Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments International Baccalaureate Program...

DD's school is in the process of getting certified as an IB school and I was wondering if anyone has any knowledge or experience with this.

What are the positive and negative to a program like this?

Any information would be appreciated since I'm new to it all. I do know that it isn't an easy process and only one other school in our metro area has the credential. And from what I have found; it looks to be more for the upper grades such as high school and DD's school is only up to 5th grade. What benefits does this credential give to an elementary school?

I think I will be disagreeing with you Steven, but I'm not sure, only because you are talking about international high school, and that does not necessarily have to be the IB program. (If you mean the IB program, then I am definitely disagreeing you.)

I have taught in the IB middle and high school program for years and love it. Especially for the best and the brightest! However, since you're question is about the elementary program, I will stick to that for the moment. The PYP program (primary years program) goes from years 1-5, it is very thematically organized with units of inquiry which allow students to investigate a topic from lots of different perspectives, rather than one subject at a time.

The program culminates with a grade 5 class project which takes the whole year to develop, it is then presented to the school community. It is a wonderful experience for the students to see what other students are interested in and problems that they can solve. As well as see what they are capable of producing.

There is an international component to it, and a community service portion as well. Done correctly, it gives elementary students a great foundation for the future. Unlike the high school program (called the diploma program), which is very content driven, there is a lot of flexibility in the pyp and the myp (middle years program) in terms of content covered.


Back to Steven's comments about IB not being for math and science students, I would definitely disagree with him. I am an IB Physics and Math teacher and it gives the students a great opportunity to delve quite deeply into these topics, even allowing them to take 2 sciences concurrently if they want to. The higher levels of these subjects not only cover first year college, but also allow students to gain college credit for their work, if that is what is important to you.

The group 4 project, a requirement of all students in the IB program, is a fantastic opportunuty for the students to carryout a cross subject scientific investigation from start to finish with little to no interference/help from the teacher. Through this project students see what it is really like to pick a research problem and try to find a useful answer to it.

If you have not had experience in the IB program yourself, I do not feel that you have the expertise to make such scathing comments about it. However, I will agree that the way it is done in many US schools is not how it should be done. But that gets into a whole other discussion.

So, I like all of the IB programs and think that done correctly, they give students an excellent education.

Thanks for the input.

Kerry: From my conversation with the director, they appear to be in line with what you described for the elementary education. She talked about international component and community service, as well as flexibility for the students. I do like the thematically organized approach and is a big plus for us. We are already looking at schools we might consider past 5th grade and I'm excited about a college prep school whose ideology is progressive. It, too, allows for a thematic approach and puts the focus on the student. They certainly do not teach to the standards (though there is some tests). I am going to monitor the school over the next few years and see how it stacks up to a few others, but for now it is definitely one we would consider sending DD to when it is time for her to go to 6th grade. It sounds to me that the IB method is not an extreme difference from the progressive so it might make for an easy transition.

On a side note ... I received another dose of how advanced DD's school really is ... baccalaureate was one of the spelling words for the 1st graders.

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

Kerry,

I think "scathing" might be an overstatement on your part, but I will certainly own up to being direct.

International High School is way over the top in my community to the point of having taken on Politically Correct status. There is an enormous amount of pressure put on parents to enroll their bright children in IHS, because that is where bright children are supposed to enroll. It is beyond phony, and it is terribly self-serving. All four public high schools in my community now have IHS on campus. The high school my daughters attended was the last hold out.

As a consequence of IHS coming in the door, that last hold out high school had to give up its longstanding curriculum strategy and class scheduling scheme to accommodate the requirements of IHS, which literally killed the goose that was laying the golden eggs. The amazing thing was this: because of its four-period school day and its lack of IHS, that hold out high school � which is the smallest and the most economically deprived public high school, and the high school with the largest Hispanic immigrant population in the community � was cranking out significantly more Advanced Placement credits per student than any of the public high schools with an IHS option. My daughters traveled across town to attend that high school, as did several other very bright students. Some of those students went on to Harvard and other prestigious colleges and universities: one is now attending Harvard Law School after completing her undergraduate studies at Harvard � all without the benefit of an IHS education.

Why did that hold out high school work so well? Simply this: the truth of the matter is that IHS is a general population high school. It pretends to be elite, but it is not. There is no testing-in requirement going in, and there is no weeding-out process once you are in. The fact is: a surprisingly high percentage of IHS graduates do not earn the prized IB diploma or the somewhat-promised college credits. By comparison, the hold out high school my daughters attended very effectively funneled the very brightest students into a phantom Advanced Placement high school that did not exist anywhere on paper, but did very much exist in reality. The smart kids found each other, and they all took the same classes (more or less), and many of them earned a whole lot of college credits.

I will concede that an IHS graduate will likely be a disciplined student as a consequence of enduring the IHS workload, but some of those disciplined students will be burned out and forever done with school after IHS finishes with them. Many years ago, I knew and worked with a lot of young people during the while that they were enrolled in IHS, and I knew their parents, too. My opinions about IHS were formed during that time, and nothing since then has changed my mind (and a nephew of mine just graduated from an IHS last week).

