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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It seems the OP was looking to find out if IB was a distinctive enough program in FCPS to warrant placing her child out of one of the county's top high schools, which is also within walking distance of her house.  She concluded that it isn't, so she won't.  End of story.  [/quote]

IB is very "distinctive" if people bother to find out how it works. AP is great too. But yes, both are "self-selecting" in FCPS. Still, if the classes are rigorous, they will indeed "select out" students who cannot hack it.

Sadly, some parents want a program that's only by application, I guess so they can say their kid was so special he or she was picked to be among the elite. But the point of these kinds of programs -- and the point of allowing all kids to dare to try them rather than just limiting them to those who can withstand an application process -- should be to[i] learn [/i]in a new and different way. But around here, parents tend to be more interested in programs they can point to and say, "My kid got in because he's [i]already[/i] so special" rather than "My kid is taking on a challenge that's going to be tough but will equip him with skills he can use in college and beyond."[/quote]

Some people would send their kids to TJ, but not pupil place out of an IB school to the nearest AP school.  Others might send their kids to the IB magnet at Richard Montgomery in MoCo, but not pupil place out of an AP school to the nearest open-enrollment IB school in FCPS.  People have their own reasons, and they aren't necessarily the one you offered.   [b]Sadly, any time a poster decides to take a pass on certain IB schools, other posters decide to hound them relentlessly.[/b]   [/quote]\\

"Hound them relentlessly?" Thanks for bringing the drama.

The PP was saying that some people on this thread are rejecting even the idea of finding out more information about IB because the parents realized there isn't some special placement test to get in. That seems to be the sole thing on which some parents here would base their assessment of whole programs.

Yet AP is the same; students self-select. Both are good programs and fit different students in different ways. But neither one has a TJ-style competition to get admitted.

Pitiful that some parents are more interested in whether a program has competitive admissions than whether the program has a curriculum that might benefit their child. They won't know because they won't look any further when they find out there's no competitive admission.

Saying this as a parent of an AP student who has friends doing IB and everyone's in the right programs that work best for them. .[/quote]

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