Re: high school redistricting
Posted by:
IBVeritas
()
Date: January 17, 2008 10:50PM
(Not related to any particular previous post.)
The IB diploma is not quite as rigorous as some might think. It amounts to taking six AP classes and the rest honors courses, plus a philosophy class and few activities that most kids do anyway.
Any kid can take any IB Standard Level (i.e., honors) or high level (i.e. AP) class and get the extra .5 GPA points and associated college credits for passing HL courses. (Almost ALL colleges offer credit for HL courses, as they do for AP courses; and diploma graduates get credit for passing HL grades plus one SL grade.)
Here are the fundamentals. This is ONLY FOR THE DIPLOMA -- which has absolutely no equivalent in any other high school program in the world. Keep this in mind, but you might see that your kid could qualify for this. In fact, when kids know from 9th grade they are candidates, many of them rise to it.
FOR DIPLOMAS:
There are three HL courses required: IB English HL ("higher level") and IB History HL, plus one third HL course of the student's choice. The other three required courses are SL ("standard level" or tantamount to "honors") in -- subtract the third HL course required -- language, math, sciences, and arts (or a second science can substitute for arts). These (usually) two-year courses generally begin in Junior year, but some can begin in Sophomore. Add to this an elective of choice (band, accounting, etc.)
IB diploma requires CAS hours (150 total between rising Junior year and graduation) and Theory of Knowledge (TOK), a three-hour-per-week philosophy class taken at some schools in the Junior year and some in the Senior year. This involves a lot of Socratic discussion and a few essays. Kids tend to really enjoy this and it's given either in place of an elective during the school day or as an "extra" class after school, or in in the evening, depending on demand and teacher availability.
CAS hours stand for Creativity, Activity, Service. (150 over two years) Taking 50 hours of sports count, and if you do any sport this would likely be met. Creativity can be fulfilled many ways (dance, art, band, chorus, certain volunteer activities, Odyssey of the Mind, etc.). Service is volunteer hours (50 over the course of two years.)
The 3,000+-word extended essay begins in Junior year on a topic of the student's choice. A mentor is assigned and the student begins compiling information and coming up with a theme. It doesn't require original research, but does require supporting a solid thesis with research and fundamental documents, if possible. The mentor and student work closely on this over one and a half years, with milestones between. (Drafts, rewrites, guidance on focus and approach, etc.) 3,000 words is fewer than most major papers -- it's about six pages, plus citations.
Most of the IB diploma requirements are going to be met by college-bound achieving students anyway. Most of them are active in extracurriculars, most do some volunteer service (Scouts, etc.), and writing an extended essay becomes pretty easy after practice in the pre-IB (aka "honors") courses.
At the end of your HL and SL courses (usually two-year courses -- like taking honors/regular Chemistry followed by AP Chemistry, or Precalculus followed by AP Calculus or honors/regular English followed by AP English), you do one to three "papers," otherwise known as a series of exams. You know exactly what to expect because you've taken similar exams all through the pre-IB and IB set of courses. Most IB and pre-IB courses are cumulative, so you're tested through the year on what you've learned the previous year -- or in the case of a two-year class, the previous two years. Teachers review this all along.
In fact, throughout the year, teachers give what is known as "internal assessments." These are similar to mid-term exams, but random samples are sent to the independent IB accreditation service -- that is, teacher grading is assessed to see whether they are grading "too tough" or "too easy" and teachers have to make adjustments based on the results. This happens in real time, basically. Students get the "results" of this assessment within a couple of months via teachers who adjust their grading based on how they've been evaluated. This keeps the curriculum up to standard and teacher grading honest. It also allows for the flexibility in content choice and curriculum progress that teachers can manage.
Students submit their extended essays in the Spring of their Senior year, and have to write short responses to their CAS activities to demonstrate what they found valuable about those efforts.
Most exams are taken late Senior year, unless a student finished an SL or HL course in Junior year, when they take it late Junior year. Some pieces of "final" exams, like English orals, are given in the middle to late Senior year. These orals require kids to look at a randomly selected passage from a work they've read over the last two years and do a literary assessment of them. They practice this all the time and are pretty comfortable with it by the time they do it. Similar to, say, German oral exams (PALS) where you speak into a tape recorder to demonstrate your understanding of the language.
The schedule for all these things (for diploma and certificate candidates, and also for all upper-classmen) is reviewed late in Sophomore year or early Junior year so students know what to expect and when to expect it. There are no surprises, and teachers are trained to work closely with kids all along to make sure they are progressing well. Teachers in various disciplines usually work together -- for example, the English and Science programs may work together so science projects are assessed both for their science value and their presentation clarity.
All the above is true of individual IB courses taken by students who are not in the diploma program. (It is usually pretty hard to tell the difference between diploma candidates and "regular" IB students.) The only difference is that they don't have to take TOK (though many do by choice), complete CAS hours, or do the extended essay.
IB Certificate students must fulfill the three HL course requirements, and the three SL course requirements, and the general pre-IB/IB course of study. No TOK, essay, CAS hours.
Non-diploma and non-certificate students don't have to take a certain number of IB courses. They can mix IB SL courses (equivalent to Honors) plus some HL (equivalent to AP) plus some general ed. For example, they can take IB HL Chemistry, IB HL English, IB SL History, Math Studies (like a general curriculum course), SL French, Music Theory, and Accounting. These are just examples.
Bear in mind: If your child takes pre-IB (aka honors) courses in 9th and 10th grade, he or she will learn to write and analyze very well -- no matter what his or her starting point was. I have heard dozens of parents marvel that their kids entered 9th grade "hating" to write. They hate it all through 9th grade. (Many kids do, no matter if AP or IB bound -- boys and girls.) Then in 10th grade it ain't so bad. Then at the end of 10th grade: "What's the big deal?"
The one drawback, if you want to consider this so, is that several IB courses are two-year courses, so you don't get as many college credits -- you take one exam for a two-year course and get the number of credits colleges give for that exam. However, some courses, like HL Physics, get as many as five college credits. You have to check with the colleges (as you do for AP -- several Ivy League colleges either don't give credit for AP, or they require that you take the course anyway even if they give you credit.)
If you believe that the purpose of high school is to rack up college credits, then sending your kid to an AP school and having him or her load up with AP courses should be your mission. (Remembering that almost no college allows more than 24 such credits). But if you believe that one mission of high school is to prepare your child for the challenging and fascinating world of higher learning, then it will matter more to you that the courses at the school your child goes to will do that, regardless of the credit amassed.
I don't know if this is helpful to those who couldn't "picture" an IB program, but I hope so.