<p>Public schools= no tuition. Covered in taxes.</p>
<p>It would be really interesting if someone went to international academy then a school in New York, or vice versa. Otherwise, comparison would be difficult.</p>
<p>well bearcats, i’m just saying in general… you don’t have to be too critical… i was just trying the emphasize my point :P</p>
<p>" It would be really interesting if someone went to international academy then a school in New York, or vice versa. Otherwise, comparison would be difficult. "</p>
<p>That’s like saying you cant make comparison between MIT and Michigan because you havnt been to both places. Obviously there are other factors but you can say that MIT in general is superior compared to Michigan</p>
<p>Well bearcats, I think overall it is quite frightening. We shouldn’t have to rank high schools. Granted, I attended an elite private school in Michigan, but none of my classmates was obsessed about its prestige and status. Will this nation start ranking middle schools next??</p>
<p>As you said earlier, we do live in a world where the right connections (sighs) matter. </p>
<p>People wonder why America has such an inadequate K-12 public school system. The inequality begins in elementary school!</p>
<p>
I think I would have to differ. It begins in middle school. In elementary school, pretty much the only things that are taught are how to read, how to write, and how to do math. Sure there’s science and history and the like but without the aforementioned 3, they can only be covered at a cursory level. When students start to get a command of reading, writing, and math, generally around 6th-7th grade, the other subjects start truly emerging. In middle school, teachers should start preparing students to work at the high school level, BUT THEY DON’T. They don’t teach good study habits. It’s impossible to teach them when they only give homework that takes 5 minutes, when they give tests that can be studied for the period before. When the students hit high school, they are slammed with work, and really don’t learn good habits until sophomore/junior year. Other countries are better because they can teach a grasp of the 3 R’s earlier, and also create good habits in middle school.</p>
<p>Note: This is all from my experience. Feel free to critique!</p>
<p>@strife15: “we had classes that gave that many classes”</p>
<p>Exactly. So the classes are equal in level, yet you and bearcats act as if these schools are far superior to the International Academy.</p>
<p>No, read my post again, please. My school had classes in that level. My school COULDN’T HOLD A CANDLE UP TO STY.</p>
<p>Hey folks, they’re all good schools and those who’ve graduated from any mentioned in this thread are truly blessed and frankly often more prepared for rigorous academic pursuit than the majority. And frankly, it’s not a great reflection of our society that we give this gift to a select few – whether by socioeconomic superiority (privates) or by skill (often influenced by socioeconomic superiority) – when countries with much less do much more for their children.</p>
<p>– That said, anyone who is suggesting that International isn’t widely acclaimed must be very unfamiliar with general pedagogy worldwide and IB programs specifically. It is the flagship. My s’s former school in undergoing conversion to IB and International is widely held to be the “right” way to do IB. I don’t think you can directly compare Hotchkiss, for example, because each school has a different curricular emphasis. Each are valuable in their respective ways. For my field, I’d personally take an IB kid as an employee any day because they typically have much more integrated mastery of divergent problem-solving approaches and the convergent communication of result, largely due to the Theory of Knowledge class, which in essence enhances creative analytical and synthetic skills. But that is a generality and a reflection of an inherent personal bias to IB, for which I have a curricular preference because I myself was the product of a “Summerhill” style experiment which was underpinned by a similar pedagogical philosophy.
Believe me that if I had need for a pure math geek, I might choose differently. (And if I were an IBank, of course I’d want Bearcats specifically, and be grateful he didn’t have to spend any of his time in performing arts ; )</p>
<p>– And the poster who said magnet schools are not really “public” is correct, even though my s. attended a well-ranked magnet. Magnets, to my mind, are a stop-gap to stop the vocal few from an absolute uprising against the government lack of foresight our society affords education. Loved my s’s nonetheless : ) It’s easy to be “ethical” until you have some skin in the game. Guilty as charged.</p>
<p>– And it really does start before middle school. It also starts before elementary school. One of the problems in the US is that by the time the system gets them, 90% of the child’s brain is structured/developed and without early inputs it’s an uphill struggle from there. It starts with prenatal care, healthy food, healthy habits, conversations, early reading, and moral instruction by action. It continues with opportunities for creativity and exploration. </p>
<p>Yet we continue to cut funds for early education despite the hard evidence that the one thing that can influence the rate of drop outs, drug use, depression and future unemployment is early childhood education. Not that the funds were ever sufficient, but in Michigan they’ve been axed.</p>
<p>In fact, in this county, a freakin mother can’t even afford to stay home with her child for more than 3 months because benefits do not support same. How come other countries can find a way for unemployment or maternity benefits to cover the first year of life? How come other countries can afford early childhood education? And we wonder why many of our children are so poorly socialized! And why we lag behind other G8s, or more generally, the world…</p>
<p>Kudos to all of you who’ve been blessed with excellent educations, whether from International, Hotchkiss, NYC’s interesting plethora of programs, or Michigan privates. Now get out there and create a society that finds a way to share education so that you don’t have to live in a bunker when you’re old, hiding from the Mad Max society outside the Bladerunner-style warehouse that hides your mansions : )</p>
