Is IB right for your child? Learn how International Baccalaureate schools, programs, and classes work for elementary, middle, and high schoolers.
Standing in front of the room, the speaker veers back and forth between two disparate works of literature: Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In both works, gender roles advance the plot, he says, offering an array of examples to illustrate his point. The speaker — holding the attention of a couple dozen students — is a high school junior. In-depth discussion controlled largely by students is what International Baccalaureate (IB) is all about at Yonkers High School. So, what is an IB class?
Founded in Switzerland in 1968 for students in international schools, IB is now offered in 5,635 schools across 160 countries — with more than 1,900 public and private schools (and counting) in the U.S. IB has gained popularity for setting high standards and emphasizing creative and critical thinking. IB students are responsible for their own learning, choosing topics and devising their own projects, while teachers act more as supervisors or mentors than sources of facts. IB emphasizes research and encourages students to learn from their peers, with students actively critiquing one another’s work. Beyond preparing students for critical thinking and college-level work, the full IB program calls for students to express themselves through writing, requires community service, and aims “to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.”
What an IB school is all about
Technically, any school with an IB program is called an “IB World School.” Since “IB school” is used as shorthand, it’s important to ask how students participate in IB at any given school. It’s most straightforward at IB elementary schools, where IB is part of every class school-wide. But in middle school and high school that may not be the case. Some middle and high schools are 100 percent IB, but not all. For example, at many high schools there is an IB program that kids may opt into, much like attending a school within a school. If that’s the case, students may participate in IB at different levels, ranging from taking a single IB course to earning an IB diploma, which involves taking a full course load of IB classes and meeting a series of requirements. Given this range, it’s crucial to ask what your local school offers and allows.
The difference between IB and AP
Although widely seen as an alternative to Advanced Placement [AP] classes, IB’s different for a few reasons. For one, IB is offered at the elementary and middle school levels. AP is offered only to high school students (with one rare exception for middle school students who are fluent in a language). What’s more, IB can be the curricula for a handful of classes (like AP) or it can be an intensive school-wide program (unlike AP).
The AP comparison only fits in a high school with an IB diploma program where students are allowed to take one or more IB classes in their strongest subjects. Even then, IB and AP classes tend to differ in teaching method and testing. Some see AP as more focused on rote learning and standardized tests. In contrast, IB classes and assessments tend to involve more research, writing, and hands-on evaluation. A key difference is the final exam. IB exams are set up to challenge students to apply what they’ve learned in new scenarios, such as analyzing a case study, in an effort to test students’ ability to react to new information in a limited period of time. The tests (often essays) are then sent to one of 6,000 trained international examiners to be graded alongside work from other IB students worldwide.
Both AP and IB courses deliver extra benefits that regular classes do not. For instance, both AP and IB class grades may be weighted (check with your local school), which boosts students’ GPAs for college applications. Additionally, passing grades on AP exams and IB exams can provide college credit. UCLA, for example, provides up to 8.0 units per course to students who pass higher level (HL) exams in 20 different subjects.
An inquiry-based approach
At all levels, IB takes a global approach, looking at big ideas across disciplines, such as examining connections between the early 20th century novel The Jungle and communism or considering visual depictions of music. No matter what they’re studying, students dig deep into subjects and try to find answers. In a Florida middle school,students reading The Diary of Anne Frank considered the implications of being a perpetrator, a bystander, and a witness of the Holocaust. In Yonkers, biology students develop their own experiments — a process that can leave classrooms stinky at times.
Is IB right for your child?
This depends partly on how your child learns. In an IB class, your child is less likely to take notes during teacher-led lectures and more likely to work on individual or group projects with the teacher facilitating. IB classes tend to be academically challenging, requiring students to take initiative, organize and complete projects, and speak in front of their classmates. Students who thrive in a demanding environment and like having options (like picking 4,000 word Extended Essay (EE) research topics and choosing how to present what they learn) will likely do well in IB. Others might feel overwhelmed by the intensity of the curriculum. However, students who may not be able to complete the full diploma are still able to benefit from taking a smaller number of IB courses. These courses are seen as excellent preparation for university studies and are weighted in GPA calculations.
IB can be time-consuming. Children who struggle in school or have serious extracurricular commitments, such as playing a varsity sport or singing in a competitive choir, may not have the requisite time or energy for IB.
Another factor to consider is the IB curricula’s emphasis on asking questions and searching for answers — no matter how controversial the subject. Questions on every imaginable topic — from global warming to gay rights — will be up for debate as teachers regularly challenge students to ask questions and research their answers. As topics arise, the only rules are that questioning is okay and that students seek not only answers but to understand the cultural biases that exist in competing arguments. It’s all in the pursuit of IB’s mission to teach students that, “other people, with their differences, can also be right.”
