Reply to Yorktown vs WL — Ranking vs word on street

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

This is important to remember: transferring into IB (supposedly) requires you to take full IB. No picky-choosey like kids zoned for WL.  This is a policy, IMO, APS needs to change.[/quote]

NP whose Yorktown-zoned child wants to apply for IB next year.  How would you change it?  Either let the YT/Wakefield kids stay even if they don't do full IB, or make it so W-L kids can't dabble in IB, they either do it or not?[/quote]

I would change it so they either do it or don't, same as everyone, since it's a program within a school.  Letting everyone dabble in it, just defeats the purpose.  [b] But who will make this change?[/quote]

Letting people "dabble" actually helps the program because they can offer a wider range of IB electives. If they limited access to only diploma students they would have electives with only a few students signing up and then they wouldn't offer them. [/quote]

I believe that due to the extremely large number of high school students in this county, and the popularity of the IB program, they would easily fill, if they asked students to fully commit (perhaps at the latest by the start of grade 10) and decide to be "in or out".[/quote]

I agree. If IB were established as its own option program, the typical high-pressure-expectations Arlington parents would be all over it like they are HBW. It would become an elite option school. But on second thought as I write this, the major obstacle to that happening would be the lack of extracurriculars. Parents expect their kids to be able to do and have it all. Separating IB from WL per se would disconnect their students from WL athletics. That's one of the problems Arlington Tech has now - students want to do activities AT doesn't offer (band) and it's too much of a hassle to go back to the home school for sports.[/quote]

I don’t think APS is too keen on creating elite option schools. HBW became one due to its small size, but that wasn’t on purpose. Arlington Tech was purposefully not designed as an elite STEM school with admissions testing. A small elite IB option school would likely create division between the “dregs of humanity” at the neighborhood schools and the highly motivated academic stars at the elite IB option school. Also, would a small IB option school be able to offer the same number of IB electives? [/quote]

Don't know and don't care. So what if the # of electives goes down? They still have their IB program and diploma. Option programs are choices and choices just might mean "choosing" to do without something else. [/quote]

Presumably the program requires a certain number of electives be offered. Additional complications to IB becoming a small school of its own include the fact that the W-L teachers who teach the IB classes also teach non-IB classes and the diploma requires a significant amount of hours outside the classroom spent on activities that include drama, sports and musical performance, all of which would be much more difficult to do at a small, IB only school.[/quote]

I understand the logistics. That isn't the point. The point is inequitable access and expectations for students depending on where they live.
Jefferson is an IB program school. Randolph is an IB program school. Keep IB at WL, I don't care. Just make it a full-time program. If you can't fill it, then there really isn't the demand to justify it. Right now, people are more than happy to incur the expense just so their kids can pick and choose and not actually pursue or obtain an IB diploma. APS is cutting back on other things in the name of equity; they might as well save the costs of the IB program and cut back on that rigor as well.[/quote]

So you want to get rid of IB for ES and MS too? [/quote]

That would be fine with me for three reasons: (1) the IB program is not run the way the official IB curriculum is designed anyway;(2) there is no actual progression path for the program from beginning to end except for students districted to Randolph AND to TJMS AND then who TRANSFER to WL; and (3) I don't know about the Randolph program, but the IB program at TJ really isn't IB and really isn't substantially differentiated from any other middle school in APS aside from "student-led" parent-teacher conferences, lots of "reflections," and starting world language a year earlier.

If Arlington wants to have an IB program, that would be fine with me as well. But it should be run like any other option program:  K-12 and and lottery admissions. Plus the students, once in the program, need to meet the requirements for the program to continue on at each level. [/quote]

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