<p>Alot of my friends go to this school. They are always busy with homework and besides sports and extracurriculars they have no lives. They all take the IB tests which I have seen and they are much more difficult than the AP test. ALL students besides 2 so far (from friend who has been keeping track) have gotten in and pretty much the whole school applies. People with 3.2’s from this school got in. This school makes students think critically and schools like mine are really far below this one. period.</p>
<p>^
Ok this isn’t true. People there are just normal students like me and you.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>What do pass rates have to do with recognition?</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Have you checked out the NYC preschool/kindergarten scene? It is ridiculous.</p>
<p>kmccrindle, America is not a socialist nation. We are a class-based (a.k.a. capitalism) society. Some of our uber-elite leaders only care about making profits. There is nothing wrong with making money (all of us want to be financially stable!), but educating the less privileged (e.g., rural and urban youth) is not their high priority. Those who can get ahead have access to right types of cultural, social, and human capital. That’s what differentiates America from the rest of the developed world.</p>
<p>Bearcats, where are you getting your information from…</p>
<p>International Academy is one of the BEST IB schools in the world. I am sure it is one of the most balanced programs. EACH STUDENT is REQUIRED to take IB English (equivalent to AP English), IB History (Equivalent to AP History), One IB Science (Equivalent to AP Bio, chem , or physics), one IB language (which far exceed expectations of AP languages-choices are limited though), as well as one IB Math Course (IB Math Studies-equivalent to Honors PDM+FST) IB Math SL (equivalent to FST+Honors PDM+Calc AB/ 1/2 of BC) or IB Math HL (equivalent to Calc BC+1/2 year of Calc 2 and they cover a lot of diverse topics as well).</p>
<p>This means each student is forced to take an equivalent to the nation’s hardest class in each subject.</p>
<p>@fireshark: While the US News ranking does not factor in IB diploma pass rates as a criterion for ranking, IA has some of the highest pass rates in North America AND the World:</p>
<p>2007 World Average (May & Nov) - 79%
2007 North American Average (May) - 73%
2008 IA Average(May) - 97%</p>
<p>So the idea that IA is not recognized nationally or even internationally is completely wrong. The proof is in the scores.</p>
<p>IA may be a good school, but the students it produces are not smarter than the top students from the top public schools in metro-Detroit.</p>
<p>What on earth are you talking about? What would you define as the top public schools in Metro-Detroit? </p>
<p>And, just for you blackpen, an academic profile of IAs students:
-Avg. scholarship offer per student last year: over $60,000 per year (merit-based, not need based, over a total of four years)
-Acceptances at every Ivy League over the school’s history, multiple Ivy acceptances every year
-About 1 TASPer every other year
-27% of the Class of 2009 named National Merit Scholars</p>
<p>Every student must write a 3500-4000 word paper to graduate, the curriculum is extremely demanding averaging 2-3 hours of homework per night, and students go on to college with a large amount of college credit.</p>
<p>I’m sure the IA is a world-class school. What bothers me is that some here can’t accept the fact that top notch grammar schools are not always on the coasts.</p>
<p>^^ In addition to the top publics, the Metro Detroit region also has several elite private schools. Selective colleges and universities admit students from these schools all the time. For instance, both the valedictorian and salutatorian in my graduating class matriculated to Stanford and Yale, respectively. </p>
<p>So yes, there are top schools in the Midwest, but the US News rankings perpetuates the coastal biases.</p>
<p>"So the idea that IA is not recognized nationally or even internationally is completely wrong. The proof is in the scores. "
lol so doing better than average makes you nationally and internationally recognized? Sure.</p>
<p>You want to compare stats? Let’s use an objective one that applies to both schools
**
Average SATs**
For 2009,
Thomas Jefferson SATs
725 verbal, 745 math (1470 total)
Sty average SATs
685 verbal, 723 math (1408 total)
IA average SATs
629 Verbal, 668 math (1297 total)</p>
<p>oh before some hacks try to come in and say “oh…SAT scores mean nothing blah blah blah”… You might have a point if you say ONE SAT scores does not tell a story about ONE person, but SAT scores for 50 people pooled together tells a collective story about the 50 people. It is a completely objective measure. As any statistian would say, you can have 1 outlier out of many data points, but you cant have 50 outliers out of 50 data points.</p>
<p>“Acceptances at every Ivy League over the school’s history, multiple Ivy acceptances every year”
Lol, really? multiple Ivy acceptances is an acheivement? At REAL top high schools, there are multiple kids with 8 ivy acceptances every year. Hey I had “multiple Ivy acceptances” myself, am I nationally and internationally recognized?</p>
<p>"This means each student is forced to take an equivalent to the nation’s hardest class in each subject. "
Hmm really? the real top schools, private or public, offer courses beyond typical high school AP/IB courses. At Hotchkiss, we have multivariable calculus (calc 3) and linear algebra (calc 4), beyond that we have kids taking a structured independent studies course working on third year level math, so your little IB math course is not “the nation’s hardest class in each subject”. The same is true for almost every subject. This is true for Sty and Thomas Jefferson as well for math and science subjects.</p>
<p>This conversation is like kids from Loomis Chaffee trying to say they belong in the same league as top boarding schools like AESDCHL. All I have to say is… haha…dream on…</p>