ICYMI: Vital Links You May Have Missed

Here are some excellent stories covering BASIS Curriculum Schools which you may have missed:

Arizona Chamber Foundation Launches News Website with Article About BASIS Curriculum Schools

The Arizona Chamber Foundation has recently launched a brand new “news network” which covers business, consumer, and general news across the state of Arizona.

The “CBN” news team chose BASIS Curriculum Schools as the subject of one of the new news website’s first feature stories, which you can read right here. It’s actually a delightful piece – one of the best we’ve seen that describes the BASIS Curriculum’s primary school program. Please check it out!

We might add, in case you didn’t know, that the Arizona Chamber Foundation is a non-partisan 501(c)(3) educational and research foundation. It is essentially the policy arm of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The Arizona Chamber Foundation, which was established in 2009 (35 years after the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry was founded), produces research studies and analysis about various public policy areas, including education. Its new news site can be found right here; we suggest signing up for its breaking news or daily news roundup newsletters, which are fantastic!

BASIS Prescott Produces Smart Shoppers

BASIS Prescott 4th grade mathematics teacher Brian Mazon enlisted his students to do some keen, useful, and intriguing math application… in the grocery store!

Put another way, the 4th graders undertook some outside-the-box market research, about which the Prescott Daily Courier had a very nice profile. The piece focusing solely on Mr. Mazon and his class of practical math whizzes can be found right here.

One of the benefits of our academic program and the BASIS Curriculum is that, across all of the schools in the BASIS Curriculum Schools network, teachers and administrators know what they’re supposed to teach. However, it is up to the teacher as to specifically how to teach it. That’s why our network values our teachers so much: they are bright and passionate about their subject, and supremely creative in determining how exactly to teach their material, as Mr. Mazon so wonderfully demonstrated here!

EdTech Magazine Assesses Our Network’s ‘Quantitative Firepower’

EdTech: Focus on K-12 is an online magazine which looks at the intersection of technology and education; issues which intersect in the publication in a manner which interests both IT leaders and educators.

You may have seen this piece linked in Vectors – but in case you did not, and because we believe it is worth reading, we’re presenting it to you once again.

The profile of our network’s use of data focuses on what we focus on, too: measuring curricular success and student performance in ways that help us shore up our program and support our students. Indeed, as parents know, our network’s foray into high-technology is mostly from outside of our classrooms, looking at what teachers and students are doing. Our use of technology helps them.

As BASIS.ed CEO Peter Bezanson is quoted as saying in the piece, “We have more IT, more analytics and more quantitative firepower than anyone else in the country.” And while that’s true, we love noting that, inside our classrooms, things are still rather traditional.

Here is the link to the Vectors piece — called “We Do Data” — which itself links to EdTech’s profile.

And here is a direct link to EdTech’s article about us.

One More Time: 20 Minutes with the Blocks

It’s rare to get a sit-down with Olga and Michael Block, our network’s high-energy, high-achieving (sound familiar?) co-founders. But earlier this spring, the Scottsdale Independent did just that. Lucky them; lucky us!

We trumpeted this lovely piece a bit when it was published, but here it is again, juuuuuust in case you didn’t click through the first time.

The BASIS Curriculum Schools network is grateful for our co-founders – and that gratitude will be celebrated in earnest this fall, as we talk a bit more about our 20th anniversary. This piece has a nice quick glimpse into the minds these two highly-respected, highly-accomplished educators. Click here to read it.