Anonymous
Post 02/09/2023 09:49     Subject: Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:That is a really terrible decision for a school that has so many military kids.

Doesn't fcps have a military liason? Someone needs to get them involved.

IB is useless for military kids.

Which school board member is in cahoots witn the company that owns the IB program?



Not true. A lot of military kids are already accustomed to IB if they’ve been to international schools overseas.


That is not "a lot"

It is a small handful of milktary kids.

The vast majority of mulitary kids have never been in an IB school and strongly prefer AP.
Anonymous
Post 02/09/2023 09:45     Subject: Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:That is a really terrible decision for a school that has so many military kids.

Doesn't fcps have a military liason? Someone needs to get them involved.

IB is useless for military kids.

Which school board member is in cahoots witn the company that owns the IB program?


This argument is largely unfounded. Any juniors enrolled in full IB courseload right now at Robinson who happen to unfortunately receive PCS orders for their senior year would be able to enroll into a full AP load for senior year at the new school. Junior level IB prepares kids for senior AP classes because junior level IB is at a minimum equal to the Honors version of the subject (e.g., IB English SL/HL 1 equates to English 11 Honors which is a pre-req for AP Literature as a senior).

Any incoming military kids who are coming in as juniors will have the opportunity to enroll in two-year IB courses. Incoming seniors is where complications arise. In that limited scenario, they are indeed better off with a different program if they are seeking a full advanced course load.


Most military families will move mountains or separate the family to avoid PCSing their kid just for senior year. At that point, switching from AP to IB or vice versa is just one more thing to deal with on a long list of much bigger worries and in practice they would just choose housing elsewhere if it really impacts them.
Anonymous
Post 02/09/2023 09:42     Subject: Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My kid is an RMIB alum. IB should only be offered to very bright kids with a lot of support.

IB in a academically lagging school is absolutely terrible idea and a sure way to torpedo the future of struggling students.


Robinson isn't an academically lagging school, despite the handwringing on this thread. That said, the IB diploma is still a niche diploma, the majority of students are not aiming for it.


Which is why this makes no sense. A student can take one AP class and get college credit for that class. IB on the other hand is a multi year slog that most students don't want.


Robinson already punches below its weight (given the wealth in the Fairfax Station/Clifton area) due to not having a MS AAP center and the IB focus.

It's hard to see how stripping the school of some of its remaining AP classes will help. It would be better to reconsider the need for IB at all. Replacing IB with AP would both reduce the number of pupil placements and help address any scheduling problems associated with having both AP and IB (note, though, that W-L in Arlington is smaller than Robinson and appears to pull it off).
Anonymous
Post 02/09/2023 09:28     Subject: Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My kid is an RMIB alum. IB should only be offered to very bright kids with a lot of support.

IB in a academically lagging school is absolutely terrible idea and a sure way to torpedo the future of struggling students.


Robinson isn't an academically lagging school, despite the handwringing on this thread. That said, the IB diploma is still a niche diploma, the majority of students are not aiming for it.


Which is why this makes no sense. A student can take one AP class and get college credit for that class. IB on the other hand is a multi year slog that most students don't want.
Anonymous
Post 02/09/2023 09:24     Subject: Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:That is a really terrible decision for a school that has so many military kids.

Doesn't fcps have a military liason? Someone needs to get them involved.

IB is useless for military kids.

Which school board member is in cahoots witn the company that owns the IB program?



Not true. A lot of military kids are already accustomed to IB if they’ve been to international schools overseas.


What percentage of military kids do you think are attending international schools abroad? The percentage of deployed abroad hovers around 15%. The percentage deployed abroad whose families accompany them are far lower. It's much more common to be stationed at a base in the US and then have a unit deploy from that base with the family remaining
Anonymous
Post 02/09/2023 08:38     Subject: Re:Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Anonymous wrote:Robinson was the only school in FCPS considered good when they added IB. I expect it only passed muster at the time with guarantees that Robinson was big enough to offer both IB and a significant number of AP classes. Otherwise Robinson would have pushed back against IB like Woodson did when they tried to replace AP with IB there.

Whether it’s to simplify scheduling or shore up the IB program, further curtailing AP at Robinson will just prompt more pupil placements to Lake Braddock. Many of the strongest kids in the pyramid already pupil place to Lake Braddock because that’s where the middle school AAP program is located.

