IB Costs and Curriculum
Dave Eaton
Past School Board Member,
Minnetonka School District
Sharing the experience of
an IB program
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Background on Minnetonka School
District
Background on the start of IB
Costs of IB
Comparison of value of AP to IB
Curriculum of IB’s Theory of Knowledge
Profile of Minnetonka
High School
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One of the top academic schools in the
state
– Approx. 2700 high school students
– College preparation focus
– Professional, high income community
– Large, successful AP program
– High 24.5 average ACT student score
Understanding the costs
of any school program
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Incremental costs vs. total costs
Start-up costs vs. ongoing costs
Accounting for local, state and federal
tax dollars spent
Costs paid by parents and students
Different ways of reporting the costs
of a school program
What the Minnetonka school
district says IB costs*
What is the budget for the IB Programme.
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General Fund Budget Allocation for 2004-2005
Cost of replacement teacher for
$24,694.
IB Coord. - Includes Fringe Benefits
Curriculum Development
2,200.
Postage
4,000.
Professional Development
3,200.
Textbooks and Workbooks
1,000.
Dues and Memberships
11,150.
Total
$46,244.
* Source: Minnetonka School District,
http://www.minnetonka.k12.mn.us/IB/IBQandA.htm
Two of the sources used to
research IB costs and curriculum
Major Initial IB costs
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Purchase of official IBP publications
Teacher training
Cost of staff site visits to existing IB schools
Cost of the required Diploma Program Coordinator
Cost of the additional secretarial staff
Office space for IB staff
IB school application fee
Full cost of accommodation, travel and incidental
expenses of IBO staff authorization visit
Major ongoing costs of IB
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IBO annual school basic fee
Examination fees
– Covered by school, state, parents
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Additional postal charges for sending
student work overseas to be graded
Required teacher training workshops,
regional and heads of schools conferences
IB specific classroom materials
IB specific library materials
Cost of additional teacher
release time for the benefit of
the IBO
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Cost of releasing teachers (including substitute
teacher cost) for*
– Teachers hosting training workshops
– Release expert teachers to lead IBO workshops and
speak at conferences
– Release teachers to join authorization teams
– Release teachers to sit in curriculum review meetings
– Teachers to assist regional offices in negotiating or
improving diploma recognition agreements with local
universities
– Assist regional offices in getting access to local and
national government education offices and other
education agencies
*Page 22, Implementing the IB Diploma Programme, Cambridge Press 2004
Typical IB start-up costs for a
school training 20 teachers
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Annual IBO application school fee $3,500
Teacher training - $40,000
Total $118,500
– $2,000 each Tuition, Airfare, Hotel, Meals
– Toronto, New York, Boston, Myrtle Beach,
– Potential for up to $1,000 paid by state, additional by Federal
Title I tax funds
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Additional library materials costs $10,000+
Additional science lab costs $10,000+
Salary & overhead of IB coordinator (Half time), CAS
coordinator, TOK Coordinator, Key learning area coordinators,
secretary - $40,000
Staff time for site visits, curriculum development &
coordination - $10,000
Initial Marketing Costs – staff time, equipment, mailing costs
$5,000
Note: costs can be paid with a combination of local, state and federal taxes
From: page 43-50, ‘Implementing The IB Diploma Programme’, Cambridge Press, copyright 2004
IB annual costs example for a school
with 30 juniors and 30 seniors in the
Diploma Program
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School Annual Fee - $8,000
Student Fees for 60 students - $16,440
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Per capita student fees- $4,110
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Student registration fees - $2,130
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$1,805 per student
30@ $22 each, 30@ $49 each
Student exam fees not paid by state– $10,200
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30 @ $76 each, 30@ $61 each
$108,340 per year
Average of $170 per student (typically paid by parents)
TOK fees - $1,300
Teacher release time $6,500
Teacher training costs not paid by state $5,000
IB coordinator $35,000
Staff development time $9,600
Curriculum Development time $6,800
Office space and postal costs, printing $3,000
Marketing materials, staff time, $2,000
Instructional Materials $7,200
Library and Media materials, IB publications $7,500
Note: costs can be paid with a combination of local, state and federal taxes
MN State funding is biased
in favor of IB vs. AP
How state of MN funds IB in
addition to local and federal taxes
Each IB exam costs the state 3
times more than each AP exam
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Each IB exam cost the state $31.60
