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DD13,HG with dyslexia and dysgraphia, is trying to make a decision about high school. She got accepted into our local IB program. This is the program where most of her friends will go. For DD, she is mostly compensated with her reading but writing still is a challenge. Has anyone else had tried IB with learning challenges?

Kudos to your DD for the acceptance! What an awesome accomplishment. Clearly she's managing her dyslexia and dysgraphia extremely well. Whether she takes the spot or not, she should feel a great sense of pride.

I can't speak from personal experience (my own dyslexic/ dysgraphic DD is only 9), but I have looked at research around IB, and have found it remarkably consistent with anecdotal reports from friends. IB tends to have an extremely high workload, generally deeper and more thoughtful than AP, but requiring huge amounts of written analysis in consequence. IB requires high executive function to cope with than demand, and the ability to work though large amounts of reading, and produce large volumes of writing, both quickly and constantly.

IB programs can be reluctant to accommodate: there is frequently an attitude that "if you can't do it, you don't belong here". It may be worth some detailed discussion with the school and teachers regarding their approach to LDs. Are there audio materials available? Can she use voice recognition, word prediction etc, in daily class work as well as larger assignments? Will she be overtly or implicitly discouraged from accessing appropriate accommodations? Are they prepared to support and scaffold executive function, or do they consider it a prerequisite to being a candidate for the program?

If you have a child who is a high achiever, independent, and motivated in regular school programming, and just wants MORE! then IB may be perfect. IB classes also provide a peer group of bright, motivated kids, who want to learn. However, IB is kind of like the regular classroom on steroids; if your child needs *different*, not just *more*, there may be other options that would better suit their needs.

If you take a look at http://nrcgt.uconn.edu/research-based_resources/#bysubject, there are at least three reports on IB/AP (edit/find will jump you to them quickly). One delves deep into students' perceptions about the benefits and challenges, and might be particularly helpful for you and your DD to assess whether the program would be a good fit, and what kinds of questions to ask. Good luck - and either way, well done DD!

I think Platypus gives an excellent overview. My only experience comes from watching my identical twin nephews, both very smart and very athletic but with slightly different temperaments, go through an IB program. They are the children of highly driven, highly motivated, highly competitive parents. (So very lucky they didn't end up with the 2E kid - I think their heads would have exploded...) Twin one is very competitive - even as an 8 year old would stomp around infuriated for the rest of the day if his soccer team lost a game. He did well in this program because he was willing to spend any amount of time needed on schoolwork in order to be "better" than everyone else. A nice kid but very intense and not really able to enjoy his teen years. Twin two is more laid back. Still smart but much less intense. Rather than getting caught up in his brother's intensity over soccer he switched over to running cross country. I think it gave him a bit of alone time away from all the pressure of school and home. He worked hard too but nothing like his brother. He sought out some friendships and outside activities, much to his parents' chagrine.

Twin one got into a better college than twin two but despite scoring 800 on at least one portion of the SAT and being a star soccer player he did not get into any Ivy's or similar. Twin 2 went to a lower ranked college quite far from home. Both were 4 year varsity athletes in college. Ironically both ended up hired by the same company in the same position after graduation. (Total coincidence they claim...)

So it really depends on what your DD is looking for. After watching my nephews I decided that life was too short and teen years too precious to encourage DD to spend them this way, long before all her LD issues were identified. But it's really personal preference and priorities. Now that she has been identified I see how hard she works just trying to keep a level playing field. With AT and hard work your DD could probably do it. But I think the question is whether she would see it as a challenge or cause problems with self esteem. Depends on her personality, temperament and how she views her LD's.

Hopefully someone with actual 2E IB experience will chime in. But yes, congratulations to your DD!

My 2e son (who has dyslexia and ADHD) was in an IB program in a very small school for one semester. It was not a good fit for a number of reasons. The overarching issue was that for a STEM focused kid, this particular school had weak STEM related coursework and opportunities (for example, they did not offer HL math and the only IB science they offered was biology). On the flip side, the students were forced to take HL English and history, which also didn't sit well with my son.

