BASIS Schools

BASIS Charter Schools
Location
7975 N Hayden Road, Suite C-240, Scottsdale, AZ 85258
Information
Type	Education Management
Opened	1998
Grades	K-12
Website	http://www.basisschools.org/

BASIS Charter Schools is a network of tuition-free charter schools in the United States, with schools located primarily in Arizona, where it was founded in 1998. Their schools use a liberal arts curriculum with emphasis on STEM and Advanced Placement courses and exams. BASIS Schools are a non-profit and are taxpayer-funded, though are managed by the for-profit BASIS Educational Group. The schools have continually topped U.S. national school rankings put out by The Washington Post and U.S. News & World Report, though they have also received criticism, most notably regarding their financial transparency and student attrition rates.

The first BASIS charter school was founded in Tucson in 1998 by Michael Block, Ph.D. and Olga Block, Ph.D. with the goal of educating students at an internationally competitive level.

In 2003, BASIS Scottsdale was opened. In 2010 BASIS Oro Valley was founded. A year later, BASIS opened three schools at once in Chandler, Peoria, and Flagstaff. BASIS continued its expansion by opening another school in Tucson and one in Phoenix proper in fall 2012, along with their first non-Arizona school located in Washington, D.C. In 2013, BASIS opened their tenth and eleventh Arizona campuses in Ahwatukee and Mesa, and the second non-Arizona campus was added in San Antonio, Texas. BASIS also began its primary (K-4) program at their BASIS Tucson site. In 2015, BASIS opened its 16th Arizona school in Goodyear, AZ.

BASIS was featured in the documentary film 2 Million Minutes: A 21st Century Solution, which examined differences between the curriculum of charter schools in comparison with that of conventional public schools. In response to the documentary, Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton visited BASIS' campus to deliver speeches on the importance of education in America.

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