by David Safier
BASIS Tucson has been hailed as one of the top schools in the U.S., traditional or charter, for a number of years. Now it's being featured in a documentary film, 2 Million Minutes: A 21st Century Solution. It will be playing at the Fox Theater October 1. You can watch the trailer here.
The film is the second in the series. The first, Two Million Minutes, showed how other countries are outstripping the U.S. in the ways they educate their children. This one features BASIS' two campuses, here and in Scottsdale, as a homegrown solution.
I haven't seen the first film, and I only know what everyone knows about BASIS. My sense is that most cross-national educational comparisons have to be viewed with a healthy skepticism, and I'm not sure BASIS presents a model that can be transferred to other settings with a different type of student. That being said, this is quite an honor, and probably a well deserved one, for the Tucson charter.
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Hi Mr. Safier,
Be sure to read the Curriculum Matters blog post on his impressions of the movie and don’t miss the comment from the movie’s director who writes…
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By focusing on the Tucson BASIS charter school, I was attempting to illustrate larger patterns of excellence:
1 – what a world-class curriculum looks like in a US high school,
2- the value of teachers with advanced degrees in the subject they teach,
3- the ability to start a world-standard school without Foundation or corporate capital,
4- the viability of delivering an excellent education on $6,500 per student per year
5- that a globally competitive education is desired by US students of all economic means
6- that a fabulous education, 3-4 years ahead of most US high schools, can be achieved in 180 days,
7- that “pay for performance” is a motivating reward.
———–
There is a huge lesson here for all school administrators in Arizona.
Thanks!
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2009/09/two_million_minutes_in_a_coupl.html