Like Platypus101 said, the workload was intense, and made more intense for my son because reading and writing took him much longer to do. The executive skills required were over the top as well--not only did students have to juggle eight classes, they had to prepare an extended essay and engage in a certain number of hours of extracurricular activities.

So on top of working all the time on things that he wasn't interested in, he had no time to pursue his interests after school. So we withdrew him from the school and he ended up dual enrolling at the local community college instead. Looking back on it, it was absolutely the right decision, but at the time it was pretty frightening--as withdrawing from high school in the middle of one's junior year is generally not the done thing.

One other thing you should know: The IB people don't seem to get LD accommodations (or at least they didn't--maybe they have been enlightened recently). Apparently they will only give a 125% extended time accommodation on their exams. They said it was because any more time than that would make the student "tired" or some such nonsense. So that is something to consider as well.

I have an older child in IB at the same school but older child does not have any LDs so I can't use her for comparison. DD sees the biggest selling point as a large group of nerdy kids who care about school. The school usually starts out with about 200 "pre-IB" kids but then only have 100 to 125 do the actual IB program during their junior and senior years. The kids who drop IB tend to populate the AP/honors classes once they migrate away from IB.

Thanks for the suggestions to talk to the counselors about what, if any, accommodations may be available. They did allow extra time on the entrance exam and DD's composite was 99th percentile. I don't know if they would be less accommodating once she gets to the school.

The 125% time was just for the IB end of course exams (which my son never took). The school allowed my son to have double time for all of the other exams for his classes.

I was in an IB program for my last two years of high school, and yes, it is very writing intense. I would definitely talk to the school beforehand to find out what accommodations are possible.

Are you more concerned about the day-to-day writing (e.g. homework, exams in class, etc), or the official IB exams? Other than giving me a little bit of credit based on my exam scores, my college didn't care if I had an IB diploma or not, although *being* in the program was a definite plus when I applied.

I am worried that the day-to-day writing/homework load might be overwhelming. She currently is in a middle school gt program. She demands a lot of herself and puts a lot of effort into school. She has decent time management skills but they deteriorate somewhat when she gets too much on her plate. We all pay for it when she is stressed out.

On the other hand, having more intense writing requirements in high school might be just what she needs to help her get ready for college. The way that the extended essay has been explained to me, it is a "check-box graded," a research paper with a one-on-one faculty adviser (my older DD hasn't gone through this yet so I'm going off of commentary from other parents who've had kids complete the program). My sister-in-law thought that it was great for her DD who is similar to mine. Then again, that kid resents how much harder she had to work than her peers and still is somewhat bitter about it.

My DD ultimately will be the one who decides her path. I'm just trying to figure out if I should nudge her one way or the other.

She'll probably have tons of time for the extended essay; I had a rough draft finished by the start of senior year. But perhaps different schools schedule it differently; we were expected to work on it independently during the summer. However, in two of my IB classes (math and psych) we had to write fairly lengthy papers.

Doing IB definitely prepared me for college, but a huge difference is that in high school I was taking 7-8 classes at a time (most of which had daily homework), versus 4 classes in college (which met 2-3 times a week).

Given good accommodations, though, it could be great, especially if you're not worried about the IB exams themselves.

Just adding my memories of IB in high school. I was an almost straight-A student and wanted to do IB. My mom said no- I could take a few AP and even the IB "Theory of Knowledge" class that was open to all honors students, but not apply to the IB program. Her reason was simple she wanted me to have a life. While I did learn a lot and enjoy the "Theory of Knowledge" courses, I'm glad I didn't do the entire program. Several of my friends in the program were frequently up past midnight doing huge amounts of reading and writing and were overall stressed and exhausted.

I am not gifted and I don't believe my friends were either, just bright kids willing to put in the effort. If a child was really gifted in reading/writing/language it might be a great fit.