A bit more on International Baccalaureate (and a note on exam admission)

If you're just catching up on the IB conversation from last night, a few notes from me:

• If you're wondering about the school demographics, I did get one bit wrong last night: Worcester Tech is our school with the highest percentage of white students by a slight margin (43% to Doherty's 41% to the district's 35.3%). Doherty is the high school with the lowest percentage of low income students (59.7% to Worcester Tech's 64.9% to the district's 74.3%). If you're wondering where the stats came from: I asked for them. If I get a chance later today, I'll run and post the rest of the percentages; all I have is raw numbers.
• As for Brooklyn Latin, as Mr. O'Connell cited last night: they are one of the three IB programs cited in the Ad-Hoc report, and it is the leadership of that school that had the strongest words against using an exam as an admission requirement for an IB program. They're stuck with theirs: as a New York City limited-admission school, they have to use the NYC exam as the admission requirement, by state law. It does not serve them well, per the school leadership, as students who do well on a single admission exam are not necessarily those who would succeed at an international baccalaureate school. 
• Because we seem to still be operating at something of a disadvantage on general knowledge of IB, here's a few words from the Ad-Hoc report on the program: 

In grades eleven and twelve, ...the standard IB course of study : language and literature in English; a second language and culture; individuals and society, e.g.  history, geography, anthropology, world religions, global politics; experimental science, e.g. physics, biology, chemistry, environmental science, sports exercise; mathematics and computer science; and the Arts, e.g. music, film, theater, painting, drawing. Following this standard course of study, IB students also take a course Theory of Knowledge, (similar to a college course in Epistemology). This course explores ways of knowing, nature of knowing, and areas of knowledge. Students also perform a service learning project, as well as a creative project.