Woodrow’s march to become DISD’s first International Baccalaureate (IB) program continues with Supt. Michael Hinojosa’s signature Monday on a "memorandum of understanding" between DISD and the Woodrow Wilson High School Community Foundation, a non-profit corporation formed to help raise funds to support the IB program.
Neighorhood resident Richard Vitale, a Bank of America executive who is president of the Woodrow foundation, reports that DISD’s board is expected to consider approving the IB designation for Woodrow in late September.
The current timeline for the IB program has Woodrow beginning to accept student applications for the IB program from through DISD in Spring 2010, the program beginning in Fall 2010 and the first IB diplomas issued following the 2013-2014 school year. Three principal fields of concentration will be available as part of the IB program: Math, Science and Technology; Business, Finance and Entrepreneurship; and Fine Arts and Humanities.
We talked about the IB program at length in the spring, and you can read those stories and accompanying comments here and here. We also interviewed Woodrow principal Ruth Vail in the spring; you can listen to the podcast here. It’s also important to remember that the IB program will be operated like a "school within a school" at Woodrow, with Advanced Placement (AP) and regular classwork remaining available for neighborhood students enrolled at Woodrow who aren’t interested in pursuing the IB program.
Also, for what it’s worth, we’ve been doing some driving this summer checking out colleges for our "rising senior" (that’s college lingo for a kid expected to graduate in spring 2010). The IB program comes up periodically in admissions counselor discussions, and I was surprised to note that it receives as much negative comment as it does positive comment.
The believers say the IB program offers rigorous, college-level instruction that prepares students for just about anything they’ll face; the non-believers say the IB program is virtually impossible for most students to complete because the workload and level of rigor is something only a highly strung and competitive parent would enjoy.
