WE Blog

Well done lads and lasses. :)

“There are many applicants each year that have to be turned down due to the number of spaces available at East.”
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RobertL, are there students who qualified but were turned away from the IB program? I really don’t know. If there are more qualified students than the single program can serve then I agree about expansion to ensure everyone has the opportunity.

Academic test scores are part (albeit a BIG part) of the qualification process but not all that is required.

There might be some who don’t apply for whatever reason but I don’t know how that would be determined. There are excellent advanced placement opportunities at each high school and they also offer a path to success for the motivated academic.

All our cities new graduates — CONGRATULATIONS!

Wichita High School East students and faculty — high five for your ranking in America’s top public high schools!

Only if you try to rub ‘elitism’ in other people’s faces Ben. :)

For instance, if the kids or a kid spoke to another High School kid and say, we’re better than you because our school scored better nationally than yours. That would be elitism and the term ‘better’ or ’smarter’ as a group only applies to a rating, not the individual achievement of any particular student.

Ego can get in the way of common sense occasionally. :)

I want one who graduated with honors from a good school and has lots of successful experience. Not a ‘good old boy’ drinking buddy who like pork rinds.

Depends if Dr. Pork Rind had a higher instance of living patients than Dr.Graduated with Honors. :D

East IB is a good school. East High itself, without IB, is a terrible school. One of the worst in town. It isn’ fair that they get to count their elitist, seperatist IB program as part of the “school” when the truth is the IB students rarely have any interaction with the regular students in the classes that count, like Math, English, History, etc.

FYIII,

Detailed and quite interesting explanation. Thanks so much!

Congrats to the class of .08

To respond to lindalinks55, obviously some of the applicants who are turned down by East IB are simply not qualified. They have bad GPA’s, poor teacher recommendations, bad test scores, etc., that exclude them. There certainly are, however, qualified applicants that are turned down. I could not speculate as to the number. For administrative reasons the entering freshmen class is capped. It has to do with allocation of teaching sections as well as what is considered a reasonable number of people for the IB personnel to administer appropriately.

lindainks55……………unfortunately, bringing in America’s Choice is a direct result of bush’s asinine NCLB. I think it was the wrong thing to do myself.

What you must get over is your connection between the use of this company and the proposed bond issue. There is none. The bond issue is needed for new schools, classrooms and ancilliary programs.

Go visit some of the more overcrowded schools this fall if you are in doubt. If you think merely redistricting schools is the answer, go ask parents of students who would be affected by these changes. I think you’ll find that the re-districting option is unacceptable to them.

You better do some more digging into this America’s Choice decision. I think you might be buying into a bag of tricks if you think this is only because of NCLB. And, ask someone why ALL these extra tests will be accomplished with a pencil. Why is a company hired that is at least 10 years behind 259? There is NOTHING good for any child about this decision. There is also NOTHING good for any taxpayer about this decision.

Linda,

I don’t know about East IB specifically, but think you may know more than me; the GOBN is alive and well in most of 259. Sad, but true.

Linda,

I’ve known Steve Shook for over 10 years, he’s a good guy. He has been an AP at East in the past. He knows the culture and staff at East well. I’m not sure I’d call him a “company man”.

Steve may be replacing Brenda Tretbar, but he is not displacing her. Brenda is actually moving to the Shawnee Mission school district for a similar position there. From what I understand, her move was family motivated. I taught with Brenda for several years while she was still in the classroom and I trust her word as to why she is leaving.

America’s Choice……………..I predict will be another fiasco. Apparently, administration has forgotten their past dealings with private Ed. services companies>>>>>>>>>>>>>>EDISON “Schools”. I still don’t get it. Adopting an outside consultant firm is only one sanction option required under NCLB. Implementing this option at Mead and Marshall may have been required by NCLB, but to put it in at the other Title I middle schools is just plain stupid. That is just saying “yep, those schools are going to fail (per NCLB) anyway”. Why would anyone (students) care to try when they have already been labeled “failures”.

Here’s the kicker, preliminary data suggests that Marshall may MAKE AYP (annual yearly “progress”).

If you distrust the administration of USD 259, then speak to the people they are responsible to…………that would be the BOE. They are elected to represent our (parents, grandparents, citizens) interests. Call any of them and express your concerns. That is what I do.

As a taxpayer and voter, that is your RIGHT.

Apophis,

I said in my concluding remarks, “Some people also have external-referencing habits, others don’t. ..Kansans aren’t interested in what the outside world is doing.”

You said, “Who care what other secondary schools around the country do, East’s program is looking great.”

Thank you for wholeheartedly seconding my statement. It’s important because A. you know the Kansas ed system as well as anyone, and B. many people in the system depend on you to be their voice.

Here’s are a couple reasons why Kansans’ failure to externally reference is problematic:

1. Kansas is inextricably intertwined with the global economy. The state was founded as a long-distance-trade zone. Kansas’s pioneer farmer-families came here not because the land was conducive to cultivating corn and wheat, but because railroad transportation that connected Kansas to grain mills in other states enabled the corn and wheat to be produced in sufficient quantities to enable Kansas-immigrant families to make a living by trading their produce for building materials, clothing, tools, etc. that were made in distant states. In the last century, Kansas grain was exported to other nations. Kansas was involved in “globalization” before this word was coined.

Wichita’s most important industry is aviation. This brings in the largest share of dollars from the outside world that become locally recirculated and support all of us who don’t build airplanes. Remove aviation from Wichita, and you have Hutchinson.

