At a recent school board meeting Herricks School Superintendent Dr. John Bierwirth presented an extensive overview of the International Baccalaureate Program, a world-class educational program, not just a series of courses. Dr. Bierwirth explained that the courses could offer significant advantages to the district.

Dr. Bierwirth said, "When I arrived in the district the school board had this on its agenda as something they wanted me to look at and it is something that I happen to know something about." He then turned to the audience and asked how many people have ever heard of the program and four people responded which he said was encouraging.

Dr. Bierwirth continued with an explanation of what exactly the International Baccalaureate Program (IB) is. He said, "The International Baccalaureate Program diploma is a pre-university diploma that utilizes international standards and encompasses many countries, not just the United States. It is truly an international program with the headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland."

Dr. Bierwirth said, "This is an integrated curriculum, not just a series of courses and there is a degree of globalism and any student in the IB program in any country are held to the same standards and if they apply to a university anywhere they know exactly what they have taken and how well they did."

The IB is in place in 924 schools in 102 countries and two of those schools are in Portland, Oregon with which Dr. Bierwith explained he had direct experience because his daughter went into one of the programs. The IB has 40,000 students worldwide.

He went on to explain, "The program focuses on two languages. Language A and Language B; experimental sciences, arts and electives, mathematics, individuals and societies, which is history. The centerpiece of the curriculum is an extended essay course called, "The Theory of Knowledge," which is one of the most wonderful courses I have ever seen anywhere. The program also includes creativity, action and service and as you know, the high school students discussed with the board the idea of mandated community service and their concerns about that. If a student wants a full IB degree they must do service. If a student goes into the program they make take courses, but the emphasis is on moving toward an integrated degree. If our students were going for a IB degree they would have to take a variety of courses in the subject areas mentioned. They would have to take exams. Just to give an example the AP (Advanced Placement) exams are scored on grades 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. For an IB degree the student would have to achieve a certain number of points. For instance, you would have to take six courses in order to accumulate 24 points which would mean that you would be getting a 5 on some grades and a 3 on others."

Dr. Bierwirth explained that it was an extraordinary elaborate process to insure that all students anywhere in the world, are graded in exactly the same fashion. He said that the program must be fair culturally, internationally and fair to someone's particular circumstances. The board must know will know the criteria for the program. There is no mystery. When a student receives a grade they will know how they achieved that particular grade. The program, he explained, does not try to catch students, but rather allow students to succeed.

"One of the interesting aspects of this program," Dr. Bierwirth said, "is something that is very relevant as to where we are in the State of New York right now. What the IB program values is skills and knowledge, not how many hours you sat in a course and not the particular way in which you demonstrate those skills in college. Therefore, in many areas there are multiple areas of demonstrating the same skill and knowledge and the student in consultation with the teacher can choose which way they care to demonstrate it."

He went on to say that if one student can better demonstrate his ability to write by writing an extended essay he can do that; if another student wants to do it under an exam situation, they can do that. There are multiple ways of demonstrating the same thing and what counts is whether or not the student has the skill and knowledge.

Dr. Bierwirth said, "I think that is wonderful and I wish New York State was a little more understanding in that respect. The bottom line is the program in the end gives the student an opportunity to find out what they know rather than find out what they don't know."

He then gave some statistics of students entering college and he said that the IB students overall did much better on freshman and sophomore courses due to a more thorough preparation.

Dr. Bierwirth said to the board, "As I indicated to you in a memo I would like the staff to start looking into this program next week. Look at the courses and see what advantages and disadvantages they have overall. See it in the context of what the Herricks District is trying to do overall academically and see it if it is right for Herricks. It is not an isolated program and has to be part of what the district is doing overall. He said another question that must be looked at is even if the IB program has advantages is whether or not the investment in the program is worth the time, effort and resources. Many high schools don't even have AP courses and Herricks has an extraordinary amount of students taking AP courses. Everyone needs time to take a look at the program and to discuss it. I want to talk to parents about the program after they take a look at it. If we then get to that point where everyone is receptive to the program than I would suggest setting up a task force to make a formal recommendation."

Dr. Bierwirth concluded, "Some places have treated the IB program as a very elite program for a small number of students and I don't want to see us do that. In the Portland High School that I spoke about, the IB courses are only taken during the last two years of high school. In that high school there were 1350 students and approximately 700 of them were taking at least one IB course. So, I am suggesting a program that would be accessible to large numbers of students."

Trustee David Stollwerk asked if the AP course would be given side-by-side with the IB courses and Dr. Bierwirth said that he would probably recommend that the school drop the AP courses unless there were certain AP courses not part of the IB that the district wanted to continue. Dr. Bierwirth added, "For this reasons we need to look at this program as a part of a whole. Most of the schools that have adopted IB have dropped their AP courses and in many cases dropped honor sections.because the level was raised for everyone in the high school. He said, "What used to be regular English is now being taught as Honors English. The district then worked backward to make sure that the students were prepared for that. They raised the standards of the high school overall and had the IB as an option. But this must be contemplated over a period of time to see if this would be right for Herricks."

The board was very receptive to the program and they said that they would follow the process outlined by Dr. Bierwirth and if the staff feels that further investigation is warranted a task force will be created followed by a detailed recommendation.