From preK to graduation
For children ages 3 to 12, IB focuses on six themes: who we are, where we are in place and time, how we express ourselves, how the world works, how we organize ourselves, and sharing the planet. Students examine these ideas through a variety of prisms, by considering works that focus on language, social studies, math, arts, science, and personal, social, and physical education.
The interdisciplinary approach continues in the Middle Years Program for students ages 11 to 16. The MYP is designed to promote active learning, international-mindedness, and empathetic thinking, equipping students to “help make the world a better place.” Since this program doesn’t align perfectly with U.S. middle school ages, students may complete their Middle Years studies during their sophom*ore year of high school.
At the end, students do a personal project that usually springs from the student’s interests. At one California high school,projects have included a board game, a skateboarding video, and a self-help book for teens. At Yonkers, one student interested in forensics created a (fake) murder scene.
High schoolers participate in IB with varying degrees of intensity, depending on what the school offers. Some schools allow students to take one or two IB courses; others may require students to work toward the full IB diploma. In the two-year diploma program, students must pass IB classes in six areas: language and literature, foreign language, individuals and societies, science, math, and the arts. At Yonkers, these classes include philosophy, psychology, and social and cultural anthropology, as well as standard high school subjects such as English, Spanish, and biology.
To earn their IB diploma, seniors write a 4,000-word essay on a topic of their choice. The senior project is designed to prepare graduating seniors for college-level research and writing. Recently, seniors at Yonkers tackled such topics as the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, the U.S. debt’s impact on the country’s role as a world power, and the effect of social media on teenagers. A local adult (usually a teacher) supervises, but the final essays are sent to outside examiners who grade the work using criteria that apply to IB students around the world.
For high schoolers pursuingvocational or career and technical education (CTE),IB recently added the IB career-related programme students take IB courses and complete the CP core, which bridges the IB academic courses and the career-related study and provides students with a combination of academic and practical skills. Students learn a second language, do community service and complete a research project related to their vocational or CTE field.
What to look for in an IBschool
If you are considering an IB school, find out what form of IB it offers. If it’s a school within a school and/or students are allowed to take IB classes without pursuing an IB diploma, ask how the program works for students at different levels of participation. How will student schedules align for academics, lunchtime, and breaks, for example, and what options do students have if they have trouble acclimating to IB classes? Schools offer different classes to meet IB requirements, so find out which foreign languages, arts, and electives are available. Also, some (but not all) IB programs have GPA or testing requirements for admission, so you’ll need to determine whether your child can meet them.
Depending on how the program is financed in your district, students may need to pay for their own tests. This is true for both AP and IB exams. However, students who qualify for the National School Lunch Program (or a similar state or local program) may have their AP and IB exam fees funded by the state or district. Also, in some states, regardless of socio-economic status, districts will cover the cost of AP and IB exams up to a pre-determined number. When students need to pay for their own IB exams, middle years students may need to pay $76 for each IB exam and IB high school students will pay $119 for each exam they take, though there is a price break for students at both levels for taking all seven exams. As a result — and like AP exams — pursuing an IB diploma often costs hundreds of dollars.
IB is not a magic bullet. Like any program, its success hinges on the general school atmosphere and the quality of teachers, students, and facilities, so be sure to look at the whole package.
What supporters say
- IB looks at the whole picture.“IB brings everything together,” says Yonkers High School Principal Jane Wermuth, so kids understand the “philosophical underpinning of knowledge.”
- Students seem engaged and interested.Many IB students say they enjoy their classes, citing teacher involvement and the sense of community. “Teachers are interested in us as people,” one high schooler explains.It gets students ready for the next step: “Our kids are prepared for college,” says Yonkers IB Coordinator Marcella Lentine. A 2012 study of IB diploma programs in Chicago backs that up: graduates of such programs were 40 percent more likely to attend a four-year college and 50 percent more likely to attend selective colleges than graduates without IB diplomas.
- IB fosters global citizens.“[What we learn in class] opens our eyes to what goes on in the world,” one teenager says. Their mission is to “create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.”
- The program can succeed in a variety of settings.In a book on IB, former Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathewsdiscusses how IB transformed a Virginia high school once described as a place “no one wanted to go to … if they didn’t have to” into what Matthews described in a 2012 Washington Post article as “one of the strongest college-level programs in the country, with improved scores and 35 percent of the participants from black or Hispanic families.”
A final word of advice
Since IB is offered in different forms in public, private, and religious schools, you need to decide what type of school and IB program best suits your family. Then visit the school and check out the IB offerings for yourself.