Do Wichita aviation workers build planes, components and assemblies according to whatever they want to do? No. Their products have to meet international standards, because the market for planes is international. They have to meet federal safety standards. Wichitans’ work product, and its cost-effectiveness against other US and international sites, determines whether jobs stay here, or are contracted to other places’ workers. The people who decide where to locate production live in Illinois and Canada. Local Airbus design jobs are dependent on European executives’ decisions.

If we understand these things, then it’s undeniable that the local educational system has to fit economic reality. Schools don’t exist to serve their employees, they exist to prepare young people to find productive roles in the economy when they become adults.

2. IB is an international-standards-based educational program. The main IB Organisation headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. The regional IBO headquarters for North America is in New York City.

If you’re going to buy the service from the international vendor, which costs $600 per student per year, you necessarily subject students to a curriculum designed by a European corporation, and your students are evaluated by IB-test-readers in Europe, i.e. Bath, England, who decide whether Wichita IB-programme students get IB diplomas, or not. Local IB teachers make their own student evaluations, but they, the East High principal, and the USD 259 administration, do not have the power to make the ultimate determination of who gets an IB diploma, administrators in Europe hold this power.

Each IB school is subject to comparitive evaluation among all IB schools. You can’t avoid this. The IB Organisation makes comparisons. The news media, increasingly interested in American public education, makes comparisons.

The foundational purpose of public IB programmes (as opposed to the private-school segment of IB) is to provide college opportunity to minority students.

To know if the programme works overall in fulfilling this mission, and in individual schools, and how well it works, requires data analysis. You can’t just locally conjure up a fuzzy-brained, “Our tiny IB programme got the feds and local African-American protesters off our backs, so it ‘works for us’.” This would be a shoddy corruption of the programme’s core purpose.

If a school pays IBO $1200 per student, on top of its normal budget, if you’re not fuzzybrained, you demand to know, Is this $1200 two-year investment worthwhile to the taxpayers who are suppyling the money? Does the programme have objective quantifiable results? For example, how many minority students get into four year colleges, and how many graduate, due to this $1200 per student investment?

In the absence of this information, proxy data such as those devised by Mathews are relevant. It makes a difference if your high school has 1 out of 8 seniors passing at least one college-creditable course, versus 4 out of 8.

The reason why other schools in other states DOES matter is that if they, under similar funding and other constraints, can achieve 4 out of 8 performance, it means this is not a ridiculously impossible dream, it means it is doable, and is already being done. If, in this circumstance, you are satisfied with your 1 out of 8 performance, and you don’t care that it could be raised fourfold as others have proved to be doable, it means you’re subjecting students–other people’s children in your community– to the tyranny of your own low expectations.

There are parents here who have lamented their and other people’s children being excluded from the IB programme. Do you want to tell these people the truth? The truth that Wichita has several hundred 11th graders each year who would be enrolled in IB if they lived in SOME OTHER STATES. IB isn’t a program for geniuses, it’s a program for kids with normal-range intelligence who are willing to study and work hard who want to get into 4-year college/university and earn bachelor’s degrees. Solid study habits can be trained, which IBO strives to do.

There are some people here, including some educator parents who want their kids to do IB and be designated as “special”. But that type of “elitism” is counterproductive. The community needs to provide IB (or AP or IB/AP combo programs) education to a far larger number of students in order for the community to thrive in the future.

For example, suppose a distant-headquartered company finds it attractive to set up an operation in the mid-section of the continent, and will offer dozens or hundreds of well-paying jobs. The team sent out to evaluate sites will look closely at candidate cities’ educational programs.

Why? Because the transferred executives and managers’ kids will have to attend school. The company will also want a well-educated hiring pool. This is why OKC and Tulsa have made a serious effort to not just meet anti-segregation requirements, they look at IB and AP as core economy-improvement measures. This is why Wichita can’t afford to have a We don’t care what other states (e.g. our next-door neighbors) are doing. Unless Wichita’s educational system is comparable to theirs, Wichita isn’t going to get the good jobs and the flow of dollars from the outside world necessary to sustain, much less healthily grow, the local economy.

FYIII, I agree with the overall thrust of your comments, but maybe have a different take or questions on some of the details.
1) Many fees are paid by parents when students register for their tests, not by the school district. Do you have the figures that separate out what the district itself actually pays? There are program fees and provision for kids on free and reduced lunch. I believe most parents feel the fees are worth it in terms of what the program does for their students, or, obviously, they wouldn’t pay them.
2) East’s program was initiated apart from a desegregation plan, and has not had that as its primary focus. Certainly many US districts look at IB that way, but not necessarily. Otherwise why would Hutchinson be starting up an IB program?
3) Your comments about IB being appropriate for a broader pool of students than what East accommodates are absolutely valid. This is why USD 259 should seriously consider opening a second high school IB program in the near future. Expanding the one at East would quickly run up against barriers of overall school size, but there are plenty more students who could succeed in IB, and several high schools that could stand a new influx of academically motivated students.
4) Some comparisons with other places may need more context than what you give. Well below 20% of East’s students are in IB or pre-IB classes. What percentage of the students in Sumner, Claassen or BT Washington are actually IB students, and what percentage go to the school simply because they live in a defined attendance area, as is the case for the sizable majority at East? My questions do not imply we have nothing to learn from them; indeed their work seems impressive.
5) The externally graded exams go all over the world. They are as likely to go to Argentina, Bahrain or South Africa as to Europe. While headquarters are indeed in Europe, the operation is not as centralized as that.

All that said, your emphasis on the fact that Kansas needs to produce students that can compete on a world level is exactly what we need to hear and remember.

Clarification: NOT sitting quietly about the upcoming school bond issue! Planning to be quite vocally against that! Wonder when they will set the date for the election?