No offense to you personally, Kerry.
My comment was only about IHS, not about PYP or anything else.
IHS is a good fit for many bright high school students. However, just as plainly, IHS is NOT a good fit for many bright high school students. If you are a parent reading this, do NOT take for granted that IHS is a good fit for your "bright high school student" if you have one.
Good people teach at IHS, and I know some of them very well. But IHS is not the be-all, end-all, answer-for-all-things best solution out there. I carefully considered IHS for my two daughters, and I chose very deliberately to NOT enroll my children in IHS � and I went out of my way to enroll them elsewhere.
Both of my daughters earned full-ride academic merit scholarships to a major university. My oldest daughter graduated from high school at age 16. Her reading ability had been tested during her first month of first grade by the local public school district, and she was found to be reading at an adult level beyond high school level at that young age � she had just celebrated her sixth birthday to be exact. She ended up skipping 6th grade, and she graduated from a university honors college at age 20. My youngest daughter is a 2007 National Merit Finalist who entered her freshman year at the university with 100 credits already on her university transcript. She took Organic Chemistry as a university freshman and earned "A" grades.
My youngest daughter would not have been able to take as much math and science as she took in high school if she had been in IHS, because the defined IHS curriculum would not have allowed it.
I am related to someone who was in IHS throughout high school, and he despaired throughout that time. As a high school senior, he took graduate-school-level mathematics courses at a major university. His story is sad. I designed "NASA Academy of the Physical Sciences" for him and for people like him.
Steven A. Sylwester
