Originally posted by: Parrotheader
Originally posted by: xirtam
Didn't make the list, buit I find the criteria odd.
To say the least.
I'd barely even heard of the school that's #1 on the list and located less than a mile from my office. Apparently it's a program that only top students within the county school system are invited to join. If true, that's not exactly a fair comparison as you're taking the equivalent of a tiny school made up entirely of AP-caliber students and contrasting that with much larger schools with a much more diverse mix of students.
The criteria for getting into JCIB was based on several things. First of all you had to be in the RLC program for Jefferson County which required Teacher, Counselor, and Principal recommendation, have a certain IQ, and pass a battery of tests. Once you were in RLC you had to deal with your RLC representative which would meet with your teachers and determine if your current school was adequate or if you needed a more challenging curriculum. Once that happened the JCIB staff and administration reviewed all of that and would invite you to come. Typically there were about 50-70 people each year that were asked from 8th grade to come to JCIB for 9-12th grade education.
Yes, there was a selective admissions policy and we were cherry picked, but many other IB schools and schools on that list do the same thing. I enjoyed going there, and because we were located at the new Shades Valley Highschool we had the ability to play sports and participate in normal high school activities. Pierre Brown a classmate of mine plays football for the Arkansas Razorback, and another guy a grade ahead named Ronald Hatcher played football for Vanderbilt. We were normal highschool students who had our own building on Shades Valley campus with very relaxed rules and individualized curriculum. People from my class went to Harvard, Oxford, Yale, MIT, Vanderbilt, UAB, Alabama, Auburn, Mississippi State, etc. Our class of 60 received over 1.5 million in scholarship to colleges throughout the world.
I loved that school and my tenure there allowed me to get a great education in Public Schools. Not everyone is afforded the same treatment and education, but because of what we had achieved or approved we were given the chance to go there. You became very tight knit friends with the people in all grades, and we were able to fun things like several trips to Europe (teachers would take students during the Summer or Spring Break). I was lucky enough to go to Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, and Morocco my 10th grade year. I can honestly say that the curriculum there was entirely college based, so we were given a leg up in getting great scholarships and into great schools.
If you think about it the criteria makes sense, because it isn't like parents or students are going to throw away the money it costs for AP/IB exams and we would take between 10-20 of them. The IB diploma is Internationally Accepted at any University in the World, and many people started college as Sophomores or a few credits shy of being Juniors because of the AP/IB tests. A vast majority of people who took the AP/IB tests made high enough to get college credit. I received credit at UAB and Mississippi State for the tests I took. In hindsight I should have stayed there my Senior year and taken more tests, but I did not.