<p>Our school district was recently certified to offer the IB diploma program. Later this week, there will be an information session on the program. Youngest D is still a year away from high school. This program will be housed at a different high school then her home high school. Our district also has programs for its gifted and academic talented students. D is in the middle school program. The high school program concentrates on math and science which is housed at the high school that D wants to attend. What questions should be asked or what should I look at to evaluate the quality and benefits of this program? I'm afraid having two academically challenging programs at two different schools is going to split her peer group.</p>
<p>Does one offer AP?
AP is often the safer route. It is much easier to get credit for AP and more credit is given to AP at many schools.</p>
<p>I agree that AP does tend to give more credit when it comes to college time, but I’m an IB student myself and I must say, it’s a very satisfying course to complete. (I can’t comment on AP as I never did it.) IB is challenging, but from what I’ve seen, it prepares a junior for college like no other. My school is an international one and has been offering IB for the past thirty-odd years. This is my last year, in fact I’ve got IB finals going on for the next two weeks.</p>
<p>I think what you should ask about the IB program in your d’s prospective school is whether or not the teachers who have been recruited to teach IB are certified IB teachers, and whether or not they are experienced with the IB Diploma Program. There are many tips and tricks to getting through the IBDP, and experienced, certified teachers will invariably be of more help than an AP teacher, for example, teaching IB material. Not that the AP teacher won’t be a good instructor, because he/she will, but if the person doesn’t have specific experience with the way IB wants things done then it could be a problem, especially because IB has a lot of internal assessments and coursework that should be done a certain way in order to get top marks, which I’m assuming is what your D wants :D</p>
<p>Also, ask about the course offerings! As a new or recently certified IB school, the high school in question may not be able to offer the more unusual or rare courses that your D might be interested in. For example, in my school, though 30 years have passed, we still dont have the option of IB HL/SL Psychology. Take note of what the school does offer, and compare this to your D’s view of what she would like to study, that way you can be sure that she is headed in the direction she wants to be headed in, and not just in the direction that she was forced to take due to the school’s limitations. </p>
<p>You might also want to ask if the program is 2-year or 4-year. I know that some schools have a 4-year course with 2 years of Pre-IB courses and then the 2 years of the regular Diploma Program, but my school doesnt have that. For my first two years of highschool I did the IGCSE curriculum which is British, and later entered the IB program, in the same highschool, for my final two years which I am now completing.</p>
<p>If you have any questions about the IB program, what it’s like to be a student of it, what the course material is like, etc, just send me a message and ask whatever you would like to. I’ll certainly respond! Good luck to you and your D as you look for options! :D</p>
<p>My S attends high school in a public city system that has several options for high school. Even though our assigned neighborhood school has a better reputation, we felt that the IB program better suited his interests and learning style. It is very writing intensive and his academic strength tends more toward the English/history side of liberal arts. Although he complains about the amount of work, my H and I have been mostly pleased with the program. To me, the teaching staff is the most critical factor and the teachers in his program are outstanding.</p>
<p>You are probably right about the peer group being split but that has long been the case in our city schools. There was a split after elementary school as kids went off to specia l interest middle schools or private schools and again after middle school. What has happened with our S is that he has become quite good friends with students for the performing arts high school along with the kids from his IB school.</p>
<p>There are a couple other thread here on the IB program that you will find useful… They should pop up in the search engine.</p>
<p>All IB programs are not the same. If all of the courses are 2 year courses, the student is limited-- may not be able to get all the sciences they need. Or may not be able to be in the band or choir.</p>
<p>Actually, I havent had the experience of being “limited” at all. If the school offers all 3 sciences at Higher Level then you’re looking at a huge amount of depth in 2 of those sciences over 2 years, which includes a mandatory amount of hours of labwork and practical write-ups, and a wide range of theory including options (My physics options are really amazing, I get to do quantum and nuclear physics, astrophysics and even medical physics, so you can see that a some of the syllabus actually strays into biological and chemical areas) and I believe that the choice is varied. Besides, if a student really is dead set on all 3 sciences then it would be possible to self-learn the third and take an AP on it. </p>
<p>And also, there is actually a requirement on student’s ECs. The CAS portion is a core req. of the IB, without it, the diploma is not awarded. The student can take band, choir, debate, instrument learning, dance, magazine editing, etc for the Creativity part of the requirement. It is also highly encouraged to take more than one activity in each section. My CAS requirement took me to Paris and Dublin for MUNs in which I was the ambassador and chair respectively, and I also learned the guitar and served on the school’s magazine team to complete my 50 hours there. Action: I played soccer and table tennis, and did the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award, which is a string of expeditions (we did hiking) with a side requirement of first aid. Service was the best though, I tutored, mentored, and played around with orphans and deaf kids.</p>
<p>There is so much variety in the IB Diploma program, please do not do it the disservice of thinking it is limited! :)</p>
<p>Well established programs tend to be better. Ours has been around for almost 30 years too and works out very well and nothing stops the students from taking a lot of APs. Our very difficult to get in state flagship tends to favor graduates of IB programs.</p>
<p>Ask lots of questions about:
- What training the teachers are getting in how to teach IB, and who is funding it. (We had to send our teachers to Mexico, as I recall, and it wasn’t cheap.) Will all teachers who teach IB or pre-IB be formally trained in official IB training?