Back when (and I am referring to a time 12 to 20+ years ago), I was very much bothered by the reputation IHS had for piling on homework, especially busywork. When my wife and I attended an IHS open house 12 years ago prior to deciding against IHS for our older daughter, I confronted one of the IHS teachers directly regarding this busywork issue by referring to one of the standard IHS assignments at the time that required students to draw (by hand!) and color (by hand!) a multitude of world maps. I asked how such a time-consuming busywork assignment could be justified in an era when most high school students are skilled in using sophisticated computer graphics, and the teacher just shrugged and responded that IHS considered the time-consuming hand labor to be worthwhile. I was not impressed by that response.

Anyway, that is a long time ago now. I can only hope that the map drawing and coloring is long gone.

The point is this: There are bright students, and then there are brilliant genius-level students, and sometimes that difference is extreme. Yes, I am an elitist regarding academic subjects � absolutely so, and with no apologies. The very brightest students should not be held back in any academic subjects by a general student population mix in their classrooms. However, though I am an elitist based on proven academic merit in academic subjects, I am not a separatist in general. My older daughter sang in high school choirs for two years, and my younger daughter took two years of wood shop and one year of metal shop � and she absolutely loved those shop classes!

My "NASA Academy of the Physical Sciences" would destroy all but the genius-level students. None but the very blessed few should even attempt its rigors, but those very blessed few need and deserve the option. Unless you are genius-level in mathematics and the physical sciences, or unless your child is, or unless your best friend and confidant is, you cannot possibly understand what it is like. My heart breaks for those very special young people, because many of them are just crushed and tortured by their unbearable circumstances. IHS does not reliably meet the needs of genius-level students, especially those who are exceptionally gifted and joyful in mathematics and the physical sciences.

As parents, our sacred trust is to know our own children, and to then effectively advocate for them in every way possible. We cannot and should not settle for the solution that everyone else says is the best solution, unless that solution is in fact the best solution for our own child. Nothing else but that matters.

I am done with high school. Thank God. My younger daughter graduated in 2007, and I was going to never look back. Then the local public schools superintendent made a decision that was simply unthinking regarding the very brightest students, and I came unglued. I could not help myself except to write my "NASA Academy of the Physical Sciences" proposal. It is my gift to your child if your child is a genius-level student, but the task to make it happen in reality is yours.

Steven A. Sylwester

Just as a curiosity in case you're not aware of it, Kerry, but here in the UK almost any science-inclined child will take 3 sciences concurrently from the age of 11 to 16, possibly specialising down to 2 for the 16 - 18 years once they are close to university choices. I could hardly believe the normal US system when I first heard about it.

I've heard plenty of good things about the IB (at senior school level, I have no experience of the elementary IB), but it seems to be widely accepted in the UK that students who want to specialise and pursue science to university are usually better off taking A levels (or even better, these days, the Cambridge Pre-U).

We live in a different state, but when we were looking into possible high schools for my child who is highly gifted academically, we had several options including an IB option. We ended up concluding the particular IB program near us would not be good for our son. That one very clearly incorporated a heavy workload of relative busy work. We were told by the teachers associated with that school that students who excel in their IB program are "organized" and "hard workers" and it seemed from the samples of work presented that those were the main qualities needed. At the time dh and I joked that ds was neither "organized" nor a "hard worker" so we had better look elsewhere! Seriously though, I remember someone representing that particular program (IB school near us) at a presentation actually said it was not a program for "gifted" kids but for students of more average ability who were willing to work hard.

ColinsMum,
Yes, I know about the A levels, and if the US offered that sort of system, I would suggest that for math science kids over IB without a question. But, given what poor options most of the US has for education, I think the IB is much better than what most schools offer as a high school program.

I have done a bit of research in to the IB PYP for my daughter. I have to say I think it looks fantastic. Certainly in the IB schools in my area are very high achieving and from what I understand the IB program is a good way to cater for. various ability levels. I've heard great reports from parents of gifted kids who've chosen to go down that path.

The only negative that anyone could come up with is that middle years program is possibly not as good as the primary or high school level programs. However the person who mentioned that to me qualified it by going on to say that middle school is a pretty notoriously difficult period to teach regardless of the program you're using (due to adolescent hormones etc)

While we've chosen not to go with a IB school for our daughter who is starting school next year for a couple of reasons (none related to the quality of the programs offered) - if we find that doesn't work out, an IB school will be our first port of call.

Greetings. This discussion about IB appeared in my Google alerts so I thought I would drop in and add my two cents. I am the administrator of the website Truth About IB. Those who favor IB, or teach IB, will inevitably seek to call me all kinds of names, and that's ok. I've been called every name in the book by those enamored with IB. It's old hat by now.

Imho, IB is the biggest educational scam being perpetrated on the planet. IBO is an NGO of UNESCO. This money-making "non-profit" has a very "Progressive" agenda woven into the frameworks of its "programmes". Now, if you are a proponent of the New World Order, hate the U.S. and Israel and think redistribution of wealth is a great idea, then IB is for you.

If however, you want your child to learn facts, (something IBO detests) and earn college-credit in college-level courses without political indoctrination, then AP or A-Levels are the superior choice.

IB eliminates choice. At the PYP level, IBO mandates schoolwide implementation. If there was a G & T section, expect it to disappear. At the MYP level, advanced tracks/Honors courses will disappear. At the DP level, especially if it is a smaller HS, AP and Honors courses will disappear. Only in the largest HSs where there is a significant population of advanced students can a district afford to run both AP and IB.

IB is college-preparatory, not college-level like AP. Also, many IB HSs for some unexplained reason tend to run IB SL courses for two years. IB SL courses are 150 hours and are not recognized for college-credit by most U.S. universities.