It almost surely doesn’t have anything to do with a secret plan to change the boundaries with Centreville since they now plan to expand Centreville to 3000 seats.

At the end of the day all these changes will just reinforce the existing perception that Oakton, Chantilly, Lake Braddock, and West Springfield are the most desirable schools in western and southern Fairfax.



Sorry but Oakton and Chantilly are actually at the top tier along with Langley and McLean. Lake Braddock and West Springfield are consolation prizes that perform around or below the FCPS average. Look at SAT scores out of those schools.
Anonymous
Post 02/09/2023 07:59     Subject: Re:Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Where in the world are you getting that it is easier to get into TJ from Robinson now?


Every MS is guaranteed seats at TJ now. The top 1.5% of the 8th grade class will be offered a seat at TJ if they meet the minimum requirements (3.5 GPA, Algebra Honors in 8th grade, Honors Science and Math in 7th and 8th grade, and at least one other honors class) and the student applies. This means that the top 9 or so students who apply will be accepted at TJ.

I am not sure how many MS feed into Robinson but if it is 4, guessing here, you could be sending the 36 kids who are STEM focused to TJ and not Robinson, which would be a full class of potential AP Science and Math kids to TJ.

I have no clue what the TJ feeding pattern for Robinson looked like before the admissions changes at TJ but I know that many of the MS in FCPS went from 0 or 1 kid to 6-9 kids.


Robinson is a secondary school, so Robinson feeds into Robinson, apart from the Robinson kids in MS at Lake Braddock for AAP or the Robinson kids in HS pupil placing to AP schools or going to TJ.

Given its recent enrollments Robinson would get about 8 guaranteed seats at TJ per year. More might end up admitted from the residual pool but there’s no way you’d have 36 kids per class now going to TJ from the Robinson pyramid. There might be 36 or slightly more in total at any one time across grades 9-12.
Anonymous
Post 02/09/2023 07:51     Subject: Re:Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Did they survey the Robinson pyramid parents to see if they want IB or AP?

Anonymous
Post 02/09/2023 07:44     Subject: Re:Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Anonymous wrote:Where in the world are you getting that it is easier to get into TJ from Robinson now?


Every MS is guaranteed seats at TJ now. The top 1.5% of the 8th grade class will be offered a seat at TJ if they meet the minimum requirements (3.5 GPA, Algebra Honors in 8th grade, Honors Science and Math in 7th and 8th grade, and at least one other honors class) and the student applies. This means that the top 9 or so students who apply will be accepted at TJ.

I am not sure how many MS feed into Robinson but if it is 4, guessing here, you could be sending the 36 kids who are STEM focused to TJ and not Robinson, which would be a full class of potential AP Science and Math kids to TJ.

I have no clue what the TJ feeding pattern for Robinson looked like before the admissions changes at TJ but I know that many of the MS in FCPS went from 0 or 1 kid to 6-9 kids.
Anonymous
Post 02/09/2023 06:30     Subject: Re:Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Anonymous wrote:Robinson was the only school in FCPS considered good when they added IB. I expect it only passed muster at the time with guarantees that Robinson was big enough to offer both IB and a significant number of AP classes. Otherwise Robinson would have pushed back against IB like Woodson did when they tried to replace AP with IB there.

Whether it’s to simplify scheduling or shore up the IB program, further curtailing AP at Robinson will just prompt more pupil placements to Lake Braddock. Many of the strongest kids in the pyramid already pupil place to Lake Braddock because that’s where the middle school AAP program is located.

It almost surely doesn’t have anything to do with a secret plan to change the boundaries with Centreville since they now plan to expand Centreville to 3000 seats.

At the end of the day all these changes will just reinforce the existing perception that Oakton, Chantilly, Lake Braddock, and West Springfield are the most desirable schools in western and southern Fairfax.



NP. Agree with this. There would’ve been rightful pushback if FCPS tried to make a new all IB high school in Region 5. This was the only way to do it and, I suspect, is an attempt to prop up IB enrollment in a county that is largely uninterested.
Anonymous
Post 02/09/2023 05:34     Subject: Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Anonymous wrote:That is a really terrible decision for a school that has so many military kids.

Doesn't fcps have a military liason? Someone needs to get them involved.

IB is useless for military kids.