- How were teachers selected to be IB teachers? Does the school plan to rotate teachers through the program? (Parents at our school fought this notion that every teacher had a “right” to teach IB students.)
- Which HL and SL subjects will be offered? When? We have a lot more offerings – especially in some of the social sciences and arts than we did originally. Which math courses will be offered. (Originally we pushed all the IB kids through HL math, which was a killer. Today we find that even excellent math students often choose SL math.)
- How does the IB and pre-IB schedule coordinate with graduation requirements? Our district has requirements for a year of World Lit, a year of American Lit, a year of 9th grade comp, and a year of senior English. It took some time to work through agreements of what grad requirements would be met by the IB program classes, which didn’t map wonderfully well against either English or Social Studies as laid out by our district.
- Do kids need to overload on any subject in order to get to an HL level in a science? At our school many kids need to take a second science class either Freshman or Soph year in order to get to the point of taking HL Bio or Chem or Physics as seniors AND complete the Bio/Chem/Physics trifecta many of the top colleges prefer.
- How many periods a day do kids have class? How many periods a day do IB students need to be in classes? In our earlier years (until some of the grad requirements were realigned with the IB curriculum) IB students often didn’t get a lunch period if they wanted to also take a music class.
- Will IB students have to take some classes on-line? Which ones, and when? Most of our IB students ended up taking either PE or health through an on-line program because it was the only way to give them enough schedule flex. Doing this freshman or soph year is much, much better than cramming it in to the already crammed junior and senior years.
- Who’s buying the textbooks? What about the lit books?</p>
<p>Cllgebnd-- just out of curiosity, what is your course schedule for junior and senior year?</p>
<p>In some schools, it is not physically possible to schedule more than the 6 IB couses + TOK, so I am curious as to how yours is set up, and when the band and choir classes meet.</p>
<p>To add to arabrab’s list:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>What SAT Subject Tests will the students be prepared to take and when? What about students who decide that they want to go into science or engineering and therefore need to take math and science (in some cases math and physical science – meaning either physics or chemistry)? Will they be well prepared for these tests? </p></li>
<li><p>What about IB students who want to pursue activities that usually take up a class period during the school day – such as journalism, choir, orchestra, or band? Will the IB students have room in their schedule for these things? </p></li>
<li><p>Will it be necessary for IB students to take any classes in a zero period (early in the morning), after school, or during the summer in order to fulfill both the IB diploma requirements and the state or district graduation requirements?</p></li>
<li><p>What’s the plan if the IB (or pre-IB) program isn’t working out well for a particular student? Can they choose to take just a few IB courses for the certificates rather than going for the diploma, or is it diploma or nothing? Can they transfer into the regular program at the school they’re attending, or do they have to go to the school in their home district? How will the IB or pre-IB classes that they have taken count toward the regular program’s graduation requirements?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>By the way, my daughter graduated from an IB Diploma program, and now, as a college sophomore, is very glad that she did. She went into college very well prepared. However, her school had been teaching the IB Diploma program for 20 years. I’m not sure I would have wanted her in a brand-new IB program. IB is complicated and in many ways quite different from a conventional U.S. high school program. It takes a while for the teachers and administrators to get used to it.</p>
<p>Karen – I want to go into Linguistics, or some other international field of study so with that in mind I chose French A2 HL, English A1 HL (thereby giving me a bilingual diploma), Business&Mgmt HL, Physics SL, Chem SL and Maths SL. </p>
