Reply to IB Program- What is it? IB or AP?

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[quote=Anonymous]Different perspective here - we moved out of the Marshall district, so we could be in an AP high school district.  We hadn't been particularly focused on the relative strengths and weaknesses of AP and IB when we purchased our house, but as our kids got older and we did more research there were several things that bothered us.

First, regardless of how much interest there is in IB at an IB high school, the IBO requires that school to revolve around the IB diploma "programme." To us, that raised resource allocation issues - would the school be precluded from offering certain courses because it had to make other IB courses available, regardless of the level of interest?

Second, we felt that, if our kids bailed on the full IB diploma program, they'd effectively become second-class citizens within the school, in a way that would not be the case at an AP school, where the number of AP courses that kids varies along a sliding scale.

Third, we'd heard stories of IB diploma students who felt they'd missed out on the opportunity to pursue other interests because the diploma program was so demanding and prescriptive, yet ended up with the same college options as students at AP schools who'd been able to exercise more control over their course selection and other school activities.  There tends to be a lot of focus on kids who allegedly take 15 AP courses in high school and "burn out," but less focus on the heavy demands made on IB diploma students who try to juggle other interests.

Fourth, we felt that IB was rather heavy on PC jargon, such as turning students into "global citizens" and the like.  We're not Tea Party types by any stretch, but there seemed to be an overtly political component to IB that you do not find in AP.  FCPS has subsequently started to use some of the same gauzy language in its descriptions of its educational objectives, but it seemed more pointed in the IB context.

At the end of the day, I'm sure Marshall would have been OK, but we were happy to move to an AP school that is a bit more traditional.  At some level, IB felt like a "trendy" program that FCPS had gotten infatuated with in the 1990s, and then steadfastly kept in place even though it never attracted the level of interest that FCPS had anticipated. [/quote]

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