn’t lost on the students.
“Our parents and our teachers just see it as the next step,” Schrock, 18, said. “It’s not really an option. It’s expected.”
Even the teaching style is executed with college preparation in mind, said Julia Toews, a ninth- and 11th-grade AP English teacher.
“It’s closer to the way I would teach in a university classroom more than a normal high school,” said Toews, who has taught at Johns Hopkins University as well as a few other private and charter schools. “I come in in the morning and the kids are already studying together.”
In such a small school, camaraderie is easy to find, Elhag, 17, said.
“We all study together because we all know we have to pass our AP exams,” he said. “Everyone here has my back, and we’ve been together for a long time, so it’s kind of like a family.”
Making the Newsweek list has put BASIS on the map, something students hope won’t affect the school size or the performance of its students.
“It used to be, ‘BASIS? Where’s that?’ ” Schrock said. “Now some people have an idea of who we are, but we still don’t have a prom or anything. If we were bigger and did that kind of stuff like other high schools, it would just be a whole different experience.”
The different experience Schrock described could be in the future.
BASIS holds open registration each year for fifth-graders, and will accept up to 100 a year, McGarvey said.
For the 2006-07 school year, BASIS had about 100 high schoolers total, said Toews, 36.
Students not in fifth grade can get on a waiting list that fills spots opened by students who leave BASIS.
A few other Arizona schools also made Newsweek’s list, including Ironwood Ridge High School in Oro Valley, which is ranked No. 1,202.
Schools are still being added to the list, as Newsweek is still receiving 2006 data from some of them.
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