IB is gone

Letter from Memoli sent to teachers 

Hello Everyone,

I hope you all had a fantastic week to reenergize and are looking forward to some warmer weather and a great end to the school year!  

Prior to the spring break many of you responded to a survey regarding IB.  Thank you for your responses, as well as the feedback you provided to Ms. Grierson and to me about IB at our after school meetings last fall.  I am writing to inform you that  Ms. Grierson and I, in consultation with the two middle school principals, are recommending to the Board of Education at their meeting on Monday, April 27th, that we discontinue the IB Middle Years Programme after this school year.  The Board will discuss this recommendation on April 27th and most likely vote on May 18. 

This decision was not made lightly and is in no way a reflection of the work, professionalism, or commitment on the part of the administrators, the IB coaches, and the teachers at both middle schools. You have all made a herculean effort to implement this new initiative despite other major initiatives competing for your time and attention.   No one could have predicted the timing or stress that the new PARCC assessment, Focus School status, the Common Core State Standards, or Achieve NJ mandates would have on the system. Addressing these externally mandated initiatives, and at the same time rolling out a new framework of teaching in the implementation of IB MYP, prevented the program from becoming as transformative as we had expected.

The purpose of the Middle School Transformation Plan was to increase the level of rigor and challenge in our middle schools, and to make it more consistent across classrooms and buildings.  Other external initiatives, such as the Common Core State Standards and Achieve NJ, have the same goal and end result.  While IB teaching techniques, educational philosophy, and strategies are sound practices, we believe that, together, teachers and administrators can achieve and maintain the same instructional goals without participating and adhering to the IB framework. The unit plans that have been developed by grade level teams across schools have focused on the right components of sound practice – inquiry based instruction. Those plans and common assessments will continue to be used in the future. 

Thanks to all of your efforts, we have two vibrant middle school communities where teachers, students, administrators, and parents work hard and are not afraid of challenges.  We have thriving music and art programs, STEM classes, an award winning PE program, school plays as well as science, Spanish, language arts, math and social studies classes that are engaging and ever changing based on the needs of our students.  The new, more rigorous standards set by the Common Core State Standards and assessed by PARCC and Achieve NJ (including the Framework for Teaching) provide teachers and administrators with the leverage we need to ensure that all students participate in high level learning targets and continue to transform the middle schools as intended by the Middle School Transformation Plan. 

Thank you for your dedication, creativity, and all that you do to make the middle school experience so worthwhile for the children.

So how much did this little fiasco cost the School District?

Maybe this will free up some money to bring back the World Languages. 

I have an 8th grader and a 6th grade at SOMS and I am pretty happy to hear this news.  My 8th grader has had the teachers training for IB for all three years she has been in middle school.  I wonder how many hours of instructional time was lost to this training?  

IB = Irritable Bowel???????

I welcome this news. It sounded ill advised, and pointless without the IB program continuing in the high school. 

When I lived in Astoria I considered the IB school there, which is a very good school and in many ways a good alternative to the more "rigorous" - stressful selective high schools in the city. It began in 7th grade, preparing the sudents to finish the traditional high school curriculum by the end of 10th grade and spend the last 2 years working toward the IB degree. It makes sense in Astoria in many ways because it's a very international community there, but even regardless of that, it is a full IB school and I seriously considered it for my kid. 

However, the middle school program here did not lead to any correlate curriculum at Columbia, was costing a lot of time and money to implement and was not the only or even the most effective way to improve the middle schools. I have nothing against the IB approach to secondary education, the full program is an impressive one. I just never saw the point in investing that much energy into an on ramp that didn't connect to the highway.

However, the middle school program here did not lead to any correlate curriculum at Columbia, was costing a lot of time and money to implement and was not the only or even the most effective way to improve the middle schools. I have nothing against the IB I approach to secondary education, the full program is an impressive one. I just never saw the point in investing that much energy into an on ramp that didn't connect to the highway.

I totally agree with you. When they chose to not continue it into the high school the program made no sense. When I went for the IB training and told them we were doing it only in the middle school even the IB trainers wondered why we were doing it. 

I like the concept but it should have been an opt in program that students could choose to take if they wanted. 

 Sorry don't know how to unquote that part 

for an uninformed someone without kids what does IB stand for?... 

seaweed said:

for an uninformed someone without kids what does IB stand for?... 

International Baccalaureate: http://www.ibo.org

And contrary to what you might hear, SOMSD is not the only public district in New Jersey with only a middle years IB program. Cherry Hill kept IB at one of its middle schools -- unlike here, it's opt-in -- after dropping it at the high school level (which was also opt-in) seven years ago.

Good call.

More time for test prep! Hooray!

bookbabe66 said:

 Sorry don't know how to unquote that part 

It's the issue being discussed in the "Quote under or over" thread.

Right now the quote function defaults the cursor above the quote so if you want to type your comments underneath, you have to move the cursor down.  When you do that, you have to be sure you move it far enough down ... outside the (faint) gray bars that show the quote.  There are some blank lines in there so it is easy to have your comments end up inside the quote.

