IB programs in county

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, as you can see from everyone's responses the IB program in MoCo is confusing and not exactly the same at every school. I would say the main benefit to doing IB at Richard Montgomery is that they offer the most HL IB classes and have always had the highest passing rate on the diploma. BCC historically has the next highest number of kids working toward a diploma in the county. The regional IB programs are very new, I don't know how large or if any kids from those regional magnets have actually graduated yet.

That's actually a great question. Someone said the regional IB program at Kennedy was relatively new, but I couldn't find any exact date when it was added through online searches.

Do you know when it was added? Based on the schools they added it to, it's clear they were added to help attract more affluent and academically achieving kids to the schools, but if they're not actually turning out a decent number of IB Diploma graduates, then it might be a lost cause.

I think the regional IB programs began in the 2020-2021 school year, but I could be off by a year. All of the regional programs were started at schools that already had existing IB programs (they weren't magnets, only open to in bound students), so teachers and administration were already familiar with the IB program, but, for example, at a school like Kennedy, very few kids would have actually graduated with an IB diploma. My guess is less than 20 a year (I am basing this off of my kid's experience in Einstein's IB program). It is hard to find this data by school for MCPS. Maybe someone else knows if MCPS publishes it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, as you can see from everyone's responses the IB program in MoCo is confusing and not exactly the same at every school. I would say the main benefit to doing IB at Richard Montgomery is that they offer the most HL IB classes and have always had the highest passing rate on the diploma. BCC historically has the next highest number of kids working toward a diploma in the county. The regional IB programs are very new, I don't know how large or if any kids from those regional magnets have actually graduated yet.

That's actually a great question. Someone said the regional IB program at Kennedy was relatively new, but I couldn't find any exact date when it was added through online searches.

Do you know when it was added? Based on the schools they added it to, it's clear they were added to help attract more affluent and academically achieving kids to the schools, but if they're not actually turning out a decent number of IB Diploma graduates, then it might be a lost cause.

I think the regional IB programs began in the 2020-2021 school year, but I could be off by a year. All of the regional programs were started at schools that already had existing IB programs (they weren't magnets, only open to in bound students), so teachers and administration were already familiar with the IB program, but, for example, at a school like Kennedy, very few kids would have actually graduated with an IB diploma. My guess is less than 20 a year (I am basing this off of my kid's experience in Einstein's IB program). It is hard to find this data by school for MCPS. Maybe someone else knows if MCPS publishes it.

I'll give them grace because they started this program in the middle of a pandemic, but yikes. The school should absolutely be tracking and supporting a higher number of IB Diploma graduates.

And I believe MCPS definitely doesn't want that data to be out until or if the numbers improve. But then they need to pour a lot more support and resources into those programs to make them effective and robust. I guess that's where Richard Montgomery has the real edge. They've got the infrastructure and experience to churn out more Diploma graduates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, as you can see from everyone's responses the IB program in MoCo is confusing and not exactly the same at every school. I would say the main benefit to doing IB at Richard Montgomery is that they offer the most HL IB classes and have always had the highest passing rate on the diploma. BCC historically has the next highest number of kids working toward a diploma in the county. The regional IB programs are very new, I don't know how large or if any kids from those regional magnets have actually graduated yet.

That's actually a great question. Someone said the regional IB program at Kennedy was relatively new, but I couldn't find any exact date when it was added through online searches.

Do you know when it was added? Based on the schools they added it to, it's clear they were added to help attract more affluent and academically achieving kids to the schools, but if they're not actually turning out a decent number of IB Diploma graduates, then it might be a lost cause.

I think the regional IB programs began in the 2020-2021 school year, but I could be off by a year. All of the regional programs were started at schools that already had existing IB programs (they weren't magnets, only open to in bound students), so teachers and administration were already familiar with the IB program, but, for example, at a school like Kennedy, very few kids would have actually graduated with an IB diploma. My guess is less than 20 a year (I am basing this off of my kid's experience in Einstein's IB program). It is hard to find this data by school for MCPS. Maybe someone else knows if MCPS publishes it.

I'll give them grace because they started this program in the middle of a pandemic, but yikes. The school should absolutely be tracking and supporting a higher number of IB Diploma graduates.

And I believe MCPS definitely doesn't want that data to be out until or if the numbers improve. But then they need to pour a lot more support and resources into those programs to make them effective and robust. I guess that's where Richard Montgomery has the real edge. They've got the infrastructure and experience to churn out more Diploma graduates.

Yes. The value of having a test-in cohort was kind of pointless while the kids were at home freshman year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the frustrating elements here is that MCPS has rolled back the ability of the non-magnet IB schools to offer "pre-IB" classes.

It's part of this incredibly upsetting push-and-pull on the part of the Central Office. They want more families to choose B-CC or Einstein and claim to be expanding opportunities to these programs, but at the same time they are gatekeeping course offerings to the point that a teen who is looking for a like-minded peer group and pre-IB classes must wait until 11th grade to access those things.

There is no such thing as "pre-IB" classes in that sense. IB starts in 11th grade. Before that, there's the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP). I think that all of the MCPS high schools that offer a IB diploma programme are wall-to-wall MYP schools, but I'm not totally certain about that.

yes there is. See above post about RMIB.

Yes there is "pre-IB" at RM 9th and 10th grade. From a former RM IB student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of the frustrating elements here is that MCPS has rolled back the ability of the non-magnet IB schools to offer "pre-IB" classes.

It's part of this incredibly upsetting push-and-pull on the part of the Central Office. They want more families to choose B-CC or Einstein and claim to be expanding opportunities to these programs, but at the same time they are gatekeeping course offerings to the point that a teen who is looking for a like-minded peer group and pre-IB classes must wait until 11th grade to access those things.

Going back to this PP from the first page of the thread..I could not agree with this concern more. (Except I felt the pushback was coming from the high school admin and not Central Office, but Central office hasn't helped at all).

Not all 'gifted' kids can realistically manage to attend a magnet...they are logistically much more complicated to attend (e.g. longer bus rides). And as other PPs pointed out, there aren't places at the magnets for all the gifted kids anyways.

SOOO frustrating, and also puts the academically-minded kids at the home school behind...while their peers at the magnets are taking, say, an advanced class, they themselves are languishing in something like 'honors English' ....

May I ask, PP, how you concluded that it's Central Office doing the gatekeeping? Is there some public info that you could point me too?