IB Programs

katliamom
Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:19:47 +0000

Our public school system has a successful, 20 year-old high school IB program. It offers comprehensive IB preparation and its students have been very successful on the IB exam internationally. The district offers IB-preparatory elementary and middle school, although anyone can apply into the high school IB program, provided they have the grades and the discipline.

A word of warning, however: at least in our district, this is a TOUGH, TOUGH program. It is not for everyone. Students have to be very motivated – it has to be their decision to be there, not the parents’. The classes are tough, the homework very time-consuming: an average of 4 hours of a night. As result, many students have to limit (or give up) high school sports and extracurriculars. Many transfer to other schools before they graduate. At my son’s no-fun-a-lot-of-rules science & tech magnet school, there are a lot of transfers from the IB kids. That said, IB juniors & seniors perform well on SAT and ACT tests (the mean ACT score last year was 28) and most get into excellent schools, often with financial aid.