The consensus on that other thread seems to be to default the cursor position underneath, which should help prevent this problem.

I totally agree that it really did not make much sense (to me at least) to put in the middle years IB program without a plan to also incorporate IB as an option at the high school. Nothing wrong with IB overall, in fact it is very highly regarded in education circles and we have relatives whose children did IB as well as or instead of AP.  But that was primarily the high school program.  It seemed to me that the IB  initiative here was primarily an attempt to deal with the controversies over leveling/de-leveling rather than to really fix the leveling system in and of itself.

I also thought that the plan to train the teachers year by year was problematic. It might have made sense as a project phase-in, but it certainly was disproportionately hard on this year's 8th graders. They were the last non-IB class and their teachers were doing IB training ("for next year") during all three years those kids were in middle school.  If I had a child in that group, I would have been very unhappy about it.  I know that I posted same when the plan first came out and those children (including a neighbor of mine) were in 5th grade.  I'm surprised we haven't seen more discussion of this over the last three years.

FWIW, I do have a kid in 8th grade, and the training really hasn't been a problem.

That said, I have always been agnostic about IB.  I think there were a variety of reasons it was tried, and several things have changed since that make it reasonable to back off.

sorry cant figure out this quote function , But would be interested in both reasons you state jfburch

jfburch said:

FWIW, I do have a kid in 8th grade, and the training really hasn't been a problem.

That said, I have always been agnostic about IB.  I think there were a variety of reasons it was tried, and several things have changed since that make it reasonable to back off.

Curious, jfburch, what in your estimation were the reasons it was tried and what has changed now to make it reasonable to back off?

Sorry quoting not working the way I expected

My opinion only based on what I've seen and heard as a parent.

The Middle School IB was a tool for improving the middle school program, by advancing approaches (e.g multi-disciplinary, global, mindset/self aware learning ) that the district was already interested in, and unifying the program within and between the middle schools.

What's changed:  two of the leaders who were implementing the program are no longer here, and PARCC has added several layers of complication and demands on teachers.

It's a fine tool, but it's not the only one, and if it's more than folks can stand, and there is not enough enthusiasm and direction from key administrators, it doesn't make sense to keep going.

At least they gave it a good solid try - for all 10 minutes.  So impressed with district leadership & vision.

ALee said:

I hope we'll see a full accounting of dollars and staff hours spent on IB. I think the community is owed that much.

I agree with you - but sadly every time I have asked for that no one seems to know that amount and the amount that administration  did give was not even close to the amount of money that was spent if you include the consultants, all the trainings, IB coaches salaries and more. My rough estimate is at least 1/2 million. 

To me the issue is not exactly the amount of money spent, but the fact that we spent nearly all of our middle school training and curriculum development dollars on it for three years, in addition to the significant fees to the IB organization, and did so seemingly after very limited investigation or debate at the District or Board level.

I just hope that something useful came out of those years of teacher training and disruption.  Since I don't currently have middle school children, I don't have clear insight, but with two in elementary, I'll be watching the evolution of this closely.

susan1014 said:

To me the issue is not exactly the amount of money spent, but the fact that we spent nearly all of our middle school training and curriculum development dollars on it for three years, in addition to the significant fees to the IB organization, and did so seemingly after very limited investigation or debate at the District or Board level.

I just hope that something useful came out of those years of teacher training and disruption.  Since I don't currently have middle school children, I don't have clear insight, but with two in elementary, I'll be watching the evolution of this closely.

 ^ THIS ^ and yeah, the money.

I doubt anything that was learned during IB training will be used in the classroom. I'm sure many educators are happy to see it go and bid good ridden to it entirely. 

I'm so happy this is the last year in middle school. My son has wasted valuable hours on IB and now PARCC. What. A. Waste.

Has anyone done an OPRA request to find our how much has been spent on Osborne's Folly?

And let's not forget those BOE members who made it all possible.  

kibbegirl:

I'm so happy this is the last year in middle school. My son has wasted valuable hours on IB and now PARCC. What. A. Waste.

 If it's his last year in MS, doesn't that put him in that last group that didn't have IB?

I wonder if one of the reasons for Superintendent Osborne leaving is that he knew that IB was failing and it would be on his head?

yahooyahoo said:

I wonder if one of the reasons for Superintendent Osborne leaving is that he knew that IB was failing and it would be on his head?

I think it was the massive pay cut that was just around the corner. 

"one of the reasons"

dave23 said:

yahooyahoo said:

I wonder if one of the reasons for Superintendent Osborne leaving is that he knew that IB was failing and it would be on his head?

I think it was the massive pay cut that was just around the corner. 

BaseballMom said:

Has anyone done an OPRA request to find our how much has been spent on Osborne's Folly?

And let's not forget those BOE members who made it all possible.  

 There were many people in the community who initially proposed and then heavily lobbied the school district to implement an IB program. So, to call this Osborne's Folly is mislabeling.