<p>I personally dont do band and choir, but my friends who do, chose to do so as either an EC or as a separate program coordinated by the London College of Music (both of which count for CAS hours). There are 3 periods a week where they get together and practice, I believe on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays just before lunch. They are eventually going to perform for a representative from the LCM who will come down here in June. The ones who are taking it as an EC meet Tuesdays after school for choir/band practice, and don’t take those particular LCM exams. They traditionally perform Christmas carols in the local chapel every December. </p>
<p>With that said, we all have 9 free periods a week, and school runs from 8 am to 3.30 pm. We’ve managed to fit everything we need to in that space, with twenty minutes of break in mid-morning and an hour for lunch at 12.30. It works well. :)</p>
<p>OP: As the parent of two IB Diploma graduates and a fan of the program, if your district has a gifted program in high school I would go for that rather than IB. IB is wonderful , challenging and prepares the students very well for college while providing a global perspective, but it is not a gifted program. If there had been a true gifted program or a science and math magnet high school in our school district, I would have sent my children to one of those programs over IB.
And I agree to ask many questions - most importantly about the training and experience of the teachers.</p>
<p>I just remembered – also ask about the kinds of activities available for CAS hours and make sure that your daughter is happy doing a variety of those. For CAS, I spent an avg of 2 hours each weekday on them, usually I would go to school at 8 and be back at 5.30 because after school I would have 2 hours of CAS. It’s a lot of time that goes into it; make sure she enjoys it because really, the CAS portion has the potential to make or break her IB experience. If she enjoys it and finishes the 150 hours early then it will give her more time in senior year to concentrate on other things like coursework deadlines, but if she hates it she might be tempted to slack on her hours and end up, in the worst case scenario, not getting her diploma because of it, so CAS is important. </p>
<p>Also ask about ToK, and about how the school plans to organise that because I know of an IB World School that taught its kids ToK using a philosophy teacher and it got all mixed up because really, ToK is very unique.</p>
<p>Also, get a sense of the gifted program, discuss the benefits of IB vs Gifted with your D, and come up with a decision together :)</p>
<p>Good luck! I’m still here and open to questions if you or your D want a senior’s perspective.</p>
<p>I too am a big fan of IB, but I wouldn’t let my child anywhere near it if it were less than 5 years old at a given school (ours is in its 21st year). IB is more than a collection of challenging classes, it’s a way of learning and a way of teaching. It’s a full-on self-contained program, and in some ways it’s quite different than regular/gifted track. It takes a school some years to work out the bugs and learn “the IB way.” I would be especially concerned about newbie IB teachers.</p>
<p>Given the choice between an established Gifted program and a brand-new IB program, I’d go with Gifted.</p>
<p>Another vote for the established gifted program. We have IB and AP in our school and I find a mix-match method works best. (If your child is very advanced in a foreign language or in math, IB may actually slow them down because they cannot take those courses until they are juniors/ seniors.) We also have the band problem here. I won’t get into an argument about this but I have found that IB is better than AP for English, TOK and social studies while AP is stronger in math/science. (Our foreign language courses are taught in a combined classroom. The teachers say they follow the AP curriculum because it’s slightly harder.) The school system’s gifted program trumps them both without fail.</p>
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<p>My S is in a well established IB program. Took Latin first 3 years (through Latin 4), math all 4 (including Abstract Geometry with Proofs and MultiV Calculus). Could’ve taken Calculus by Sophomore year in public school, but I’m not sure that would have served him better. He did very well on the Math SAT and AMC exams. The art program was especially wonderful. He took 3 years of woodworking and design and became very proficient; this semester (sr year) got a nice independent portfolio review as part of the program.</p>
<p><a href=“If%20your%20child%20is%20very%20advanced%20in%20a%20foreign%20language%20or%20in%20math,%20IB%20may%20actually%20slow%20them%20down%20because%20they%20cannot%20take%20those%20courses%20until%20they%20are%20juniors/%20seniors.”>quote</a> We also have the band problem here. I won’t get into an argument about this but I have found that IB is better than AP for English, TOK and social studies while AP is stronger in math/science.
