The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, under the leadership of the late Dr. Ernest Boyer, began in the early 1980's the workings that would be the foundation of The Basic School. Carnegie reports such as, "A Quest for Common Learning" (1980), "High School: A Report on Secondary Education in America" (1983), and "College: The Undergraduate Experience in America" (l986) led Dr. Boyer to conclude that true educational reform should begin with the first formal years of learning. The Carnegie Foundation thus began a study focusing on the first ten years of life resulting in the publication of "Ready to Learn: A Mandate for the Nation" (1991). The report outlined steps the nation must take to get all children ready for school.
Convinced that all schools must be ready for children, "The Basic School" (1995) followed "Ready to Learn" as the Carnegie Foundation studied elementary education as a whole. What Dr. Boyer envisioned then was "a new place for learning." "The Basic School is not an institution, but an idea, to make available to every child the practices that work... The Basic School is not about buildings and budgets, it's about building a better world for children," Dr. Boyer wrote. The school is described as "basic" because it takes school reform to the first years of formal education, because it gives priority to language and suggests a core of knowledge with coherence integrated around eight human commonalities, and because it puts forth key components of an effective school and brings them all together in one place.
The Basic School is a comprehensive approach to school renewal that is based on connections. The framework of the Basic School is based on connections to people to build community, connections of the curriculum to achieve coherence, connections of the classrooms and resources to enrich climate, and connections between learning and life to build character. Community, Curriculum, Climate, and Character become the priorities, or building blocks, if you will, for school renewal.
The Carnegie Foundation has led the renewal effort at the national level by aiding the implementation of the Basic School tenets within a network of sixteen very diverse schools. And upon its release as a Carnegie report, "The Basic School" has received overwhelming acclaim.
The Center for Educational Leadership at Trinity University, in August 1996, created the Basic School Center in an effort to help local schools with their own renewal efforts. District leaders were invited to learn about the philosophy of the Basic School. And then the real work began of offering awareness level meetings to campus leadership and their teachers, offering Basic School training to campus teams eager to adopt this framework, and offering a year-long study group opportunity to all educators. Several local schools, having committed to the tenets of the Basic School, were assigned a mentor to help lead the implementation of this idea on their campus. In June 1997, Trinity University, through the Center for Educational Leadership, hosted the first Basic School Summer Institute.
What is a Basic School?
"The Basic School is not just another 'pilot program' or novel innovation, rather it's a comprehensive plan to strengthen elementary education by bringing together, in a single school, the key components of an effective education."
~Ernest L. Boyer