International Baccalaureate Revisited

Wednesday night, at a District Four school board candidate forum, this maven and one of my opponents, John Lloyd, disagreed on how to define the International Baccalaureate (IB) program. Part of John’s platform is to increase the number of IB schools in Richmond. Although John, like me, is deeply committed to the children of Richmond, it was clear from his words that he has not read my description here of the various IB programs, and that he is living in IB’s past.

At the forum, John told the audience that the IB program is only the program for eleventh and twelfth graders that currently exists in Richmond at Thomas Jefferson High School. John is well meaning but wrong.

The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) runs three different and distinct programs—the Diploma Programme (that’s the way they spell it), the Middle Years Programme and the Primary Years Programme.

The oldest program, the Diploma Programme, was originally set up to provide children of diplomats and other government employees working overseas a standardized education and high school diploma so that they could be admitted to colleges and universities around the world. It is the program that operates at Thomas Jefferson High School.

The Middle Years Programme, for students grades six through ten, is the program that RPS has running at Lucille Brown Middle School and at Thomas Jefferson High School. Unfortunately, RPS chose to run the Middle Years Programme as a school-within-a-school program, benefitting only about 80 students at Lucille Brown.* I am convinced that had it been operated as a full school program Lucille Brown would not have had the problems it has had in meeting state and federal standards.

Then, there’s the Primary Years Programme (PYP). For you who have been following my campaign, you know that a key part of my platform is to add funding to the RPS budget for four PYP schools in Richmond—two north of the river, two south. Currently, Richmond has no PYP. As far as I know, none of the other candidates for school board (in any of the city’s nine districts) is campaigning to bring PYP to our elementary schools. So, let’s talk about PYP…

As do all other schools in the Commonwealth, an IB PYP school will teach our children all the knowledge mandated by the state. IB students will be well prepared to excel on the SOL tests. But IB students will get a whole lot more.

The IB teaching method is based on five elements:

Knowledge
Significant, relevant content we wish the students to explore and know about, taking into consideration their prior experience and understanding.

Concepts
Powerful ideas that have relevance within the subject areas but also transcend them and that students must explore and re-explore in order to develop a coherent, in-depth understanding.

Skills
Those capabilities the students need to demonstrate to succeed in a changing, challenging world, which may be disciplinary or transdisciplinary in nature.

Attitudes
Dispositions that are expressions of fundamental values, beliefs and feelings about learning, the environment and people.

Action
Demonstrations of deeper learning in responsible behaviour through responsible action; a manifestation in practice of the other essential elements.

IB’s PYP teaching method is also based on several transdisciplinary themes:

Who we are
Inquiry into what it means to be human.

Where we are in place and time
Inquiry into orientation in place and time – local and global perspective.

How we express ourselves
Inquiry into the ways in which we discover and express ideas.

How the world works
Inquiry into the natural world and its laws, the interaction between the natural world and human societies

How we organize ourselves
Inquiry into the interconnectedness of human-made systems and communities.

Sharing the planet
Inquiry into rights and responsibilities in the struggle to share finite resources with other people and with other living things.

Aside from providing our children with the knowledge they will need to compete in an international setting, the Primary Years Programme is also designed to develop the following skills in our children:

Thinking
Comprehension – Grasping meaning from material learned; communicating & interpreting learning.

Social skills
Resolving conflict – Listening carefully to others; compromising; reacting reasonably to the situation; accepting responsibility appropriately; being fair.

Communication skills
Reading – Reading a variety of sources for information & pleasure; comprehending what has been read; making inferences & drawing conclusions.

Self – management skills
Time – Using time effectively and appropriately.

Research skills
Collecting data – Gathering information from a variety of first – and second-hand sources such as maps, surveys, direct observation, books, films, people, museums and Internet.

Finally, the PYP encourages students to strive to be:

Inquirers : They develop their natural curiosity. They acquire the skills necessary to conduct inquiry and research and show independence in learning. They actively enjoy learning and this love of learning will be sustained throughout their lives.

Knowledgeable: They explore concepts, ideas and issues that have local and global significance. In so doing, they acquire in-depth knowledge and develop understanding across a broad and balanced range of disciplines.

Thinkers : They exercise initiative in applying thinking skills critically and creatively to recognize and approach complex problems, and make reasoned, ethical decisions.

Communicators: They understand and express ideas and information confidently and creatively in more than one language and in a variety of modes of communication. They work effectively and willingly in collaboration with others.

Principled: They act with integrity and honesty, with a strong sense of fairness, justice and respect for the dignity of the individual, groups and communities. They take responsibility for their own actions and the consequences that accompany them.

Open-minded: They understand and appreciate their own cultures and personal histories, and are open to the perspectives, values and traditions of other individuals and communities. They are accustomed to seeking and evaluating a range of points of view, and are willing to grow from the experience.

