As a longtime school choice advocate, I am always in favor of giving parents the tools they need to ensure their children receive a high quality education, which is necessary to compete in today's global marketplace. And as a visiting professor of law at Liberty University and former associate professor at Xavier University, I know how a rigorous education is critical for students to be prepared to get the most value out of their time at college.
Therefore, I am disturbed by a recent development in states such as Idaho, where members of the school board are questioning the worth of this program despite its value to students. Or in New Hampshire, where fringe activists claiming to be members of the Tea Party are supporting bills to shut down a rigorous education program.
You may be familiar with schools which have advanced placement (AP) classes, where students are given the opportunity to take accelerated classes. The program in question, International Baccalaureate (IB), was started in 1968 and is even more rigorous. Offered in 1,311 primary and secondary American schools, IB has a track record of helping shape young minds into accomplished life-long learners and ethical leaders. And for poor minority students in rough neighborhoods such as Chicago, IB has been a ticket for many motivated students out of dependency and poverty.
IB is accepted by more than 1000 U.S. universities -- such as MIT, John Hopkins and the Naval and Air Force academies -- as an exemplary mark of academic achievement. Some universities automatically enroll high school students who finish the IB Diploma Program. And hundreds of universities offer college credit for IB classes, which saves students time and money.
In addition, according to a recent study by the Stanford Research Institute, not only are IB students much more likely than other students to attend a selective college, most (81%) finish their program within 6 years. That is compared to the national average of 57%, which has been a strain on taxpayers and has added to our current student loan default crisis.
So, what is the objection to IB? Because the program is available across the globe, encourages students to learn a second language, and teaches students about other cultures, it appears that the conspiratorial-right is claiming the program is part of a plot to erode American sovereignty through the United Nations and create a one-world, socialist government.
It is a shame William F. Buckley is not alive today because he spent a lifetime building a respectable and electorally-successful conservative movement, while rejecting kooks from organizations such as the John Birch Society. Our movement needs to be concerned about actual threats to our sovereignty, such as unelected judges who cite international law in their decisions or inappropriate treaties such as the Law of the Sea. No one can fill WFB's shoes, but I am here to insist that an intense and vigorous education to prepare students for a global world is a good thing! To claim otherwise makes self-labeled conservatives sound anti-intellectual, paranoid, and detached from legitimate political discourse.
As Kentucky Senator Rand Paul said while visiting an elementary school with a successful IB program, "I think the one-size-fits-all (model) coming out of Washington is not the way to go. I think we need to empower innovative, creative, talented principals and teachers to do their jobs and let the success come." Programs such as No Child Left Behind and the elimination of voucher programs are examples of how busybody bureaucrats inflict permanent damage on entire generations of students.
We were each endowed with abilities from the Almighty. And education policy must free up local communities to offer programs to allow students to maximize their God-given potential. School choice, parental control, and a vigorous, classical education are at the heart of conservative philosophy.
believe or not.
The balance can be found if you educate with knowledge, righteousness, and love for the kids.
There have been some suspicious movements in Europe, which have been trying to disrupt or destroy public education, to be of poor quality.
I do not know who may be interested in such an aberration, because countries will surely suffer ignorance, crime and social problems of mass poverty...
And a BIG WASTE OF MONEY...
To try to control this error, God commands us to take care of the rest!
And together, because children should not suffer for the mistakes of its leaders.
A child, whatever its source, whether or not, his family has money,
is a creature of God, that can may be destined for great achievements.
If states think only of money it costs the health or schooling, thousands of children will be lost along the way ...
We must be generous with the basis of Developped society!
Anyone curious why Blackwell is allowed to return to politics without first explaining his contract with Mike Connell?
And yes, IB exam results are not as accepted as AP exams in the US, but the situation is different internationally. One of my daughter's friends plans on attending a school in Switzerland. She is doing an IB diploma.
But the AP exam issue is easily solved - take the AP exam. You don't have to take the AP course to take the AP exam, and the IB courses easily prepare the student for the AP. My daughter got 5's on the AP exams for American History and English without any exam prep - she had too much homework due to study for the AP exams.
From what I can see, the IB courses are more rigorous than the AP courses - there is not full equivalency as some of the IB courses are 2 or 3 year sequences.
http://myinclinevillage.com/2011/07/31/what-all-parents--students-should-know-before-enrolling-in-ib.aspx
The big difference between the two is that IB is a complete curriculum and AP is not. School districts that adopt AP use it to augment an existing curriculum. IB school districts tend to teach to the whole IB curriculum but as of late a trend towards offering only selected IB high level classes, a la AP class selection, appears to be developing.
An finally some more links:
Interesting AP versus IB comparison:
http://www.collegeconfidential.com/dean/archives/ap-vs-ib.htm
IB matriculation and college acceptance:
http://www.ibo.org/recognition/dpdestinationssurvey
My 10th grade daughter took 4 IB courses and an online AP class. Since she was not in 11th or 12th grade she was not allowed to take the IB exams. Instead, she took the AP exams, and got 5's.