Which school board member is in cahoots witn the company that owns the IB program?



Not true. A lot of military kids are already accustomed to IB if they’ve been to international schools overseas.
Anonymous
Post 02/09/2023 05:16     Subject: Re:Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Where in the world are you getting that it is easier to get into TJ from Robinson now?
Anonymous
Post 02/09/2023 00:15     Subject: Re:Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:This is not the way.

Should be dumping IB across the county to simplify.


OP here. I’ve been pretty impressed by the IB program so far! And I took AP in high school in Maryland.


I’m an AP kid. I was ok with IB but the recent changes effects parents and kids monetarily and in terms of effort and time. This really just seals the deal for me to transfer my kids to LB or TJ.

Robinson is more than welcome to dump AP. Enrollment is dropping anyway as their top math/science kids are going to TJ. IB is very strong for writing (it’s very essay driven) which is great. However, the STEM driven parents that I have talked to are considering transferring to Lake Braddock if their kids don’t get into TJ. Because the course credits for STEM in an AP program vs an IB program aren’t the same. For some schools like UVA AP Calc BC gives extra credits vs IB math (for UMd, it’s equivalent to three classes.) This is significant because the only class parents are upset about is AP calc BC. This one class is equal to two years of IB math- because there are different tests.

Now I am not saying the school isn’t good. But I am saying it will definitely drop in rankings if it has an increase of transfers. But what I suspect is that this is intentional. They want more kids to transfer to LBSS (because it is losing enrollment numbers) and to TJ so that they can expand Robinsons boundaries and take some of the centreville kids off of Fairfax Station road. Long term- my suspicion is that boundaries will be changing once that happens and Centreville parents won’t complain that their kids are going to Robinson and Robinson can blame it on parents transferring their kids to LB.

I do think that this also means more kids will end up getting into TJ from Robinson and that people who have smart kids will see the data points from that soon enough and keep real estate values high FWIW. I also think that this will help with scheduling for teachers and that the school will do better overall. But I do not like the change personally.



I teach at Robinson. I can assure you nothing of the sort is motivating this change. The master schedule is a nightmare of one off classes, causing teachers to have 3 preps, student schedules to be inflexible, and staffing ratios to be a challenge. IB already had so many sub sections of classes (year 1, year 2, HL, SL) that scheduling is really, really hard.

They are keeping AP calc and AP stats next year. The only class they are dropping is APUSH. There is an analogous IB course already offered.


If the scheduling is so hard, the degree is so niche, and the fact that we have so many military families here as is: why keep IB? Why not transition out to AP?

Remember: Robinson wasn’t IB before. Now that it is, and now that TJ is easier to get in from Robinson: what will make Robinson a top school when it doesn’t offer the classes the top kids want to take? Now I understand AP stats is still being offered- but that’s not the same as AP calc BC, which gives more credit for one exam and I believe that that is no longer being offered.

As for the boundary changes: sure. But lots of things happen when enrollment plummets that may make the school board re-evaluate why it’s happening.
Anonymous
Post 02/08/2023 23:45     Subject: Re:Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Robinson was the only school in FCPS considered good when they added IB. I expect it only passed muster at the time with guarantees that Robinson was big enough to offer both IB and a significant number of AP classes. Otherwise Robinson would have pushed back against IB like Woodson did when they tried to replace AP with IB there.

Whether it’s to simplify scheduling or shore up the IB program, further curtailing AP at Robinson will just prompt more pupil placements to Lake Braddock. Many of the strongest kids in the pyramid already pupil place to Lake Braddock because that’s where the middle school AAP program is located.

It almost surely doesn’t have anything to do with a secret plan to change the boundaries with Centreville since they now plan to expand Centreville to 3000 seats.

At the end of the day all these changes will just reinforce the existing perception that Oakton, Chantilly, Lake Braddock, and West Springfield are the most desirable schools in western and southern Fairfax.

Anonymous
Post 02/08/2023 23:16     Subject: Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB
Anonymous wrote:My kid is an RMIB alum. IB should only be offered to very bright kids with a lot of support.

IB in a academically lagging school is absolutely terrible idea and a sure way to torpedo the future of struggling students.


Robinson isn't an academically lagging school, despite the handwringing on this thread. That said, the IB diploma is still a niche diploma, the majority of students are not aiming for it.