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June 27, 2010 in Idaho Voices
Worldview wrestling
Task force will mull IB concerns
( Editor’s note:This is part two of a two-part series examining the International Baccalaureate program in the Coeur d’Alene School District.)
Duncan Koler likens it to being in a courtroom, sparring in words before a judge and jury.
Standing at the podium in front of the trustees and board members of the Coeur d’Alene School District, the Hayden attorney has in recent months become a frequent critic of the district’s International Baccalaureate programs at Lake City High School and Hayden Meadows Elementary School.
Since becoming the unofficial spokesman for dozens of parents and concerned community members who oppose IB, Koler has presented his findings and research at the monthly meetings, arguing that the public school system is polluted by an advanced learning program that’s expensive, endorses a progressive political agenda with close ties to the United Nations, and is a waste of taxpayer money, $1.3million in the seven years since its inception.
Meanwhile, the supporters of IB, which Superintendent Hazel Bauman described at a recent board meeting as being “the vast majority of parents,” contend that the high school and elementary school programs provide a better understanding of American values through an inquiry-based program that encourages students to become globally aware individuals.
“We enjoy the intellectual challenge of it because there is give and take and they do have points to raise on the other side,” Koler said about attending the board meetings, which he described as going from sleepy affairs last fall to rocking debates this year. “We don’t have to agree with (the school board) and don’t, but quite often some of them we agree with. So we’ve, yeah, had a lot of people come forward and want to help and we are running active on this and we’re not giving up.”
Not until IB “is dead and buried,” he added.
Digging deeper into the program spurred Koler into action. At public protests and school board meetings, critics like Koler have made their position clear: the programs push a global education that supersedes American history.
Program backers challenge those assumptions. By helping develop the intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills to live, learn and work in a rapidly globalizing world, as the IB website states, Bauman said students in the programs will emerge better prepared for the future.
“The U.N. is not controlling the curriculum in the school district,” Bauman said. As for offering international points of view in IB coursework, she added, “We are competing with those countries. We are competing with those countries for jobs and for resources, and it’s better to know more about those you are competing against.”
To help settle the debate, Bauman is organizing a task force this summer to answer the questions that critics have brought up. Those issues include: outlining the requirements to become a Primary Years Program, the K-5 program offered by IB, and examining who controls those requirements; determining if the U.N. or UNESCO has any control in the IB curriculum and if the programs teach radical environmentalism or promote socialism or communism; and concluding if IB undermines the founding U.S. documents.
“We are going into this with an open mind,” Bauman said, adding that the exploratory committee will primarily consist of educators along with two community members representing both sides of the issue. “We are hoping that we will find evidence, and I believe we will find evidence, to refute the allegations that the opposition group has made.
“However, if there are any grains of truth in what they are saying, we will be transparent and mitigate those issues…. The report will answer these questions definitively and with evidence.”
The task force will present its report to the school board in August.
Koler worries that the verdict is in. If it’s not an independent inquiry, he fears, it could amount to an act for the crowd.
“I think it’s going to be a snow job and a beat-down by the teachers and the administrators and the one person – the parent – that’s for it against the one person that’s not for it. So it’s nine against one, and there’s just no way,” he said.
The school board, he added, has previously shown a commitment to the programs, offering as an example the speaking time provided to the different sides of the controversy. At the June board meeting, a handful of IB critics were given three-minute time slots for statements, while a few supporters were given nearly twice that.
The task force proposal is nothing new, he said. “It represents a continuation of (the school board’s) effort to control the process, to control the publicity regarding this issue, and to funnel it toward the findings that they want.”
Yet despite the debate, Koler is quick to point out that IB program participants are typically outstanding students. “It’s pretty well known that there’s a ton of work that these kids do – lots and lots of reading, especially every night, and that’s great,” he said. “I buy into it that these students have earned the right to go to these colleges. We’ve got bright kids and we do have good teachers – we have very good teachers. They are very defensive, but they are good teachers.”
The high school and elementary programs are two of the seven “schools of choice” in the district. School board members are unanimous in defending the value of the IB programs, especially in the context of the ‘schools of choice’ initiative.
