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[quote=Anonymous]I am having a hard time following this debate.  The way I look at it, the county offers IB programs in several MCPS high schools.  IB is a fabulous program and as long as there are other options for students who are less academically oriented it seems like these high schools are doing a great job offering interested students a highly rigorous and academically challenging high school experience.
Then there is a test-in magnet program at RM which admits just over a hundred students a year after receiving close to a thousand applications.  This shows that there is high demand for this kind of academic experience.  What makes this program different from the other IB programs at say Einstein or BCC?  I would imagine the peer group, the expectations placed on the students by the teachers and the pace and level of instruction in the classroom.  I don't have direct experience with RMIB (my child got in but chose to go to Blair SMAC instead) but we know many families with children in the program as well as families whose kids have graduated from the program and this is what they tell us.  My child has been in three magnet programs and what these families tell me does seem consistent with his experience - the peer group does make a big difference.  So, it isn't just that their 12th grade research paper might be of higher quality or that they are more likely to earn their diploma (I am not aware of any IB program in the country with a more successful record in this area), because of the additional academic rigor/depth and higher expectations, many kids are happier because they are with kids who truly understand and accept them.  This is one of the advantages a test in magnet program has over a GT program in a local school cluster which would serve the top 10-15% of the students.  There is an argument for more localized GT programs especially at the elementary and middle school level and of course many area high schools offer highly advanced students AP and IB programs.  Despite this, at the high school level, many students in the top 5% are just not going to be happy in their home high school even if their school offers numerous AP and/or an IB program.  We encouraged ds to strongly consider his home (Bethesda area) high school but he really wanted to go to a magnet high school because of the learning environment and because of the peer group.  There are parents who push their children into these programs and make them stay even when they are unhappy or struggling but these are a minority.  It is incorrect and cruel to stereotype the kids in these programs as kids who are coached/pushed to get in, have to be coached/pushed to succeed, are stressed/unhappy etc.  There are lots of different types of kids in these programs.  In the high school magnets they tend to be more uniformly hard working (in part because the application process screens for this) but there are lots of kids who love music, who write, who paint, who act, who are athletes in addition to being great students who love to learn.  I am aware that I am more familiar with the SMAC program which has a lot of camaraderie and the kids seem to laugh a lot in class and I have heard RMIB is more of a pressure cooker but even with that caveat, most of the kids I know who are now in RMIB chose to go there and most of these kids live in areas with high performing high schools.[/quote]

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