An elite curriculum meets an amalgam of students

In the hall, a student stops Stroud to talk about his progress in "Einstein's Dreams," a book by an MIT physics and writing professor, which Stroud teaches in his Theories of Knowledge class. Meant to help students learn to think, it's a course required for the diploma, along with passing exams in math, English, social science, science, foreign language, and art; a 4,000-word research essay; and 150 hours of community service.

The mark of IB, say those familiar with the program, is its emphasis on depth of knowledge over breadth. With students able to choose from an assortment of essay questions on their exams, teachers are freed up to spend more time on any one topic - focusing on the role of women in the Civil War, for example, rather than feeling crunched to cover every detail of the conflict.

At lunchtime, the assistant principal regularly lets a group of 10th-graders overtake her office. Today they grumble and grouse about next year, when they'll return as juniors to a full IB courseload. They share IB horror stories: Anu Bakare says she knows she'll get only four hours of sleep a night. To get her IB psychology work done, she says, a friend at UNIS sleeps in 15-minute intervals. The group nods, resigned to this fate.

At any of the nearby public high schools, Courtney says, "we'd be in AP getting everything done - it would be a lot easier." All say that at some point they considered leaving.

Principal Stroud already suspects that the answer to the question, "Is IB is for everyone?" may be "No."

From other IB educators and concerned parents he has heard the refrain: "You can't slow down instruction to wait for the kid who doesn't get it." He heard echoes of it again earlier this month when he spoke about making IB accessible at the annual International Baccalaureate North America (IBNA) conference in Montreal.

Parents and educators worry the curriculum may require too much sacrifice. Six hours of homework a night leaves little room to practice tennis or piano, let alone look after siblings or hold down an after-school job. Teachers worry about self-esteem. How will a student feel if IB proves to be too demanding?

But Stroud's talk was well received, with other school heads asking to visit and start up a correspondence.

The IBNA organization is also exploring questions of access. "We're trying to convince folks that well more than a small slice of the student population can participate in IB programs successfully," says Bradley Richardson, the North America regional director in New York. "Consider that around the world, students who are not all advantaged are doing this and doing well."

The key, Stroud says, is to find the right balance - the range of achievement levels that can be incorporated into a classroom before the curriculum must be distilled too much - and to offer tutoring and extra classes for students who start off behind.

For Stroud and his students, the first real test will come in 2007. By then the 10th-graders will be seniors, sitting for six long exams over two days in the hope of earning the IB diploma.

Jamaal Brown, one of those 10th-graders, tinkers on a laptop between bites of lunch, preparing for a presentation. He says his parents pushed him toward the Baccalaureate School after stumbling across it in a booklet put out by the city. He wanted to go to Cardozo, an overcrowded high school nearby.

But "[now] that I've realized what the school has to offer," he says, "I can't give it up to go to a regular high school."

For their International Baccalaureate exam in Higher Level History of the Americas, students in 2002 could choose two essay questions from six different topics. They had 90 minutes to write both essays. Here's one example of their choices:

Topic 1: Causes, practices and effects of war

1. Compare and contrast the causes of the First and Second World Wars.

2. Analyse the changes in the nature of warfare during the twentieth century.

3. Why were there so many civil wars in the twentieth century?

4. Examine the effects of war and the fear of war on the civilian population of two countries, each chosen from a different region.

5. "The Korean War was a limited war, a civil war, and an episode in the Cold War." To what extent do you agree with each part of this assertion?

Source: "Supertest: How the International Baccalaureate Can Strengthen Our Schools," by Jay Mathews and Ian Hill (reprinted with permission from Open Court).

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