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<p>Yes to all of the above.</p>
<p>Although some IB schools can find satisfactory solutions for students who are very advanced in a subject, it is a difficult challenge, and I have known of situations – even in a school with a very long established, large IB program – where students have indeed been forced to slow down.</p>
<p>Band/orchestra/choir is often a problem for those students who are very good performers who wish to try out for all-state band, orchestra, or choir. In most states, in order to be eligible for all-state, you must be enrolled in the band, orchestra, or choir course. Participating in an outside organization (such as a community college orchestra) doesn’t count. Neither does participating in music as an extracurricular activity only. So IB students who cannot fit the music performance course into their schedule lose their all-state eligibility for that particular year. </p>
<p>SL math and science courses are less advanced than AP. HL courses are at least as advanced as AP but do not necessarily cover exactly the same material (physics, in particular, is quite different). Moreover, students can only count a maximum of four HL subjects toward their diplomas, and in some IB schools, two of them MUST be English and history (not for IB reasons, but because of the contortions that the program planners have to go through to make the IB program also meet state graduation requirements). Also, only two of the six subjects counted toward the diploma can be sciences (this is for IB reasons). All of these factors combine to make it difficult for IB students to plan a program as rigorous in science and math as they could have gotten at a math/science magnet or a regular high school with extensive AP courses and math/science electives.</p>
<p>As my child heads out for 7 hours of IB testing today, and only the beginning of 10 testing sessions he will sit through this month, he still values his IB education. He has less testing sessions than many of his fellow IB seniors since he decided not to take the corresponding AP tests in science and english due to the fact that he HL’d in science and he knew the colleges he applied to did not give credit or placement for AP english. He also had finished with IB math and the IB elective last year. Meanwhile, the non-IB seniors are hitting the beach. The prospect of a May like this should be a major part of the discussion with any prospective IB student.</p>
<p>In our county, IB programs generally have been placed in high schools that would otherwise have challenges in attracting top students. This permits these schools to retain the certain panache of having a challenging curriculum available that they otherwise would not have. </p>
<p>I think it a good program for very good students whose skills lie in the liberal arts arena. </p>
<p>I think the AP programs (and there is pupil placement to AP schools) is “better” for the prototypical student aspiring to a technical degree at (in our state) a school like Virginia Tech.</p>
<p>Agree w/2collegewego about IB English and Social Studies > AP and AP math/science > IB. S2’s 9th grade pre-IB English class was as rigorous (if not more so) as S1’s AP English Lang junior year. They were taking thse classes at the same time, so the comparisons were very direct. Hands down, social studies is stronger than AP at S2’s IB program, and that was the major reason he chose the IB program over a math/science program. </p>
<p>OTOH, S1 was a math/CS guy and there was no way IB would fit his needs. He would have liked the social science side a lot, but there was not nearly enough math/CS for him. (He was an unusual case, but for a student who is ready for calculus in 9th/10th grade and has very advanced programming skills early in HS, IB is probably not a good fit. IB Further Math covered topics that S1 picked up for fun outside of school.)</p>
<p>Keep in mind that very, very few colleges offer credit for Standard Level exams, so the ability to take AP exams in addition to the IB SLs will be important to students wanting to maximize their credit/placement opportunities.</p>
<p>S2 was in the first cohort of a new highly gifted specialty program for middle school, and even with experienced teachers, there are bumps and hurdles. He was glad to be in an established program for HS. I think S2 works a lot harder in IB than his older brother did in his math program. The full IB program challenges students to be good in subjects across the board. AP and specialty programs allow for more specialization and playing to one’s strengths.</p>