State High’s IB program costs $93K a year with about a dozen graduates. Should it continue?

Recent discussions on the size and cost of State College Area’s International Baccalaureate system have brought out staunch defenders of the small but mighty program inside the high school, raising questions about the program and what may be keeping it from growing.

International Baccalaureate, or IB, is a two-year diploma program with advanced material designed to allow students to earn college credit, not unlike Advanced Placement courses. However, IB classes are only offered to 11th and 12th grade students whereas AP courses are offered from grades 9-11.

Despite both programs offering more rigorous study and a chance to earn college credit, they serve different student needs. IB teachers and students say both course programs are vital at State High.

At a Sept. 30 board meeting, the administration presented an overview of the IB program including its predicted $93,702 annual costs for 2024-2025 and its small class sizes. This year, 21 of the 39 IB courses were granted an exception from the school board’s class size policy, which requires courses with under 12 students to request board approval. IB classes make up just over half of the 40 high school courses that were approved this year.

Despite its small size, dozens of parents and former IB students showed up in person and online to defend the program and explain the difference it made in their academic and personal lives.

At State College, the IB program is split into two categories: diploma students who take a full two years of courses, and a la carte students, who may take one or more courses per year depending on interest or scheduling needs.

The district launched its IB program in 2019 and since then has seen its a la carte interest jump from 52 students in 2021-2022 to 234 this school year, partially due to changes in curriculum offerings in 2022 when the district started transitioning advanced courses into IB courses.

But the number of diploma students has stayed roughly the same, with senior graduating classes hovering between eight and 13 students.

Jennifer Schreiber, IB Diploma programme coordinator, said there are 21 diploma students in grades 11 and 12 this year. She said the program’s growth was likely curtailed by COVID but as more students graduate from the IB diploma program, the more people learn about it.

IB classes, Schreiber said, are unique. They go more in-depth and let students have more agency in their learning. Students in IB programs are encouraged to take holistic approaches, apply creative thinking and find connections between the subjects and real-world situations.

“It is a complex program, but it has a lot of value, and so we’re helping people understand who it’s for, and that we have a strong program here,” Schreiber said. “When something is new, I think people are always nervous about trying something new.”

During the board’s Sept. 30 discussion, director of curriculum Jackie Saylor said if the program was phased out, students would be able to find similar courses through AP or other classes.

“We would work with our department coordinators looking at our course offerings to determine what courses it would make sense for students to select if they if the IB program is phased out,” she said. “And preliminarily, it would seem that we have several options for each course, the exception of one, maybe where we have a variety of options that our school counselors could work with students to help them select from.”

The majority of the program’s expenses come from textbook replacement and annual fees. Textbooks are on a five-year cycle, costing $22,000 annually and an additional $16,000 is paid to International Baccalaureate each year to run the program. Additional costs include IB team leader pay and teacher training.

However, students and teachers in the IB program believe it cannot be easily replaced or replicated. Melissa Wager, an IB and AP English teacher, said it could be difficult to integrate IB curriculum or content into other courses and removing it would limit options for students.

“I think it’s an oversimplification to assign a quantitative value to a qualitative experience,” Wager said. “That’s oversimplifying the program.”

IB course assessments are also vastly different than AP, Wager said. AP courses prepare for one final test or assessment at the end of the year or semester, often consisting of multiple choice questions, essay portions or short answer questions. For IB, students have more flexibility to share what they’ve learned throughout the course.

“Even the assessments themselves, over the course of two years, are really grounded in student choice and inquiry, which I think makes it unique and also a different approach for teachers to build in those inquiry skills throughout those two years, to prepare them for that,” Wager said.

Cheyla Ramirez Crawford, a senior in the diploma program, said she struggled at the beginning of her high school career before finding the IB program. For her, standardized testing and memorization wasn’t the best way to learn.

“It gives them an opportunity to express what they know and what they have learned throughout the year in numerous different ways, which is why it’s so important,” Ramirez Crawford said. “That’s why this program is so valuable — because there are so many students who are not being represented in the world in the way that they could be if they were given diverse opportunities in their education system to show what they know.”

Lové McGriff, an a la carte student, said the inquiry aspect, where students get to focus on the topics that matter to them and apply it to the courses, helps her stay engaged and has helped improve her grades.

“I feel like it really helps with people like me, where it’s hard for me to learn just something I do not care about, like half the time,” McGriff said. “It’s a lot more helpful to me because now I’m showing my true potential as a student, instead of being stuck in like a box.”

Wager also said the IB program not only helps students connect with the material but also with fellow students.

“I think it’s a small school within a large school experience, and in a place like State High that is so large, to have students feel a part of a community, a small community, a sense of belonging and collaboration and value, I think is really important for kids, especially today,” Wager said. “I think that they find that community in this program.”

Superintendent Curtis Johnson said he doesn’t doubt the value of the IB program but it’s the administration and the board’s job to evaluate all programs. There’s a desire for other courses that teachers cannot take on because they are locked into the IB program, he said during the Sept. 30 meeting. Some teachers, especially in the world language courses, are co-seated with both IB and AP students, meaning they must prepare two lesson plans or assessments for each course.

“I don’t think the question is about whether the IB program is valuable,” Johnson said. “It’s a world-renowned program. We know that. The question is, are there other courses and programs that would strike the interests of our students, that students might be more interested in.”

But Ramirez believes a district as privileged as State College Area should be able to allow students to be involved in decisions regarding their own education.

“I think the idea that we have a choice in what we want to do with our education — because it’s ours — is really important,” Ramirez Crawford said. “It’s my education. So what I want to do with my life — it matters, and what I want to learn about, it should matter.”

The board did not make a request to the administration regarding the IB program during the Sept. 30 meeting and it is unclear when the issue will return to the board agenda.