Caring: They show empathy, compassion and respect towards the needs and feelings of others. They have a personal commitment to service, and act to make a positive difference to the lives of others and to the environment.

Risk-takers: They approach unfamiliar situations and uncertainty with courage and forethought, and have the independence of spirit to explore new roles, ideas and strategies. They are brave and articulate in defending their beliefs.

Balanced: They understand the importance of intellectual, physical and emotional balance to achieve personal well-being for themselves and others.

Reflective :They give thoughtful consideration to their own learning and experience. They are able to assess and understand their strengths and limitations in order to support their learning and personal development.

Maven, this all sounds wonderful, but what’s it going to cost?

Well, reader, it’s not going to be cheap. First there’s the cost of staff training. Then we need IB program coordinators. If we implement the four PYP schools that I envision we will need one coordinator for the north of the river schools and one for those to the south. Then there’s the annual IB fee that is currently over six thousand dollars per school per year. In sum, it won’t be cheap. But, aren’t our children worth it? Besides, not all the money has to come from the RPS budget. There are grants available (from the U.S. Department of Education, for example) to offset IB costs, and I am sure that many of our local businesses would be willing to bear parts of the expense.


*In the past, the IB organization has given schools leeway to run the MYP as magnet schools, schools within schools, or whole school programs. Recently, however, IB is strongly encouraging programs to be whole school, as the IB teaching and learning methods elevate the learning of all children.

Let’s Talk IB

Yesterday’s Times-Dispatch article about International Baccalaureate programs in the Richmond area (A world of satisfaction ) was enlightening but it only looks at a part of the picture. It looks at IB only as an honors program for gifted children and therefore misses what is best about IB.

The International Baccalaureate Organization offers three different programs. The Diploma Program, for high school juniors and seniors, is the program that generally gets the most attention. The Diploma Program offers college-like courses for students and, like AP courses, its students often receive college credit for the IB courses they complete. Certainly, the Diploma Program should be considered an honors program. It requires students to complete an extended essay project, to study the interdisciplinary Theory of Knowledge, and to participate in creativity, action, service (CAS), which “encourages students to be involved in artistic pursuits, sports and community service work.”

The IB Middle Years Program (MYP) is designed for students in middle school and the first two years of high school. Although in Richmond Public Schools the MYP program is viewed as an honors program, that is not its intent. The MYP uses a different approach to learning that exposes students to eight different subjects taught through five areas of interaction. The MYP encourages students to be “independent thinkers” who

can recognize relationships between school subjects and the world outside, who can adapt to new situations and combine relevant knowledge, practical and social intelligence to solve authentic problems alone or in groups.

I am most familiar with the MYP at Langston Hughes Middle School and South Lakes High School in Fairfax County. Unlike the MYP in Richmond at Lucille Brown Middle School, all students at Hughes are IB students. There are no admissions tests, comparison of SOL scores, teacher recommendations. Enrollment is not limited to 50 students. There is no separate school-within-a-school. Every child living in the Hughes school zone becomes an IB student upon enrolling at Hughes. They remain IB students through the ninth and tenth grades at South Lakes High School. Because of this “whole-school” approach, all students in the Hughes-South Lakes MYP benefit from the IB program. It seems clear that the MYP is working quite well. In the five years since the MYP has been fully functional for all students at Hughes-South Lakes student achievement, especially among minority students, has improved considerably.

I understand that the whole-school approach to implementing the MYP is the way things will go in the future. The school-within-a-school model, like that at Lucille Brown, is no longer favored by the International Baccalaureate Organization.

The third IB program is the Primary Years Program (PYP). The PYP is intended for students in kindergarten through the fifth grade. The PYP

curriculum framework consists of five essential elements: concepts, knowledge, skills, attitude, action. The knowledge component is developed through inquiries into six transdisciplinary themes of global significance, supported and balanced by six subject areas.

The six themes are 1- who we are, 2- where we are in place and time, 3- how we express ourselves, 4- how the world works, 5- how we organize ourselves, and 6- sharing the planet. As is the MYP, the PYP is intended to be a whole-school rather than an honors program.

Last summer I was fortunate to share dinner with faculty of an elementary school located in Athens, Georgia. Their description of their school population closely resembled the populations of many of Richmond’s elementary schools. They told me that before becoming an IB school most of the children in the school were not meeting state-mandated standards. Under the PYP, student achievement in the school improved significantly. So, at least in that school, the PYP was successful.

None of the IB programs are cheap. For the PYP, as of the beginning of this year, the fee for the first two years (when the school is in the application process) is seven thousand dollars per year. After that the annual fee is five thousand dollars per year so long as the school is a PYP school. In addition to the fees, the IB school must bear the cost of faculty training and of a program-coordinator faculty position.

Thank you to TD reporter Zachary Reid for his wonderful article. Now you know the rest of the story.

For more information on IB, see ibo.org.