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Walking into a BASIS elementary school, you鈥檒l notice there are two or more teachers in every classroom.

What makes these Arizona-grown public charter schools different is that all students, no matter the grade level, have teachers with subject level expertise. At the elementary school level, students also have 鈥渓earning expert teachers,鈥� explains Patrisha Leybovich, a parent of twins at BASIS Chandler Primary North.

鈥淭he way the children experience the course of the day is unlike anything I鈥檝e seen before. They don鈥檛 have designated classroom, instead they are assigned a 鈥榗rew鈥� and move from room to room with their learning expert teacher,鈥� said Leybovich, whose kids鈥� assigned team names are 鈥淶inc鈥� and 鈥淎rgon鈥� from the periodic table of elements. 鈥淭he subject level expert teachers are true professionals and highly accomplished in their subject areas, instead of one generalist teacher.鈥�

Peter Bezanson, BASIS.ed Chief Executive Officer, says their model allows teachers to take a deep dive into subjects they鈥檝e studied extensively, whether poetry or history or physics, and provide students access to and an understanding of higher level content. In this way, BASIS primary schools are more like middle and high schools than they are elementary schools.

As a public charter school, BASIS provides a free public education to Arizona students with no barriers to entry. Critics say the success of BASIS is due to 鈥渃herry picking students.鈥� Bezanson says that鈥檚 not the case.

鈥淲e don鈥檛 cherry pick our kids; our kids cherry pick us. In a choice-rich environment like Arizona, our goal is to create a school that students and families want to choose,鈥� he said. 鈥淎s a result, instead of being 鈥榓ssigned a school,鈥� we get students who actively seek us out and want to attend our schools.鈥�

BASIS cannot choose its own students even if it wanted to.

State statute specifies that Arizona charter schools are open to any student who wishes to attend. An enrollment brief published by the Arizona Charter Schools Association and written by David Garner and Nathan Arrowsmith, with Osborn Maledon, a highly respected Phoenix-based law firm, explains what Arizona law requires.

鈥淏y law, charter schools must admit all students who submit a timely application, up to the capacity of the school. If the number of students interested in attending the school exceeds the school鈥檚 capacity, the school must institute a random drawing 鈥� or 鈥榣ottery鈥� 鈥� process for admissions,鈥� the legal brief states.

BASIS started in 1998, when its founders Michael and Olga Block couldn鈥檛 find a school for their daughter that fit their educational philosophy.

鈥淥ur original school in Tucson was really started by a mother鈥檚 love for her daughter,鈥� said Bezanson.

Olga Block and her daughter moved to the U.S. in 1996 from Prague, in the Czech Republic. While Olga was fluent in English, her daughter was new to the language.

Michael Block, a University of Arizona economics professor, saw that foreign students were better prepared and consistently surpassing American students because math and science education was much better outside the U.S. Together they built a public charter school that fuses Asian and European curriculum into a 鈥渘ew American education.鈥�

鈥淎lmost overnight, BASIS Tucson became one of the top performing schools in the state,鈥� said Bezanson.

BASIS Charter Schools grew slowly, opening its second campus in Scottsdale in 2003. The network didn鈥檛 open a third campus until 2010.

When former Intel executive Craig Barrett took over the helm as Chairman of the Board in 2011, he led the effort to grow the BASIS Charter School footprint, allowing thousands of students access to its high-quality schools in just a few years.

Today, nearly 15,000 Arizona students attend one of 20 BASIS public charter schools in Arizona, with several thousand more students in BASIS charter schools in Texas and Washington D.C., plus a new campus opening this fall in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. There are also private BASIS Curriculum Schools in California, Virginia, and New York, and private international schools in China.

All told, according to Bezanson, there will be more than 22,000 students in 35 BASIS Curriculum Schools this coming fall, and those schools are seeing success.

In the just-announced of the nation鈥檚 top public schools, BASIS claimed the top five spots.

鈥淲hen freedom from regulation, high-quality charter legislation, and a friendly business community come together, the result is an environment that fosters growth of extremely high performing schools that produce great outcomes for students,鈥� said Bezanson.