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BASIS, One of America’s Top Charter School Networks, Seeks New Turf: China
Washington Post | 7/30/15
Behind the Headline
High Scores at BASIS Charter Schools
Education Next |Winter 2014
BASIS schools, which began as a network of academically challenging charter schools but which now includes private schools, will open a new school in China. T. Rees Shapiro reports in the Washington Post, “The expansion will be the first foreign campus for BASIS. The pre-K through 12th grade school is slated to open Sept. 1 in a glittering steel and glass building in Shenzhen.”
BASIS schools in the U.S. are routinely ranked among the top high schools in the nation. In “High Scores at BASIS Charter Schools,” June Kronholz wrote about two BASIS charter schools in Arizona.
The Tucson charter school outscored all 40 countries that administered the 2012 PISA, or Programme for International Student Assessment exams, with a mean math score of 618, 131 points above the U.S. average. Its 10-year-old Scottsdale sister school scored even higher: 51 points above the metropolitan Shanghai area in math and 42 points higher in science.
“The BASIS curriculum and its hard-charging teachers go a long way toward explaining the schools’ success,” Kronholz wrote.
-Education Next
