Serious effort to remove IB from FCPS?
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Anonymous
| I personally know parents who claim that they want AP to transfer out of Annandale to LB but really- they bought in the wrong neighborhood, can't afford LB neighborhoods and have an easy transfer out of Annandale because of IB. They are necessarily against IB. |
Anonymous
What we should not be doing is keeping IB at schools like Annandale just to give parents a pupil placement option to an AP school they wouldn’t otherwise have. Annandale isn’t attracting many pupil placements for IB and should revert back to AP. |
Anonymous
It’s fine to like AP better but you don’t need to insult IB just because you are not a fan. Just like people who like IB don’t need to diss AP. Is it really that hard not to be a jerk? |
Anonymous
One need only scroll slightly up the thread to see an IB poster "dissing" AP. Guess some of you can diss it out but can't take it. |
Anonymous
But here's the deal. This topic only comes up becomes the SB is exploring county-wide boundary changes that could see people moved from one high school to another. Here are some facts relevant to that discussion: 1. FCPS currently has over twice as many AP high/secondary schools (17) as IB high/secondary schools (8). 2. Parents in FCPS generally prefer AP over IB, as revealed by historic pupil placement activity and other events, such as the successful efforts by Woodson parents to overturn an FCPS plan to convert Woodson from AP to IB and FCPS's cessation by the mid-2000s of conversions of AP high schools to IB. 3. IB costs more per student than AP due to IBO fees and requirements, including the requirement to have a dedicated IB coordinator at each school offering the IB diploma. 4. IB diploma rates at the 8 IB high/secondary schools are consistently low; for 2023-24, according to the VDOE, the IB diploma rates ranged from as little of 2.6% of graduating seniors to at most 17.5%: * Robinson 17.5% * Marshall 13.3% * Annandale 10.0% * Edison 9.1% * South Lakes 7.9% * Justice 5.8% * Mount Vernon 2.8% * Lewis 2.6% 5. In the past, when students were redistricted from AP schools to an IB school (South Lakes), FCPS officials made statements that they would expand the AP offerings at the IB school, but subsequently failed to honor that commitment. 6. The high/secondary schools that are currently the most under-enrolled are IB schools (Lewis and Mount Vernon), whereas the opposite is true with respect to the schools deemed over capacity. In the context of potential boundary adjustments, one big impediment is the fact that some high/secondary schools offer AP, while the others offer IB. In light of the facts described above, it would be logistically easier to convert the smaller number of IB schools to AP than to convert the larger number of AP schools to IB, and such a change generally would be better received by families. When people pipe up, again in the context of this broader discussion, with comments about how much they like IB, they are perceived as taking the position that they'd like to see FCPS maintain the IB schools and even reassign kids from AP schools to IB schools against their will. If you just said you'd like to maintain the status quo with no boundary changes, you might get a different reaction because everyone otherwise has heard the arguments in favor of AP or IB 10,000 times by now. |
Anonymous
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Would love to see AP be the default available at all HS, with then a few schools geographically spread around the county that serve as IB magnets as an optional choice program.
Logistically this could either be IB academies/programs located within an existing HS, or we could convert a couple HS to being magnet/academy centers with a number of choice programs like IB, arts/music, vocational focus, etc. housed under one roof. Would be a challenging transition though to repurpose existing schools and do boundaries, not knowing in advance how many students will opt for the programs (and transferring from where). Probably there's a way to phase this in over a couple years that makes it less disruptive. |
Anonymous
Won't work. Look at the stats. Maybe, make Robinson the magnet--but they likely would not like that either. Get rid of IB. |
Anonymous
this is not enough to justify IB |
Anonymous
cont. Do you really think those parents would lobby to have their child go to an IB magnet? Not enough kids. |
Anonymous
For these 8 schools, there were 543 IB diploma candidates in 2023-24, and 376 IB diplomas awarded. Some of the current diploma candidates would stay at their base schools and do AP if AP were available, but some kids who otherwise wouldn't pupil place to an existing IB school would attend a school where every kid was pursuing the full IB diploma. But if they had classes over 450, it would certainly be a viable school. |
Anonymous
I’ve taught both AP and IB English. I prefer IB, and that’s where I placed my own child. I’ve been listening to AP vs IB arguments for over a decade. I’ve noticed that most people against IB don’t have strong knowledge of the program. |
Anonymous
| We are at Robinson and do not care for the IB program. It's too rigid, and too difficult to fill the diploma requirements without sacrificing other things. Plus, it's not great for a math nerd who hates writing. Worst of all is the cheerleading from the school about it - do they get a commission or something? |
Anonymous
Some of us do have experience with both programs and strongly prefer AP. |
Anonymous
We don't really need a program that results in 82.5% to 97.4% of the seniors at high schools within FCPS not getting a IB diploma, which is the original goal of IB at the high school level. The IBO only started encouraging kids to take courses a la carte to generate more revenue when it became clear relatively few American students were interested in doing the full IB diploma "programme." |
Anonymous
Isn’t it wonderful that the county provides both options? |