Academic Excellence ◈ Global Citizenship ◈ Application of Knowledge
The Albany Preparatory Charter School will offer a rigorous academic curriculum that is designed to effectively prepare students to earn a coveted International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma during their high-school years, and which fully meets or exceeds the New York State learning standards for intermediate-level schooling.
The IB diploma is widely accepted as the “gold standard” for international education. The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) was established in Switzerland in the late 1960s and developed with a group of schools its Diploma Program, a rigorous curriculum that emphasizes critical thinking and exposure to a variety of points of view. The approach was designed for children the IBO identifies as “geographically mobile students.” In an increasingly internationally interactive world, this educational approach becomes unquestionably valuable, a value evidenced by the program’s widespread use and acclaim. The renowned Diploma Program now is offered in more than 1,400 schools in 114 countries, including 497 in the United States and 26 in New York (23 public schools).
The rigor of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program has been acknowledged by the New York State Education Department: IB examinations are among the very few tests (with Advance Placement exams) that have been approved as a substitute for Regents exams.
An International Baccalaureate (IB) education also holds significant rewards in post-secondary education. Top universities, including Harvard, accept IB diplomas without hesitation, and elite institutions such as Yale, Princeton, and Stanford Universities each offer college credit or accelerated classes for students who simply score well on their high-school IB exams. Reflecting its success at incorporating an international approach to education, IB diplomas are recognized by universities worldwide.
The International Baccalaureate educational approach, which establishes a core philosophy focused on students’ intellectual and social development and overlays the school’s academic areas with five “areas of interaction,” will be adopted by Albany Prep. Albany Prep also has incorporated into its curriculum content and standards outlined in the Core Knowledge Sequence and curricular components offered by the New York State Education Department for grades five through eight. Further description about the combination of these approaches at Albany Prep appears below.
This educational design is supported by use of the research-based and successful curricular programs of Success for All (SFA), Readers/Writers Workshop, Singapore Math; the hands-on science program FOSS (Full Option Science System), and History Alive. More information on these and other curricular programs appear under “Preparing Children for Excellence.”
The International Baccalaureate Model
The International Baccalaureate Organization’s acclaimed Diploma Program is a two-year program designed for students attending grades 11 and 12. Because Albany Prep will serve grades five through eight, the school will not be an official IB school, but rather will adopt the approach to education used in the IB Diploma Program and adopt subject-area curriculum that will prepare students thoroughly and effectively for this program. Variants of IB components – such as the Personal Project – will be adapted and incorporated as end-of-school requirements for Albany Prep’s eighth-graders. (More detail on the incorporation and adaptation of the IB approach at Albany Prep appears in “Preparing Children for Excellence.”)
The IB approach adds a distinct focus on providing students “with the values and opportunities that will enable them to develop sound judgment” and to “help them develop the knowledge, attitudes, and skills they need to participate actively and responsibly in a changing and increasingly related world.” To support the implementation internationally of International Baccalaureate programs, the IBO stresses a three-pronged educational framework of communication, intercultural awareness, and holistic learning. This framework, about which more detail is offered below, will be embraced by Albany Prep.
Communication, notes the IBO, is “fundamental to learning, as it supports inquiry and understanding, and allows student reflection and expression. Good command of one’s own language enables clear expression of ideas, attitudes and feelings…. But more than simply generating appropriate language, good communication is also about listening to what others have to say and being attuned to intentions, variations and nuance.” Core communication skills of writing, speaking, analyzing, and drawing conclusions will be developed across all academic subjects at Albany Prep.
Intercultural Awareness will be nurtured at Albany Prep by providing a global view of individual situations and issues studied in the classroom. Various perspectives about students’ own cultures and others’ social and national cultures will be used to analyze tasks at hand in an effort to encourage intercultural understanding.
Holistic Learning, in the IB model, “emphasizes the links between the [academic] disciplines.” Student learning within each discipline, including each subject’s unique objectives and methodologies, will be accentuated by considering issues and problems in their widest scope and from various perspectives, forming good solutions by drawing upon insights acquired from many sources. At Albany Prep, students will be encouraged to “recognize relationships between school subjects and the world outside, and learn to combine relevant knowledge, experience and critical thinking to solve authentic problems.”
The Core Knowledge Sequence
Learning standards and curricular content for English language arts, mathematics, science, technology, history and geography, and the arts draw heavily from the highly-successful Core Knowledge Sequence developed by the Core Knowledge Foundation. The success of the Core Knowledge approach is documented in numerous studies (see “Preparing Children for Excellence”).
Albany Prep opted to adopt Core Knowledge components to help ensure a rigorous and broad liberal arts education for its students. The intent of a sequential approach to education is rooted in the idea that, as Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch notes, “learning builds on learning: children (and adults) gain new knowledge only by building on what they already know.” Hirsch also notes the international use of sequential education systems, an element that supports the effective blend of an International Baccalaureate approach and use of Core Knowledge content and standards:
All of the highest-achieving and most egalitarian school systems in the world (such as those in Sweden, France, and Japan) teach their children a specific core of knowledge…, thus enabling all children to enter each new grade with a secure foundation for further learning. It is time American schools did so as well…”
The Core Knowledge Sequence also reflects the input of a special panel created by Hirsch and others to provide standards of specific knowledge about diverse cultural traditions that all American children should know and share as members of a global community. This aspect of Core Knowledge, too, blends well with the IB approach adopted by Albany Prep.
NYS Standards and Curriculum
Albany Prep’s curriculum also reflects an educational program that, where Core Knowledge and International Baccalaureate may have voids or do not readily lend themselves for adaptation to Albany Prep’s design, incorporates curriculum components designed and offered by the New York State Education Department. This incorporation is particularly evident in the academic areas of New York State history, Career and Occupational Studies, Family and Consumer Sciences, Languages Other than English, and Physical Education, but it occurs to some extent throughout each discipline.