Reply to why do people prefer AP schools to IB?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I graduated from high school 18 years ago, so I am not sure how all of this has changed.  I attending an IB program in Florida and we didn't have a non-complete program.  You either did the full program or not.  I started freshman year in "pre-IB" and it was a lottery to get a seat of the 100 available.  They called them magnet schools back then, which made no sense since my program was in north county in a wealthy area.  The other one was at St. Pete High, which was a dump.

Anyways, we ended up taking both the IB and the AP exams, since the state of Florida paid money to performing schools at the time based on AP exam results.  I found the AP exams to be a joke, and since I was angry I had to take them, I answered one half in Spanish (not a native language of mine) and the other one I wrote about how my biology teacher was bald.  I am pretty sure I got 3s on both of those.

I pursued engineering in both undergrad and graduate school. Eventually gave up on engineering and went to law school.  I have always felt the IB program was the best fit for any talented student.  That said, Florida was unique in that the "pool" of kids was very different compared to here I suspect, and even though my local high school had AP classes, the "level" of student was likely not the same.  If I didn't go to IB, my parents would have sent me to Tampa Jesuit, and they didn't have girls, so I deftly avoided that.      [/quote]

I had a similar experience in California. It was the best educational opportunity (almost like a private school experience) and I found the AP exams to be extremely easy because it was mostly content knowledge and not as much critical thinking (we also had to take both).

I think the issue in FCPS is an economic one. People don't like IB because it's in poor schools.

We are actually fairly happy with our experience in South Lakes, though. [/quote]

We had kids at both AP and IB schools in FCPS and much preferred the environment and experience at the AP school.  Not because it was higher SES, although it was, but because all the students were treated well, unlike at the IB school where the handful of IB diploma candidates were put on a pedestal and everyone else (the vast majority of the students) was second-class. [/quote]

I have a junior at an FCPS IB school. She is doing the full IB diploma, and not only is she not "on a pedestal" but no one even seems to know who is and who isn't doing the diploma. The kids can only tell by who is in their TOK class, or if they ask them personally. All of her friends are taking mostly IB classes, but only a handful are doing the diploma. [/quote]

That wasn't our experience.  The AP school felt more inclusive and, despite the purported emphasis on writing at IB schools, [b]we actually found that the teachers at the AP school were more demanding and provided more feedback on written essays[/b]. [/quote]

+1  My experience has also been that AP schools put more emphasis on meaningful, quality writing.[/quote]

But, you see, this has NOTHING to do with AP.  There is no AP integrated curriculum.  AP is just a collection of individual class curriculi, that's it.  Don't be fooled by this new ridiculous capstone thing that they created to give the impression that it is something more akin to IB.   AP schools can certainly produce strong writers, but that's a consequence of the English/Social Studies departments and the number of students willing to take the stronger classes.[/quote]

You sound more than a little desperate.  I'm sorry that IB hasn't quite taken root in FCPS after 20 years of trying, but the AP schools in the area continue to have the edge and attract the stronger students.

Don't worry.  I'm sure some can still be fooled into thinking that IB is an "integrated curriculum" that will enables students to think holistically on their way to becoming enlightened "global citizens," but sometimes the whole is less than the sum of its parts.  Too much busywork and not enough flexibility make IB the second choice among higher SES families in this region. [/quote]

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