The Master Teacher Campaign at BASIS Tucson
View the 2009-10 BASIS Tucson Master Teacher Campaign Brochure
View supporters of the 2008-09 Master Teacher Campaign
Purpose: A Faculty Second to None
The Master Teacher Program helps BASIS Tucson recruit, retain, and reward high performing teachers. With private contributions from BASIS parents, community members, local businesses, and foundations, BASIS rewards teachers for the learning gains made by their students through merit-based salary supplements and bonuses.
A top quality curriculum requires top quality teachers. With one of the most academically aggressive programs in the country, BASIS depends on its teachers to possess deep subject knowledge and the ability to convey complex information to students in an understandable way.
Through the Master Teacher Program, we aim to provide top quality teachers who are devoted to the educational principles at BASIS with sufficient compensation to assure they will not have to leave teaching or BASIS to obtain adequate salaries and financial progress over their professional careers. We also wish to recruit the “best and brightest.” Offering respectable salaries for high performing teachers has helped us attract the attention of talented new teachers.
BASIS students have achieved remarkable results due in large part to the knowledge, creativity, dedication, and efforts of the BASIS Tucson faculty. The Master Teacher Campaign will help ensure BASIS students continue to achieve these results well into the future.
History: The Master Teacher Program through the Years
The Master Teacher Program was launched in the 2006-07 school year at BASIS Scottsdale with a generous founding contribution from Barbara and Craig Barrett of $450,000 over three years. This support helped leverage additional funding from Scottsdale families, companies, individuals, and foundations for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 school years.
The BASIS Scottsdale Master Teacher Campaign was so successful we launched a sister campaign at the BASIS Tucson campus in the 2008-09 school year. One in four BASIS Tucson families contributed to the campaign in its inaugural year and the campaign proved a success with nearly $80,000 raised from Tucson families, companies, individuals, and foundations.
In the 2008-09 school year, United Health Care became the first major Corporate Donor to the Master Teacher Campaign, contributing $25,000 to BASIS Scottsdale and $25,000 to BASIS Tucson to support UHC Teachers in the Life Sciences. BASIS continues to seek business organizations, foundations and philanthropists willing to support named or “endowed” teacher positions, in whole or in part, through annual contributions of $50,000.
Support: Why your contribution matters
Access to a high quality teacher is the leading in-school factor contributing to student achievement. BASIS Tucson has been lucky to find high quality teachers who are not only talented, but also dedicated to the school’s cause, curriculum, and especially students—but dedicated as they may be, BASIS teachers are capable professionals who could stand to earn large salaries elsewhere.
As with all Arizona charter schools, BASIS Tucson receives less state and local funding per-student than traditional public schools ($1000 less per student according to a study commissioned by Superintendent Horne), making it unfeasible to pay faculty much more than the average Arizona teacher salary without outside support.
Thanks to those who contributed to the 2008-09 Master Teacher Campaign, BASIS Tucson was able to raise teacher salaries while many area schools struggled to compensate their teachers and even dealt with cutbacks. Your contribution will help ensure BASIS is able to recruit and retain a first rate faculty so it remains an academic powerhouse into the future, regardless of state budget crunches and school finance crises.
The “Buzz” About BASIS
“I have a general feeling we set our expectation levels way too low in most of our public school systems. The result we get is exactly where we set the expectation level. The BASIS school effectively set the expectation level much higher and accomplishes much more.”
Craig Barrett, Intel Chairman
“[The American Academy for Liberal Education] commends BASIS Scottsdale for outstanding work in liberal arts education. Pioneering educators Olga and Michael Block have proved that their wildly successful program in Tucson, AZ can be replicated with equal success… how many middle schools in the country teach high school economics in the 8th grade, in addition to teaching high school level chemistry, physics and biology? Principal Diane Moser has created a student culture that welcomes such academic challenge with enthusiasm and passion, embracing a liberal arts mission.”
Dr. Sarah Cunningham, Former AALE Charter Director
“Nationally, AP is considered a program for high school juniors and seniors. Until I met the Blocks, I never envisioned a school where ninth graders could take AP English Language and Composition, or AP European History, or AP Computer Science, and 10th graders would be welcome in AP Calculus, AP Physics or AP Chemistry. Nor did I think it would be possible to have a school in which at least seven AP courses would be required for graduation.”
Jay Mathews, Washington Post
“BASIS is a truly inspiring school led by administrators who stand at the forefront of a growing body of educators who are seeking tremendous results as they act on a belief that all students deserve preparation for and access to the sort of stimulating coursework found in AP classes.”
Trevor Parker, AP College Board Operations Director
“You can’t argue with the success of a school in which you can visit the ninth grade class (all the kids)studying pre-calculus, and an eighth grade working through hydrocarbon structures all in the same hour…[They have] three different science subjects running concurrently, as is done in many countries.”
Martha Schwartz, Science Education Consultant
“Simply by virtue of attending BASIS, (students) will be placed in the highest category regarding rigor of curriculum.”
Steve McLaughlin, Senior Associate Director of Admissions for Duke University