while each AP exam only cost the
state $10.32
– $102,750 was spent subsidizing 3,251 IB
exams in 2005
– $304,361 was spend subsidizing 29,480
AP exams in 2005
*All figures from MN Dept of Ed 2005 report to legislature found at:
http://www.leg.state.mn.us/docs/2006/Mandated/060264.pdf
IB In-depth teacher training increases
costs by requiring traveling out of state
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No in-depth IB teacher training is
available in Minnesota
– IB training is only available in cities like
Toronto, New York, Boston, Myrtle Beach
– State pays for up to $1,000 for out of
state training
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AP teacher training is available in state
– State pays for up to $550 for in state
training
*All figures from MN Dept of Ed 2005 report to legislature found at:
http://www.leg.state.mn.us/docs/2006/Mandated/060264.pdf
With only 50% more program
participants, each IB school costs the
state 7 times more than AP schools
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Only 4% of schools offering advanced
programs offer IB
IB schools received on average $15,605*
per school in state funding
– Only 12 MN schools offer IB
– Ave. of 109 IB students per school
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AP schools only received on average
$2,010* per school in state funding
– 250 MN Schools offer AP
– Av. of 76 AP students per school
*All figures from MN Dept of Ed 2005 report to legislature found at:
http://www.leg.state.mn.us/docs/2006/Mandated/060264.pdf
Each IB student costs the state
4.9 times more than each AP
student*
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Average of $29 spent for each AP student
– $542,778 in state taxes spent on 18,902 AP
students in the state
– 17.6% of all MN High School students
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Average of $138 spent for each AP student
– $171,655 in state taxes spent on 1,241 IB
students in the state
– 2.2% of all MN High School students
– Total of 122 IB diplomas earned in the state
*All figures from MN Dept of Ed 2005 report to legislature found at:
http://www.leg.state.mn.us/docs/2006/Mandated/060264.pdf
How state IB funds flow
to a local school district
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In 2005 Minnetonka was reimbursed $8,071 in
state funding for IB
– Minnetonka had 24 IB diploma candidates in ‘05
– $610 was received to subsidize 25 IB exams
– $7,461 was received to subsidize IB teacher
training for 6 teachers
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17 other IB teacher’s trained previously would have been
eligible to receive an additional $17,000 in state funding
in earlier years
*All figures from MN Dept of Ed 2005 report to legislature found at:
http://www.leg.state.mn.us/docs/2006/Mandated/060264.pdf
Comparison of AP vs. IB
costs
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AP has lower teacher training costs
– Training in MN available for teachers
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AP has lower administration costs
– Less administration time for program
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AP has lower mailing costs
– AP does not require mailing materials to Europe
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AP has lower fee costs
– Fee’s paid by the school are much lower for AP
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AP has lower student/teacher materials
costs
IB is designed around IBO standards,
not state and local standards
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“The IBO is an independent organization
unfettered by individual national
demands.”
– pg. ix Implementing The IB Diploma, Cambridge, 2004
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School boards give up local control of
curriculum and grading when they sign
an IBO agreement
Cautions to Schools
investigating IB
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‘A school adopting the DP must prepare itself for
significant investments in terms of time, effort and
money.’
‘Teachers salaries may well have to be revised
upwards’
‘Class size may have to shrink’
– IBO strongly recommends a limit of 25 students per class
– From: page xi, ‘Implementing The IB Diploma Programme’,
Cambridge Press, copyright 2004
Justification used for IB
programs
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To differentiate the school from others
– 97.5% of MN High Schools don’t have IB
– Minnetonka marketing calls IB ‘prestigious’
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To take away funding from other districts
– $5,300 in state funding follows students that open enroll
to another district
– If enough students open enroll because of IB that can
offset the higher costs of IB
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Provide an additional option for existing students
Claims IB is required to give students an
international perspective
– AP also offers an International Program
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Claims IB is the way to improve the way teachers
teach (adopt the IB pedagogy)
Accessing IB Curriculum
Criteria:
Education- the act or process of imparting or acquiring
general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and
judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others
intellectually for mature life.