However, some IB opponents say plan was created in light of the controversy. District administrators said that is a false accusation.
“That’s absolutely not true. I have been promoting schools of choice for probably a decade,” Bauman said. “We realized that if we didn’t offer schools of choice, we would lose more and more of our market share.”
For parents who don’t want their children in one of the schools of choice in their attendance zone, the school board outlined an option that would allow the student to be transported to a different school.
So far, that hasn’t been a problem, Bauman said. When the district sent out resubmit-to-enroll letters to parents of students at several schools, including Hayden Meadows, Ramsey and Sorenson, “overwhelmingly, the vast, vast majority of parents want to be enrolled in those schools,” Bauman said. “As far as I know, we have no takers on the transportation option next year.”
The schools of choice, Bauman said, “are revenue-producing for us. We are generating more ADA (average daily attendance, which amounts to about $6,000 of state funding for every student that attends a public school) from these schools of choice. So if we have to transport students, the cost will be very small comparatively…. The bottom line is we are making money from the schools of choice.”
As for the cost of the IB diploma program and Primary Years Program, the initial expenses were the most expensive part, Bauman explained. Textbooks, subscription fees and teacher training soaked up most of those initial fees.
“It was an expensive program to get started, I would give the opponents that, but that was all the upfront costs,” Bauman explained. “The ongoing costs are not nearly as difficult to maintain as the opponents would want you to believe.”
With Coeur d’Alene High School’s advanced learning program, known as Advanced Placement, providing college credit at many universities, Koler and other critics want IB programs removed from the school district, arguing AP is currently accepted at more colleges. Supporters say IB courses are gaining ground as accepted college credit and offer more of an admissions advantage at top-tier universities.
“I think they have a lot of leeway within the framework provided by IB to create their own curriculum, but they agree when they become an IB school to teach in harmony with the IB program, which emphasizes environmentalism, social justice, things like that,” Koler said. “It’s a consistently designed, reinforced-at-every-level program that involves, in my opinion, social engineering on social, political issues. And I don’t think that has any place in our school system, our public school system.”
The Primary Years Program offered at Hayden Meadows uses the same district curriculum and state standards that are taught at other schools, only in an IB-style framework which focuses on cause-and-effect and compare-and-contrast lessons, according to Principal Lisa Pica. So far, the feedback from parents has been positive, she added.
“We have had exactly this year one student withdrawn because of the PYP program, and that was Mr. Koler’s child,” Pica said. “This is not politically driven whatsoever. I respect other people’s opinions and they have a right to their opinion, and that’s not even going to be an argument. Those that are anti-IB, they have a right to their opinion, but so do our parents. So I just think that we need to respect that on both sides and go from there.”
In the high school program, IB teachers, who are required to attend a two-day workshop once a year, create the coursework and lessons. There are course-specific guidelines and yearly updates, but that is the extent of the outside influence, according to IB teachers at Lake City.
“We have not received any directions from the U.N., UNESCO or anything else about how we are supposed to teach, and I love America,” explained IB Theory of Knowledge instructor Eric Edmonds. “I need to get my students to do their work, to do their homework, to think carefully, to write well, and not to be distracted by the millions of things that distract them. They have iPhones – that is a far bigger concern in my world than socialism, frankly.
“Teachers are not trying to convince their students of any particular ideology. Teachers are trying to teach their students to think for themselves.”
As the IB students across the hall in Derek Kohles’ class prepared for the bell, a handful of them took the chance to voice their support for the program. The students said they first learn about their own nation and culture before being taught about the rest of the world
“A lot of the people who are anti-IB, their whole thing is that IB creates a worldview. None of us understand why having a worldview or understanding how other people think is a bad thing,” said Brianna Loper.
Edmonds cited a number of students who have been accepted at prestigious universities in recent years: Harvard, Duke, Stanford, Yale, Georgetown and Columbia.
“In terms of the number of students going to top-tier schools, it’s significantly changed as a result of IB,” he said. “And that’s a shift from the past.”
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TruthAboutIB on June 30 at 1:43 p.m.