We were never concerned about the IB matriculation - I had planned on her spending her last 2 years of high school at Bellevue college doing Running Start for both High School and College credit.
Instead, she is off to the University of Washington where she will study engineering - without ever graduating from high school.
"My name is Richard Girard and I have a talk radio program in Manchester, NH. We covered the controversy over the IB program.
First, many of the people involved were genuine Tea Party members. Some even helped found and organize the first statewide Tea Party group. To suggest, in any way, that they are not legit is simply wrong.
Second, the concern is not that the curriculum is available across the globe. The AP is available across the globe. The objection is about the IB's open affiliation with UNESCO, its "all or nothing" approach, and a curriculum that seems to reflect UNESCO's political agenda, rather than academic rigor. They're also concerned by the apparent ceding of local authority and control to international organizations that not only require arbitration in Swiss courts, but subject the participating schools to IB inspection and regulation.
Third, the NH legislation had nothing to do with banning the IB. It simply established a study committee to investigate the IB. It also established criterion that would disallow any school district in NH from adopting a curriculum that did certain things most of us would not think prudent.
If you'd like to know what really happened in NH, visit http://www.girardatlarge.com/component/search/?searchword=hb+1403&ordering=&searchphrase=all and look for yourself.
Note well: EVERY proponent of this curriculum in our neighboring town either refused to come on my show to share their side or refused to respond to our invitation."
And since you don't seem to know what the plural of "criterion" is, you probably aren't in much of a position to judge the IB's academic rigor, since you don't seem to have experienced any yourself.
The above line is better known as "accountability" so people don't cheat. The College Board can also inspect and regulate. Has this person ever watched Stand & Deliver?
The comment that 'it appears that the conspiratorial-right is claiming the program is part of a plot to erode American sovereignty through the United Nations and create a one-world, socialist government' is certainly one of the key hyper-globalist lines of attack. But it is probably a very fringe view. There is also a relatively more rational conservative line of attack that sees education as a natural process, and children should not be 'transformed' into global citizens. The notion that IB is 'un-American' (even 'anti-American') is a long-established one and a view held by many IB opponents. Much, in my view, eminates from mis-understandings about the history and origins of IB, whilst a lot more could be done by schools and educators to explain to parents and other agencies what IB entails and aims to do- it is not ideal for all schools in all situations. A key problem is that the debate in America seems to involve people of polarized views, with little room for a consensual debate.
IB has always had an elitist bent because the kids who do well have heavy support from their families or from dedicated programs geared to shepherding them through all 4 years of IB classes. My district only graduates 3 or 4 kids a year with IB diplomas, but close to a thousand kids a year graduate with at least one successful AP class. Since it's very expensive to pay for teacher training, visiting test administators and the franchise expenses given the results, we're taking a hard look at whether the cost justifies the prestige value. In my opinion it doesn't.
Calling IB elitist is where you and I differ. Strong family support should not be an elite thing. I teach in an urban school, so I see what even moderate parent involvement can do to change the results of education. Why should even that be considered elitist?
It's also simply a fact that middle and upper class families have more income and housing stability than lower income families. If you're moving from rental to rental every year or so and to new schools, it disrupts the IB sequence of classes and for all practical matters one disruptive year throws out all of the accumulated work the student puts in the process, not to mention that with fewer venues most kids who leave one IB high school program probably won't get in another.
Some kids have a tougher row to hoe than others. IB works out the best for kids who don't transfer from school to school, have time to volunteer in their communities and have strong family support. You might think I'm being a snob for saying that for most low income kids that's not their reality, but from my experience as a teacher who has seen both IB and AP, that's the way the world goes. For low income kids who have to pull themselves up, AP is much more practical. For the school districts looking for a cost-effective model that increases classroom
I'm a strong supporter of AP classes, particularly in this era of increasingly unaffordable college tuition costs. Good schools (or at least good schools in larger cities) offer students the opportunity to get college credit while in high school. That's a win-win for the student, the family, the schools and the nation.
At least you and I agree on one major point, and perhaps that is the opening to more discussion. But these are not "fringe activists" - these are mainstream Tea Partiers that your organization supports.
It is also hard to stand with you when you couch your comments around vouchers and the like.
BTW, you do know that IB is a very secular program, right?
Don't go trying to conger up ol' Bill Buckley and put words in his mouth. IB is an outrageously expensive, ideological "worldview" that is inappropriate in American public schools.
www.truthaboutib.com
Huh, that's one of the most Un-american comments I've ever read here.
IB has ONE goal -- to create global citizens for the UN so that UNESCO's redistributive goals across nations can be propagandized by students.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/05/26/international-baccalaureate-undermines-us-founding-principles
Did you know that it is in the Minnesota Republican Platform to eliminate IB from the Minn. public schools? Funding to IB in Minn. too?