Dive Brief:
- The International Baccalaureate foundation says low-income and minority students who take IB classes do as well as their white peers from higher-income families when it comes to high school graduation and college enrollment rates, but access for low-income kids is still low.
- Even low-income students who take just a single IB class are more likely to graduate and go on to college, but only a third of low-income students at high schools that offer the IB program take a single class, according to The Hechinger Report.
- Individual schools have their own criteria for who can take IB classes, and while many students from disadvantaged backgrounds may not be prepared for the rigor, International Baccalaureate’s head of research, John Young, said there is a lot of unrecognized potential.
Dive Insight:
Schools with both IB and Advanced Placement programs have been working to expand access to more students, recognizing the challenge of the more rigorous classes helps prepare students for college and career. Many states use AP participation as a measure of school success. There have been complaints that too many students are being pushed into AP classes they’re not prepared for, setting them up to fail and also limiting the rigor of instruction possible in mixed classrooms.
At the lower levels of elementary instruction, gifted programs come with the same concerns. Minority students as well as those from low-income families are underrepresented. Proponents of wider access have pushed for new identification systems that rely on more than test scores to determine whether students are qualified.