Indoctrination- to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideology,
etc., esp. to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief or
point of view.
IBO Mission - Moral
Relativism and Tolerance
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To create “caring young people who help to
create a better and more peaceful world
through intercultural understanding and
respect”*
..encourage students across the world to
become “learners who understand that other
people, with their differences, can also be
right”*
– Note: differences in taste are much different than
differences in morals
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Communities need to be able to discern the
difference between:
– Education (how to think) and
– Indoctrination (what to think)
*From the IBO website at www.ibo.org
Required Theory of Knowledge
(TOK) class is “central to the
educational philosophy of IB”*
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“How do I, or how do we, know that a given
assertion is true?”*
“Questions are the essence of TOK…often
challenging to accepted belief..”*
The possible ways of knowing are: Emotion,
Reason, Language or Perception
‘a philosophy course that considers the ways in
which people acquire knowledge as well as the
typical strengths and weaknesses of each of these
ways.’
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From: page xi, ‘Implementing The IB Diploma Programme’,
Cambridge Press, copyright 2004
* From IBO Theory of Knowledge, October 2000
TOK class materials at
Minnetonka High School
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Required
reading
materials for
the key IB
course
– $128.49 per
student
IB TOK books expose students
to limited ‘ways of knowing’
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The Demon Haunted World
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Pro-science, anti-religion, paranoid tone, advocates science replacing religion
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Advocates new-age rejection of truth of the Bible, advocates that Bible is based
totally on myth
The Power of Myth
Darkness at Noon
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Novel set in Soviet Union – torture truth vs. serving his country
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Novel growing up in Africa, beaten and tortured by Nazi sympathizers
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Existentialist essay on how to reconcile science, religion and humanism
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Perspective of brain injury patients, no testable ideas
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Troubling tail of a disaffected amoral young man, involved with a pimp, kills a man,
called ‘the existentialists' bible’
The Power of One
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
The Stranger
Innumeracy
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Impact of people not literate in math
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Biased view of the bias that is in history books
Lies My Teacher Told Me
IB list is inferior with other lists
of books on ‘ways of knowing’
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Classics of the Islamic Tradition
– Qur'an, 'Attar, Al-Ghazali, Ibn Khaldun.
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Classics of the Indian Tradition
– Kalidasa,Gandhi.
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Classics of the Chinese Tradition and
Buddhism
– Mencius. Lao Tzu, Hui-neng, T'ang, Cao Xueqin.
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Classics of the Japanese Tradition
– Murasaki Shikibu. Kamo Chomei. Kenko Yoshida. Basho,
Matsuo.
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Classics of Western Tradition
– Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas,
Calvin, Machiavelli, Bacon, Descartes, Pascal, Locke,
Hume. Rousseau, Kant ,Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Darwin,
Marx, Dostoyevsky, Freud, ect.
IB Theory of Knowledge
class at Minnetonka
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“One of the key aims of knowledge
theory is to identify values, beliefs,
and biases underlying judgments and
knowledge claims pertinent to issues.
The class discusses difficult questions
for which there are not absolute right
or wrong answers.”
From:http://www.minnetonka.k12.mn.us/IB/IB_QA.pdf#search=%22high%20
cost%20%22International%20Baccalaureate%22%22
Type of religious questions asked of IB
students Taking Theory of Knowledge *
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“What are your religious beliefs (if any)?”
“Be able to justify a personal position on the
question of the existence of God”
“On what basis do spiritual beliefs rest?”
“Is it a set of beliefs you have come to
yourself, or one that you have absorbed
from your culture unquestioningly?”
“What is the role of myth and religion in
culture?”
From: TOK Textbook, ‘Ways of Knowing’, by Michael Woolman, IB Press
Two required books that address religion in
the IB Theory of Knowledge class
Anti-Christian bias of
Joseph Campbell
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States as a fact that belief in the virgin birth of
Jesus really originated from Greek mythology
– This old falsehood was completely proved false by Machen
way back in 1930
– States that all religions are just symbolic myths and purely
subjective
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Humanist Society in South Carolina recommends
parents read ‘The Power of Myth’ to their children if
they ever show an interest in God
When asked “Why do you think we tend to a literal
interpretation of Christ in myth?”
