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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The argument fails because the focus needs to be on the students that FCPS actually has, not the students FCPS wishes it had.  If IB were going to draw people to schools, surely we would have seen this happen by now.  But it hasn't, and [b]most of the students who attend the schools with IB programs clearly would be better served by AP[/b].[/quote]

Huh? How do you know this?

IB courses can be taken WITHOUT committing to the entirety of the diploma. There is also an IB Career-related Certificate (IBCC) Program:

http://www.fcps.edu/is/aap/ibdiploma.shtml

So the costs of the IB coordinator are not solely for the students in the IB Diploma program but also for the students in IBCC as well as for students taking individual IB courses (much like students do, a la carte, for AP).[/quote]

The whole point of IB at the high school level is the IB diploma and everything at an IB high school has to be organized around enabling students to pursue a diploma and making sure that, among other things, the IB school "develops and promotes international-mindedness and all attributes of the IB learner profile across the school community," and "provides for the full Diploma Programme and requires some of its student body to attempt the full diploma," etc.  The IBCC is an after-the-fact add-on to keep IB schools that have abysmally low rates of diploma candidates forking over the annual fees and other money to the IBO.

The AP "a-la-carte" analogy fails because [b]IB courses are more cumbersome (often two-sequences as opposed to one-year AP courses)[/b]; moreover, even if they were no different than AP courses, it would still beg the question as to why we should pay more money for IB coordinators, training, annual school fees, and tests when AP costs less.

IB has been such a waste of time and money in FCPS.  It strains credulity that FCPS won't listen to parents and kill it, even when people have repeatedly expressed their anger over  getting redistricted to IB schools.  [/quote]

Where are the two-sequences courses in IBCC? I don't see this requirement listed.

http://www.fcps.edu/is/aap/ibcc.shtml
[/quote]

You have to take two IB diploma courses and many of them have a two-year sequence.

IBCC has limited flexibility compared to AP/Academy offerings at other schools, and most of the schools that offer this have few IB diploma candidates.  It doesn't seem worth the candle when you could take the same money spent on IB fees, coordinators, etc. and just provide the students with access to non-IB courses that deliver similar services at lower cost. [/quote]

The only two-year course sequence I see for IBCC is for CTE courses. The IB Diploma courses do not need to be a two-year sequence.[/quote]

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