NoviTalk.org

International Baccalaureate – Another Viewpoint

Last week, the Novi News headline story titled “High school’s IB program drawing rave reviews” was nothing more than a puff piece for a costly school program.  While I concede that many of the International Baccalaureate Diploma candidates are excited with the program, this hardly reaches a level of district-wide “rave”.

The story states that this program has “excitement throughout the district.”  How exactly is that measured and how truly significant are those numbers?  I’d certainly like to see some metrics, as I’ve always suspected the demand level has been exaggerated.

Quotes about IB students tending to have “better college acceptance rates” or “better ACT/SAT scores” are simply nonsense.  There are no studies to show that.  Students who enroll into the IB diploma program are already highly achieving and would excel no matter what classes they took.

The value of the IB diploma program has (and always will be) the diploma itself.  Novi H.S. has only 18 students who are “Diploma Candidates”.  If you consider the total cost of the program (estimated by other districts to be around $200,000), you can clearly see that the return on investment is questionable.  Consequently, 19 other U.S. IB Diploma schools have dropped the program since 2009.

This program has already been a distraction.  When our district was first considering going from a 4 block to a 6 period day, many good suggested schedules were scrapped because it did not fit the needs of the IB program.  This year, all sophomore students (class of 2013) who previously completed Spanish III  were required to take a “Transitional Spanish” class before moving on to an upper level Spanish class in their junior year.  Since IB classes can only be taken by juniors or seniors, this move ensures larger IB enrollment numbers.

It’s also worth mentioning that Novi High School is current holding an IB Drama class with only 6 students.  How is that fair to others who are now required to be educated in larger class sizes due to recent budget cuts?

Whether this program “stands the test of time” remains to be seen.  It should be evaluated during future budget cuts along with all other programs.  Is it more important than band for middle school students, full-day kindergarten, or any other program that was up on the chopping block last year?  That decision will be left for future boards and a future Superintendent to decide.