– Campbell responded, “I think it’s the result of a strong
institutional emphasis in our religions in the West, and a
fear of the mystical experience.”
Anti-Christian bias of Joseph
Campbell- Required TOK Text
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On page 282, Campbell ridicules the Christian belief in
resurrection calling it "a clown act, really."
“We know that Jesus could not have ascended to heaven
because there is no physical heaven anywhere in the
universe.” Page 9*
“Jesus on the cross, the Buddha under the tree—these are the
same figures.” Page 10*
“Once you reject the idea of the Fall in the Garden, man is not
cut off from his source.” Page 11*
“[The serpent] is the primary god, actually, in the Garden of
Eden. Yahweh, the one who walks there in the cool of the
evening, is just a visitor.” Page12*
“One problem with Yahweh, as they used to say in the old
Christian Gnostic texts is that he forgot he was a metaphor.
He thought he was a fact.” Page 13*
Quotes from ‘The Power of Myth’, by Joseph Campbell
Campbell repeatedly deceives
students about the content of
the Bible
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Campbell’s claim:
– “I’m sure there’s not idea of a virgin birth in the (Old
Testament, Jewish) tradition. The virgin birth comes into
Christianity by way of Greek tradition.” Joseph Campbell,
page 173
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Let’s actually look in the Bible:
– “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The
virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and
will call him Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14
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Note, Isaiah began his ministry in 740 BC, the year King
Uzziah died, hundreds of years before the New Testament
was written
Carl Sagan’s Anti-Religion
bias
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Sagan says about religion, “It is better to grasp the
Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion.”
1981 American Humanist Association Humanist of the
Year
– Keynote speaker at atheist conventions
– Aside: The American Humanist Association is registered as
religious charitable tax exempt organization
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The universe is all there is, ever was, or ever will be –
Carl Sagan
– In other words, there is no God, no created universe
Carl Sagan in ‘The Demon
Haunted World’
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“The Bible is full of so many stories of
contradictory moral purpose that every
generation can find scriptural justification
for nearly any action it proposes… and this
moral multiple personality disorder is hardly
restricted to Judaism and Christianity” pg.30
“If you accept the literal truth of every word
of the Bible, then the earth must be flat!”
page 325
TOK Materials display the
ideology of IB
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St. Augustine’s view that humans must rely on God, not reason, to
guide them to the truth is called ‘extreme’
– IB TOK Textbook, page 276
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“If one looks at most Western compilations of quotations, it seems
that most are attributed to dead, white European males. Why might
this be so? To what extent does the identity of the author of a
quotation influence how it’s content is interpreted and how seriously
it’s ideas are taken?
– IB Diploma Guide, TOK, March 2003, page 31
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On section of the book is entitle: “The Prison of Logic”
– IB TOK Textbook, page vi
Questions asked of students after being
required to read anti-Christian authors
like Joseph Campbell and Carl Sagan*
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“What are your religious beliefs (if any)?”
“Be able to justify a personal position on the
question of the existence of God”
“On what basis do spiritual beliefs rest?”
“Is it a set of beliefs you have come to
yourself, or one that you have absorbed
from your culture unquestioningly?”
“What is the role of myth and religion in
culture?”
From: TOK Textbook, ‘Ways of Knowing’, by Michael Woolman, IB Press
AP provides more flexibility and
value for students than IB
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IB is more expensive than AP
AP is accepted at more colleges for
credit
– Many colleges give no college credit for
SL (lower level) IB classes
– More colleges accept individual AP classes
than single IB classes for credit
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AP classes graded by local teachers, IB
classes graded by IB staff in Europe
Conclusions
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IB is more expensive than AP
IB offers less value and flexibility than AP
IB carries the baggage of viewpoint bias
– For example, IB’s keystone TOK class censors
and disparages the traditional Biblical view of the
world embraced by many families in the US
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There are much better ways to provide a
quality, cost effective education with an
international understanding than IB
Questions?