I just love how Bauman sets up a strawman argument to knock down for the Task Force:
“the K-5 program offered by IB, and examining who controls those requirements; determining if the U.N. or UNESCO has any control in the IB curriculum and if the programs teach radical environmentalism or promote socialism or communism; and concluding if IB undermines the founding U.S. documents.”
I can tell you right now, the Task Force will focus on the word “control”, as in, how does the UN CONTROL IBO? Not only IBO, but the IB K-5 “curriculum”. Well, we all know that there is NO IB K-5 curriculum, that it is only a set of 6 globalist themes taught through the Constructivist method, which has been proven to be a flawed method of teaching and learning.
In fact, right in this very article, Principal Pica makes my point:
“The Primary Years Program offered at Hayden Meadows uses the same district curriculum and state standards that are taught at other schools, only in an IB-style framework which focuses on cause-and-effect and compare-and-contrast lessons, according to Principal Lisa Pica”
Cause and effect, compare and contrast. Not quite. I highly recommend this book for an excellent debate on the topic: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415994248/
The attempt by the district to “minimize” the cost of IB is astounding, truly astounding. IBO’s annual membership and exam fees have risen dramatically in the past four years and will continue to rise as the company is in serious financial straights due to overspending on its headquarter relocation.
And supposedly only ONE child has withdrawn. Target the Koler’s kid. Nice. “Oh Mr. & Mrs. Koler. You’re the ONLY parents to complain about our precious IB!”
How many other parents have decided to enroll their kids in private school or homeschool them? How many new people to CDA are choosing other educational options? And why should the district continue to spend millions on a program that is causing such controversy?
http://truthaboutib.com/
Concerned_Parent on July 01 at 1:55 p.m.
Ms. Bauman says her “Task Force” is going to be unbiased, and made up of approximately 10 teachers, school administrators, and community members. Well, make that only 2 community members, and only 1 of those will be anti-IB/PYP. So it’s going to be 9 against 1. Not only that, but Ms. Bauman has conveniently framed the 6 questions the Task Force will answer, without any input from IB/PYP opponents. Care to guess what the outcome will be? As Bob Dylan wrote in Subterranean Homesick Blues, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Ms. Bauman: save your time, our resources and don’t bother. Once again, you and the School Board are wasting taxpayers’ money and insulting their intelligence. Instead, just own up to the fact that you like U.N. education and wild horses couldn’t make you change your mind.
Ms. Bauman and her Board keep saying that “Schools of Choice” are needed in our consumer-driven society so our public schools can “keep up with the competition,” and hold on to the $6,000 per student they receive from the state. Since when is the mission of our public schools to compete with non-public education for the purpose of receiving a bigger share of the budget from the state? Ms. Bauman’s (and her Board’s) priorities are seriously deranged. Instead of invoking platitudes as an excuse to throw more money at putting liberal social programs in our schools, why don’t we take a hard look at why parents are taking their kids out of public schools in droves (hence the “competition”)? Is it because the curriculum is not liberal enough? Is it because you just can’t get a good U.N. education in our public schools? Is it because they just don’t have enough good marimba and juggling teachers in public schools? (Guess what - they do now at the Sorenson Elementary “School of Choice”!) I think not. Parents are home schooling and private schooling their kids precisely because of this kind of teaching in public schools.
shimauma on July 02 at 7:03 a.m.
Duncan Koler is up against a scum bureaucracy, that’s a fact. The supporters of IB will do whatever sneaky weaseling they have to do to get what they want. The sad thing is that with a lot of these socialist “education” programs, it’s just about getting our kids indoctrinated into a global mindset, it’s also about the money they get for doing it.
ruthm on July 02 at 4:54 p.m.
The IB program is a very expensive program.
It is a program that is anti-religion, anti-American.
We ARE NOT global citizens we are Americans, Americans who made this country great because we have the greatest document on earth : THE CONSTITUTION, thanks to our founding fathers. We are Americans under the Constitution, and the rest of the world can adopt what we have or they can keep what they have but many die trying to get into this country.
NO school board should shove the IB program down their tax payers’ throats without giving them a chance to have their say by a democratic process.